The two are treated differently. With Paul, some here and elsewhere bring it up constantly. But with Rothbard, it is rarely mentioned. It’s just sad to see this pointless infighting over the minarchist/anarchist divide (which is in the end what it boils down to).
But what is the point? You are dealing in inaccurate estimates when you do that. Surely you can’t stick the entire ideological base of an individual into one word. So any label you choose for that individual will not convey accurate information, but only a wild estimate. I understand the need to use labels, to keep a conversation flowing even moderately, but dedicating an entire discussion on what label fits an individual is preposterous. Debate the ideas he holds or the methods he uses, but don’t waste time on labels.
And I think it would be a huge benefit for libertarians to avoid labels, since the labels have a tendency to override actual policy discussion. For example, I have two friends who, beyond a few reservations about free markets, would be libertarians (or very close, at least). The only real thing holding them back is that they perceive me to be on the right because I defend free markets and they have the irrational idea that they HAVE TO be on the left, because “the left defends the working man” or something. They agree with me on most issues, even on the free market, but they still can’t bring themselves to give up the label of “left”.
I won’t argue with the pass Rothbard sometimes will geta pass by those who do know, but I’m also not sure everyone, let’s say on this forum, for instance, does know about it.
I do agree that it’s a bit of a double-standard, however; this is why while I do not agree with many things RP, Rothbard, and Rockwell may say, I still try to consider what they say outside of what I immedialty disagree with, as not everything they wrote/talked about should be immedialty casted out & ignored for not fitting in my current state of views.
For instance, while I do not fancy the LRC or RP, anymore, I would be lying if I were to deny that they weren’t influential when I first began reading & eventually became libertarian, and even eventually becoming interested in anarchism.
I could be really picky with the first statement, and say this is why more than one label can be used in a description, but I see what you mean [H]
In using labels in a discussion, presumably one where not everyone makes a statement in what their own definitions of labels are, other’s infer their own definition within the discussion, and at some point, a meta-debate appears regarding how labels are defined, etc., which would obviously pull away from the original discussion/topic established.
As for your friends, have you tried clarifying that the “free-market” is not, in fact, exclusive to whatever they consider the right? I would try to show them that the “free-market” is not whatever Republicans, or whoever they disagree with, say, and that thinking so is playing right into the usual politican trap of double-speak.
It probably doesn’t help if they don’t know much about economics, which is why I would probably start with asking them “Are you for voluntary action?” and work your way up explaining that the core of the “free-market” is about voluntary action, mutual consent, non-coercsion, etc., and that the “free-market” is not blind corporatism for the pet-projects of Republicans, which is where I think many liberals sometimes get stuck at.
The amount of damage done by politicans, concerning double-speak around the term “free-market”, is frankly frustrating, and is what I think keeps other’s from learning more, for fear of breaching a cultural taboo, of some sort.
I remember saying this a while ago, but it does seem like labels do more harm than good in dividing libertarians, and perhaps, productive discussion in general :\
I’m puzzled as to what you found so horribly offensive. It is no secret that the state shoves incompatible peoples together and then justifies its existence as the arbiter of the social conflict its own actions create. It is also no secret that the state seeks to criminalize ethnic pride as loyalty to a pre-state institution that is incompatible with loyalty to the all-encompassing state. If some respond to this by calling for white/black/Jewish/whatever separatism, that is a blow struck against and not for the central state. The values you have inculcated that lead you to find such things offensive are, not coincidentally, the very ones propagated by the central state, which seeks ultimately to erase all human biodiversity and raise up a new breed of humans whose only loyalty is to the centralized state and not to any element of organic society such as family, tribe or faith. This is probably also why anarchists tiptoe around the fact that Somalian society in the absence of the central state is rigidly clan-based.
Umm, Rockwell in this “classical liberalism” essay is presenting the classically liberal perspective. But of course old-style liberalism was pre-Rothbard, pre-stateless theory in a libertarian framework. Rockwell for his part finds that a state contributes nothing to society that society needs, and that the state only does harm, points which are pretty obvious from his archive.
I never claimed it does. It tarnishes everyone involved, and the libertarian movement in general.
