The BNP 3. Anti-Capitalist Ideology

The major libertarian objection (and of anyone who holds a remotely free-market position) is the socialistic attitude to the BNP with regard to the economy. It's trumpeted policies of economic nationalism are recipes for autarky with the result of establishing a fortress Britain. Britain has always been a trading nation and owes its golden age to the period of relative laisez-faire of the eighteenth and nineteenth century seems to be lost on the policy makers of the BNP, who eagerly prophecies the fall of international capitalism through some combination of peak oil and collapse of the financial system. Presumably Nick Griffin has simply updated the tired old cliche that 'capitalism' is doomed to collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions, resulting in some kind of pre-industrial village idyll like the Shire out of the Lord of the Rings.

The NLF is not a friend of 'big business' in the form of the corporation which if why the NLF advocates the smashing up of Corporations by removing the privileged legal status they hold which have enabled them to dominate the British economy. The NLF would also end the manipulation of the pound for political purposes and return it to the gold standard and so end the economic cycles of boom and bust. The idea that the BNP's policy prescription of protectionism, subsidies, nationalism and state planning will result in prosperity is false.

On a side note the NLF advocates a practical idealism with regard to realising a libertarian society. It argues for a homogeneous nation-state that is low-taxed and regulated but still provides the essential pillars of the welfare state, social security, health care and education - though using libertarian ingenuity to restructure the incentives to deliver such welfare more efficiently and at less expense. The NLF has no time for the type of libertarians who reduce libertarianism to dogmatic absurdity such as those who repeat the mantra of open borders.