Murray’s reasoning for including, at least, the war of the Confederacy is dubious. To quote his take on what constitutes a just war:

My own view of war can be put simply: a just war exists when a people tries to ward off the threat of coercive domination by another people, or to overthrow an already-existing domination. A war is unjust, on the other hand, when a people try to impose domination on another people, or try to retain an already existing coercive rule over them.

This viewpoint of Rothbard is not the best take on just war. Rothbard uses the collectivist concept of a people rather than the autonomous individual. This can easily lead to a nationalistic defense of state sovereignty as opposed to a radical defense of individual rights. This is not to deny that human beings exist in a social context. It simply acknowledges that consent is ultimately necessary on an individual level.

Even if one agrees with this viewpoint, it doesn’t legitimize the South’s war. The South was trying to preserve coercive domination over black people. And the Confederacy hypocritically denied slaves the same right of secession that the Confederate government was claiming in relation to the Union. The negative libertarian rights and freedoms of the slaves were not acknowledged by the Confederate state.

There is simply no way of reconciling radical libertarian principle with a defense of the so called Southern War of Independence. This doesn’t mean the Union was perfect or perfectly embodied libertarian ideals either. To quote Roderick Long:

When libertarians on one side point out that the Union centralised power, violated civil liberties, committed vicious war crimes, was hypocritical on secession, ignored avenues for peaceful emancipation, and cared more about tariffs and nationalism than about ending slavery, I agree and applaud; but they lose me when they start calling the Civil War the “Second War of American Independence” and portray the Confederates as freedom fighters.

Equivalently, when libertarians on the other side point out that the preservation and extension of slavery was central to the South’s motivations for secession (as seems clear from what secessionists said at the time of secession, as opposed to what they said in their memoirs years later), and that the Confederacy was just as bloated and oppressive a centralized state as the Union, equally hypocritical on secession and equally invasive of civil liberties, once more I agree and applaud. (As I like to say, the Confederacy was just another failed government program.) But they too lose me, when they start calling Lincoln a great libertarian and the consolidation of federal power a victory for liberty.

The proper position to take is one of opposition to both states alike and support for anarchistic abolitionism of the Lysander Spooner variety.

The book is an excellent discussion of libertarian principles and applications, and it is still worth reading today. In rereading the book for the first time in decades, I found the foundational material especially interesting. Indeed, the material in For a New Liberty foreshadows what we find in greater detail in the later Ethics of Liberty.

As we saw in the later book, Rothbard believed that what he called the “nonaggression axiom” had to be derived. Although he used the word axiom, rather than principle or maxim or (as I prefer) obligation, he did not mean that the idea of nonaggression was self-evident, a priori, or self-justifying. Nor did he say that the denial of the axiom results in a contradiction.

As Rothbard wrote, “If the central axiom of the libertarian creed is nonaggression against anyone’s person and property, how is this axiom arrived at?” Clearly, then, he regarded it as a derived principle. Does that mean he was wrong to call it an axiom? Not according to Roderick Long:

Another objection [to the nonaggression axiom] focuses on the term “axiom,” which is sometimes taken to imply that the prohibition of aggression enjoys a special epistemic status analogous to that of the law of non-contradiction, e.g., that it is self-evident, or knowable a priori, or a presupposition of all knowledge, or that it cannot be denied without self-contradiction. While some proponents of the prohibition do indeed claim such a status for it, many do not, and accordingly it is sometimes suggested that “non-aggression principle” or “zero aggression principle” is a more accurate label than “non-aggression axiom.”

On the other hand, there is a broader sense of “axiom” in which a foundational presupposition of a given system of thought counts as an axiom within that system of thought … even if it rests on some deeper justification outside that system; for example, Isaac Newton described his fundamental laws of motion as “axioms” within his deductive system of mechanics, yet regarded them as grounded empirically. In this sense non-aggression might legitimately be regarded as an “axiom” of libertarian rights theory regardless of what one takes its ultimate justification to be.

Rothbard continued his own discussion of the foundation of the nonaggression axiom thusly:

What is [the axiom’s] groundwork or support? Here, libertarians, past and present, have differed considerably. Roughly, there are three broad types of foundation for the libertarian axiom, corresponding to three kinds of ethical philosophy: the emotivist, the utilitarian, and the natural rights viewpoint.

“Emotivists,” he wrote, “assert that they take liberty or nonaggression as their premise purely on subjective, emotional grounds.” He was undoubtedly dissatisfied with that “foundation”:

While their own intense emotion might seem a valid basis for their own political philosophy, this can scarcely serve to convince anyone else. By ultimately taking themselves outside the realm of rational discourse, the emotivists thereby insure the lack of general success of their own cherished doctrine.

He meant that one must give reasons for why we all have a right not to be aggressed against, or why (changing perspective) we owe it to others to abstain from aggression.

He also dismissed utilitarianism as a foundation for libertarianism. While he agreed that freedom produces the good consequences claimed by utilitarians, he found this defense wanting because it is confined to consequences only and has led to a weak espousal of guidelines in political theory, rather than to “an absolute and consistent yardstick.” He might have gone further and argued that strict consequentialism cannot contend with the fact that the various things that contribute to human well-being are discrete and incommensurable (there’s no homogenous thing called well-being) and that interpersonal comparisons of subjective utility are impossible. In other words, the required utilitarian calculus cannot be executed.

That leaves the “natural-rights basis for the libertarian creed,” which Rothbard claimed is the “basis which, in one form or another, has been adopted by most of the libertarians, past and present.”

“Natural rights,” he went on, constitute “the cornerstone of a political philosophy which, in turn, is embedded in a greater structure of ‘natural law.’” From there, Rothbard provided material similar to what he would write later. He described human nature and the nature of the world as requiring that each person

learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain and advance his life. Since men can think, feel, evaluate, and act only as individuals, it becomes vitally necessary for each man’s survival and prosperity that he be free to learn, choose, develop his faculties, and act upon his knowledge and values. This is the necessary path of human nature; to interfere with and cripple this process by using violence goes profoundly against what is necessary by man’s nature for his life and prosperity. Violent interference with a man’s learning and choices is therefore profoundly “antihuman”; it violates the natural law of man’s needs.

Rothbard, in For a New Liberty, didn’t address the question of why we should care about human flourishing, though he did so in The Ethics of Liberty. In essence, he responded there that the ultimate good — flourishing — is, so to speak, baked into the very enterprise of doing ethical and political theory, and indeed of all action.

In light of his concern with human flourishing, it is unsurprising that Rothbard would write that “it is evident that individuals always learn from each other, cooperate and interact with each other; and that this, too, is required for man’s survival” and that “the libertarian welcomes the process of voluntary exchange and cooperation between freely acting individuals.” Hence, Rothbard’s interest in the free market, with its division of labor, as a natural habitat for human beings.

It is important to understand that for Rothbard, the very concept aggression (and thereforenonaggression) could not be formed apart from more fundamental considerations. He wrote,

If, for example, we see X seizing a watch in the possession of Y we cannot automatically assume that X is aggressing against Y’s right of property in the watch; for may not X have been the original, “true” owner of the watch who can therefore be said to be repossessing his own legitimate property? In order to decide, we need a theory of justice in property, a theory that will tell us whether X or Y or indeed someone else is the legitimate owner.

To avoid vicious circularity, of course, a theory of justice cannot be formulated in terms of aggression. Rather, its roots lie in the natural law, from which the nonaggression axiom/principle/obligation is also derived.

Rothbard played a larger role than most in shaping the modern libertarian movement. Alas, he’s been gone nearly 20 years, but his work deserves attention today. Anyone eager to understand the rich libertarian philosophy and heritage could do no better than to begin withFor a New Liberty.

The first striking feature of Ethics is that the opening five chapters, which comprise part 1, seek to establish the validity of natural law, an approach to moral inquiry based on the distinctive nature, faculties, and tendencies of the human being; this approach began with the ancient Greek philosophers and developed through the thought of Catholic and Protestant thinkers, such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius. (For these religious philosophers, natural law was discoverable through reason, and was separable from theological questions.) One can judge Rothbard’s deep interest in this subject by his first four chapter titles: “Natural Law and Reason,” “Natural Law as ‘Science,’” “Natural Law versus Positive Law,” and “Natural Law and Natural Rights.”

Rothbard wanted us to read this material before moving on to such topics as property, enforceable rights, voluntary exchange, aggression, and self-defense. Why?

Because natural law gives meaning to and thus is indispensable to understanding those concepts. It provides the context. He approvingly quoted the natural-law philosopher John Wild: “The philosophy of natural law defends the rational dignity of the human individual.” He praised the English natural-law liberals (such as John Locke and the Levellers), “who transformed classical natural law into a theory grounded on methodological and hence political individualism.” And he identified the “great failing” of “classical” natural-law thinkers from Plato to Leo Strauss: they were “profoundly statist rather than individualist.”

Rothbard’s conviction that individual rights are derived from something more fundamental can be seen in this statement: “The myriad of post-Locke and post-Leveller natural-rights theorists made clear their view that these rights stem from the nature of man and of the world around him.”

For Rothbard, individual rights boil down to the right to be free from aggression. (Thus complete freedom in society is possible and realistic.) This is what he  wished to derive from the natural law. The principle is not self-evident (though it surely has intuitive appeal). It is no free-floating iceberg. Rather, it follows from earlier findings that reason discloses about human nature (“the primordial natural fact[s] of freedom” and self-ownership), human action, the nature of the world around us, and the conditions under which we may flourish. The book does not discuss the nature of aggression until the third chapter of part 2:  “A Theory of Liberty” (chapter 8 in the book).

Readers who are eager to get on to Rothbard’s discussion of the Nonaggression Principle — which I think is better expressed as the Nonaggression Obligation — may be tempted to skip part 1. To them I have three words of sage advice: Don’t do it! You will deny yourself the full benefit of this marvelous book. Read and enjoy the discussion of natural law.

For Rothbard, natural law concerns the discovery of objective values and objective ethics. He writes,

In the Thomistic tradition, natural law is ethical as well as physical law; and the instrument by which man apprehends such law is his reason — not faith, or intuition, or grace, revelation, or anything else. In the contemporary atmosphere of sharp dichotomy between natural law and reason — and especially amid the irrationalist sentiments of “conservative” thought — this cannot be underscored too often.

