Let's Hear Some Libertarian Music!

Looking through my CD collection I noticed a few songs with libertarian lyrics/theme. Thought I would post a few and encourage people to post a few of their own.

Legal Tender by The B52s

“Gangster presidents” are making “prices go through the roof”!

I’m Paying Taxes, What Am I buying? by James Brown and The J.Bs

Self explanatory.

Don’t own any Beatles but:

Taxman by The Beatles

Deserves a mention.

Just a few, anybody want to contribute?

(Sorry if anything comes out as Mary Poppins, I was using this thread as a template and I might have made a bad click)

Not necessarily libertarian, but he hated the USSR!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfzGLWv8vxM

This one by Pete Seeger is really cool–“Andorra”. Can’t get it out of my head :slight_smile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2yKjobBt8k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEGyTTaRpj0&feature=player_embedded

I posted this in one of the low content threads. It’s a dubstep song by Porter Robinson featuring Jeff Riggenbach reading from For A New Liberty.

Well, another libertarian music thread (the 3rd one thus far?). One thing I need to know about these threads is should the entire band have a libertarian-ish base, or just a few pop songs easily accessible by the mainstream/casual radio listener? On a whole I could say Crass, Discharge, and tons of other anarcho-punk bands have rather libertarian lyrics (if they aren’t bitching about capitalism), and more well known bands on a whole like Rush (2112, Anthem, Trees, etc.), as well as plenty of folk music.

Most libertarian punk song?

You talk about your revolution, well, that’s fine
But what are you going to be doing come the time?
Are you going to be the big man with the tommy-gun?
Will you talk of freedom when the blood begins to run?
Well, freedom has no value if violence is the price
Don’t want your revolution, I want anarchy and peace

You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain’t it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me

But what about those people who don’t want your new restrictions?
Those that disagree with you and have their own convictions?
You say they’ve got it wrong because they don’t agree with you
So when the revolution comes you’ll have to run them through
You say that revolution will bring freedom for us all
Well freedom just ain’t freedom when your back’s against the wall

You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain’t it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me

Will you indoctrinate the masses to serve your new regime?
And simply do away with those whose views are too extreme?
Transportation details could be left to British rail
Where Zyklon B succeeded, North Sea Gas will fail
It’s just the same old story of man destroying man
We’ve got to look for other answers to the problems of this land

You talk of overthrowing power with violence as your tool
You speak of liberation and when the people rule
Well ain’t it people rule right now, what difference would there be?
Just another set of bigots with their rifle-sights on me

Vive la revolution, people of the world unite
Stand up men of courage, it’s your job to fight

It all seems very easy, this revolution game
But when you start to really play things won’t be quite the same
Your intellectual theories on how it’s going to be
Don’t seem to take into account the true reality
Cos the truth of what you’re saying, as you sit there sipping beer
Is pain and death and suffering, but of course you wouldn’t care

You’re far too much of a man for that, if Mao did it so can you
What’s the freedom of us all against the suffering of the few?
That’s the kind of self-deception that killed ten million jews
Just the same false logic that all power-mongers use
So don’t think you can fool me with your political tricks
Political right, political left, you can keep your politics
Government is government and all government is force
Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course
Oppression and restriction, regulation, rule and law
The seizure of that power is all your revolution’s for
You romanticise your heroes, quote from Marx and Mao
Well their ideas of freedom are just oppression now

Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It’s just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren’t clearly stated
Nothing’s really different cos all government’s the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game

Nothing changed for all the death, that their ideas created
It’s just the same fascistic games, but the rules aren’t clearly stated
Nothing’s really different cos all government’s the same
They can call it freedom, but slavery is the game
There’s nothing that you offer but a dream of last years hero
The truth of revolution, brother… is year zero.

I might like this band except that they have a song where it goes “Do they owe us a living? OF COURSE THE FUCKING DO!”

The sense of entitlement makes me cringe.

Depends how you take it. It’s like how someone says “I have a right to health care” and someone else says “I have a right to bare arms”. One is a sense of entitlement, and the other is a sense of not being restricted in the act of doing so. Seems there has been a line or two from Flux of Pink Indians and Crucifix that had some sense of “someone should do something”, or that “we need to make a change”, etc., and just had some sense of collective authority to it. Like there’s some social problem so we must act blah blah. Anyway…

The living that is owed to me
I’m never going to get
They’ve buggered this old world up
Up to their necks in debt

Relate this to our own government’s debt and the rise of inflation? Do they owe us a living? Well, they surely don’t owe us a killing.

Thank you so much for your post.


