Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2.
Was Murray Rothbard a Friend of Ayn Rand?
3.
Was Murray Rothbard a Racist or a Racial Separatist?
4. Was Ludwig von Mises a Fascist?
5. Was Murray Rothbard's Support of David Duke Motivated By Racism?
6. Why Did Murray Rothbard Oppose a Black Nationalist State?
4. Was Ludwig von Mises a Fascist?
5. Was Murray Rothbard's Support of David Duke Motivated By Racism?
6. Why Did Murray Rothbard Oppose a Black Nationalist State?
7.
What About Ron Paul's Racist Newsletters?
8.
What About Ron and Rand Paul's Criticism of Civil Rights Legislation?
9.
Is
Racism Compatible with Libertarian Economics?
10.
The
State Should Treat Adults Like Children; Doesn't That Prove
That Libertarians Are Racist?
11.
Conclusion
12. Post-Script
Content
1. Introduction
The following is a response to “Exposing the Racist History of Libertarianism and Murray Rothbard” by Gary Anderson, from the October 3rd, 2011 issue of Business Insider. That article can be read in full at the following address: http://www.businessinsider.com/exposing-the-racist-history-of-libertarianism-and-murray-rothbard-2011-10
In his article “Exposing the Racist History of
Libertarianism and Murray Rothbard”, Gary Anderson makes a series
of statements which generally amount to libelous slander against
various heroes and founders of libertarianism; in particular, former
Texas Congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul, and
economists Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. He makes sweeping statements about Austrian School economics, libertarianism,
and libertarians, and ignore important things about history and
distinctions between political ideologies.
This piece critiques the statements and assertions
made by Anderson in his piece point by point, and more or less in
order.
2. Was Murray Rothbard a
Friend of Ayn Rand?
While it is true that “Murray Rothbard was the
student of Ludwig Von Mises”, the statement that Rothbard was “a
friend of Ayn Rand” is misleading, given that – after he stopped
associating with her and her circle of “friends” (ideologues) -
he wrote a play entitled “Mozart Was a Red”, which pokes fun at
Rand's habit of calling her own views and preferences “rational”,
and applying the label “collectivism” to points of view with
which she disagreed, often regarding topics which have nothing to do
with politics or economics.
However, it is true that Rothbard praised Rand; in
1958, he wrote that “Atlas Shrugged” was “the greatest novel
ever written”. But this point does not have anything to do with
race, so for the purposes of this essay it does not merit further
discussion. It might be worth mentioning in passing that - when
pressed - Rand supported the State of Israel over Palestine, due to
the Israelis' technological superiority over the Palestinians'
supposedly more primitive culture, but this does not reflect in any
way upon Rothbard's views.
3. Was Murray Rothbard a
Racist or a Racial Separatist?
Anderson's next claim is that “Rothbard was a
racist...”. Since this is a very general statement, instead of
discussing it directly, I will only address more specific claims,
such as the author's next claim that Rothbard “...believed in the
[']voluntary['] separation of the races”.
In the June 1994 issue of American Renaissance,
Rothbard wrote on the topic of possible solutions to the racial
apartheid problem in South Africa. He wrote that, “[b]eyond a small
quantity, national heterogeneity simply does not work; the
[']nation['] disintegrates into more than one nation, and the need
for separation becomes acute... We are now probably a lot more than
two nations, and we had better start giving serious thought to
national separation.”
Rothbard is saying that
a nation works best when it is homogenous - that is, when its
nationals unite into a common political association on the basis of
shared interests and feelings, including ethnic, racial, cultural, or
religious identity – and that national separation should be
considered as an option when the criteria which once united the
people of a nation is no longer shared by all its people or by the
vast majority thereof.
Rothbard
continues, “To those who think that the main problem is
restricting the number and types of immigration, the best answer is
that such a policy is decades too late. We are already far more than
one nation within the borders of the U.S.A., let alone worry about
the immigrants. To greet the very raising of such questions with the
mindless cry of [']racism['] or [']chauvinism['] misses the entire
point... We might not be able any longer to bring back the Old
Republic across the entire land area of the 50 states. But we may be
able to bring it back in a substantial part of that land area.”
Rothbard's comment that “[w]e are already far more than one
nation” could suggest any number of things. One possibility is that
he means to imply racial or ethnic “nations” of people living in
the U.S.; that is, he is promoting racial separatism. This seems to
be Gary Anderson's interpretation of Rothbard's position.
Another possibility is that by “nations”, he means people
identifying as members of the same nation on ethnic, racial,
cultural, religious, and other bases. In this case, a “nation”
may imply a “people”, although not necessarily a “state” (or
country), because a people may have a national identity but still be
stateless, as in the situation experienced by the Jewish people
before the State of Israel existed.
Yet another possibility is that Rothbard is referring to the fifty
states as nations unto themselves. This is a possibility because
of the national essence of the states, being recognized as “free,
sovereign, and independent states” by the United States and Great
Britain in the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
Understanding the latter two possibilities, we see that it is
possible that what Rothbard was advocating was that the oppressed
blacks of South Africa come to wield self-determination, autonomy,
and independence as a sovereign nation; rather than that they
become victims of national
separation through being excluded from participation and membership
in the white-run government.
Murray Rothbard is not the first person to advocate voluntary
national separation as a solution to the problem of the dissolution
of a national cultural identity which shapes a society existing
within the framework of a geographical state. After all, the founding
of the United States occurred when – among other things – a
national identity developed among the colonists, who resented being
governed by inaccessible and unaccountable overseas powers.
In fact, support for national separation alongside individualism and
voluntary governance is not unique to theorists of the classical
liberal and laissez-faire persuasions.
In 1907, Austrian social democrat Otto Bauer wrote “The Question of
Nationalities and Social Democracy”, in which he developed the
principle of “national personal autonomy”. This principle is that
nations should be organized “not in territorial bodies but in
simple association of persons”
Fellow Austrian social democrat Karl Renner's observation that Jews
could adopt any nationality they wish is one which certainly seemed
to apply to Bauer, a secular Jew who spoke German and Czech. The
reason for nationality having been such an important issue in Bauer's
place and time is that the Habsburg Empire was fracturing into about
ten distinct peoples with new national identities, most of which now
control their own sovereign European states.
To summarize Rothbard's quote on immigration, he evidently feels
that “restricting the number and types of immigration” might have
worked several decades ago. However - to be fair - Rothbard only made
this statement as “the best answer” to those who support such a
policy, which seems to suggest that Rothbard's position is that
dealing with immigration alone is not enough to solve the national
question. This may also provide an explanation as to why Rothbard
wrote, “...let alone worry about the immigrants” and “[t]o
greet the very raising of such questions with the mindless cry of
[']racism['] or [']chauvinism['] misses the entire point...”.