With obvious approval he quoted William J. Kenealy, a Jesuit priest, who wrote,

This philosophy maintains that there is in fact an objective moral order within the range of human intelligence, to which human societies are bound in conscience to conform and upon which the peace and happiness of personal, national and international life depend. [Emphasis added.]

Rothbard then asked a question posed by another natural-law philosopher, John Wild: “Why are such principles felt to be binding on me?” And he supplied Wild’s answer:

The factual needs which underlie the whole procedure are common to man. The values founded on them are universal. Hence, if I made no mistake in my tendential analysis of human nature, and if I understand myself, I must exemplify the tendency and must feel it subjectively as an imperative urge to action.

Or, Rothbard adds, as 19th-century American Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing put it, “All men have the same rational nature and the same power of conscience, and all are equally made for indefinite improvement of these divine faculties and for the happiness to be found in their virtuous use.”

Much modern philosophy dismisses natural law as old-fashioned and unscientific, but Rothbard endorsed Étienne Gilson’s observation, “The natural law always buries its undertakers.”

Now here is a puzzle. On the one hand, Rothbard emphasized that natural-law philosophy seeks to identify that which is objectively good for all human beings. He writes,

Aquinas, then, realized that men always act purposively, but also went beyond this to argue that ends can also be apprehended by reason as either objectively good or bad for man. Moral conduct is therefore conduct in accord with right reason.

And,

If, then, the natural law is discovered by reason from [quoting Edwin W. Patterson] “the basic inclinations of human nature … absolute, immutable, and of universal validity for all times and places,” it follows that the natural law provides an objective set of ethical norms by which to gauge human actions at any time or place.

And, finally, “The natural law, then, elucidates what is best for man — what ends man should pursue that are most harmonious with, and best tend to fulfill, his nature.”

But on the other hand, Rothbard was an economist in the Austrian tradition, which holds that value is subjective. Can this paradox be resolved?

Rather easily, it turns out. He wrote,

The natural law, then, elucidates what is best for man — what ends man should pursue that are most harmonious with, and best tend to fulfill, his nature. In a significant sense, then, natural law provides man with a “science of happiness,” with the paths which will lead to his real happiness. In contrast, praxeology or economics, as well as the utilitarian philosophy with which this science has been closely allied, treat “happiness” in the purely formal sense as the fulfillment of those ends which people happen — for whatever reason — to place high on their scales of value. Satisfaction of those ends yields to man his “utility” or “satisfaction” or “happiness.” Value in the sense of valuation or utility is purely subjective, and decided by each individual. This procedure is perfectly proper for the formal science of praxeology, or economic theory, but not necessarily elsewhere. For in natural-law ethics, ends are demonstrated to be good or bad for man in varying degrees; value here is objective — determined by the natural law of man’s being, and here “happiness” for man is considered in the commonsensical, contextual sense.

Many of these quotations indicate that Rothbard believed that under natural law, binding moral constraints can be rationally identified. Respect for other people and their just possession is one such binding constraint; it does not require explicit or implicit consent. I wish he had developed this point further because it seems crucial to the libertarian case. Why do we owe other people nonaggression? What is the nature of that obligation? (I discuss this question in “What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.”)

Instead, Rothbard, in part 2, seemed to shift ground and offer other reasons for respecting people’s rights. He wrote that any proposed political ethic that permits some to rule others fails the test of universalizability; an objective moral code must be applicable to everyone. (This sounds like one of Kant’s formulations of the categorical imperative.) He also wrote that living parasitically off of other people conflicts with the exploiter’s own self-interest because it reduces the volume of goods produced while violating his nature:

Coercive exploitation or parasitism injure the processes of production for everyone in the society. Any way that it may be considered, parasitic predation and robbery violate not only the nature of the victim whose self and product are violated, but also the nature of the aggressor himself, who abandons the natural way of production — of using his mind to transform nature and exchange with other producers — for the way of parasitic expropriation of the work and product of others. In the deepest sense, the aggressor injures himself as well as his unfortunate victim.

True enough, but why ought one, first, act only in accord with a universal ethic and, second, not exploit others if one were to calculate that in a great society the reduction in the volume of goods would be only marginal? Why exactly is an exploiter harmed because he loots rather than produces? Or, what exactly is the price to be paid for not living in harmony with one’s nature as a human being?

In fairness to Rothbard, he did not set out to formulate a complete ethical philosophy, just the subset of ethics dealing with aggression. He likely believed that a complete ethics had already been formulated by others. (He cited several Aristotelian and Thomist thinkers and was influenced by the Aristotelian novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, although he did not cite her.) So why reinvent the wheel?

My questions aside, The Ethics of Liberty is a great book that deserves the attention of anyone interested in the good society and human flourishing.

“An expansive definition of coercion allows libertarians to achieve a greater depth of understanding about the various ways in which people can be coerced. If we wish to comprehensively eradicate initiatory coercion; we will have to understand the many ways in which it can manifest itself. Apart from the obvious use of physical force; there is the use of economic reward and punishment and social ostracism. Both of which can be used to control people.”

the invasive use of physical violence or the threat thereof against someone else’s person or (just) property

Rothbard provides several quotations of Hayekian definitions of coercion. The first one goes:

control of the environment or circumstances of a person by another (so) that in order to avoid greater evil, he is forced to act not according to a coherent plan of his own but to serve the ends of another

He also quotes Hayek thusly:

Coercion occurs when one man’s actions are made to serve another man’s will, not for his own but for the other’s purpose.

The third relevant Hayek statement quoted goes:

the threat of force or violence is the most important form of coercion. But they are not synonymous with coercion, for the threat of physical force is not the only way coercion can be exercised.

Hayek clearly embraces a more expansive definition of coercion than Rothbard does. This brings us to the central question of what kind of response to non-physical violence coercion should be sanctioned on libertarian principle. One guide to answering this question can be found in the principle of proportionality. If I aggressively verbally abuse or ostracize you; shooting me would be disproportionate to the offense. On a similar note, the refusal of service doesn’t justify a violent response either. That doesn’t make it any less odious.

An expansive definition of coercion allows libertarians to achieve a greater depth of understanding about the various ways in which people can be coerced. If we wish to comprehensively eradicate initiatory coercion; we will have to understand the many ways in which it can manifest itself. Apart from the obvious use of physical force; there is the use of economic reward and punishment and social ostracism. Both of which can be used to control people.

The solution to dealing with these kinds of controls is to make use of non-state non-violent protest. If people are unjustly marginalized through social ostracism, we libertarians should come to their aid through social pressure. When people are controlled through economic reward and punishment, there should be a concerted effort to help them achieve greater economic independence. These solutions are necessary to achieve an integrated approach to dealing with coercion.

In an article titled “Capitalism vs. Statism“, Murray Rothbard differentiated between his concept of free market capitalism and state capitalism, giving what is essentially his definition of capitalism in the following quotation:

“If we are to keep the term “capitalism” at all, then, we must distinguish between “free-market capitalism” on the one hand, and “state capitalism” on the other. The two are as different as day and night in their nature and consequences. Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. 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.”

Here, Rothbard, like most proponents of capitalism, is equating his capitalism with markets. Let’s now see how Benjamin Tucker defines socialism. In “Socialism: What Is It?“, “Socialism”, Tucker states, “says that every increase of capital in the hands of the laborer tends, in the absence of legal monopoly, to put more products, better products, cheaper products, and a greater variety of products within the reach of every man who works.” Tucker is here implying that the existence of socialism, which he defines as a decentralization of control of labor and the means of production, is dependent on free market activity. As such, essentially, Tucker’s socialism is dependent on the existence of Rothbard’s capitalism.

So wherein lies the disagreement? Tucker has been dead almost 75 years now, and Rothbard nearly 20, and yet many of those following in the philosophy of each to this day still furiously opposes the positions of the other. Of course one is not bound to a dichotomy between Tucker’s socialism and Rothbard’s capitalism and is free to devise their own ideology based on an infinite choice of variations on each, but given those who identify as students of one, I see a great amount of bickering due to misrepresentation of the others’ ideology. Both are proponents of liberty above all else, both oppose state granted monopolization, and both believed that with greater liberty and, as a natural consequence, greater equality of opportunity, economic endowment would tend more toward equality than in a state controlled environment. While on some minor issues on which neither misinterpret each other, each camp may have quarrels. However, with the more pivotal issues each would agree. The only fundamental difference between the two regards the emphasis of the Tuckerites on non-hierarchical labor. So again, I ask, why such heated bickering between the two camps?

And in similar regard, much of the bickering between others is also a result of misinterpretation. For example, the anarchist communist Murray Bookchin was once, for a short time, a member of Rothbard’s living room political discussion group. For those that fraternize in either of these circles, it is known that the disdain each group holds for the other’s ideology is generally much greater than that between Rothbardians and Tuckerites. Yet and still, according to Jeff Riggenbach who knew both men, Bookchin once told him that he does not have any fundamental philosophical opposition to the anarcho-capitalist’s vision of capitalism. On the flip side of the same coin, in conversations with Rothbardians, communist anarchists may find that these purported opponents of their position are perfectly agreeable to the peaceful coexistence of communist and capitalist societies so long as each is liberated.

And the same can be said of supposed statist ideology. With the many variations on Marxism and anarchism, the only true distinction that can be made between each is that Marxists believe in a transition period to arrive at an anarchic society. What this transition looks like differs depending on the Marxist. For Leninists, this period much more closely resembles the current popular conceptions the public holds of more well known leftist societies of today. For the Luxembourgists and council communists, however, what their proposed transition period looks like differs only semantically from anarchic ideology. And what about the even wider variety of anarchist opinion? Anarchists have proposed solutions ranging from insurrectionary revolution to gradual evolution to counter economic models such as Agorism. Each proposes a method of moving from the current status quo to a new order. Neither proposes a definite time frame for moving from current operations to their vision, and most deliberately avoid predicting this time frame even approximately. Could this vaguely defined period, then, not be thought of as a transition period? Surely there is no one that disagrees time will elapse between this immediate moment and the realization of their ideal system. Thus, while one may disagree with some of the details that certain Marxists propose, one cannot disregard completely the theory of a transition period promoted by Marxists.

Perhaps the most important example of semantic misunderstandings, however, is seen with the mainstream public and radical dissenters in a general sense. Unfortunately with radical dissent seems to come general and widespread mainstream disinformation intended to fallaciously attack or transform the dissenting ideologies. This is the natural result of authority systems protecting the status quo. And it has been incredibly effective. Such misleading definitions of the terms mentioned above, as well as many others associated with them, have been put forth that generally any political discourse seems to be fairly unproductive as a result.

