Destroying the "Old Society," Competing for "Free Space"
Today, as the U.S. political landscape evolves, the extreme libertarians born from Silicon Valley's internet economy model—including Peter Thiel, who plays the role of an elite political theologian and prophet of Western civilization, and Elon Musk, who deliberately crafts his image as Silicon Valley's "Iron Man" and declares his mission to save human civilization—have stepped into the spotlight. They replicate Atlas Shrugged, emulating Galt's example, attempting to completely destroy the "old society" occupied by "parasites" or "mediocrities" and establish a utopia governed solely by themselves in a "free land" or "free space" devoid of nation-states, systems, or ethical constraints. In this decentralized, anarchic utopia, figures like Thiel fantasize about achieving immortality of consciousness or even the physical body through brain-computer interfaces and gene-editing technologies, while replacing human labor with artificial intelligence and robotics.
The competition for "free space" is an important underlying logic of Western capitalist development. The desire for exclusive possession constitutes the spatial order concept of Western capitalism—an extremely localized order concept imbued with Christian monistic overtones. Whenever capital needs to expand its space internally or externally, it tends to seek monopoly status by destroying the existing order structures within that space.
Looking back at the history of Western capitalism's expansion into "free space," we can observe repeated oscillations in the relationship between capitalist elites as individuals and the nation-state as an organized force.
When capitalist elites seek to expand their space and encounter nation-states as obstacles to their expansion, they often resort to "freedom," even directly mobilizing the "rabble" they despise in the name of the people to destroy certain orders. For example, when capitalism sought dominance in Europe, it invoked "freedom" to legitimize the bourgeoisie's seizure of political power, liberated peasants from feudal production relations to transform them into laborers, and ultimately destroyed the feudal power and ownership structures tied to land.
When capitalist elites attempt to establish a hegemonic order conducive to their expansion, they rely on the nation-state as a "collective" tool to facilitate their ambitions. From the colonial era, when they occupied land in the "New World" and engaged in maritime plunder under royal charters, to the era of trade imperialism, when they leveraged nation-states to impose tariff strikes on competitors and wage wars on semi-colonies, this characteristic has been evident.
This dynamic of competition and cooperation between individuals and nation-states has shaped capitalism's unique order, yet its foundation remains individualism. Europe's persistent fragmentation and failure to unify reflect the sovereign consciousness rooted in individualism. This concept also creates an inherent tension between sovereign individuals and sovereign nation-states.
In 1997, a book titled The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age quietly appeared. The authors presented two forms of nation-states: one controlled by government "employees," the other by "clients." They argued that the former, constrained by the self-interest of government departments, deviates from the original intent of democracy, operates at high cost with low efficiency, and—under the pretext of providing "protective services"—acts like a monopolistic entity that continuously extracts wealth from the people to maintain its capacity for violence. Only a nation-state truly dominated by "clients," they claimed, could solve the "inefficiency of democracy."
It is not hard to see that this book already contained the blueprint for Western tech elites to destroy the "old society" and create new "free spaces." When the book was republished in 2020, Peter Thiel wrote a preface for it. He excitedly noted that advancements in information technology had, for the first time, given elites the ability to intellectually control the direction of the "rabble" and even everything. Artificial intelligence made "centralized control of the entire economy possible," while the most important tool in the hands of sovereign individuals was "strong encryption technology," representing liberalism, which could usher in a "decentralized and personalized world."
To extreme libertarians, the nation-state is the greatest obstacle on the path to seeking "freedom." They aim not only to dominate the United States but also to achieve the expansion of sovereign individuals into all spaces. They believe that the mission of "civilization" is the war of sovereign individuals against all nation-states.
In the late 20th century, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, sovereign individuals relied on the United States as a tool of violence to destroy the state apparatus of newly independent Soviet republics in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, creating "free space" for capital to roam unchecked. Today, in the eyes of extreme libertarians, aside from the "employee"-controlled United States, China also poses a real threat.
Capitalism Enters a New Stage
The rise of America's tech elite and their pursuit of a decentralized, anarchic order reflect capitalism's entry into a new stage of development. In this stage, technological progress and the continuous accumulation of individual wealth make it possible for a tiny minority to break free from nation-states and achieve monopoly. They differ most significantly from libertarians of the past in two ways.
First, their methods of wealth accumulation are highly detached from production. As "venture capitalists," their wealth growth is closely tied to the extreme volatility of highly globalized stock, bond, futures, financial derivatives, and cryptocurrency markets. Financial markets and cryptocurrencies have created individuals with wealth comparable to nations. Their wealth growth is entirely disconnected from production and the lives of the vast majority, yet it exerts significant societal influence, leading libertarians to believe that the utopia ruled by a tiny elite is inevitable.
Second, with advancements in information technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology, libertarians see the possibility of expanding "free space." When tech elites achieve physical immortality through genetic engineering and consciousness immortality through brain-computer interfaces in the "metaverse," allowing consciousness to traverse freely between electronic and physical spaces, will this godlike "freedom" not constitute the utopia they seek? At the same time, all material labor required to sustain this utopia can be performed by robots. This will sever the last—and most unsettling—connection between libertarians and the "rabble."
The ultimate utopia of libertarians is one inhabited only by a few elites. In this utopia, there is no place for nation-states or the people—only themselves, as completely "free" as gods.
The libertarianism embraced by figures like Peter Thiel represents the final abandonment of the nation-state as an organizational form they once parasitized, now that capital has achieved dominance. The history of Western capitalism is replete with libertarians "discovering and occupying" "free space."
Today, as the White House changes hands, young tech elites who believe technology can solve all problems have found in Trump—a libertarian of the older generation—a shortcut to destroying the "employee"-state. Under the lie of "revitalizing American manufacturing," libertarians are using the "client"-dominated United States to carry out their old work of attempting to destroy other nations while exploring the complete replacement of the "rabble's" labor with machines in an AI-driven financial frenzy.
Compared to Trump, Thiel and Musk represent the new sovereigns of capitalism's new era. They believe they can seize the power to monopolize and dominate everything from the hands of nation-states, becoming the most thorough, complete, and "free" libertarians. Today, these new sovereigns of capitalism, like their forebears, are waging war against all people and all nations under the banner of saving "civilization."
(The author is a professor and doctoral advisor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University.)