Rothbard's comment that “[w]e might not be able... to bring back
the Old Republic across the entire land area of the 50 states...
[b]ut we may be able to bring it back in a substantial part of that
land area” shows that Rothbard is still thinking of independent and
self-determining nations of people in the context of sovereign
territorial government (that is, statism; the local monopoly on the
use of legitimate force), in contrast to Bauer's aterritorial
conception of nationalism.
We have yet to confirm that Rothbard's advocacy of national
separatism is motivated by racism, and that his advocacy of an
evidently statist form of national separatism is motivated by
anything other than pragmatism. These issues will be addressed,
although for now Anderson is done with Rothbard, and has moved on to
Ludwig von Mises.
4. Was Ludwig von Mises a Fascist?
Anderson continues, “I have
argued that [Rothbard's] teacher, Mises, was an elitist with fascist
tendencies.” Ludwig von Mises was a member of the Austrian
nobility, served as a front officer in the Austro-Hungarian
artillery, and served as an economics advisor to austrofascist
Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss (as well as to Otto von
Habsburg).
While Dollfuss (of the Christian Social Party, and later the Fatherland's Front) was an austrofascist, he was not a Nazi or a national socialist. In fact, he banned the Austrian Nazi party in 1933, and in 1934 he was assassinated by Nazis.
Dollfuss's Austrian fascism was modeled on Mussolinian fascism; not Hitler's National Socialism. Mussolini helped protect Austria's fascist regime against the Nazis until 1938. Dollfuss and von Mises supported Austrian independence, rather than the annexation of Austria by a Germany under Nazi rule.
Additionally, Dollfuss's Austria was not anti-Semitic. There were no official anti-Semitic policies in place, public violence against Jews was rare, and Jewish artists and others took refuge in Austria from Germany until Austria became unsafe for Jews and Austrian nationalists in 1938.
Furthermore, Ludwig von Mises himself was a Jew. In 1940, fearing a Nazi invasion, he fled Switzerland to the United States. It may be true that von Mises was an “elitist” - having been born into a wealthy Jewish family and having been a member of the nobility - but to call him a fascist is to risk conflating Nazism and antisemitism with anything and everything termed “fascism”, through ignoring the vague differences between austrofascism, Italian fascism, and national socialism, and the history of those regimes' interactions.
It is worth noting that in Dollfuss's fascist regime banned the Social Democratic Party which was at several times headed by Karl Renner. However, during the emergency period through which Dollfuss led Austria, Renner for a time pledged to support the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria by Germany which reunited the two).
[discussion of this topic is continued in section #12 (post-script)]
5. Was Murray Rothbard's Support of David Duke Motivated By Racism?
Anderson continues, “...Rothbard spoke kindly of David Duke, the KKK office seeker”, commenting that “[o]ne disaffected libertarian was dismayed that Rothbard would seek to align himself with a pure racist just because he believed in limited government.”
Anderson is referring to former Republican Louisiana State Representative and perennial presidential candidate David Duke, who was once the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke is a “racial realist” and a critic of the State of Israel. He supports preserving Western culture and traditional Christian family values, voluntary racial segregation, and white separatism.
In the January 1992 issue of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, Rothbard wrote an article entitled “Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement”. In the article, he wrote that “[i]t took a massive campaign of hysteria, of fear and hate, orchestrated by all wings of the Ruling Elite, from Official Right to Left, from President Bush and the official Republican Party through the New York-Washington-run national media through the local elites and down to local left-wing activists. It took a massive scare campaign... bogey images of the Klan and Hitler... a virtual threat to boycott Louisiana, to pull out tourists and conventions... jobs by businesses leaving the state...” [to “get” David Duke].
Rothbard's article - in which he describes Duke as a “right-wing populist” and seems to regard Duke's having received 55% of the white vote in his Louisiana State House race as a good thing - was written in 1992. This means that the article was published 22 years after David Duke formed the national socialist White Student Alliance group at Louisiana State University, 18 years after Duke founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (K.K.K.K.) in Louisiana, and 12 years after Duke left the Klan to form the National Association for the Advancement of White People (N.A.A.W.P.).
It is true that Duke was formerly associated with national socialism, border-watch activities, and the Ku Klux Klan; and also that he has criticized the State of Israel and Jewish control over American foreign and banking policy, and defended Ernst Zundel, the German publisher who served in jail and prison in Germany, the U.S., and Canada for - among other crimes - inciting hatred against an identifiable group, being a threat to national security, inciting racial hatred, and incitement for Holocaust denial.
However, Duke kept his K.K.K.K. open to women and Catholics, he has consistently opposed white pride without aggression or violence for decades, he criticizes the State of Israel for its militancy and its policy of apartheid against the Palestinians, he criticizes passages in the Jewish Talmud which he believes promote the idea of Jewish supremacy, and he defends questioning the facts of the Holocaust as protected free speech which does not directly and specifically threaten or encourage the incitement of violence.
Zundel - who admitted he wasn't positive that he had absolutely no Jewish heritage - has never been convicted of any crime against Jews or the property of Jews, nor of any crime against person or property in general. We should keep this in mind, as well as the fact that restriction of non-violent speech regarding the Holocaust has already been adopted across the European Union, with each state imposing a three-year prison term for offenses such as diminishing, trivializing, or questioning crimes against humanity.
Rothbard never praised David Duke explicitly for his past association with national socialism or the Ku Klux Klan. In The Rockwell-Rothbard Report, Rothbard wrote, “[i]t is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke's... campaign that could not also be embraced by paleo-conservatives or paleo-libertarians: lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites: what's wrong with any of that?””
6. Why Did Murray Rothbard Oppose a Black Nationalist State?
Next, Anderson addresses Rothbard's stance on the relationship between nationalism and American blacks specifically, saying that “[t]he only reason that Rothbard did not back a separate state for blacks was because he was afraid it would cost too much in [']foreign aid['].”
And so, we now
return to the question “is his advocacy of an evidently statist
form of national separatism motivated by anything other than
pragmatism?” In defending David Duke, Rothbard wrote that “[t]he
basic right-wing populist insight is that we live in a statist
country and a statist world dominated by a ruling elite”.
Rothbard
supported what he called “anarcho-capitalism” over statism. In
the mid-19th
century, the same philosophy was largely a branch of classical
liberalism and laissez-faire
economics;
more recently it has come to be known as “market anarchism”.
In 1972,
Rothbard wrote in defense of the idea that “free-market capitalism”
should be distinguished from “state capitalism”, saying that
“[f]ree-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary
exchanges... State capitalism consists of one or more groups making
use of the coercive apparatus of the government – the State – to
accumulate capital for themselves by expropriating the production of
others by force and violence.”