Rothbard was a complicated man who did change his positions somewhat over the years. I have no problem critisizing Rothbard when I think he is wrong, and there are some things that I think he was wrong about. For example, I remember reading an interview with him where he basically characterizes opposition to voting as naive. I also disagree with the article in which he tries to distinguish between two types of nationalism, a statist kind and a libertarian kind. I found his change of his position on immigration later in life to be unfortunate. Another area where I disagree with Rothbard is that I don’t necessarily agree that two eyes for an eye should be a universal standard for justice. And so on, and so forth.
Uh, no. Opposition to nationalism and racism was not invented by the state and is not an inherently pro-state position. As for what I found so horribly offensive, how about the reoccuring theme that it’s actually perfectly okay for the state to institutionalize segregation? You do realize that there’s a difference between private property rights discrimination and institutional/forced segregation, do you not?
I don’t think youre’ being intellectually honest about this. The remarks I’m refering to were deliberately inflammatory, purposefully fanning the flames of racial animosity. I don’t see how that’s constructive to liberty. What would truly be constructive to the message of liberty would be to spread it to as many different identity groups as possible and to demonstrate that they can peacefully cooperate or co-exist in a free society. Liberty is not a group-identity-specific thing.
Your arguement makes some assumptions that I find to be false, particularly the assumption that various people are inherently incompatible, which strikes me as kind of hobbesian (I recall even Lew Rockwell himself writting a piece on this very site about a year ago argueing against the premise that people of different religions in particular cannot peacefully co-exist in the same general area, and he likewise characterized this as a hobbesian premise).
You then go on to say that the state created the division, which would seem to contradict your initial premise since it would indiciate that the conflict is in fact not “natural” or “organic”. Which way is it? You can’t have it both ways. The initial premise also flies directly in the face of economics, particularly in the context of incentives towards cooperation, which don’t magically dissapear in the absence of a state but probably strengthen.
I’m not aware that the state propogates opposition to nationalism. Every state, in various ways, tends to propogate its own specific nationalism. An individual state of course has a fundamental interest in maintaining specific loyalty to it. I’m also not aware that the state invented cosmopolitanism, which was a premise held by many classical liberals.
I never understood the way in which conservatives worshop the family, tribe and religion. Frankly, in a psychological sense I find family-worshop to be the seed which the state springs from. Also, tribalism isn’t usually anarchic, it’s usually some kind of state. My vision of a free society does not consist of some kind of tribalist, highly segregated dystopia.
I’ll have to dig through LewRockwell.com for the article that I’m thinking of. I’m fairly certain that at such a point Rothbard endorsed the idea that the state can have restrictive/segregative policies (basically treating it as if it were a private owner anyways).
Yes, if you are going to making outlandish claims like that Lew support state enforced segregation, you had better be prepared to back it up. His entire archive says the opposite. It disgusts me that someone would make such a fraudulent claim. It is also disappointing coming from a list member whom I’ve come to respect.
Here Rothbard endorses the Bell Curve and racialist “science”. “In short; racialist science is properly 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.” Nonsense!
“This brings us to the first controversial move of the Clinton-elect pre-administration: eliminating the ban on gays in the military. The military should be considered like any other business, organization, or service; its decisions should be based on what’s best for the military, and “rights” have nothing to do with such decisions. The military’s long-standing ban on gays in the military has nothing to do with “rights” or even “homophobia”; rather it is the result of long experience as well as common sense. The military is not like any civilian organization. Not only are its men in combat situations (which it partially shares with civilian outfits like the police) but the military commander has virtual total control over his subordinate’s person and life, especially in combat situations. In such situations, open homosexuals could engage in favoritism toward loved ones, and engage in sexual exploitation and abuse of subordinates under their command. Add the discomfort of many in close and intimate situations, and you get destruction of the morale and efficiency of combat units.”
In short, he’s defending the “right” of the state to discriminate as if it were a legimate private property owner.
Here he reinforces this impression: "Finally, libertarians will fall back on their standard argument that while all these strictures do apply to private organizations, and that “rights” do not apply to such organizations, egalitarian rights do apply to such governmental outfits as the military. But, as I have written in the case of whether someone has “the right” to stink up a public library just because it is public, this sort of nihilism has to be abandoned. I’m in favor of privatizing everything, but short of that glorious day, existing government services should be operated as efficiently as possible. "
I side with Walter Block. The bum can stink up the public library all they want. To me, “as efficiently as possible” translates to “as if it was the legitimate private property of those who control it”.
