Rothbard splitting hairs unconstructively

Miscellaneous General
1

I have a great respect for Rothbard, and, to be sure, his writings were the ones to truly push me out of minarchy and into anarchy, and I will always regret never being able to thank him personally for the lessons he has taught me posthumously. That being said, today I was a bit disappointed in him. On the Mises homepage today, a work of his entitled Do You Hate the State? can be found. In it, Rothbard complains that some of his AnCap contemporaries do not appear to harbor the same utter hatred for the state that he possesses, but Rothbard admits that at least they still propose that market anarchy would be the best possible solution to the problem of running an efficient society.

One thing i have always loved about the libertarian ideal (and one of the most persuasive points about it) is its massive inclusion. Sure, it has a few (I guess one really [NAP]) strict principles, but for the most part it is pretty inclusive. For example, in our ideal society, If one wanted to form their own micro-society in a socialist fashion, they would be free to do so. Another example of Libertarian inclusion can be found in other, less obvious circumstances.

For example, as many of you probably know by now, I am a Christian. There are a few others here that I know of that share my “faith” or whatever you want to call it. But I will also say that I have many libertarian friends (both online and off) that are strict atheists, deists, and even a couple buddhists and muslims (I have yet to meet a hindu Libertarian but I hope to meet one some day). In all my time reading these forums as well as my as-of-now short stent of writing on them, I have never encountered any real contempt among us on the grounds of religion. Just the other day, on this thread in fact, I was questioned on a comment I had made about my faith by what I would later find out to be an atheist. Not once did I pick up even the slightest hint of superiority from this person, nor did they attack me in any way (let alone any of my more religious comments.

I think the major reason for this is two fold. First, most of us know we can’t afford to make enemies, at this point, over topics such as religion. Second, we recognize that, for the most part, such a personal aspect of someone’s life, such as religion, does not hinder their ability to think rationally in economics, regardless of however irrational we believe their spiritual belief to be. Most of the time, any questions we may pose to someone of a different belief, I have found to be mostly for the educational purposes of the asker. They just want to understand further the religion they are asking about. Their mission has rarely been to poke holes in another’s belief. The few times I have witnessed this have been at first provoked by the other party. Perhaps we take the NAP to the extreme: “I will not attack your belief until you first attack mine or ask for my opinion.”

So, now I get to the point of my post and then to my question. In my opinion, if there is one thing Rothbard is good at, it is splitting hairs. Usually this is for a good, constructive reason or in a case where the splitting of the hairs is like splitting an atom; it makes for an explosive difference when we really think about the topic. However, in the case of this essay by Rothbard, I do not think he is doing anyone a service. I will be the first to say that I practice a very public, very flagrant hatred of the state, oftentimes to my own detriment (you can thank me later…tee hee). Conversely, I think it is counterproductive to the cause of Liberty to take someone like David Friedman or Eric Mack, and publicly ridicule them solely for the reason that in their writings they don’t “hate the state enough.”

For one, prose heavy in “state-hate” is probably not the best way to reach initial audiences who have not been exposed to austrian/libertarian writings. State-hate is great for riling up the choir (forum members of Mises.org), but for the average joe, it sounds pretty fringe and, to some, even downright mad, indeed. I think there is a place for this kind of writing just as there is for Rothbards. If there had only been Keynes and Rothbard, I probably would have ended up a Keynesian. I consider having someone like Milton Friedman around to be paramount to my journey; someone to nudge me in gently.

Second, why take authors who agree with you “in the end”. Sure, they might not say that the state is inherently evil, but they still agree with and support your theory of market anarchy as the best way to “organize” society. Attacking them will do little to no good for your message.

Thoughts?

2

In the spirit of constructive hairsplitting I must ask, where are you getting ‘ridicule’ from?

When we boil down your complaint does it come out to the fact that you aren’t too cool on radicalism and so you dont want to read texts that promote it?

3

If I had come to Mises and read something like “Hate the State” the first time I might have been at least a bit turned off.