Rothbard
believed that libertarianism could co-exist with open borders, until
he changed his position to support closed borders in a March 1994
paper entitled “Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State”,
in which he cited the need to protect the destruction of cultures and
languages (i.e., cultural nations and linguistic nations) from
immigration resulting from forced economic and social integration,
the result of trade negotiation between two or more sovereigns.
In the essay,
Rothbard wrote that “the crucial flaw is the implicit assumption of
the entire analysis [which is “the problem of the nation”; i.e.,
“collective security against aggression” rather than “national
self-determination” and “the genuine nation, or nationality”]
[is] that every nation-state
“owns” its entire geographical area in the same just and proper
way that every individual property owner owns his person and the
property that he has inherited, worked for, or gained in voluntary
exchange...”.
He
continues, “[i]t is absurd to designate every nation-state, with
its self-proclaimed boundary as it exists at any one time, as somehow
right and sacrosanct, each with its “territorial integrity” to
remain as spotless and unbreached as your or my bodily person or
private property. Invariably, of course, these boundaries have been
acquired by force and violence, or by inter-state agreement above and
beyond the heads of the inhabitants on the spot, and invariably these
boundaries shift a great deal over time in ways that make
proclamations of [']territorial integrity['] truly ludicrous.”
We
see from these quotes that Rothbard is directly questioning each of
the three principles of statism: territorial integrity, legitimate
force / coercion, and the regulatory monopoly. The regulatory
monopoly is antithetical to the classical liberal and free-market
ideal of regulatory competition,
which
can be fulfilled in federalist systems which institutionalize dual
federalism, co-equal sovereignty, and regional (including states')
rights and decentralization.
The purpose
of regulatory competition is to allow for an experimentation in
policy, so that the risks of bad policies confined to relatively
small areas, and so that the best policy may be gleaned from amongst
jurisdictions competing to provide the best governance for the most
reasonable cost to the citizens who consume their goods and services.
This form of government helps to diffuse the centralization and
hierarchical structure of the federalist state.
Dual
federalism is the only type of federalist system which provides
opportunity for states, counties, and municipalities to freely
practice difference, divergence, and diversity in policy
implementation, which can seem necessary to Democrats, liberals,
progressives, and socialists if and when a state desires to nullify a
Republican, conservative, libertarian, or capitalist federal law
which prohibits the state from implementing the laws they please.
Understanding
that – and, indeed, why
– Rothbard opposed the state, we should be able to guess right away
that he would reject something termed “the welfare state”. And,
of course, he does; in his essay reviewing The
Bell Curve
by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, Rothbard wrote that the
book expressed “what everyone has always known but couldn't dare to
express about race, intelligence, and heritability”.
Rothbard
writes that “[u]ntil literally mid-October 1994, it was shameful
and taboo for anyone to talk publicly or write about, home truths
which everyone, and I mean everyone, knew in their hearts and in
private: that is, almost self-evident truths about race,
intelligence, and heritability… Essentially, I mean the almost
self-evident fact that individuals, ethnic groups, and races differ
among themselves in intelligence and in many other traits, and that
intelligence, as well as less controversial traits of temperament,
are in large part hereditary.”
He
continues, “[i]f and when we... abolish the welfare state... and
property rights and the free market shall be triumphant once more,
many individuals and groups will predictably not like the end result.
In that case, those ethnic and other groups who might be concentrated
in lower-income or less prestigious occupations, guided by their
socialistic mentors, will predictably raise the cry that free-market
capitalism is evil and “discriminatory” and that therefore
collectivism is needed to redress the balance”. He adds that The
Bell Curve
“tries to downplay the entire issue of race, devoting most of its
space to [statistics, qualifications, and] inheritable differences
among individuals within each ethnic or racial group.”
To
summarize the preceding three paragraphs, Rothbard believes that
intelligence – as well as “less controversial traits of
temperament” (which presumably includes any
natural
or behavioral trait)
are “in large part hereditary”, that they differ among
“individuals, ethnic groups, and races”, and that these “truths”
are “almost self-evident”.
The
proposition that the idea that individual traits differ in large part
due to heredity is almost self-evident seems true enough. So here's
where we should be the most clear: Rothbard believes that
intelligence - and
other traits, including
any natural or behavioral “temperamental trait” one could think
of -
differ,
in
large part,
due to heredity across
races and ethnicities.
To
summarize this, Rothbard wishes The
Bell Curve
had addressed race
and ethnicity more directly, instead of focusing on inheritable
differences among individuals (as well as statistics and
qualifications). Additionally, he believes that heredity is a
significant factor in natural and behavioral traits with
regard to race and ethnicity, in
addition to
among individuals.
It
very well may be that Rothbard also
believes that environment
– that is, environmental conditioning
– is
also
(in addition to heredity and genetics) “in large part” an
influence on natural and behavioral traits including intelligence,
and neglected to mention it. Rothbard would of course agree that the
collusion of big government and big business has resulted in an
expropriation of wealth from all
Americans
(white, black, Jewish, etc.).
We will remember that Rothbard once wrote “attack... affirmative
action and racial set-asides, call... for equal rights for all
Americans, including whites”.
Rothbard
defends his opposition to affirmative action by writing - in his book
The
Case for Discrimination
- “...what is the relevance
of past victimization to present rights? Surely, we all have an equal
right not to be aggressed against at present, and no other rights
than that, regardless of the amount of victimization suffered by our
forebears in the past.”
Rothbard
would likely have agreed with the statements that affirmative action
is impermissible public-sector discrimination. His writing in The
Case for Discrimination
seems to express a general sentiment that governance and
discrimination (i.e., choice) are each more preferable when done by
the private sector (businesses and individuals) than when done by the
public sector (the state).
In
Rothbard's view, the ostensibly legitimate coercion of the state's
regulatory monopoly (or oligopoly, as the case may be) is
intrinsically aggressive. This is because the state wields the
authority to initiate force against those suspected of committing any
and all crimes which occur within a constitutionally-delineated set
of borders.
The
state's monopoly on violence stands in direct contrast to Rothbard's
conception of the core functions of government (i.e., providing
defense, security, and justice) as only being just and non-violent if
arranged according to voluntary association. In such a system,
individuals choose who provides them with the various goods and
services associated with defense and security independently
and on a transaction-by-transaction basis,
without anyone being compelled to always submit his or her civil and
criminal disputes to the same arbitrator.
It
will inform us to know that the typical libertarians believes that
subjecting an individual to an obligatory association against his or
her will constitutes the
involuntary servitude - i.e.,
slavery - discussed in the Amendment XIII to the U.S. Constitution
(this will be addressed later in the section on Ron and Rand Paul's
positions on the Civil Rights Act of 1964).