What I wish for is not an end to terminology. After all, it is terminology that affords us as humans a heightened capacity for communication to that of other animals. Rather I feel it is crucial for people to recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, all individuals have a common drive towards liberty above all else. This is true whether or not they quibble over the semantics of this statement. Thus, all such philosophies are driven by an innate sense of direction towards personal liberty. As such, one should enter discourse with this understanding and, rather than bickering over semantics, try to discover where the semantic disagreement occurs and learn how to speak the language of the other. Where there is a common thread of dissent with the status quo, and a common drive toward liberty, there should be a great enough level of concurrence to move forward together in changing the world toward an agreeable future.

Karl Hess estava entrando de cabeça na esquerda quando Rothbard deu a New Left como uma causa perdida. Mesmo durante as tentativas mais entusiasmadas de Rothbard em colaborar com a esquerda, Hess ainda estava mais a esquerda de Rothbard. Como eu mencionei na parte 1, em um momento ele era associado ao Industrial Workers of the World. Ele continuou se movendo em direção à esquerda na década de 1970, em 1975 escreveu o livro de tendência socialista libertáriaDear America.

Como a década de 1970 avançava, seu esquerdismo assimilou um tom mais na linha do livro “Small is Beautiful”, com uma ênfase na tecnologia de escala humana e democracia de bairro. Neste período, ele escreveu o livro altamente recomendadoCommunity Technology e foi co-autor do livro Neighborhood Power, com Davi Morris.

Por volta de 1980 ou mais, Hess também iniciou uma tímida volta à direita, embora ele nunca tenha ido tão longe nessa direção como Rotbard foi em seus últimos anos. Sua auto-biografia Mostly on the Edge, escrito após sua volta para a direita, ainda preservava muito do seu espírito, em geral, descentralizador e anticorporativismo de seus últimos anos.

Em relação a carreira de Samuel Edward Konkin III, dependo, entre outras coisas, do próprio relato dele da história do Movement of the Libertarian Left – MLL (Movimento da Esquerda Libertária). Se você deseja a história completa e complicada de todas as organizações que ele construiu, parta para o relato de Konkin (junto com os obituários por Jeff Riggenbach e Phil Orborn) e você terá todos os detalhes organizacionais e as anedotas humanizantes que você possa arcar. Estou pulando muita coisa aqui porque meu foco principal está em suas ideias e nas pessoas de hoje que foram influenciadas pelas ideias dele.

Konkin (também conhecido como SEK3), natural do estado canadense de Alberta e um credor social em sua juventude inexperiente, foi um aliado de Rothbard que remonta desde os dias da separação da Young American for Freedom (ele foi um dos delegados de Wisconsin, na convenção que ocorreu em St. Louis). Seu Movement of the Libertarian Left continuou a desenvolver o pensamento de Rothbard em direção a esquerda que o próprio Rothbard tinha abandonado.

Apesar da desilusão de Rothbard com a aliança esquerda-libertária, a colaboração de 1969 entre o Young Americans for Freedom e os dissidentes do Students for a Democratic Society teve sua dinâmica própria. Por exemplo, de acordo com a história do Movement of the Libertarian Left de SEK3, o grupo de ativistas chamado Libertarian Alliances formou-se em um número de campus de faculdades inteiramente na década de 1970. O fenômeno foi iniciado em Fevereiro de 1970, quando o grupo California Libertarian Alliance organizou uma conferência chamada Left-Right Festival of Mind Liberation. Entre os oradores estavam Karl Hess, o libertário de livre mercado Robert LeFevre, Carl Oglesby, e o atual deputado federal pelo estado da Califórnia Dana Rohrahacher, que era conhecido pelos radicais do Young Americans for Freedom como “Johnny do baseado”, da época de quando ele servia para alguma coisa, e o próprio Sam Konkin.

A partir do Libertarian Alliance da Universidade Wisconsin-Madison, e atraindo aliados envolvidos com o crescente Libertarian Alliances de toda Nova Iorque e costa oeste, Konkin estabeleceu muitos de seus amigos viajantes para dentro de um movimento rothbardiano de esquerda que levou o nome “New Libertarian Alliance – NLA” (Nova Aliança Libertária), em 1974. Konkin criou a NLA como uma organização de vanguarda e fora dos padrões, para promover sua estratégia de Contra-economia e sua ideologia do Agorismo. Em 1978 ele fundou o “Movement of the Libertarian Left” (Movimento da Esquerda Libertária) como uma contraparte mais acima do NLA. O Agorist Institute apareceu em algum momento depois disso, caso você ainda esteja por dentro (eu não estou disfarçando a graça desta proliferação maluca de organizações, acredite em mim – veja, a seguir, mais sobre isso).

O foco estratégico principal de Konkin, de acordo com sua posição anti-política doutrinária, era o que ele chamou de “Contra-economia” ou “Agorismo“. A ideia foi esboçada no New Libertarian Manifesto (O Novo Manifesto Libertário) de Konkin: construir uma contra-economia de mercado negro e drenar recursos do vínculo do estado corporativo, até que a contra-economia de livre mercado finalmente suplante completamente o sistema de capitalismo de estado.

As ideias de Konkin sobre contra-economia se encaixam em um alcance considerável com as ideias de esquerda da dualidade de poderes e políticas prefigurativas. Eu examinei uma estratégia de contra-economia baseado nesses conceitos, de uma perspectiva socialista libertária consideravelmente à esquerda de Konkin em “Building the Structure of the New Society Within the Shell of the Old“:

Contra-instituições econômicas, infelizmente, funcionam dentro do escopo de uma economia de capitalismo corporativo maior. Eles competem em mercados no qual a instituição cultural das empresas dominantes é de cima pra baixo e hierárquica e estão em alto risco de absorver essa cultura institucional por elas mesmas. É por isso que você tem um setor sem fins lucrativos e cooperativo do qual a gestão é indistinguível de sua contrapartida capitalista: salários de prestígio, fazer mimos na gestão intermediária, irracionalidade burocrática e adesão servil para o dogma de teoria motivacional/ gerencial mais recente. O problema é agravado por um sistema financeiro capitalista, que amplia o reforço positivo (na forma de crédito) para empresas seguirem um modelo organizacional ortodoxo (mesmo quando a organização de baixo pra cima seja muito mais eficiente) (…)

A solução é promover tanto quanto possível a consolidação dentro da contra-economia. Precisamos voltar ao trabalho de “construção da estrutura da nova sociedade dentro da casca do antigo”. Um ótimo acordo de produção e consumo já ocorre dentro da economia social ou da economia do dom, do trabalho autônomo, do comércio de permuta e etc. As ligações entre setores precisam ser ampliadas e fortalecidas entre aqueles envolvidos nas cooperativas de consumo e produção, trabalho autônomo, sistemas de câmbio local (Local Exchange Trading System), jardinagem domiciliar e outras produções familiares, comércio de permuta informal, etc. O que as contra-instituições econômicas já existentes precisam é começar a funcionar como uma contra-economia corrosiva.

A outra maior inovação de Konkin foi o seu desenvolvimento da teoria de classe libertária. As raízes da teoria de classe de Rothbard e Konkin se apoiam nos pensadores franceses como Saint-Simon, Charles Comte e Charles Dunoyer e na ala radical do liberalismo clássico inglês. Eles identificaram a classe dominante como aqueles proveitos que adquiriram suas riquezas por agir através do estado.

O pensador clássico nessa tradição foi o livre-mercadista radical inglês Thomas Hodgskin, que fez a distinção entre direitos de propriedade “natural” e “artificial”. A primeira distinção, dizia, resultava naturalmente da posse e servia para certificar o domínio do indivíduo do seu produto de trabalho. Os direitos artificiais de propriedade, por outro lado, foram criações do estado em que permitia o titular a coletar tributo do produto do trabalho. Os detentores dos direitos de propriedades artificiais incluíam os grandes latifundiários com seus arrendamentos feudais, os capitalistas mercantilistas com ligações políticas e os beneficiários de diversos outros privilégios e imunidades.

As ideias dos positivistas franceses e de Hodgskin foram retomadas com a distinção de Franz Oppenheimer em sua obra The State (O Estado) entre “apropriação natural” e “apropriação política” da terra e entre os “meios econômicos” e “meios políticos” para a riqueza. Apropriação política da terra foi o principal meio político para a riqueza.

Os economistas políticos clássicos tinham reconhecido que a maioria das pessoas entrará no emprego assalariado apenas quando toda a terra estiver apropriada e já não tiverem acesso direto ao trabalho autônomo em sua própria terra. Isso foi uma observação comum feita por Adam Smith, David Ricardo e Thomas Malthus. A contribuição radical de Openheimer foi observar que, embora a terra estivesse, de fato, completamente apropriada, ela nunca fora apropriada naturalmente. Pelo contrário, ela tinha sido apropriada politicamente pelos grandes latifundiários agindo por intermédio do estado. Os grandes latifundiários usaram seus direitos artificiais de propriedade da terra para controlar o acesso e cobrar tributos àqueles que trabalharam nela e, em muitos casos, para manter várias extensões de terreno de fora de uso por completo. Somente sob estas circunstâncias, em que os meios de subsistência direta foram feitas inacessíveis para o trabalho, poderia o trabalho ser forçado a vender seus serviços sobre condições desavantajosos (a literatura da classe dominante britânica, na época dosCercamentos, estava cheia de admissões francas de que o único modo a levar as pessoas a trabalharem duro o bastante, por um salário baixo o bastante, era roubar suas terras). O privilégio foi o meio político para riqueza e o estado era o meio político organizado.

Rothbard fez disso a peça central de sua teoria de classe, tratando o conluio com o estado como o meio político para a riqueza e a classe dominante, como aquelas que se vincularam ao estado e usaram de seus subsídios, privilégios e proteções especiais como uma fonte de lucro. Rothbard expôs estes princípios, entre outras passagens, em “A Anatomia do Estado“.

