Libertarianism is a political theory. Its not a way of life. You can certainly go around stealing and committing fraud and still call yourself a libertarian. You would simply recognize that your actions are in fact violations of property rights.
I’m currently listening to Brian Doherty and some notes on the history of the libertarian movement:
-
many more people were anarchists in the early days than people usually (like me) know. Only Read was not an anarchist back in those days.
-
Rothbard made a really big impact on the movement. My take: you could say that Rothbard is to the libertarian movement what Mises is too austrian economics: very, very important. Not the ‘father’, but he did spread the intellectual movement everywhere (economics, history, philosophy, etc.), getting people under 30 in the movement, taking it to the general public, etc.
@Adrian Healy
"“I’m not sure if there is ‘a’ philosophical father in libertarianism. We have Lockeans, Aristotelians, Humeans, Kantians and probably some more I’m forgetting.” "
Not libertarians… sorry, did you re-pasting what you’d already written and I’d already read - have a point to it?
"It’s also true that there was a libertarian movement before Rothbard and the Mises institute. If anyone is ‘the father’ of modern libertarianism, it would be someone like Hazlitt, Mises or Leonard Reed, i.e. the people who made the first libertarian think tank in the USA (the FEE).
Rothbard didn’t come to the scene after people like Read, Hazlitt, Harper, Mises and Friedman were big. It doesn’t make sense to call him ‘the father’ of either libertarianism in general or philosophical libertarianism in particular. This doesn’t mean he didn’t have a big influence, but that’s far from calling him the father, which implies (imo) something like ‘originator’.
And they are not part of the ‘modern’ libertarian movement.
"But if you try to apply the NAP and support a minimal state several posters have already determined that such an individual isn’t a libertarian."
Excuse me? So what? You are not a logically consistent or principled libertarian by any means, you are in absolute error. Since the social contract is completely invalid and rests upon aggression. However, the important point is - being radical and an abolitionist for the things that violate the NAP. The minarchists are fellow travellers until we reach that point and they begin to defend the status quo.
@AdrianHealey
“I’m currently listening to Brian Doherty and some notes on the history of the libertarian movement”
That figures..
A Fairy Tale of the Libertarian Movement - Salerno
[This review essay of Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty will appear in an upcoming issue of The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.]
Another economic ignoramus who thinks that creating wealth is about coming up with enough money. Until these people grasp that money is not wealth, production is wealth, there can be no adult conversation about economic policy.
It’s the spectre of objective value, a fallacy that goes back to the paleolithic. People assume that the price of goods and services is an objective cost, and not a way to allocate scarce resources. They think the way to create wealth is to come up with enough money to pay the objective cost of goods. Humans being able to consume the goods they need is not a question of producing those items but of expropriating the money to pay their objective price. When you come up with enough money, goods will just appear by themselves.
LOL - I think you just coined a new law… we can call it Nero’s Law. The heterodox “Say’s Law” is a bunch of right-wing propaganda garbage designed to enslave us in the property-debt-wage system.
Clayton -
Humans being able to consume the goods they need is not a question of producing those items but of expropriating the money to pay their objective price.
I was lately surprised by how many people in fact assume that.
Mind if I quote your post on Facebook?
So?
Where does these reviews say ‘Brian Doherty’s interpretation or facts regarding the discussion we have are wrong’?
Let me answer that for you: it does not.
Wait, what? You just called people like Roderik Long, Douglas Rasmussen & Douglas Den Uyl, Robert Nozick, Henry Hazlitt, Jan Narveson, David Gauthier, Ayn Rand and Leonard Read ‘not libertarians’?
Lol. Why not? Not modern enough?
No true Scotsman. ^^
Thanks a lot.
Not at all, go ahead.
“So?”
Just saying I now understand part of the reason behind your flawed conception of the libertarian movement.
“Wait, what? You just called people like Roderik Long, Douglas Rasmussen & Douglas Den Uyl, Robert Nozick, Henry Hazlitt, Jan Narveson, David Gauthier, Ayn Rand and Leonard Read ‘not libertarians’?”
Wait, what? Did you just call the above as equally analogous to Locke, Aristote, Hume & Kant?
Lol. Why not? Not modern enough?
Lol, why? They were clearly part of a different era. That which Hayek himself concedes.
No true Scotsman. ^^
Come again? Go justify that remark thanks.
What part of Gordon’s and Salerno’s review address my opinions regarding the libertarian movement and ‘proof’ that it is flawed?
Of course not. Saying someone is an Aristotelian, doesn’t mean he’s analogous to Aristotle. Rothbard, for example, was a combination of Aristotle and Thomas of Aquinas. Nozick of Kant and Locke. Narveson has very Humean tendencies. Long and Rand, obviously, Aristotle.
My point was that because we have such a diversity in intellectual ‘debt’, it’s hard (if not impossible) to pin down a ‘philosophical father’. Within the Marxist movement, it’s a bit easier.
Why is that ‘clearly part’ of a different era? It seems very reasonable to say that the start of the modern libertarian American movement starts with the first institutional organization that systematically search and provided for libertarian thinkers and ideas. For example; Rothbard got into these ideas through a pamphlet created by the FEE. (Friedman on rent control.) It was an intellectual home for libertarians/classical liberals such as Mises, Hayek and Friedman in those days. And it’s not that they didn’t had a bunch of anarchist libertarians; Leonard Read was one of the only founders that wasn’t an anarchist, together with Hazlitt. (The anarchists, however, aren’t as famous, because they were mostly business man who supported the FEE in stead of actually writing themselves.)
Obviously, you could argue that this isn’t really the start of the modern American libertarian movement. It’s very easy to say that it ‘actually’ started with Rothbard founding the Cato instittute, together with the Koch brothers. Or that it ‘actually’ started with Harper founding the IHS. Or that it ‘actually’ started with founding the Mises Institute. I’m just not sure why you would want to make that argument and how you would make that argument.