Market-anarchists
like Rothbard often state a desire for a free-market system of
private law and private defense. They believe that - as Rothbard
stated in The
Case for Discrimination
- there should be no statute of limitations, and some favor a
potentially infinite series of appeals.
A reasonable
market-anarchist position on compensation for slavery, hate crimes
and public-sector discrimination would involve using free-market
private-sector arbitrators - who are neutral third parties lacking
material interest in the outcome - to resolve disputes between people
and the private and public agencies they claim wronged them.
When the
defendant is a public agency (that is, an arm of the state), this
mutual choice of independent arbitrators - without which a just legal
system cannot exist - constitutes and entails a direct confrontation
with the sovereign state regarding the legitimacy of its authority
and monopoly jurisdiction over any and all crime in an area. This is
because the private-sector arbitrator is preventing the state from
acting as both judge and defendant, in which case it could not be
trusted to refrain from deciding in its own favor more than
appropriate.
Rothbard
regards all obligation to participate in the funding of the actions
of the state as involuntary servitude. Rothbard would likely agree
that he - not a member of the political class - is not responsible
for any systematic exploitation of racial and ethnic minorities,
except in that he became a victim of the state's aggressive
compulsory taxation system, whereby the confiscation of a segment of
his earnings were used by the state to finance arms of government
which practice public-sector discrimination.
Simply
put, when politicians and public employees and agencies are
responsible for public-sector discrimination - or for forcing
discrimination or segregation on
private enterprises
(as in the case of Jim Crow laws) - the politicians
and public employees
who
are responsible should
pay to compensate the victims; not the taxpayers, Rothbard included.
Rothbard's
is opposed to compulsory taxation and the welfare state because they
conflict with libertarian and free-market principles of regulatory
competition and individual choice and delegated negotiation power in
contractual governance. Additionally, Rothbard rejects calls for
socialism and collectivism as a means to redress disparities in
socioeconomic equality - and, presumably, access to disparities in
intelligence and knowledge - across races and ethnicities and among
individuals; favoring instead individualist-, market-, and trade-
oriented approaches to affecting a more egalitarian distribution of
adequate access to justice, security, defense, etc..
Rothbard
would undoubtedly argue that the markets - not the state, nor the
collective, nor society - are the proper avenue for the redress of
such inequalities. Market anarchist theory is not negligent of
advocating particular methods of, nor tactics for, distributing
resources; market-anarchists primarily support individual choice in the market,
through the direct-action radical rectification of state theft and
the structural poverty it causes (including landed property; i.e.,
adverse possession [squatting]), among other tactics [for example,
those named by Gary Chartier in his article “Bleeding Heart
Libertarians for Redistribution”].
Very much in
the same way that diverse government through regulatory competition
can minimize and insulate against the risk of policy failure,
refraining from using the regulatory monopoly to coerce taxes out of
Professor Rothbard does the same, insulating and internalizing what
would otherwise require externalization of responsibility by means of
socialization of risk of personal and private financial failure (that
is, social welfare and corporate welfare, including taxpayer-funded
corporate bailouts).
This
is to say that Rothbard likely feels that each individual - white,
black, Jewish, etc.
- should have the equal opportunity to become as financially well-off
as Rothbard himself, without forced redistribution to redress wealth
disparity before a true free-market system can be implemented. Also,
that compulsory taxation constitutes an uncompensated or
under-compensated takings of private personal earnings, in that the
cost of receiving goods and services from government would be
cheapened due to the presence of market competitors against the
monopoly and oligopoly maintained by the state. It is worth noting
that the libertarian stance on private property takings (at least in
regards to the issue of eminent domain and Amendment V to the U.S.
Constitution) is that any takings of private property must be
absolutely consensual and fairly compensated, or else such takings
must occur as punishment for a crime.
The
effects of such takings of wealth are that it is practically
impossible to estimate how much potential growth in productivity -
and fruit of market knowledge - is lost when funds which would
otherwise have been spent re-investing for personal wealth were taxed
away by the state before their full yield could be acquired and taken
into personal possession, and the knowledge of how to accumulate such
wealth dispersed among other market participants. Freedom of the
individual to acquire vast amounts of wealth implies freedom of any
and all
individuals to do the same.
Now
- to finally answer the question at hand - why did Rothbard oppose a
black nationalist state? The following quotes on this topic all come
from Rothbard's article “Their Malcolm and Mine”, which was
originally published in the February 1993 issue of The
Rockwell-Rothbard Report.
Wrote
Rothbard, “There is no question that black nationalism is a lot
more libertarian than the compulsory integration pushed by King, the
NAACP, and white liberals. But there are... problems with black
nationalism, which Malcolm [X] never had a chance to explore... [for
example] black nationalism in what territory? A nation has to have
territory... [']Black nationalism['] within the United States is then
only a phony nationalism, and beginning to look like a drive for an
aggravated form of coerced parasitism over the white population.”
He
continues, “Apart from all the problems of
enclaves and access [involved in creating a single nation as an
archipelago of black communities], does anyone really believe that
this New Africa would be content to strike out on its own, with no
massive [']foreign aid['] from the U.S.A., and strictly limited
migration between the two nations? In a pig’s eye.”
To summarize and to
answer the original question, Rothbard opposes a black nationalist
state because - as a libertarian - he is opposed to all states. This
includes nation-states like black nationalist states, as well as the
welfare state. In Rothbard's view, the state is coercing blacks to
become dependent on the welfare state; by subjecting them (as well as
whites and others) to an involuntary political association.
Rothbard also rejects
the idea of a black nationalist state on the grounds that it would
not be able to support itself without “massive... foreign aid”
from the United States. This seems to suggest that he desires any
potential black nationalist movement (which is not statist) to be
financially independent, and also free from compulsory association
between nations; i.e., free from being coerced into dependence on
other nations.
Rothbard's comment
seems more reasonable in light of the fact that opposition to foreign
aid is typical of libertarians, being that the state's coercive
monopoly is involved; such foreign aid is funded through compulsory
taxation of the subjects of one state by it, and given to another
sovereign state and possibly to some of its subjects if there is
anything left over after the state takes what it wants.
Among self-described
libertarians, opposition to foreign aid is rarely motivated by
racism; but always by opposition to spending money and resources
(including weaponry) aiding potentially dangerous foreign regimes
that claim a local right to prohibit competition in the provision of
security, which renders the market practically non-existent, and
de-legitimizes the right of people to defend themselves against
representatives of the state, and to provide security unlicensed by
the state if and when the state becomes intolerably tyrannical.
Rothbard is also
concerned about the possibility that Martin Luther King's popularity
among white liberals - and the success of the movements behind him in
affecting and changing the policy of states - could risk legitimizing
statism, as well as the compulsory integration and taxation which go
along with it. Rothbard would likely agree with Barry Goldwater's
statement that “[w]e must never forget that the freedom to
associate means the same thing as the freedom not to associate.”