Konkin pegou essa ideia básica e lidou com elas, aplicando-a em detalhe às condições concretas do capitalismo de estado americano. A classe dominante não era apenas de funcionários estatais, mas os bancos centrais, os grandes interesses financeiros associados e os altos comandos da economia corporativa intimamente ligada ao sistema financeiro estatista. O Agorismo foi o movimento revolucionário daqueles comprometidos nos meios econômicos na tentativa de tirar o máximo das atividades econômicas quanto fosse possível do controle da classe dominante. A teoria de classe agorista de Konkin foi estabelecida no primeiro capítulo, de seu trabalho inacabado, de Agorism Contra Marxism. Esse capítulo está anexado ao excelente Agorist Class Theory, de Wally Conger, que, por sua vez, é baseado no capítulo e fragmentos sobrevividos da obra de Konkin na área. Uma profunda análise de classe do sistema financeiro e de seus satélites industriais, baseada na mesma versão da teoria de classe libertária, está estabelecida em um artigo de Walter Grinder e John Hagel: “Toward a Theory of State Capitalism”.

Como disse Konkin, a teoria de classe agorista e marxista concordam em quase tudo de quando se trata daqueles que estão no topo e na base de seus respectivos sistemas de classe. “As diferenças surgem como uma se move para o meio da pirâmide social”. A principal diferença em relação ao meio é que a teoria de classe agorista é muito mais próxima do “producerismo pequeno burguês” dos populistas do século 19. Agoristas não tem nenhum problema com o empreendedorismo ou o lucro empresarial. O que eles tem um problema é com a classe rentista, obtendo rendimentos absenteístas vindo de grandes fortunas com a ajuda do estado. Aqueles que estão no topo da pirâmide geralmente agem através do estado para se certificar de que eles não terão que se envolver com empreendedorismo. Pelo contrário, o estado os protege do risco e da competição, e por isso, os permite a acumular arrendamentos seguros de longo prazo (veja, por exemplo, aqui e aqui – por favor, veja!).

Em 1999, Konkin fundou o grupo do Yahoo, Left Libertarian, o ponto de encontro através do qual eu, pela primeira vez, entrei em contato com ele, com suas ideias e seu largo círculo de amigos. Tive vários anos de debates estimulantes lá que influenciaram meu desenvolvimento para nenhum fim. Em 2007, três anos após a morte de Konkin, a lista implodiu sobre uma disputa política entre J. Neil Schulman e basicamente todo o resto do grupo, e a maioria das figuras importantes no círculo de Konkin migraram para o grupo Left Libertarian 2. O antigo grupo do Yahoo de Konkin é praticamente uma concha vazia, embora Neil Schulman e Kent Hastings continuem com o grupo (e com os artigos, que valem a pena dar uma olhada). Por causa de uma disputa similar com Neil sobre os direitos do nome “Movement of the Libertarian Left – MLL”, muitos membros do grupo Left Libertarian 2 colaboraram em formar uma organização sucessora, o Alliance of the Libertarian Left – ALL. Mais uma vez, quase todas as figuras importantes do antigo Movement of the Libertarian Left migraram para o Alliance of the Libertarian Left e deixou o antigo corpo como uma concha vazia sob a posse de Schulman.

Eu sei, eu sei. Eu sou o primeiro a reconhecer o quão cômico a sopa de letrinhas das organizações de Konkin deve parecer para alguém de fora. Para fazer graça, numa referência a certo trecho do excelente filme “A Vida de Brian”, do grupo humorístico britânico Monty Python, é como se um homem fundasse a Frente da Judéia Popular, a Frente Popular da Judeia e todas aquelas outras organizações “divisoras” ao mesmo tempo. A personalidade de Sam me lembra um pouco a de Bakunin. Com seu entusiasmo infantil por fundar organizações infinitas (com acrônimos legais, claro) e publicações, emitindo cartões de visita e formando grupos clandestinos conspiratórios, é difícil de acompanhar tudo sem um cartão de pontuação.

Mas suas ideias merecem ser levadas seriamente por si só e seu trabalho teve efeito crítico que desmente o fator de riso em todas as mitoses organizacionais descrita anteriormente. Suas ideias teóricas n’ O Manifesto do Novo Libertário e em seu trabalho inacabado sobre a teoria de classe agorista são, ambas, contribuições monumentais ao pensamento libertário. Suas ideias inspiraram um largo círculo de libertários proeminentes que são influentes em uma ampla gama de organizações e publicações atuais, e seus efeitos em cascata continuam a se espalhar continuamente.

A mais importante associação de seguidores rothbardianos de esquerda de Konkin atualmente é a Alliance of the Libertarian Left  (ALL). Não há nada que remonta a “Frente Popular da Judeia” ou fragmentações do tipo. Na verdade, é um exemplo clássico de como um grupo de afinidades deve ser organizado em uma era de políticas interconectadas. É uma comunidade ampla e vibrante de rothbardianos de esquerda e outros aliados da esquerda (como eu). Uma organização guarda-chuva de algo como uma “Internacional Agorista”.

Em certo sentido, o Alliance of the Libertarian Left é uma melhoria sobre o seu antecessor Movement of the Libertarian Left. O antigo Movement of  the Libertarian Left foi quase inteiramente composto de amigos e pensadores agoristas de Konkin. Embora fossem descendentes da tentativa de Rothbard com a aliança com Nova Esquerda, o ALL incluiu somente um lado da aliança – o lado libertário de mercado. Não houve qualquer “novos-esquerdistas” ou socialistas libertários em vista. O mais próximo que eles chegaram em dialogar com a esquerda genuína foi quando alguns anarco-comunas ou georgistas pararam na lista do Left Libertarian por um tempo e depois seguiram em frente. Embora o núcleo do novo Alliance of the Libertarian Left seja composto dos antigos associados de Konkin, inclui um acréscimo muito maior de movimentos da esquerda. Diversos seguidores de Benjamin Tucker e mutualistas do meu tipo (que enfatizam os aspectos socialistas tanto quanto os aspectos do mercado do anarquismo individualista) e uma grande variedade de geolibertários. Além do antigo núcleo dos agoristas, existe um bom número de pequenos associados agoristas. Chuck Munson (Chuck0), do Infoshop, ainda possui uma ligação amigável com vários membros do ALL. Em um certo sentido, o Alliance of the Libertarian Left é o tipo de aliança de esquerda-direita que Rothbard tentou e falhou em atingir quase quarenta anos atrás.

Portanto, apesar da aparente tolice de Sam com todas as suas organizações, no final, ele construiu algo importante que durou. Ele gravou o seu pensamento em uma ampla gama de pessoas e aproximou todos elas juntas, e a maioria delas ainda está junta e construindo sob os pensamentos de Konkin e de cada outra pessoa. Sua influencia continua alimentando o movimento libertário grandemente de um modo mais amplo de muitas maneiras que nós nunca podemos imaginar completamente a importância no decorrer de nossas vidas.

Basta olhar para os links no site do Alliance of the Libertarian Left ou clicar no blog agregador associado do movimento, o Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left, que você pode achar uma grande variedade de sites hospedados pelos antigos camaradas lutadores de Konkin da época de St. Louis, os discípulos mais recentes do rothbardianismo de esquerda e da contra-economia e até mesmo alguns novos amigos esquerdistas mais novos como eu, que – embora nunca tenhamos nos considerados como seguidores de Rothbard ou Konkin – temos sido influenciado fortemente pelos seus pensamentos.

O site de Brad Spangler, Agorism.info, reproduz O Novo Manifesto Libertário juntamente com muitos outros panfletos de Konkin.

O Agorist Action Alliance (A3) foi criado por Spangler como uma organização ativista pela coordenação da propaganda agorista e organização contra-econômica.

KoPubCo, uma publicação pertencente ao antigo associado de Konkin, Victor Koman, imprimiu muito da literatura do MLL, incluindo reimpressões do New Libertarian Notes e Strategy of the Libertarian Left.

A revista acadêmica fundada por Rothbard, Journal of the Libertarian Studies, desde Dezembro de 2004, tem um editor rothbardiano de esquerda, Roderick T. Long.

Outro membro do Alliance of the Libertarian Left, Sheldon Richman, é editor da revista The Freeman, fundada por Leonard Read. Em anos recentes, ele tem mudado sua postura editorial em uma direção decididamente libertária de esquerda e tem sido um crítico verbal do capitalismo de estado.

Joseph Stromberg – embora completamente sem filiação com o Alliance of the Libertarian Left – é, contudo, uma espécie de uma eminência rothbardiana de esquerda. Ele próprio rejeitou, como tentativas artificiais, dividir a carreira de Rothbard entre fases de inclinação à esquerda e direita. Mas a divisão é muito útil em minha opinião e Stromberg claramente enquadra-se na categoria rothbardiana de esquerda quando se trata de sua análise do papel dos interesses na política externa e interna dos EUA.

Provavelmente, as duas peças centrais do seu corpo de trabalho são:

1. Sua análise sobre o progressismo corporativo na política interna americana em “The Political Economy of  Liberal Corporatism“, e

2. Seu esforço prolongado em integrar teorias da esquerda radical (Hobson, Beard, W. A. Williams e os neo-marxistas) do capital monopolista e do imperialismo dentro de um quadro teórico austríaco, em “The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire“. Este artigo eu não posso recomendar o suficiente.

Além disso, vale a pena navegar nos arquivos nos sites LewRockwell.com e Antiwar.com. Embora o Mises Institute não mantenha um arquivo de autor, seu trabalho pode ser encontrado por uma busca no Google de seu site. Provavelmente sua única grande obra, ao lado de dois artigos mencionados acima, é sua bibliografia comentada ao longo da literatura revisionista sobre guerra e política externa: “Guerra, Paz e o Estado“.

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson.

Tradução de Rodrigo Viana. Revisão de Adriel Santana.

Em 2004, eu estava extremamente animado sobre a “Era of Good Feelings” entre os políticos Michael Badnarik do Partido Libertário e David Cobb do Partido Verde. Isso me deu alguma esperança para o renascimento de um projeto ainda mais esperançoso de 30 anos e poucos atrás.

Durante o final da década de 1960, Rothbard tentou uma aliança estratégica com o movimento da “Old Right” americana “isolacionista” e comparativamente antiestatista com a “New Left” americana. Esse período é o assunto de um artigo de John Payne, “Rothbard’s Time on the Left”. Payne escreve:

No início da década de 1960, Rothbard viu a “Nova Direita”, exemplificada pela revista National Review, como perpetuamente unida com a Guerra Fria, que rapidamente se tornaria exponencialmente mais intensa no Vietnã, e as intervenções do estado que a acompanhava. Então ele partiu à procura por novos aliados. No movimento da “New Left” americana, Rothbard encontrou um grupo de estudiosos que se opôs à Guerra Fria e a centralização política, e possuía uma massa a seguir com alto grau de potencial de crescimento. Vendo essa oportunidade, Rothbard estava disposto a pôr a ciência econômica de lado e se estabelecer em um terreno comum e, ao passo que sua cooperação com a New Left nunca alterou ou provocou o afastamento de qualquer de suas crenças fundamentais, a retórica de Rothbard mudou nitidamente em direção à esquerda durante esse período.