Here Rothbard buys into the religious right’s lie that prayer is banned in public schools: “Christians have, for decades, suffered an organized assault that has driven expressions of Christianity out of the public school, the public square, and almost out of public life altogether. The rationale has been an absurd twisting and overinflation of the First Amendment prohibition on establishing a religion. Establishing a religion has a specific meaning: paying for ministers and churches out of taxpayer funds. To ban even voluntary prayer from the public schools, or to ban the teaching of religion, is a pettifogging willful misconstruction of the text and of the intent of the framers, in order to replace our former Christian culture with a left-secular one. The banning of creches in front of local town halls demonstrates how far the secularists will go – indeed shows how totalitarian they are in their drive to ban religion from public institutions.”
Surely Rothbard should have known better than this. Generally, there is no ban on prayer in school. What’s not allowed is mandatory prayer, and that’s what the religious right is generally pushing for.
I’m sorry, I find this period of Rothbard’s thought to be horrid. He was clearly pandering to paleocons and the religious right. To quote the man himself once again: “In sum, the task of paleolibertarians is to break out of the sectarian libertarian hole, and to forge alliances with cultural and social, as well as politico-economic, “reactionaries.”” Libertarians should ally with reactionaries? Wowzers!
If can’t-we-all-just-get-along multiculturalism is the natural order, then why does the State have to pass thousands of laws and erect a vast and powerful enforcement mechanism to establish it?
In our glorious anarchist future, is there ANY room for human biological or cultural diversity? Or will the Anarchist Freedom Patrol smash any people’s attempts to maintain a discrete identity, e.g., the Amish, the Hasidim, Sikh, etc.
Your world-view seems tainted by a false dichotomy between statist egalitarianism and libertarian segregationism, as if multiculturalism is purely a statist construct and segregationism is the “natural order” of a free society. I don’t buy that, since there’s an extent to which racial and cultural mixing is simply the result of people’s associations, and there’s a considerable extent to which segregation has historically been a state construct.
I don’t know, if segregation is the natural order, why did the state have the exact opposite policy for much longer, I.E. pass thousands of laws and erect a vast and powerful enforcement mechanism to institutionalize it? It’s government controled property I’m talking about here, not mere private property discrimination. Do you side with the “right” of the government to exclude people from “it’s” property? If so, then you’ve granted it legitimacy as if it were a private owner.
Oh yes, there is plenty of room for human biological or cultural diversity - which racist paleocons and white nationalists don’t support within their respective attempts at homogeneity. I don’t get how you can totally conflate diversity and homogeneity. In either case, the fact of the matter is that the paleo types are playing their own game of victimology and racial identity politics - claiming the racial, religious and cultural majority to be the victim. While there’s an extent to which this is true, it is way overblown by those who make a pet peeve out of it, such as Pat Buchannan.
Thanks for confirming what I suspected: there are no writings endorsing state racial segregation. That is what I thought. On the other hand Rockwell wrote this:
In a similar way, the racialists must also confront the reality of the market economy. As Mises said, in a market economy, there is no legal discrimination against anyone. Freedom prevails, and “whoever dislikes the Jews may in such a world avoid patronizing Jewish shopkeepers, doctors, and lawyers.” The problem is that this does not produce the results racists want. Indeed, the market always tends to bring people together in peace, neither compelling nor forbidding exchanges.
In the archive of Rothbard’s writtings from the early 90’s, Rothbard clearly defends the “right” of the state to discriminate in general (whether it be racial, sexual, religious or whatever) for what he considers to be practical reasons. That’s my point, and there’s no dancing around it, it can be found straight from the horse’s mouth from “The Impressionable Rothbard”, which documents precisely this arch-conservative period of Rothbard’s thought. The problem is that the state has no such right to discriminate using other people’s resources, and people who try to defend such a thing on libertarian grounds (which includes every libertarian who nonsensically tries to reconcile government imposed restriction on immigration, I.E. a form of institutional discrimination, with libertarianism) are making a grave error.