It is important to note
that Rothbard does not oppose black nationalism. As I have explained,
Rothbard opposes black nationalist statism because of his various
reasons for opposing any and all kinds of statism. Despite the
militancy of black nationalist leaders such as Marcus Garvey and
Malcolm X, Rothbard has nothing but kind words for both men.
While casting Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. as a “fraudulent intellectual” - and
calling the Reverend Al Sharpton a “clown” - Rothbard praises
Malcolm X's genuine intellect: “He carried himself with
great pride and dignity; his speaking style was incisive and sparkled
with intelligence and sardonic wit.”
Of Marcus Garvey, Rothbard writes, “...it would
make the most sense to adopt the solution of... Garvey: a mass
exodus, a return to West Africa, there to carve out a new black
nation, as a people's exile from the Old Sod is at last redeemed. It
is true that in contrast to voluntary immigration, black migration
from Africa to America was coerced, and voluntary black
[']Zionism['], or African repatriation[,] was the preferred solution
to the black problem for most groups, North and South, before the
Civil War.”
Rothbard continues, “Even now, I bet that many
Americans would cheerfully chip in to support such a crusade.” This
statement suggests that Rothbard would prefer that Americans support
such a project on an individual and voluntary basis, rather than
through the state's compulsory taxation.
It's worth noting that Liberia - the fruit of
Garvey's dream of a return of New World blacks to their ancestral
African homeland, forming their own sovereign state - suffers from
poor economic conditions and poor conditions for business despite
the foreign aid sent from the United States and other countries, as
well as from non-governmental and international governmental
entities.
Given the similar
libertarian and nationalist attitudes expressed by white and Jewish
libertarians and black nationalists alike, it should not surprise us
to discover that – not unlike the “black [']Zionism[']”
mentioned by Rothbard – there exist movements to attempt to
geographically relocate libertarians for the purposes of achieving
“national” sovereignty or greater influence on government.
Examples of this include the Free State Project in New Hampshire, and
Milton Friedman's grandson Patri's efforts to build a private city in
El Salvador. Additionally, sea-steading presents a possibility for
similar goals to be achieved on a much smaller scale.
Murray Rothbard
does not oppose a black nationalist state because he thinks blacks
are less intelligent and/or in some other way inferior; rather, he
supports the black
nationalist movement, but is concerned about the risk that – if it
were to express itself as a sovereign state – it would succumb to
all the same problems which are typically associated with statism.
To Rothbard and his
followers, sovereign states wield the practically unquestionable
authority to threaten and use physical force to compel people to
integrate and associate into non-consensual political, economic, and
social arrangements, violating basic conditions necessary for a
competitive market, and for kinetic freedom of choice concerning
standards of quality justice and security which vary among
individuals and across ethnic/racial and ideological groups.
Under the state,
political association is non-consensual due to the lack of free
individual choice from among existing alternative governance
agencies; which people would otherwise choose independently, on a
case-by-case basis, and in a situation in which the agency dispensing
justice would be neutral (having no vested interest), and have no
authority to compel anyone to always submit their disputes to itself
based on such arbitrary things as where the persons involved happened
to be located or traveling when the dispute occurs.
This brings us to the
geographical problem of nationalism. Rothbard is cautious of
promoting a geographical state as a solution to the black nationalist
movement's lack of self-determination for several reasons. One is
that he describes the “territorial integrity” required of statism
as “absurd” to begin with. Another reason is that the
geographical state of the African-American nation - mainly “enclaves”
of scattered, non-contiguous black neighborhoods - undermines the
condition of territorial integrity, so even if we momentarily suspend
disbelief in the necessity of territorial integrity, a fundamental
problem of logistics remains.
We might wonder
what exactly Rothbard means when he indicates that he does not
“believe that this New Africa would be content to strike out on its
own... strictly limited migration
[emphasis mine] between the two nations”. Is strict limitation of
migration necessary to sustain a nation's independence? Perhaps not,
but perhaps it is necessary to sustain a nation-state.
After all, the “blood
and soil” mentality is what sustains the current governmental
paradigm. And, of course, people have got to have permanent access to
land in order to plant food and survive, don't they? Not necessarily.
What about wandering vagrants in a(n allegedly) post-scarcity modern
economy? What of gypsies, Jews, nomads, refugees, political
prisoners, and stateless persons? They travel, seek food and security
where they are, and are often oppressed and inhibited by states.
There is as much
validity to the idea that land and territorial integrity is necessary
for government as there is to the idea that it is not. Besides,
permanent ownership of land is - by and large - outlawed; however,
there is still allodial land ownership in Alaska, making the state
possibly the only U.S. state not operating under a feudalist land
rentier system.
Rothbard does not seem
prepared to go into this territory - at least not in this particular
essay on Malcolm X - but these are some of the things a libertarian
might want to take into consideration when thinking about possible
solutions to building national apparati which can provide security
and the resources necessary to sustain life to peoples and persons of
all varieties, dispositions, and characteristics, and according to
any combination thereof which they might see fit based on their own
subjective individual evaluation and free informed consensual
election.
It may well be
that Rothbard is genuinely confusing the state with the nation,
falsely attributing to the nation
the monopoly power to standardize immigration and emigration policy
within territory, which is characteristic of a nation-state, but not
of a nation which rejects the state. But the point of the statement
might also have been to draw attention to the fact that when people
talk about black nationalism, they are not often clear about what is
to be expected of what a black nationalist movement with fulfilled
goals would look like; i.e., whether it will be a state or not, what
kind of policies on territory and migration it might need to have in
order to be self-sustaining (that is, not parasitic on - nor
encroaching on the territory of - any wealthier or poorer nation, and
not parasitic whether through victimization or through blameworthy
willful indolence).
After Gary Anderson
writes of Rothbard's apparent opposition to a black nation-state, he
writes, “...Ron Paul distanced himself from Rothbard's racism, in
stating that racism is a collectivist view. Still, there is a strong
racial tension in libertarian thought.” Paul's original statement
was “Libertarians are incapable of being a racist, because racism
is a collectivist idea.”
Ron Paul also said that
“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that
views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals.
Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical
characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in
terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality,
the advocates of so-called [']diversity['] actually perpetuate
racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently
racist. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government
devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group
claims. ...Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards
individual achievement and competence[;] not skin color, gender, or
ethnicity.