Watch Hugo Online Free

Any songs with libertarian lyrics or implications I suppose.

I’ll be the guy that posts the metal song.

Revocation - Dismantle the Dictator

The corpse master presides
Over congregation zombified,
Indoctrinating the populace.
A military nation.
Upon the eve of war.
Inflicts retaliation.
On enemies in distant shores.

Gripped by an iron hand.
Military industrial.
Exterminating the dissident voice.
A military nation.
Upon the eve of war.
Inflicts retaliation.
On enemies in distant shores.

The fog of propaganda. Instilled across generations.
Inhibits thought, Sapping vital motivations.
Proliferation instead of disarmament.
Destined to fail, meltdown is imminent.

Overlord overthrown.
(Overlord overthrown.)
A challenge to rise from the rhetoric,
(Overlord overthrown.)
Dismantle dictators and rancorous politics

Bert, good luck trying to interpret Crass as an AnCap band. Not only did they take on things that would be considered “cultural Marxism” here (like anarcha-feminism) they hated private defense. Listen to Securicor if you don’t remember.

There is a great number of anti-soviet songs played by the Russian bands back in the 1980s. One of the best songs (and my favourite one by this band) is this one:

[View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmp3ME08aN8]

Each time I listen to it I think how greatly this song expresses the spirit of totalitarianism.

Englisch translation (not the best one. I corrected it a little but it is still hard to preserve the original meaning since several lines in Russian are ambigious.)

Bound by one chain
Collective responsibility smears like soot
I hold somebody’s hand but feel elbow
I seek for eyes but feel look
There asses are higher than heads
Behind red dawn is pink setting
Bound by one chain, tied with one aim
Bound by one chain, tied with one aim

Here are weak joints but big space
Here are broken memberships, from them columns are made
Here is one type of words for kitchen and another for streets
Here eagles are deserted for broiler chickens
And even when I’m kissing I follow example of
Bound by one chain, tied with one aim
Bound by one chain, tied with one aim

One can believe even in lack of belief
One can be busy even in absence of business
Poor people pray, pray that
Their poorness is ensured
Here one can play tuba with yourself
But you can play just sound off
And if there are people that come to you
There will be people that will come after you
That like others are
Bound by one chain, tied with one aim
Bound by one chain, tied with one aim

Here women look for but find only old age
Here yardstick of work is deemed to be tiredness
Here aren’t scoundrels in rooms trimmed with leather
Here seniors are similar to the subordinates
And must be tired no less than the latter of being
Bound by one chain, tied with one aim
Bound by one chain

Well, it’s not like they are discussing theory here. The line “I’m a private in a private army” - Blackwater-esque? Well, I like a lot of feminist ideas and I’ve written a lot of my own stuff in support of feminist views and beliefs (at the same time I’ve got into some debates with feminists over privilege and raunch feminism - those involved in the queer culture movement are damn annoying).

From their song Where Next Columbus?

“Marx had an idea from the confusion of his head
Then there were a thousand more waiting to be led
The books are sold, the quotes are bought
You learn them well and then you’re caught”

Don’t get me wrong. I love Crass. And I don’t think they were Marxist at all, as most Anarchists aren’t. I wouldn’t ascribe any theory to them that they don’t ascribe to themselves. They were just Crass.

Next Mises Daily - Austrian Analysis of Crass.

Since we’re already on the topic of Crass, ever heard of The Apostles?

Haven’t heard of them. Same scene as Crass?

Aren’t Crass literal communists (as in they live/ lived in a self described commune), or at the very least were in the 70’s and 80’s?

In that sense, yes. Penny Rimbaud still lives at said commune.

Also weren’t they pacifists? If so I guess that could be a political label you could give them. They kind of remind me of like a punk version of a Tolstoyan type of outlook. Been forever since I listened to them though and I think I only own/owned Penis Envy.

Haven’t heard of them. Same scene as Crass?

Same scene, and extremely under rated. Put out more material than all the other anarcho bands and kept releasing material up into the early 90’s (of which they reformed and recorded a proper sounding studio album under the name Unit). They recorded a demo tape called Libertarian Propaganda in 82, but some of their songs had anarcho-syndicalist lyrics. Musically in my opinion they were a lot better, more experimental and didn’t fall into the typical sounding anarcho-punk paradigm (Crass, Flux of Pink Indians, The Alternative, The Mob, etc.)

From reading interviews with them (and one of the inserts of an EP I have of theirs) they seemed to not really care about the scene at the time. They were more politically involved, but felt the punk movement itself was sort of full of shit. The Wiki page on them isn’t bad.