Rothbard made the exact same error that he had earlier critisized, I.E. the error of treating the government as if it currently is a purely voluntary buisiness, and therefore rationalizing restrictive or discriminatory government policies. He even states in the linked articles that the government should be run as efficiently as possible. Really? Should it? Efficient towards what end but governing? And who is to decide which internal government policy is truly “efficient”? Him? Me? A central planner? Isn’t that what it boils down to? Centrally planning inculsivity vs. centrally planning exclusivity? I reject both. I’m not interested in abolishing government bans on discrimination only to turn around and fully support government discrimination and mandatory/institutionalized discrimination. That’s a double standard, just as the inverse would be.
I oppose Jim Crow laws, but it should be pointed out that the Southern governments passed them in response to Reconstruction, which deliberately disenfranchised the South’s electoral majority.
Through the vast majority of human history, race relations were simply not the object of legislation. Yet racial phenotypes persisted and different genetically related groups coalesced geographically. (I get the feeling that this really, really bothers a lot of anarchists.) In a free society, such associations are allowed, and different peoples trade with or live among each other as they wish or not. Civil rights laws distort the natural order by taking away everybody’s safe harbors. Again, it is telling to see on which side government force is deployed in this debate.
Restrictive government polices, such as immigration controls, do the same thing. They disrupt the natural flow and outcome of people’s free associations. In either case, I’m not supporting anti-discrimination laws, I’m opposing the alleged right of thieves to restrict other people from access to stolen resources (which may very well be partially theirs to begin with, consequentially making it a double injustice) and I’m opposing mandatory/institutionalized discrimination, I.E. the alleged right to tell someone else that they can’t be inclusive with their own private property. The “paleolibertarian” position, as I understand it, supports both.
I actually think that the natural tendecy of a free market in the long-term is generally to weed out racial or cultural exclusivity. Apparently you disagree and see it as a “natural order”, which is a convenient buzzword that carries an appeal of authority. When you appeal to human history, you do it with the presumption that there was a free market so that you can conclude that whatever the “order” happened to have been was “natural”. Of course, I don’t buy into this conservative romantization of the past and I see no such free market throughout history to point to as evidence that past “orders” were “natural”.
That’s a pretty grim world, where everybody looks the same, talks the same, and thinks the same. (It’s also contrary to millenia of human history but I digress). And it is precisely that vision that the State and its media organs are pushing people towards. Any dissent from this vision is tagged as racist and thought crime and will face the full force of the civil rights bureaucracy.
That does not logically follow at all. In fact, what logically follows from pluralism is just the opposite, when there is a higher degree of diversity of people associating with eachother. It makes no sense whatsoever to claim that inclusivity is “everyone being the same”. No, just the opposite, it’s a whole bunch of very different people being included. What would truly be “everyone being the same” is what you favor: homogeneity. It’s homogeneity that implies that everyone has to be exactly the same in terms of a particular trait. In either case, I fail to see what’s so “grim” about people from different races or religions or cultures co-existing and associating on a free market. The horrors!
Also, I fail to see how the state is pushing people towards a vision of a free market producting pluralist outcomes. You clearly have a very one-sided and warped view of this matter, as if anyone who doesn’t buy into your rather obvious racialism surely must be a statist crusader trying to persecute you and the oh so melined white male christian.
Also, if you truly disagree with this premise so much, keep in mind that you’re disagreeing with the findings of laissez-faire economics and are totally ignoring incentives. You should very well known that it is unprofitable to turn down potential customers is mass, and that discrimination was slowly being weeded out by the market (although not an entirely free one) before the civil rights laws were passed. In that case, if you really beg to differ on this matter, it’s not just me you’re disagreeing with, it’s the vast majority of laissez-faire economists you are disagreeing with. You may as well accuse them of being part of this intricate radical egalitarian conspiracy too.
If goods with a scarcity of zero (they are abundant) have a price of zero in a free market, then in order for there not to be a premium on looks, race, intelligence, ideas, genetics, etc. we would have to be identical.
I agree that market prices trend towards zero, but they don’t hit zero until issues of scarcity are eradicated.