But Ron Paul aside
(Paul's views on race and civil rights will be more thoroughly
addressed later in the piece), to recapitulate, of what kind of
“racism”, exactly, is Rothbard - and are libertarians in general
- guilty, according to Gary Anderson? Being “pale, stale, and
male”, and needing to have his privilege checked? Rothbard did,
after all, casually use the word “Whitey” while agreeing with
Malcolm X. Does Rothbard as a secular Jew deserve the right to say
that about white people, and to talk about black people as if he
knows anything about their problems? Wait a minute, are all Jews
white?
The reader may detect
the sarcasm in the previous paragraph. By the way, two-thirds of the
world's fifteen million Jews have Eastern European lineage, and a
libertarian believes in free speech and says whatever he wants so
long as he does not directly incite initiatory aggression. But
getting back to the point, Murray Rothbard was a secular Jew whose
libertarian “national” compatriots and associates were all in
conflict with Nazis, whether they were austrofascist economic
advisers who fled them, or Americans who fought them.
Privilege-check Murray
Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises if you will; they are dead and cannot
defend themselves. Privilege-check Malcolm X for having Murray
Rothbard as a sympathizer, and Martin Luther King for having Ron
Paul as an admirer. Privilege-check Marcus Garvey for calling
American blacks a race of cowards and imbeciles, and Bob Marley's son
for using that quote in his music. Privilege-check libertarian Big
Boi; conservative Thomas Sowell; Colin Powell, adviser to a
Republican; and conservative Walter Williams.
Just don't
neglect to consider whether Colin Powell, Thomas Sowell, and Walter
Williams - by the mere fact that they are African-American -
deserve race-based reparations and affirmative action. They would
want you to do so. Additionally, privilege-check anyone but Abraham
Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Lyndon Johnson, the unfortunately
racist, civil-liberties-denying heroes of the Civil Rights left.
Murray Rothbard is only
a racist insofar as he is a vulgar libertarian. For the purposes of
discussion with others, he must theoretically accede to the currently
accepted governmental paradigm of the territorial nation-state with a
local monopoly on legitimate coercion. Rothbard is attempting to
explain a bridge between nation-statism and an articulation of the
state's antithesis which still retain a national character; not every
aspect of a perfect, concise critique of the state makes it through
during every one of Rothbard's statements. When a writer like Gary
Anderson takes one of them out of context - or does something even
less responsible, like use the phrase “Rothbard's racism” - the
reader becomes horribly misled and under-informed.
Rothbard and
libertarians are certainly guilty of attempting to consistently
oppose statism, nation-statism, the warfare-welfare complex,
corporate welfare, compulsory integration via mass migration
resulting from international trade agreements, location-based
compulsory political association, institutional racism and
discrimination in the public sector (even when it labels itself
“affirmative action” and purports to be the opposite of
discrimination), and the political culture of compulsory political
and financial dependence and parasitism - and of impermissiblility
of independence, fiscal solvency and discretion, and political
autonomy and self-determination - which the aforementioned things
encourage.
Rothbard is guilty of
“racism” because he is guilty of being cautious about what a
successful voluntary, independent, and self-sustaining black national
separatist movement might look like; cautious about endorsing the
first suggested plan to enable blacks to become independent (i.e.,
the welfare state, involuntary association, compulsory taxation, and
heavy-handed, expensive federal intervention into alleged interstate
commerce in order to bring about desegregation in the private sector
which ostensibly served the public, thus meriting intervention),
which the movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. seemed to
legitimize when it supported the obviously racist civil rights
reformer Lyndon Johnson, for president of the United States in 1964,
instead of delving into a serious discussion about Barry Goldwater, a
consistent conservative with a solid record of supporting civil
rights legislation aside from one or two articles of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 (this will be more thoroughly addressed later).
But if Rothbard opposes
nation-statism, what kind of nation or nationality does he want? That
is beyond the scope of this piece, but suffice it to say that a
consistent libertarian would support a free and competitive market in
the provision of defense, security, and justice. That is to say that
a libertarian nation would be a system of contracts between
individuals, in which the individuals who by their own volition and
election become subject to this or that particular free-market
provider of defense, security, and justice, become a nation in that
they are bound together in a political association which is voluntary
rather than compulsory.
Is Murray Rothbard
personally racist? That is, does his comment that “racialist
science is... not an act of aggression or a cover for oppression of
one group over another, but, on the contrary, an operation in defense
of private property against assaults by aggressors” mean that he is
racist because he supports white/Jewish supremacy and falsely
believes that black people are trying to steal his property?
No; it may mean that he
is a vulgar libertarian, but it does not necessarily mean that he is
racist. It seems that Rothbard falsely believes that there is no such
thing as institutional and systemic discrimination and racism
perpetrated by the state. If this is true, then it would explain how
Rothbard perceives what he observes about race and achievement;
namely, that there are observable achievement disparities across
racial and ethnic lines.
Rothbard evidently
believes that such achievement disparities are intrinsic to the races
and ethnicities themselves; rather than believing that they result
from the conditions of such races and ethnicities in the United
States, and - at that - existing as mere statistical averages,
neglecting adequate representation of each individual, including
outliers and exceptional individuals.
Aside from apparently
being a vulgar libertarian (because he seems to believe that the
current state of markets are the natural result of innate
differences that vary to some degree according to race and
ethnicity), Rothbard is being unscientific. I might add that, for
wishing that The Bell Curve
had focused more on ethnicity and race rather than on individual
differences, Rothbard may be “racist” in the sense that Ron Paul
described racism as “a form of collectivism”.
However, if we
re-examine one of Rothbard's other quotes about The Bell
Curve, we see that Rothbard
is primarily focusing not on differences associated with race and
ethnicity, but differences associated with heritability
and genetics. Writes
Rothbard, “individuals, ethnic groups, and races differ among
themselves in intelligence and in many other traits, and that
intelligence, as well as less controversial traits of temperament,
are in large part hereditary.”
It
is important to stress that Rothbard included “individuals” here
for a reason. This inclusion shows that Rothbard is not
obsessed with group, collective, ethnic, or racial differences,
relative to his focus on individual differences (this would render
him not racist
by Ron Paul's anti-collectivist standards). Rothbard is simply
defending racialist science on the basis of the uncontroversial idea
that heredity and genetics influence
(not
“exclusively determine”) differences across individuals and
racial/ethnic groups.
To
address Rothbard's comment that racialist science is “an operation
in defense of private property against assaults by aggressors”;
here Rothbard is likely commenting on the sweeping, unprecedented,
and expensive federal intervention into interstate commerce and
uncompensated private property takings which was unfortunately
overlooked in the rush to pass comprehensive civil rights reform in
an era of rapid and tumultuous change. The ramifications of the
political successes of the Civil Rights Movement on the relationship
between public and private property - and between the states and the
federal government - will be addressed more thoroughly later in this
piece.
