4TPANCAP

 Reality is that 4th political theory and the anarcho-capitalist followers became an instrument of the alt-right and post-modernist resistance, following paths.

Superficial & Instrumental Convergences

The common ground is generally negative (what they oppose) rather than positive (what they propose).

• Rejection of Global Liberalism: Both ideologies are fundamentally hostile to contemporary liberal democracy, globalism, and cultural modernity.

  • 4PT views liberalism as the primary global antagonist, a nihilistic ideology that promotes individualism, materialism, and destroys traditional cultures and geopolitical pluralism.

  • Anarcho-Capitalism views the modern state and its regulatory/welfare apparatus (often associated with contemporary liberalism) as inherently coercive, parasitic, and destructive of individual liberty and free markets.

• Anti-Statist/Anti-Centralization Impulse (Different Aims):

  • AnCap is defined by its absolute rejection of the state, advocating for the privatization of all public goods, including law and security, based on the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) and radical individual liberty.

  • 4PT is not truly anti-statist; Dugin advocates for a strong, multi-polar Eurasian 'Empire' led by Russia, but it seeks to shatter the current unipolar, Atlanticist, liberal world order dominated by the US and global institutions. On an instrumental level, both support the destruction of the current dominant geopolitical structure, even if 4PT wants to replace it with a different great power structure, and AnCap with no state at all.

Fundamental Disagreements

The apparent convergences dissolve quickly when examining the core values and proposed subjects of each theory. They are fundamentally incompatible.

Feature	Fourth Political Theory (4PT)	Anarcho-Capitalism (AnCap)
Core Subject	Dasein (Authentic Existence), the Ethnos (Culture/People/Community), and the Great Space (Geopolitics).	The Individual and their Self-Ownership and Private Property Rights.
Economic View	Often Anti-Capitalist (especially against globalist/financial/market-liberal capitalism). Calls for a "Third Way" economics that subordinates markets to traditional/communitarian values.	Radically Pro-Capitalist. Advocates for pure laissez-faire economics and a fully privatized system based on voluntary exchange.
Political Goal	Establish a Multipolar World Order of great, traditional civilizations (Eurasia) that rejects Western liberalism and materialism.	Establish a Stateless Society (Anarchy) where all services are provided by competing private firms operating under the Non-Aggression Principle.
Core Value	Traditionalism, Community, Sovereignty, and Cultural Identity (Ethnos).	Individual Liberty, Private Property, and Non-Coercion.

4PT sees the world in terms of civilizations, empires, and eternal values and views liberal individualism as the problem.

AnCap sees the world in terms of individuals, voluntary contracts, and markets and views collective authority (the state) as the problem.

The Convergence of Antipodes: A Philosophical Absurdity

The attempt to find a philosophical convergence between Aleksandr Dugin's Fourth Political Theory (4PT) and Anarcho-Capitalism (AnCap) immediately lands us in the realm of the Absurd. These ideologies stand as philosophical antipodes: one an extreme communitarian, geopolitical, and traditionalist project; the other a radical individualist, market-driven, and hyper-modernist vision. Yet, their mutual and complete rejection of the dominant Liberal-Globalist order creates a point of convergence—a common ground found only in their shared diagnosis of the world's sickness.

I. The Axiomatic Divide: Rationalism vs. Anti-Rationalism

The most profound philosophical difference lies in their approach to Rationalism and founding Axioms:

• Anarcho-Capitalism (AnCap) and Rationalism: AnCap is the quintessential political expression of Axiomatic Rationalism. Its entire edifice is built upon a minimal set of non-negotiable, logically derived axioms, primarily:

  1. Self-Ownership: The individual owns their own body.¹

  2. The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): The initiation of force or threat of force is illegitimate.

  3. Homesteading (Private Property): Property is acquired through first use or voluntary exchange.

     From these axioms, AnCap attempts a utopian construction of a stateless society, believing that purely rational actors, operating under a perfect system of private law and competitive defense, will yield a spontaneously ordered market equilibrium.2 This approach is profoundly anti-pragmatic, prioritizing the moral purity of the axiom over observable human Behaviorism or historical precedent.

• Fourth Political Theory (4PT) and Anti-Rationalism: 4PT, drawing heavily from Martin Heidegger's philosophy of Dasein, is an explicit rejection of the Enlightenment's Rationalist tradition, which Dugin holds responsible for the rise of Liberalism, Individualism, and Nihilism. Dugin champions Traditionalism and the Ethnos (the collective cultural existence) as the subject of politics, viewing the rational, atomized individual of the West as a nihilistic fiction.³ 4PT is an ideological anti-modernist patchworking—part Heideggerian ontology, part geopolitical Political Realism (a multi-polar world), and part eschatological prophecy. Its guiding principles are drawn from myth, tradition, and collective existence, deliberately subverting the Western reliance on rational-legal axioms.

II. The Nihilistic Convergence and Political Realism

Despite their opposing foundations, they converge in their mutual descent from a common, post-modern sense of Nihilism and their shared need for Political Realism to achieve their goals.

• The Shared Nihilism of the "Final Ideology":

  • 4PT explicitly diagnoses the current Liberal order as the "End of History" and the triumph of a comprehensive Nihilism—a spiritual void masked by consumerism and individualism. The creation of 4PT is an act of meta-political defiance, attempting to infuse a transcendent purpose (the Ethnos/Dasein) back into a world drained of meaning.