Eu adicionaria uma ressalva, a respeito do que Payne disse de Rothbard pondo a ciência econômica de lado. Na verdade, como veremos a seguir, Rothbard compartilhou de algum terreno econômico comum com a New Left. Na sua posição mais a esquerda, a crítica austríaca de Rothbard do capitalismo de estado corporativo era bastante radical.

No final da década de 50, de acordo com o relato de Payne, Rothbard encontrou-se em desacordo com W. F. Buckey e Frank Meyer na National Review. Suas apresentações sobre política externa, em um período em que ele viu a “questão guerra-paz” como algo chave para a agenda libertária e referiu-se à Guerra Fria como verdammte [N.T.: verdammte, do alemão, “condenável”], foram rejeitadas. Finalmente, em 1961, Meyer publicamente interpretou-o como fora do “movimento conservador” (ou, pelo menos, fora do fusionismo do National Review).

As partir do início da década de 60 em diante, Rothbard se viu cada vez mais atraído à crítica revisionista da esquerda docapitalismo de estado do século 20 (ou o que a New Left chamou de corporate liberalism). Ele ficou especialmente impressionado pela tese do livro de Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, que foi publicado em 1963.

A crítica misesiana de Rothbard do estado corporativo, em que compartilhou tanto em comum com a New Left, foi um afastamento considerável das afinidades políticas de direita de Mises. Para Mises, o intervencionismo estatal foi motivado quase que inteiramente pelo sentimento anticapitalista: aquilo que Nixon teria denominado de “fodidos hippies sujos” ou Eric Cartman (personagem de South Park) repudiaria como “um bando de lixo hippie abraçador de árvores malditos”.

Rothbard, por outro lado, aplicou os princípios da Escola Austríaca, em grande parte do ponto de vista da crítica de Kolko, que viu o intervencionismo estatal como motivado principalmente pelo desejo dos próprios capitalistas corporativos em proteger seus lucros da destrutiva força da competição do mercado. Kolko discordou diretamente do relato histórico ortodoxo do estado regulador, como exemplificado pelo progressista Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Especificamente, ele negou que a agenda legislativa da Era Progressista fora formulada primeiramente como uma restrição populista sobre as grandes empresas, ou de que o governo interviu na economia do século 20 como uma “força contra balanceadora” contra as grandes empresas. Pelo contrário, o estado regulador foi uma tentativa das grandes empresas alcançarem, agindo diretamente através do estado, o que tinha sido incapazes de alcançar através de combinações voluntárias e trustes executados inteiramente no setor privado: a cartelização da economia e a criação de mercados oligolopolistas estáveis caracterizado por fixar preço. Payne cita essa declaração resumida do livro de Kolko:

Apesar do grande número de fusões e do crescimento no tamanho absoluto de muitas corporações, a tendência dominante na economia americana do início deste século [vinte] foi em direção a crescente concorrência. A concorrência era inaceitável para muitas empresas fundamentais e interesses financeiros… Visto que novos concorrentes surgiram e como o poder econômico foi difundido em toda a nação em expansão, tornou-se evidente a muitos empresários importantes que somente o governo nacional poderia “racionalizar” a economia. Embora as condições específicas variassem de indústria para indústria, problemas internos que podiam ser solucionados apenas por meios políticos foram o denominador comum daquelas indústrias cujo lideres defenderam grandes regulações federais. Ironicamente, ao contrário do consenso dos historiadores, não foi a existência de monopólio que levou o governo federal a intervir na economia, mas a falta dele.

O propósito da ação estatal era, em primeiro lugar, ajudar a construir, excessivamente, a indústria, de modo simultâneo, a operar em capacidade plena e dispor do produto excedente que não poderia vender a preços de cartel. Em segundo lugar, como uma alternativa, era para permitir a indústria cartelizada operar com altos custos e capacidade ociosa e ainda permanecer-se lucrativa por vender seus produtos pela fixação de preços cost-plus através da precificação de monopólio (isso poderia também ter sido a declaração de missão do Ministério de Recuperação Industrial Nacional do presidente Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a propósito).

Essa percepção inicial de Rothbard, de que a historiografia revisionista da New Left foi útil para uma crítica ao livre mercado do capitalismo corporativo do século 20, levou-o a uma considerável soma colaborativa com estudiosos da New Left.

Rothbard participou do Studies on the Left, um projeto de historiadores da New Left como James Weinstein e William Appleman Williams. Foi Weinstein, em The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, que cunhou o termo “progressismo corporativo”. E Williams desenvolveu a tese “Open Door Imperialism” para descrever a política externa americana. Algumas contribuições de Rothbard para o Studies on the Left foram incluídas em uma coleção de artigos de livro de bolso resultantes de esforços do grupo até 1967: For a New America.

Rothbard manteve laços de amizade com acadêmicos da New Left por muito tempo depois de sua desilusão com o movimento estudantil radical. O seu segundo empreendimento mais arriscado em uma bolsa de estudos colaborativa (relativamente ao final do período de 1972) foi A New History of Leviathan, uma coleção de ensaios críticos sobre o corporativismo no New Deal, co-editado por Rothbard e pelo socialista libertário Ronald Radosh.

Ele contribuiu com um artigo (“Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal“), em 1968, para a revista Ramparts (tanto David Horowitz e Ronald Radosh, que juntamente depois tornaram-se dois dos membros mais detestáveis de um movimento neoconservador caracterizado por suas odiosidades, foram associados com esta publicação importante da New Left).

Rothbard fundou o periódico Left and Right, em 1965, como um veículo para sua aliança de esquerda e direita enviesada academicamente. Se você estiver muito interessado nesses tipos de coisas, procurar os arquivos retribuirá bem seu esforço.

De sua colaboração acadêmica inicial com acadêmicos da New Left, Rothbard moveu-se para tentar a sorte com um movimento de massa em aliança com estudantes radicais.

O ponto alto dessa aliança ocorreu em 1969. A facção libertária de viés anarquista radical do grupo ativista Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) saiu da convenção desta instituição, em St. Louis (principalmente sobre a Guerra do Vietnã e do recrutamento militar obrigatório). As raízes do movimento libertário contemporâneo, e da maioria do seu pessoal fundador, pode ser traçada a este ato de secessão. Não muito tempo depois, Rothbard (juntamente com Karl Hess, um ex-redator de discurso do antigo político Barry Goldwater que cunhou a frase “extremismo em defesa da liberdade”, e, posteriormente, moveu-se consideravelmente para a esquerda) organizou um encontro em massa dos dissidentes libertários do YAF com secessionistas socialistas libertários semelhantes vindos do grupo ativista estudantil Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Durante esse evento, Hess discursou a uma audiência coligada do YAF e insurgentes do SDS usando uniformes militares e um broche da Industrial Worker of the World (N.T.: O I.W.W. é um sindicato industrial internacional de tendência anarquista também conhecido como “Wobblies”).

A publicação The Libertarian Forum, de Rothbard, foi fundada em 1969, na época em que Rothbard estava se tornando cada vez mais desencantado com a New Left, e a própria New Left e especificamente o SDS, sob ataque dos fanáticos maoístas doPartido Trabalhista Progressista e dos idiotas niilistas do grupo ativista Weather Underground, estava se desintegrando. Embora Rothbard pudesse ter convivido muito bem com os acadêmicos da New Left, ele aparentemente sofreu um considerável choque cultural em 1969 ao descobrir precisamente o quão radical os estudantes radicais eram (as denúncias encobertas de economistas acadêmicos e do uso de gravatas feitas por eles foram uma afronta particular a Rothbard, que foi culpado sobre os dois resultados). Apesar disso, o primeiro volume do Libertarian Forum foi embalado com o comentário impetuoso sobre a aliança da New Left.

Pegue, por exemplo, esta citação de 1º de Maio, da edição de 1969:

[Os estudantes] veem que, independente de outro merchandising editorial, as empresas tem se utilizado das escolas e faculdades do governo como instituições que treinam seus futuros trabalhadores e executivos à custa de outros, isto é, dos pagadores de impostos. Isto é somente um caminho em que o nosso estado corporativo utiliza o poder taxativo coercitivo tanto para acumular capital corporativo quanto para abaixar os custos das empresas. Independente de como o processo é chamado, não é “livre iniciativa”, exceto no sentido mais irônico.

Considere também essa declaração de Hess:

A verdade… é que o libertarianismo deseja avançar os princípios da propriedade mas de forma alguma pretende defender, sem mais nem menos, toda propriedade que atualmente é chamada de privada. Muitas dessas propriedades são roubadas. Muitas são de títulos duvidosos. Estão profundamente interligadas com um sistema estatal coercitivo, imoral, que sancionou, constituiu e lucrou com a escravidão; se expandiu e explorou através de uma política externa imperial e colonial brutal e agressiva, e continua a manter as pessoas numa relação a grosso modo de servo-mestre com concentrações de poder político-econômico. Os Libertários estão preocupados, primeiro e acima de tudo, com a mais valiosa das propriedades, a vida de cada indivíduo… Direitos de propriedade relacionados a objetos materiais são vistos por libertários como emanando, e… um importante secundário do direito de possuir, direcionar, e desfrutar de sua própria vida e daqueles acessórios adicionais que podem ser adquiridos sem coerção… Isso está muito longe de compartilhar opiniões com aqueles que desejam criar uma sociedade na qual super-capitalistas estão livres para juntar grandes posses e com aqueles que dizem que isso é o propósito mais importante da liberdade… O libertarianismo é um movimento popular e um movimento de libertação. Ele procura um tipo de sociedade livre, não coercitiva, na qual as pessoas, vivas, livres e distintas, possam se associar livremente, desassociar, e, como bem julgarem, participar nas decisões que afetam suas vidas… Significa pessoas livres coletivamente para organizar os recursos de sua comunidade mais próxima ou organiza-los individualmente; significa a liberdade de ter um judiciário baseado e apoiado na comunidade aonde desejado, nenhum onde se preferir, ou serviços de arbitração privada aonde isto é visto como mais desejável. O mesmo com a polícia. O mesmo com escolas, hospitais, fábricas, fazendas, laboratórios, parques e pensões. A liberdade significa o direito de moldar suas próprias instituições. Ela se opõe ao direito dessas instituições te moldarem simplesmente graças a um poder acumulado ou status gerontológico.