Finally, what does it
mean that Rothbard holds his personal view on genetics, and that as a
libertarian he would support national association through voluntary
individual election from among competing providers of
dispute-resolution, security, defense, and protection, in a system of
contract rights?
It implies that
individuals would be free to refrain from associating politically
with other individuals on the basis of any criteria they choose;
that is, a person's prejudice of others based on race and ethnicity
would simply not be detectable in a market for political goods and
services which treats people as individuals instead of as groups, and
in which people - in the absence of states - would likely come to
view nationality as something which is more influenced by cultural,
religious, moral, and ethical values and interests than race,
ethnicity, and identification with landed public and private
property.
It implies that in a
libertarian society, people would have the right to refuse service
(refuse to serve) to anyone without giving a reason; the
freedom from involuntary servitude protected by Amendment XIII to the
U.S. Constitution. Anyone who supports affirmative action and objects
to the right of a person or organization to use race as one of many
criteria by which to determine with whom to associate, might want to
re-evaluate his or her views on affirmative action.
7. What About Ron Paul's
Racist Newsletters?
Anderson writes, “Ron Paul's newsletters had
racist thoughts in them, although Dr[.] Paul stated they were put in
his publications without his knowledge. I have no reason to doubt
that. But these were mistakes that are significant.”
Ron Paul has admitted that he as the purported
author of the newsletters, he is responsible for their content, but
he has said that, truthfully, he did not read those particular
articles or explicitly approve their publication.
The supposedly racist Ron Paul newsletters - which
feature negative comments about Martin Luther King and references to
how “fleet of foot” African-American muggers can be – have been
alleged to have been written by Jeffrey Tucker, Lew Rockwell, and
Murray Rothbard.
Whom is the real author of the newsletters, whether
their contents are racist, and why the reader should care, are
outside the scope of this piece.
8. What About Ron and Rand Paul's Criticism of Civil
Rights Legislation?
Anderson writes, “...even Rand Paul made a racial
gaff[e] right after he won the [Kentucky U.S.] senate seat, that he
regretted, when he said he was for the repeal of the 1964 civil
rights act.”
This is plainly not true; Rand Paul has never said
that he would support a repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which
provided for, among other things, freedom from discrimination and
segregation in private businesses such as restaurants and hotels); he
and Ron Paul have said that had they been in Congress at the time,
they - like Barry Goldwater before them - would have criticized Title
II of the act, which specifically desegregated private
properties which ostensibly serve “the public”, denying them the
right to discriminate against individuals for any reason, and to see
that individuals coming onto their private property for the purposes
of economic interaction conduct themselves in the manner preferred by
the owner of the property.
The enforcement of
Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 incurred great financial
expenses which the Southern states were not prepared to undertake. It
necessitated then-unprecedented federal intervention into interstate
commerce, predicated upon the notion (newly established through the
decision in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S.)
that a particular establishment's location means that it
“substantially affects interstate commerce”, thus meriting
federal intervention.
Furthermore, it
necessitated uncompensated property rights takings; the right to
refrain from associating with others for any reason should be
protected, and only taken under conditions of consent and adequate
compensation. The constitutional arguments made by the plaintiff in
Heart of Atlanta (in
support of Amendments V and XIII) support this view.
Simply put,
libertarians believe that infringing on an innocent person's right to
discriminate without getting permission and adequately compensating
that person, is itself involuntary servitude, i.e., slavery (you can
read more about this topic in my article “Barry Goldwater and the
Conservative Backlash: A Case Study of Ethnic Collective Action by
Whites in the Election of 1964”, at
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/02/barry-goldwater-and-conservative.html).
Anderson
continues, “This [presumably, “libertarian economics” and
“individualism”] plays into the desire to repeal the civil rights
act, so that you can kick out ethnic minorities from your restaurant
without serving them. This plays into the desire of Rothbard to
voluntarily separate from blacks in a nation and in public activity.”
As
I explained above, the cost to the states, the uncompensated private
property rights takings, and the blurring of the line between the
public and private sectors, were the primary reasons for the
libertarian and conservative objections to Title II. It is worth
noting that in 1964 Barry Goldwater had a better record supporting
civil rights legislation than President Lyndon Johnson.
It
is also worth noting that Goldwater conservatives wholly opposed Jim
Crow laws. For those who aren't familiar with this concept, Jim Crow
laws were orders by
the public government
that ostensibly private
businesses must
segregate.
To
repeal Jim Crow laws was a considerable stride towards civil rights
reform, as well as towards freeing the private sector from domination
by the public sector. But - being that Goldwater also supported
expanding voting rights for blacks - a Goldwater presidency likely
would have overseen decreased private-sector discrimination occur
gradually, as each state would grow to be able to afford to implement
and enforce anti-discrimination and anti-segregation legislation, and
when public elections would allow such reforms to come to be.
However,
it may well be that the important issue of civil rights was dealt
with with the appropriate amount of haste; that is debatable. After
all, a business owner living in the Deep South under a Goldwater
presidency would find himself in the awkward position of being free
to discriminate and to require segregation, although not required
to do so.
In
such a situation, according to Goldwater and the Pauls, consumers
would be free to boycott establishments whose set of discriminatory
practices offend their tastes; the free market would bring about
social change as and when it would occur naturally without the heavy
hand of central government forcing it to occur. Additionally, say
what you will about today's conservatives; at least in 1964 the
Republicans ran a presidential candidate who was willing to endorse
the boycott
(which is, I might add, arguably a form of discrimination).
9. Is Racism
Compatible with Libertarian Economics?
Anderson
writes, “...many buy into the financial views of the libertarians.
They are used to justify Wall Street excess. But are they more
insidious and dangerous than that? Racism is actually quite
compatible with libertarian economics.”
Anderson
is probably referring to the Austrian School of economics. The claim
that libertarians' economic position justifies Wall Street excess is
preposterous; when libertarians criticize the welfare state, they
criticize social welfare and corporate
welfare alike. The claim that “[r]acism is... compatible with
libertarian economics” is, frankly, ignorant and unfounded, for all
of the reasons which I have explained in the preceding 9,000 words of
this piece.
10. The State Should Treat
Adults Like Children; Doesn't That Prove That Libertarians Are
Racist?
Anderson
continues, “Libertarian economics stresses individualism, even
though these guys know that their moms changed their diapers and they
had to get help all along the way growing up. Individualism is great,
but I remember going to class reunions and seeing that once you got
to the 20th
[year] reunion, there was a lot less individualism and a lot more
humility. We all need people. We are not islands... Yet there is a
theme historically that comes from Mises. For Mises, as I quoted in
[']Ludwig von Mises Implies Being a Savage Animal Is Ok!['], [said
that] the newborn child is born a savage. This is why libertarians
only accept the legitimacy of voluntary relationships.”