4

Fine, perhaps the term ‘ridicule’ was a bit misplaced. I’ll call it poorly constructed ‘constructive criticism’. I think his point in the piece is halfway off. I’ll explain…

Rothbard writes,

“To carry our analysis further, radical anti-statists are extremely valuable even if they could scarcely be considered libertarians in any comprehensive sense. Thus, many people admire the work of columnists Mike Royko and Nick von Hoffman because they consider these men libertarian sympathizers and fellow-travelers. That they are, but this does not begin to comprehend their true importance. For throughout the writings of Royko and von Hoffman, as inconsistent as they undoubtedly are, there runs an all-pervasive hatred of the State, of all politicians, bureaucrats, and their clients which, in its genuine radicalism, is far truer to the underlying spirit of liberty than someone who will coolly go along with the letter of every syllogism and every lemma down to the “model” of competing courts.”

Ok, if hatred for the state is really more important than proper theory, why not just forget David Friedman and Eric Mack and call Noam Chomsky our brother. He does after all “hate the state”, at least eventually he will once it has smashed capitalism.

I don’t know what I said that prompted you to draw this conclusion, as I tried to make it abundantly clear that I think there is a place for that kind of writing, and I also made it clear that Rothbard is a hero of mine. But, shame on me for questioning someone, especially when that someone is a hero of mine. I’ll explain…

There is another part of Rothbard’s wish for general radicalism that doesn’t sit well with me, and it actually lies, ironically, in his pandering to the less radical.

He writes, “What divides the movement now, the true division, is not anarchist vs. minarchist, but radical vs. conservative. Lord, give us radicals, be they anarchists or no.”

So again, if being ‘radical’ is so important, then apparently that fervor only applies to the intensity of one’s hatred for the state and not for how strict one follows his principles. Well, as a radical AnCap both in my strict belief in anarchy and my hatred for the state, I will look to any modern minarchist and tell them they are libertarian-lite; they are just a white-washed contradiction. I am talking even to Ayn Rand who had a pretty nasty bark when it came to ‘hating the state’, but the bite let us down when pressed on Intellectual Property. Mises was another of these. I usually give him a pass because without him and the invaluable work he contributed and then formulated into the study of praxeology, we wouldn’t have Rothbards. Even Mises, though, in all of his brilliance, couldn’t quite get there, despite his utter hatred for the state.

Of course hatred for the state is a nice trait. But no one but anarchists really hate it. This is why I think Rothbard’s remark above is ironic. Even minarchists don’t really hate the state; they just hate it in certain quantities. Hoppe talks about this in his General Theory of Socialism and Capitalism , where he basically states that we have two choices: market anarchy or some varying level of socialism.

i wonder if Rothbard wrote this out of some need to justify his heroes minarchy. I wonder if you, NirgrahamUK, responded to me the way you did because you can’t question your idols. I don’t know. I just think it is silly to let radicalism trump proper theory in importance. You can find radicalsim is all sorts of different shades, even if you’re just looking for “state-hating”. But just because you are a state-hater doesn’t necessarily mean I would ever call you comrade.

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How would you characterise the way I responded to you that would map to me being unable to question my ‘idols’ ?

but this is beside the point. This is just a matter of preference. Rothbard stated a particular preference at a point in time and put it in writing. We can agree and disagree. We can have interesting discussion about it, but lets not get crazy personal and over-invested.

Personally, I have stricter requirements than Rothbard, as I prefer my state-haters to also be free-marketers, whilst I certainly prefer free-marketer’s who ‘arent radical’ to leftists that are. But so what.

6

You are right. I am probably just getting a little wound up. I just don’t understand him on this one.

Sorry if my post came off as dick-ish

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You’re religious you say, so don’t you understand this is the good heathen debate essentially? Good pagans don’t get doomed to hell. You don’t penalize them for not having been exposed to the gospel to the extent necessary to turn them around, when they already do all the right things and make the world a better place. Those who have heard the gospel and claim to have internalized it, but are still useless weenies, well they are never going to be much use are they?

Also Rothbard isn’t talking about Chomskiyetes I don’t think. He is talking about proto-anarchocapitalists. He is talking specifically about anti-statist radicals from traditions that we draw from. Richard Cobden eg.