Em outro artigo na mesma edição, “Confisco e o Princípio de Apropriação”, Rothbard propôs um modelo de privatização bem distante do tipo de pilhagem corporativa de ativos estatais que normalmente se encontra sendo defendido nos fórunss de libertários tradicionais de hoje em dia.

O que a maioria das pessoas normalmente identifica como a proposta de privatização “libertária” estereotipada, infelizmente, parte de algo como isso: vendê-la para uma grande corporação sob as condições que são mais vantajosas para a corporação. Rothbard propôs, como alternativa, tratar a propriedade estatal como sem dono e permitindo-a ser apropriada por aqueles que verdadeiramente a ocupam e que misturam seu trabalho nela. Isso significaria transformar serviços de utilidade pública do governo, escola e outros serviços em cooperativas de consumo e colocando-os em controle direto de sua clientela atual. Significaria ceder a indústria estatal à sindicatos de trabalhadores e transformá-la em cooperativas sob posse dos trabalhadores.

Porém se isso era o modo apropriado de lidar com a propriedade estatal, Rothbard questionou, em seguida, e sobre a indústria nominalmente “privada” que, na verdade, é um braço do estado? Isto é, o que acontece com a indústria “privada” que recebe a maioria de seus lucros de subsídios vindos dos pagadores de impostos

Mas se é assim com a Universidade de Columbia, e quanto à General Dynamics? E quanto à miríade de corporações que são partes integrais do complexo militar-industrial, que não só conseguem mais da metade ou às vezes toda sua receita do governo, mas também participam de assassinato em massa? Quais são suas credenciais à propriedade “privada”? Certamente menores que zero. Como ávidas lobistas para esses contratos e subsídios, como co-fundadoras do Estado-guarnição, elas merecem confisco e reversão de sua propriedade para o setor privado genuíno o mais rápido possível. Dizer que sua propriedade “privada” deve ser respeitada é dizer que sua propriedade, a propriedade roubada pelo ladrão de cavalos e do assassino, deve ser “respeitada”.

Essas fábricas deveriam ter sido tomadas por “trabalhadores que trabalharam nela”, ele diz. Mas ele foi mais longe, e sugeriu que um movimento libertário, tendo capturado os altos comandos do estado e prosseguindo a desmantelar o aparato do capitalismo de estado, poderia, na verdade, nacionalizar essa indústria subsidiada pelo estado como o prelúdio imediato a entregá-la aos trabalhadores. Ele foi tão longe ao ponto de dizer que, mesmo se um regime não-libertário nacionalizasse a indústria capitalista estatal com a intenção de se manter nele, não era algo para os libertários ficarem irritados particularmente com a questão. A indústria subsidiada não seria mais o “mocinho”, e não menos que uma parte do estado, como o próprio aparato estatal formal. “[Isso] significaria apenas que uma gangue de ladrões – o governo – estaria confiscando propriedade de outra gangue cooperada prévia, a corporação que vivia do governo”.

Eu iria além de Rothbard. Por que, de fato, o critério pelo status do governo é o montante dos lucros diretamente subsidiados vindo da receita estatal? E as corporações que funcionam dentro de uma teia de proteções regulatórias estatais, e os direitos de propriedade artificiais semelhantes a “propriedade intelectual” do Bill Gates, sem o qual eles não poderiam operar noponto de equilíbrio da receita por um único dia. Qualquer um que tenha lido muito do meu trabalho, por um dado período de tempo, sabe que eu considero todas as “500 maiores empresas da revista Fortune”, de fato, uma ótima representação desses braços do estado. Como eu já argumentei em uma postagem anterior, as maiores empresas estão tão entrelaçadas ao estado que a própria distinção entre público e privado torna-se sem sentido.

Para reforçar essa impressão, tenha em mente que (como as observações de Hess sobre a propriedade sugerida) Rothbard considerou todos os títulos de terra não rastreáveis sobre um ato legítimo de apropriação pelo trabalho humano, a estar totalmente nula e desocupada (veja aqui, aqui e aqui). Isso significa que títulos de terra devolutas e não cultivadas seriam nulas e todas essas terras nos Estados Unidos deveriam estar abertas para apropriação imediata. Significa que todo imóvel realmente existente do sul da Califórnia, no presente momento mantido como investimentos imobiliários autênticos através de estradas de ferro, de acordo com as concessões de terras do século 19, deveria, imediatamente, se tornar propriedade livre e alodial absoluta daqueles que atualmente que estão sob aluguel ou o hipotecam. Significa que toda a terra no Terceiro Mundo, atualmente, “possuída” por oligarquias fundiárias quase feudais deveria imediatamente tornar-se a propriedade dos camponeses que nela trabalharam. E a terra atual que está sendo usada pelo agronegócio corporativo e outros tipos de produção agrária exclusivamente para o mercado, em conluio com esses mesmos proprietários de terras, deveria ser devolvida aos camponeses que foram expulsos dela.

Em suma, Rothbard não se encaixava exatamente no estereótipo do “maconheiro do Partido Republicano” que você vê comentaristas regurgitando junto ao fórum de discussão política do Kos. Esse artigo está ficando muito, muito longo. A princípio, tentei encaixar todo o material de rothbardianos de esquerda em uma postagem. Mas irei poupar o material sobre os sucessores libertários de esquerda de Rothbard (Sam Konkin, Joseph Stromberg e o resto) para outra postagem. [Que você vê amanhã por aqui.]

Artigo original afixado por Kevin Carson.

Tradução de Rodrigo Viana. Revisão por Adriel Santana.

Karl Hess was just getting into his full left-wing swing when Rothbard gave up the New Left as a lost cause. Even during Rothbard’s most enthusiastic attempts at collaboration with the Left, Hess was already to the left of Rothbard. As I mentioned in Part I, at one point he was a Wobbly. He continued to move leftward into the 1970s, in 1975 writing the libertarian socialist tinged Dear America.

As the 1970s wore on, his leftism took on more of a “Small is Beautiful” coloring, with an emphasis on human scale technology and neighborhood democracy. In this period he wrote the highly recommended book Community Technology, and coauthored Neighborhood Power with David Morris.

By around 1980 or so, Hess also started drifting back to the right, although he never went as far in that direction as Rothbard did in his last years. His autobiography Mostly on the Edge, written after his shift back to the right, still retained much of the generally decentralist and anti-bigness spirit of his earlier years.

In considering the career of Samuel Edward Konkin III, I rely among other things on his own account of the history of the Movement of the Libertarian Left (PDF). If you want the full, complicated history of all the organizations he built, go to Konkin’s account (along with obits by Jeff Riggenbach and Phil Osborn) and you’ll get all the organizational details and humanizing anecdotes you can handle. I’m skipping over a lot here, because my main focus is on his ideas and the people today who were influenced by them.

Konkin (aka SEK3), a native Albertan and a social crediter in his callow youth, was an associate of Rothbard dating back to the days of the YAF schism (he was a Wisconsin delegate at the St. Louis convention where it took place). His Movement of the Libertarian Left continued to develop Rothbard’s thought in the leftward direction that Rothbard himself had abandoned.

Despite Rothbard’s disillusion with the libertarian-left alliance, the collaboration of 1969 between YAF and SDS dissidents had a certain momentum of its own. For example, according to SEK3’s history of the Movement of the Libertarian Left, Libertarian Alliances formed on a number of college campuses through the 1970s. The phenomenon was kicked off in February 1970, when the California Libertarian Alliance organized a Left-Right Festival of Mind Liberation. Speakers included Karl Hess; the free market libertarian Robert LeFevre; Carl Oglesby; Dana Rohrahacher (yeah, him), who was known as the “Johnny Grass-seed” of the YAF radicals back when he was good for something; and Sam Konkin.

Starting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libertarian Alliance, and drawing associates involved with the mushrooming Libertarian Alliances all over New York and the West Coast, Konkin organized many of his fellow travellers into a left-Rothbardian movement that took on the name New Libertarian Alliance in 1974. Konkin created the NLA as an underground organization, for promoting his stategy of Counter-Economics and his ideology of Agorism. In 1978, he founded the Movement of the Libertarian Left as an above-ground counterpart to the NLA. The Agorist Institute popped up at some point thereafter, if you’re still keeping track. (I’m not blind to the humor in this mad proliferation of organizations, believe me – more about which below.)

Konkin’s chief strategic focus, in keeping with his doctrinaire anti-political stance, was what he called “Counter-Economics (PDF)” or “Agorism.” The idea was outlined in Konkin’s New Libertarian Manifesto (PDF): to build a black market counter-economy, and drain resources from the corporate state nexus, until the free market counter-economy finally supplanted the state capitalist system altogether.

Konkin’s ideas on counter-economics dovetail to a considerable extent with the left-wing ideas of dual power and prefigurative politics. I discussed a counter-economic strategy based on those concepts, from a libertarian socialist perspective considerably to the left of Konkin’s, in “Building the Structure of the New Society Within the Shell of the Old“:

Economic counter-institutions, unfortunately, work within the framework of a larger corporate capitalist economy. They compete in markets in which the institutional culture of the dominant firms is top-down and hierarchical, and are in great danger of absorbing this institutional culture themselves. That’s why you have a non-profit and cooperative sector whose management is indistinguishable from its capitalist counterparts: prestige salaries, middle management featherbedding, bureaucratic irrationality, and slavish adherence to the latest motivational/management theory dogma. The problem is exacerbated by a capitalist financial system, which extends positive reinforcement (in the form of credit) to firms following an orthodox organizational model (even when bottom-up organization is far more efficient)….

The solution is to promote as much consolidation as possible within the counter-economy. We need to get back to the job of “building the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.” A great deal of production and consumption already takes place within the social or gift economy, self-employment, barter, etc. The linkages need to be increased and strengthened between those involved in consumers’ and producers’ co-ops, self-employment, LETS systems, home gardening and other household production, informal barter, etc. What economic counter-institutions already exist need to start functioning as a cohesive counter-economy.

Konkin’s other major innovation was his development of libertarian class theory. The roots of Rothbard’s and Konkin’s class theory lie in the French thinkers Saint-Simon, Comte, and Dunoyer, and in the radical wing of English classical liberalism. They identified the ruling class as those interests that obtained their wealth by acting through the state.