As Anderson
writes, people become more humble later in life. According to
Anderson, they become less individualistic, too. However, it may well
be that this is the result of statist society taking away people's
freedom to become politically and financially independent and
autonomous. Maybe rather than becoming humbled,
people become discouraged,
and thereby lose their individuality. I would support the notion that
losing one's individuality is a bad
thing, and agree with Hannah Arendt that the polis
should be an artifact of uniqueness.
Disturbingly,
Anderson seems to be suggesting that the fact that when libertarians
were infants, their mothers had to change their diapers, means that
such individuals who become independent adults should never be free
to make their own financial and political decisions; that is, that
the state should - as Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul are apt to repeat
- “take care of us from cradle to grave”, and that the two
parties should - as Chris Matthews is apt to repeat - behave as the
“mommy party and the daddy party”.
Essentially,
Anderson is defending the idea that the state should treat
independent adults capable of giving informed consent as if they were
children. This simply cannot do, for reasons that are obvious and
hardly worth going into detail about for the purposes of this piece,
which was about race in the first place.
11. Conclusion
Anderson
continues by writing about topics which barely have anything to do
with racism, much less “expose the racist history of libertarianism
and Murray Rothbard” (I would argue that this
very piece that
I am writing accomplishes
that goal more thoroughly than Anderson's).
He
refers to an “elitist financial decay that seeks limited government
to the extreme”, claims that libertarianism is “based upon the
desire to ignore the needs of the greater society”, calls
anarcho-capitalism “a capitalism of unwholesome greed”, and makes
some practically incomprehensible points about who will build the
roads, the common good, societal destabilization, the relationship
between socialization and technology, and some unnamed and likely
fictional “young people who have... wealth and independence”.
Since these topics have practically nothing to do with race, they are
beyond the scope of this piece.
In summary,
Gary Anderson's article “Exposing the Racist History of
Libertarianism and Murray Rothbard” (published in the October 3rd,
2011 issue of the online magazine Business
Insider)
does not
“expose the racist history of libertarianism and Murray Rothbard”.
Rather, it makes a series of poorly-supported and unsupported claims
of racism and other negative claims about their ideas; claims which
neglect important things about politics, economics, nationalism, and
history, which simply cannot be discussed thoroughly in its
approximately 660 words.
The
purpose of this piece has been to critique Anderson's claims that
several particular libertarians are racist. This is well worth
discussing, as this piece has shown. We might consider that to ask a
different
question
- namely, “Are libertarians racist” or “Is libertarianism
racist” - might actually be "racist" in and of itself, in the sense in
which Ron Paul explains that racism is a collectivist idea.
This
is to say that we should remember to look at and deal with the
individual unilaterally in a system of voluntary association
permitting self-reliance and independence, lest we look at everything
through the lens of collectivism and “groupism” (as Paul put it),
and - if a libertarian hero or two does,
in fact, turn out to be a racist and promote racist policies - judge
the whole of libertarianism for the evident racism of only one or a
few of its proponents.
Ludwig von Mises, who left Switzlerland for the United States in 1940, was not wrong for trying to give Habsburg and Dollfuss advice on how to have a free and fair economy. Perhaps the citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire could have benefited from having an “enlightened absolutist” in Otto von Habsburg, informed by Mises' economic advice.
12. Post-Script
Ludwig
von Mises once said, “Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight
statism”. And this is true; statism and imperialism of all kinds
must be defeated, so that people can make choices, free from
constraintby entities that limit their alternatives, and authorize
legitimized coercion and aggression against those who complain.
It
upsets me that Mises has been turned into a sort of "libertarian
fascist" icon; the idea that Mises was a fascist, or had a soft
spot for elitism and nobility, came from the fact that he worked as
an economic adviser for Otto von Habsburg and Engelbert Dollfuss
(leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Austria, respectively).
Habsburg
was a monarch, while Dollfuss was an Austrian Christian
austrofascist, who had to cede power to Hitler when the Nazis annexed
Austria in 1934, after outlawing the Nazi Party in Austria the
previous year. Dollfuss ended up being betrayed and killed by the
Nazis. It's true that Habsburg and Dollfuss were authoritarians, but
Mussolini and Dollfuss quietly wished for a vision of fascism that
did not include Hitler's Nazist, anti-Jewish version of it. In fact,
Mussolini, of all people, cautioned Dollfuss not to
persecute the Jews too much.
Challenging
Hitler's leadership over Germany, and Austria, and Europe as a whole,
and the Nazi Party itself, would have been welcome; even though it
might have involved dealing with only slightly less evil actors, such
as Dollfuss (who suppressed socialism), Mussolini (who sought to
revive Roman fascism), and Nazi Party leaders Gregor and Otto
Strasser (the latter of whom was anti-Semitic).
Ultranationalism,
fascism, and authoritarianism are all terrible, but Hitler was worse
than each Mussolini, and Dollfuss, and Habsburg. A Europe in which
the latter three had been in charge, would have been preferable for
the vast majority of Europeans, than the reality in which Hitler
conquered most of the continent.
Ludwig von Mises, who left Switzlerland for the United States in 1940, was not wrong for trying to give Habsburg and Dollfuss advice on how to have a free and fair economy. Perhaps the citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire could have benefited from having an “enlightened absolutist” in Otto von Habsburg, informed by Mises' economic advice.
Libertarians
should acknowledge that Mises was not an authoritarian, nor any more
than a tacit supporter of states or statism; for the sake of his profession, and for the sake of getting his spreading his ideas efficiently. That is, it
would not have made much sense if Mises had tried to be the economic
adviser of a warlord, or the head of a rebel group or terrorist
group, or a horde of nomadic warriors. The Austro-Hungarian Empire,
the Austrian Republic, and the Austrian Federal State were not likely
to dissolve, and so, their leaders needed economic advice.
Despite
the fact that Mises served political leaders (to whom, today, many of
us might refer as “dictators), his quotation about fighting
statism, and another statement he made – that if it is possible to
do without the state, then people should do so – demonstrate that
Mises believed that it was both possible and desirable to eliminate
the state.
That
is why I wrote this article; to explain that Libertarians should not
hold on to a legacy of support for fascism, where none exists. I
wrote this article to explain to Libertarians that if you really
understand Rothbard and Mises, and their motivations, then it is
possible to disprove the charges that libertarians, or
libertarianism, are racist.
Written in November 2013
Originally Published on November 23rd, 2013
Post-Script Written on January 1st, 2019 and Added on January 3rd, 2019
For
more entries on civil rights, slavery, segregation, and
discrimination, please
visit:
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/06/title-ii-of-civil-rights-act-of-1964.html
http://www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2011/06/title-ii-of-civil-rights-act-of-1964.html