  • AnCap, though promoting economic vitality, is often accused of a different kind of Nihilism—a hyper-materialist, atomistic world where all value is reducible to utility, price, and contract. By reducing all human interaction, including law and defense, to market transactions, it risks dissolving the shared social bonds necessary for communal life. The state's monopoly on force is replaced by a "monopoly of force" that can be bought and sold.

• Pragmatism and Realism in Policy: Neither ideology is currently a governing reality, forcing their active policies into instrumental Political Realism—or a kind of Pragmatism of the Fringe:

  • 4PT's Pragmatism: Its "active policies" are fundamentally geopolitical and state-driven, urging a strategic alliance between great powers (Russia, Iran, China) to dismantle the American-led unipolar world. The practical policy is anti-globalism and Eurasianism—a cold, hard Political Realism that seeks to leverage existing state power for counter-hegemonic ends.

  • AnCap's Pragmatism: Because the goal (statelessness) is unattainable through democratic means, AnCap policies often retreat to Minarchism (a minimal state) as a pragmatic first step, or focus on strategies like Agorism (counter-economics) and Seasteading (physical separation). Its realism is constrained to the realm of non-aggression and small-scale voluntary association, a highly constrained, micro-realism within the macro-reality of the state.

III. The Absurd Utopia: An Existentialist Deadlock

The ultimate convergence is their shared Absurdity—not in the Camusian sense of confronting a meaningless cosmos, but in the radical impossibility of their proposed utopian replacements for the current order.

Visionary Utopia	Philosophical Problem
4PT's Multipolar Empire	The Absurd is the attempt to restore an inauthentic Traditionalism (or Authentic Dasein) that is historically and politically manufactured—a myth-driven collective identity imposed on a globalized population.
AnCap's Stateless Market	The Absurd is the assumption that the abolition of the State will not immediately lead to the emergence of de facto states (Private Defense Agencies) and a new, more ruthless form of feudalism, but rather a perfect, non-coercive market order.

Both theories offer a sweeping, totalizing alternative to the present, yet both demand an ontological leap of faith—the 4PT asks us to sacrifice the individual for the Ethnos, and the AnCap asks us to sacrifice the collective for the Axiom. Their convergence is the echo of their shared despair: they both believe the existing liberal world is so fundamentally broken that only a structure built on its direct opposite—whether the radical Collective or the radical Individual—can justify existence.

The Axiomatic Cage: Rationalism, Absurdism, and the Pragmatic Necessity of Policy

Political philosophy often unfolds in the tension between the theoretical ideal and the practical necessity. At one end of this spectrum stands Rationalism, which, coupled with an Axiomatic approach, attempts to build policy on immutable, universal truths. At the other end, Nihilism and Absurdism deny the possibility of these foundational truths, exposing the political project as inherently arbitrary. The ultimate challenge lies in how Political Realism and Pragmatism must synthesize these extremes into active, effective policy, often by employing the observable metrics of Behaviorism.

The rationalist project in politics is inherently utopian, seeking to derive the best possible system from irrefutable starting principles, or axioms. This is evident in libertarian thought, where the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) serves as a primary axiom, dictating all subsequent policy regardless of outcome. In this view, policy is not a tool for societal improvement but an exercise in consistent logical deduction. This approach is profoundly anti-behaviorist; it cares little for empirically observed human tendency, trusting instead that correct application of the axiom will naturally lead to human flourishing. However, by prioritizing purity of principle over the messy reality of application, axiomatic rationalism frequently produces policies that are structurally sound in theory but brittle and impractical in the face of human irrationality.

This fragility is precisely the ground upon which Absurdism and Nihilism stand. If the cosmos is indifferent (Absurdism) or devoid of intrinsic value (Nihilism), then all political axioms—justice, liberty, equality—are human constructs without metaphysical sanction. This denial of foundation can lead to political paralysis, or, conversely, the radical creation of entirely new, non-rationalist foundations. For example, some non-liberal political theories reject the liberal individual, instead locating their foundational subject in an existential concept like Dasein (Being-in-the-world) or the ethnos. This move is a direct response to the perceived Absurdity of hyper-individualized postmodern life, attempting to fill the nihilistic void not with reason, but with a new, collectively-felt, existential commitment, fundamentally rejecting the rationalist's faith in universal reason.

The bridge between these foundational conflicts and governmental action is forged by Political Realism and Pragmatism. Realism, as an active policy, refuses to engage with moral or rational axioms, prioritizing only the acquisition and maintenance of order and power. Policy is deemed good not because it aligns with a rational truth, but because it works to ensure the security and survival of the political unit. Pragmatism complements this by shifting the evaluation of policy from its intent (rational axiom) to its consequence (observable outcome). This is where Behaviorism becomes critical; policies are designed as measurable interventions, succeeding or failing based on empirically verifiable changes in collective human conduct. The pragmatic realist utilizes behaviorist techniques—from taxation to nudges—to manage the fundamentally flawed, absurd human nature that the rationalists ignored and the nihilists embraced. Policy thus becomes a set of functional tools rather than a moral imperative.

In essence, successful policy often involves a Pragmatic truce: we operate on the functional level of Behaviorism and Political Realism, designing systems that effectively manage the chaos, while fully acknowledging the Nihilistic and Absurdist truth that there is no universal, Axiomatic structure guaranteeing their lasting moral justification. The political arena, therefore, is where the ideal of Rationalism goes to die, and the reality of power and measurable results takes its place.