The classic thinker in this tradition was the English free market radical Thomas Hodgskin, who made the distinction between “natural” and “artificial” rights of property. The former, he said, followed naturally from possession and served to secure the individual’s ownership of his labor product. Artificial property rights, on the other hand, were creations of the state which enabled the holder to collect tribute from the product of labor. Holders of artificial property rights included the great landlords with their feudal rents, the politically connected mercantile capitalists, and the recipients of assorted other privileges and immunities.

The ideas of the French positivists and of Hodgskin were taken up in Franz Oppenheimer’s distinction between “natural appropriation” and “political appropriation” of the land, and between the “economic means” and “political means” to wealth. Political appropriation of land was the chief political means to wealth.

The classical political economists had acknowledged that most people will enter wage employment only when all the land is appropriated and they no longer have direct access to self-employment on their own land. This was a commonplace observation made by Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus. Oppenheimer’s radical contribution was to observe that although the land was indeed all appropriated, it had never been naturally appropriated; it had, rather, been politically appropriated by the great landlords acting through the state. The great landlords used their artificial property rights in the land to control access to it and charge tribute to those working it, and in many cases to hold vast tracts of it out of use altogether. Only under these circumstances, in which the means of direct subsistence were made inaccessible to labor, could labor be forced to sell its services on disadvantageous terms (the British ruling class literature at the time of the Enclosures was full of frank admissions that the only way to get people to work hard enough, for a low enough wage, was to steal their land). Privilege was the political means to wealth, and the state was the organized political means.

Rothbard made this the centerpiece of his class theory, treating collusion with the state as the political means to wealth, and the ruling class as those who attached themselves to the state and used its subsidies, privileges and special protections as a source of profit. Rothbard stated these principles, among other places, in “The Anatomy of the State.”

Konkin took this basic insight and ran with it, applying it in detail to the concrete conditions of American state capitalism. The ruling class was not only state functionaries, but the central banks and associated large financial interests, and the commanding heights of the corporate economy most closely tied to the statist finance system. Agorism was the revolutionary movement of those engaged in the economic means, attempting to take as much economic activity as possible out of the control of the ruling class. Konkin’s agorist class theory was set forth in the first chapter of his unfinished work Agorism Contra Marxism. That chapter is appended to Wally Conger’s excellent Agorist Class Theory (PDF), which itself is based on the chapter and surving scraps of Konkin’s work in the area. An in-depth class analysis of the financial system and its industrial satellites, based on the same version of libertarian class theory, is set forth in an article by Walter Grinder and John Hagel: “Toward a Theory of State Capitalism (PDF).”

As Konkin said, Agorist and Marxist class theories pretty much agree when it comes to those at the top and bottom of their respective class systems. “The differences arise as one moves to the middle of the social pyramid.” The main difference regarding the middle is that Agorist class theory is a lot closer to the “petty bourgeois producerism” of the nineteenth century populists. Agorists don’t have any problem with entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial profit. What they have a problem with is the rentier classes, deriving absentee incomes from huge fortunes with the help of the state. Those at the top of the pyramid generally act through the state to make sure they don’t have to engage in entrepreneurship. Rather, the state protects them from risk and competition, and thereby enables them to collect secure long-term rents (see, for example, here and here – please do!).

In 1999, Konkin founded the LeftLibertarian yahoogroup, the venue through which I first came into contact with him, his ideas, and his wide circle of friends. I had several years of stiulating discussion there that influenced my development to no end. In 2007, three years after Konkin’s death, the list imploded over a political dispute between J. Neil Schulman and just about everybody else, and most of the important figures in Konkin’s circle migrated to the Left-Libertarian2 group. Konkin’s old yahoogroup is pretty much an empty shell, although Neil Schulman and Kent Hastings stayed with it (and the archives are well worth digging into). Because of a similar dispute with Neil over the rights to the name “Movement of the Libertarian Left”, several members of LeftLibertarian2 collaborated to form a successor organization, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. Again, just about all the leading figures in the old MLL migrated to the ALL and left the old body as an empty shell owned by Schulman.

I know, I know. I’m the first to acknowledge how comical Konkin’s alphabet soup of organizations must seem to anyone on the outside. To beat you to the joke, it’s like one man founded the Judean People’s Front, the Popular Front of Judea, and all those other “splitter” organizations at the same time. Sam’s personality reminds me a bit of Bakunin’s. With his childlike enthusiasm for founding endless organizations (with cool acronyms, of course) and publications, issuing name cards, and forming conspiratorial undergounds, it’s hard to keep track of it all without a score card.

But his ideas deserve to be taken seriously in their own right, and his work had a serious effect that belies the snicker factor in all the organizational mitosis described above. His theoretical ideas in the New Libertarian Manifesto, and in his unfinished work on agorist class theory, are both monumental contributions to libertarian thought. His ideas inspired a large circle of prominent libertarians who are influential in a wide range of organizations and publications today, and their ripple effects continue to spread outward.

The most important association of Konkin’s left-Rothbardian followers today is the Alliance of the Libertarian Left. There’s nothing remotely “Judean People’s Front” or splinterish about it. If anything, it’s a textbook example of how an affinity group should be organized in an era of networked politics. It is a large, vibrant community of left-Rothbardians and other left-wing allies (like me). It’s an umbrella organization something like an Agorist International.

In a sense, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is an improvement on its MLL predecessor. The old MLL was almost entirely made up of Konkin’s Agorist fellow-thinkers. Although it was descended from Rothbard’s attempt at a New Left alliance, it included only one side–the market libertarian side–of the alliance. There weren’t any New Leftists or libertarian socialists in sight. The closest they came to dialogue with the genuine left was when some anarcho-commies or Georgists stopped by the LeftLibertarian list for a while and then moved on. Although the nucleus of the new ALL is made up of Konkin’s old associates, it includes a much larger accretion of left-wing movements. Several Tuckerites and mutualists of my general stripe (who stress the socialist as much as the market aspect of individualist anarchism), and quite an assortment of geolibertarians. In addition to the old core of Agorists, there are a good many small-a agorist fellow-travellers. Chuck Munson (Chuck0) of Infoshop even has friendly ties with several members of the ALL. In a sense, the Alliance of the Libertarian Left is exactly the kind of left-right alliance Rothbard tried and failed to achieve almost forty years ago.

So despite Sam’s seeming silliness with all his organizations, in the end he built something important that lasted. He impressed his thought on a wide range of people, and brought them together, and most of them are still together and building on his and each other’s. His influence continues to leaven the broader libertarian movement in ways we may never fully realize the importance of in our lifetimes.

Just by looking at the links on the Alliance of the Libertarian Left site, or clicking the movement’s associated blog ring, the Blogosphere of the Libertarian Left, you can find a wide range of sites hosted by Konkin’s old fightin’ comrades from the St. Louis days, more recent disciples of left-Rothbardianism and Counter-economics, and some even newer left-wing friends like me, who–despite never having considered ourselves followers of Rothbard or Konkin–have been strongly influenced by their thought.

Brad Spangler’s site, Agorism.Info, reproduces the NLM along with many of Konkin’s other pamphlets.

The Agorist Action Alliance (A3) was created by Spangler as an activist organization for coordinating agorist propaganda and counter-economic organization.

KoPubCo, a publishing outfit owned by old Konkin associate Victor Koman, has reprints of much of the MLL’s literature, including reprints of New Libertarian Notes and Strategy of the Libertarian Left.

The Rothbard-founded scholarly journal, Journal of Libertarian Studies has since December 2004 had a left-Rothbardian editor, Roderick T. Long.

Another member of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, Sheldon Richman, is (sic) editor of Leonard Read’s long-lived periodical The Freeman; he has in recent years moved its editorial stance in a decidely left-libertarian direction and been a vocal critic of state capitalism.

Joseph Stromberg – although completely unaffiliated with the Alliance of the Libertarian Left–is nevertheless something of a Left-Rothbardian eminence.  He has himself rejected as artificial attempts to divide Rothbard’s career into left- and right-leaning phases.  But the division is quite useful in my opinion, and Stromberg clearly falls into the left-Rothbardian category when it comes to his analysis of the role of interests in U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

Probably the two centerpieces of his body of work are:

1. His analysis of corporate liberalism in American domestic policy in “The Political Economy of Liberal Corporatism,” and

2. His extended effort at integrating radical left-wing theories (Hobson, Beard, W.A. Williams, and the neo-Marxists) of monopoly capital and imperialism into an Austrian theoretical framework, in “The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire (PDF).” This article I cannot recommend highly enough.

In addition, it’s worthwhile to browse his archives at LewRockwell.Com and Antiwar.Com. Although Mises.Org… doesn’t maintain an author archive, his work can be found by a Google search of their site. Probably his single greatest work, aside from the two articles mentioned above, is his lengthy annotated bibliography of revisionist literature on war and foreign policy: “War, Peace, and the State.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008. 

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Os Rothbardianos de Esquerda – Parte 2: Depois de Rothbard.

In 2004, I was extremely heartened by the “Era of Good Feelings” between the Libertarian Party’s Michael Badnarik and the Green Party’s David Cobb. It gave me some hope for the revival of an even more hopeful project of some 30-odd years before.

During the late 1960s, Murray Rothbard attempted a strategic alliance of the “isolationist” and comparatively anti-statist Old Right with the New Left. That period is the subject of an article by John Payne, “(PDF) Rothbard’s Time on the Left.” Payne writes:

By the early 1960s, Rothbard saw the New Right, exemplified by National Review, as perpetually wedded to the Cold War, which would quickly turn exponentially hotter in Vietnam, and the state interventions that accompanied it, so he set out looking for new allies. In the New Left, Rothbard found a group of scholars who opposed the Cold War and political centralization, and possessed a mass following with high growth potential. For this opportunity, Rothbard was willing to set economics somewhat to the side and settle on common ground, and, while his cooperation with the New Left never altered or caused him to hide any of his foundational beliefs, Rothbard’s rhetoric shifted distinctly leftward during this period.

I would add one qualification, concerning what Payne said about Rothbard setting economics to the side. In fact, as we will see below, Rothbard shared some common economic ground with the New Left. At his leftmost position, Rothbard’s Austrian critique of corporate-state capitalism was quite radical.

In the late ’50s, according to Payne’s account, Rothbard found himself at odds with W.F. Buckley and Frank Meyer at the National Review. His submissions on foreign policy, in a period when he saw the “war-peace question” as key to the libertarian agenda and referred to the “Verdamte cold war,” were rejected. Finally, in 1961, Meyer publicly read him out of the “conservative movement” (or at least out of National Review’s fusionism).

From the early ’60s on, Rothbard found himself increasingly attracted to the left-wing revisionist critique of 20th century state capitalism (or what the New Left called “corporate liberalism“). He was especially struck by the thesis of Gabriel Kolko’s book The Triumph of Conservatism, which came out in 1963.

Rothbard’s Misesian critique of the corporate state, which shared so much common ground with the New Left, was a considerable departure from Mises’ right-wing political affinities. For Mises, state interventionism was motivated almost entirely by anti-capitalist sentiment: what Nixon would have called the “filthy f**king hippies,” or Eric Cartman would dismiss as “a bunch of G*ddamn tree-hugging hippie crap.”

Rothbard, on the other hand, applied Austrian principles largely from the standpoint of Kolko’s critique, which saw state interventionism as motivated mainly by the desire of corporate capitalists themselves to protect their profits from the destructive force of market competition. Kolko directly contradicted the orthodox historical account of the regulatory state, as exemplified by the liberal Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Specificially, he denied that the Progressive Era legislative agenda was formulated primarily as a populist restraint on big business, or that government had intervened in the economy in the 20th century as a “countervailing force” against big business. Rather, the regulatory state was an attempt by big business to achieve, acting directly though the state, what it had been unable to achieve through voluntary combinations and trusts carried out entirely in the private sector: the cartelization of the economy, and the creation of stable oligopoly markets characterized by administered pricing. Payne quotes this summary statement from Kolko’s book:

Despite the large number of mergers, and the growth in the absolute size of many corporations, the dominant tendency in the American economy at the beginning of this [the twentieth] century was toward growing competition. Competition was unacceptable to many key business and financial interests. . . . As new competitors sprang up, and as economic power was diffused throughout an expanding nation, it became apparent to many important businessmen that only the national government could rationalize the economy. Although specific conditions varied from industry to industry, internal problems that could be solved only by political means were the common denominator in those industries whose leaders advocated greater federal regulation. Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians, it was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it.

The purpose of state action was, first of all, to help overbuilt industry simultaneously to operate at full capacity and to dispose of the surplus product it couldn’t sell at cartel prices. Second, as an alternative, it was to enable cartelized industry to operate with high costs and idle capacity and still remain profitable by selling its product at cost-plus markup through monopoly pricing. (This might as well have been the mission statement of FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Administration, by the way.)

This initial perception by Rothbard, that New Left revisionist historiography was useful for a free market critique of twentieth century corporate capitalism, led to a considerable amount of cooperation with New Left scholars.

Rothbard participated in Studies on the Left, a project of New Left historians James Weinstein and William Appleman Williams. It was Weinstein, in The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, who coined the term “corporate liberalism.” And Williams devised the thesis of “Open Door Imperialism” to describe American foreign policy. Some of Rothbard’s contributions to Studies on the Left were included in a paperback collection of articles resulting from the group’s efforts through 1967: For a New America.

Rothbard retained friendly ties to the scholarly New Left long after his disillusionment with the radical student movement. His second venture in collaborative scholarship (at the comparatively late date of 1972) was A New History of Leviathan, a collection of critical essays on New Deal corporatism coedited by Rothbard and the libertarian socialist Ronald Radosh.

He contributed one article (“Confessions of a Right-Wing Liberal“), in 1968, to Ramparts. (Both David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh, who both later became two of the most odious members of a neoconservative movement characterized by its odiousness, were associated with this leading periodical of the New Left.)

Rothbard founded the journal Left and Right in 1965 as a vehicle for this academically oriented Left-Right alliance. If you’re at all interested in this kind of things, browsing the archives there will well repay your effort.

From his initial scholarly collaboration with New Left academics, Rothbard moved on to attempt a mass movement in alliance with student radicals.

The high point of this alliance occurred in 1969. The radical libertarian/anarchist caucus of the Young Americans for Freedom walked out of the YAF convention in St. Louis (mainly over the Vietnam War and the draft). The roots of the contemporary libertarian movement, and most of its founding personnel, can be traced to this act of secession. Not long afterwards, Rothbard (along with Karl Hess, a former Goldwater speechwriter who coined the phrase “extremism in defense of liberty,” and subsequently moved considerably to the left) organized a mass meeting of the YAF’s libertarian dissidents with similar libertarian socialist secessionists from the SDS. During that event, Hess addressed a combined audience of YAF and SDS insurgents wearing combat fatigues and a Wobbly pin.

Rothbard’s journal The Libertarian Forum was founded in 1969, at a time when Rothbard was becoming increasingly disenchanted with the New Left, and the New Left itself (and specifically the SDS, under onslaught from the Maoist Kool-Aid drinkers in Progressive Labor and the nihilist nutcases in the Weather Underground) was disintegrating. Although Rothbard could get along pretty well with New Left academics, he apparently suffered considerable culture shock in 1969 at finding out just how radical the student radicals really were (their blanket denunciations of academic economists and the wearing of neckties were a particular affront to Rothbard, who was guilty on both counts). Nevertheless the first volume of Libertarian Forum was packed with heady commentary on the New Left alliance.

Take, for example, this quote (PDF) from the May 1, 1969 issue:

[The students] see that, apart from other tie-ins, corporations have been using the government schools and colleges as institutions that train their future workers and executives at the expense of others, i.e. the taxpayers. This is but one way that our corporate state uses the coercive taxing power either to accumulate corporate capital or to lower corporate costs. Whatever that process may be called, it is not “free enterprise,” except in the most ironic sense.

Consider also this statement (PDF) by Hess:

The truth… is that libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that it in no way wishes to defend, willy nilly, all property which now is called private.

Much of that property is stolen. Much is of dubious title. All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system which has condoned, built on, and profited from slavery; has expanded through and exploited a brutal and aggressive imperial and colonial foreign policy, and continues to hold the people in a roughly serf-master relationship to political-economic power concentrations.

Libertarians are concerned, first and foremost, with that most valuable of properties, the life of each individual…. Property rights pertaining to material objects are seen by libertarians as stemming from and… secondary to the right to own, direct, and enjoy one’s own life and those appurtenances thereto which may be acquired without coercion….

This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super-capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom….

Libertarianism is a people’s movement and a liberation movement. It seeks the sort of open, non-coercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people may voluntarily associate, dis-associate, and, as they see fit, participate in the decisions affecting their lives…. It means people free collectively to organize the resources of their immediate community or individualistically to organize them; it means the freedom to have a community-based and supported judiciary where wanted, none where not, or private arbitration services where that is seen as most desirable. The same with police. The same with schools, hospitals, factories, farms, laboratories, parks, and pensions. Liberty means the right to shape your own institutions. It opposes the right of those institutions to shape you simply because of accreted power or gerontological status.

In another article in the same issue, “Confiscation and the Homestead Principle,” Rothbard proposed a model of privatization far removed from the kind of corporate looting of state assets you commonly find advocated in mainstream libertarian venues these days.

What most people ordinarily identify as the stereotypical “libertarian” privatization proposal, unfortunately, goes something like this: sell it to a giant corporation on terms that are most advantageous to the corporation. Rothbard proposed, instead, was to treat state property as unowned, and allowing it to be homesteaded by those actually occupying it and mixing their labor with it. This would mean transforming government utilities, schools and other services into consumer cooperatives and placing them under the direct control of their present clientele. It would mean handing over state industry to workers’ syndicates and transforming it into worker-owned cooperatives.

But if this was the appropriate way of dealing with state property, Rothbard asked, then what about nominally private industry which is in fact a branch of the state? That is, what about “private” industry that gets the majority of its profits from taxpayer subsidies?

But if Columbia University, what of General Dynamics? What of the myriad of corporations which are integral parts of the military-industrial complex, which not only get over half or sometimes virtually all their revenue from the government but also participate in mass murder? What are their credentials to “private” property? Surely less than zero. As eager lobbyists for these contracts and subsidies, as co-founders of the garrison stare, they deserve confiscation and reversion of their property to the genuine private sector as rapidly as possible. To say that their “private” property must be respected is to say that the property stolen by the horsethief and the murderer must be “respected.”

Such factories should be taken over by “homesteading workers,” he said. But he went further, and suggested that a libertarian movement, having captured the commanding heights of the state and proceeding to dismantle the apparatus of state capitalism, might actually nationalize such state-subsidized industry as the immediate prelude to handing it over to the workers. He went so far as to say that even if a non-libertarian regime nationalized state capitalist industry with the intention of hanging onto it, it wasn’t anything for libertarians to get particularly bent out of shape about. The subsidized industry was no more the “good guys,” and no less a part of the state, as the formal state apparatus itself. “…[I]t would only mean that one gang of thieves–the government–would be confiscating property from another previously cooperating gang, the corporation that has lived off the government.”

I’d go Rothbard one further. Why is the criterion for de facto government status the amount of profits directly subsidized from state revenue? What about corporations that function within a web of state regulatory protections, and artificial property rights like Bill Gates’ “intellectual property,” without which they couldn’t operate in black ink for a single day. Anyone who’s read much of my work for any length of time knows that I consider the entire Fortune 500 a pretty good proxy for such de facto branches of the state. As I already argued in an earlier post, the largest corporations are so intertwined with the state that the very distinction between “public” and “private” becomes meaningless.

To reinforce that impression, bear in mind that (as Hess’s remarks above on property suggest) Rothbard considered all land titles not traceable to a legitimate act of appropriation by human labor to be utterly null and void. That meant that titles to vacant and unimproved land were void, and all such land in the United States should be open to immediate homesteading. It meant all the real estate in Southern California currently held as real estate investments by the railroads, pursuant to the land grants of the nineteenth century, should immediately become the absolute freehold of those currently making rent or mortgage payments on it. It meant that all the land in the Third World currently “owned” by quasi-feudal landed oligarchies should immediately become the property of the peasants working it; and land currently being used by corporate agribusiness and other cash crop operations, in collusion with those same landlords, should be returned to the peasants who were evicted from it.

In short, Rothbard didn’t exactly fit the “pot-smoking Republican” stereotype you see the commenters over at Kos regurgitating. This is getting way, way long. I originally intended to fit all the Left-Rothbardian material into one post. But I’ll save the material on Rothbard’s left-libertarian successors (Sam Konkin, Joseph Stromberg, and the rest) for another post.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 31st, 2008 at 9:28 pm

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Os Rothbardianos de Esquerda – Parte 1: Rothbard.