We are locked into Texas for guests apparently as we, appropriately to a movie featuring cannibalism, we have the great purveyor of the Silence of the Memes, Scott Morrison, AKA Captain A on with us tonight.

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Google Description for the film

The Platform

In the future, prisoners housed in vertical cells watch as inmates in the upper cells are fed while those below starve.

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Our Guest:

Our guest is Scott M. (He/Him) He is a Texas-based musician who enjoys good music, good books, and long naps. He plays shows and weddings and even runs a trivia night each week – until his demands are met.

Scott’s a strong advocate for freedom who is constantly engaging with people on Facebook, especially when it comes to policing and civil asset forfeiture and other crimes, trying to move the needle back toward liberty.

You can check out his meme page on Facebook at:

https://www.facebook.com/Silenceofthememes/

He was also our guest for “Enemy at the Gates”, “Joker”, and “Crazy Heart”, which you can find here:

Episode 163 – Enemy at the Gates (1:07:45)

Episode 151 – Joker (1:16:53)

Episode 141 – Crazy Heart (1:14:21)

We will be sure to invite Captain A back again sometime in the near future.

Notes:

Here is a lefty-take praising the social messaging:

https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/3/20/21187001/platform-movie-netflix-review-spoilers

Rawls’ – “Original position” in society, and you won’t know which as you are in the veil of ignorance. Which set of rules would you choose without knowing where you would be? He presumes you will be risk-averse and agree that there should be a minimum standard (enforced by government) just in case you are in the lowest quintile. Totally ignores property rights – but then assigns them at a specific point in time, and then what? The “Difference principle” unless inequality benefits the most people. Talent or acquired talents you don’t earn or deserve.

Ep. 445 John Rawls and the Left’s Case for Redistribution

Go down rationing and defending the food. There are 250-ish levels. – Being willing to defend with force to get the food down to the lower levels – while their argument that the first 50 or so levels, who get to eat daily have a seemingly minor inconvenience of going without for just the one day (live simply so that others may simply live), have these first 50 floors not homesteaded the flow of the river of food? Riparian water rights?

I wish I had mentioned this point on the show, but how the overseers must have done some kind of calculation, or census, to determine how much food to send down and that it was “sufficient”. Obviously a ridiculous notion, yet one that we see every time the government tries to collect data or do a census every ten years.

“Unfortunately, statistics…the collection of statistics creates problems themselves.”

– Murray N. Rothbard

“My name is John Johnson but everyone here calls me Vicki.

Now, this is something the other tour guides won’t tell you.

In this particular cell-block, Machine Gun Kelly had what we call in the prison system, a “bitch”.

And one night in a jealous rage Kelly took a make-shift knife or “shiv”, and cut out the bitch’s eyes.

And as if this wasn’t enough retribution for Kelly, the next day he and four other inmates took turns pissing into the bitch’s ocular cavities.

(short pause)

This way to the cafeteria!”

– So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993)

“Statistics are the eyes and ears of the bureaucrat, the politician, the socialistic reformer.

Only by statistics can they know, or at least have any idea about, what is going on in the economy.

Only by statistics can they find out … who “needs” what throughout the economy, and how much federal money should be channeled in what directions.”

– Murray N. Rothbard

If you are interested in more about how the free market would handle the allocation of scarce resources, conservation, pollution, and other environmental issues, check out the following article and lecture by Murray N. Rothbard:

The Libertarian Manifesto on Pollution

Rothbard also tears apart John Kenneth Gailbraith’s ridiculous critiques of advertising, planned obsolescence, and consumerism in part 3 of this excellent lecture series from the early 1970s where he’s ‘hoppin’ mad’ about Nixon’s price controls.  The whole thing is well worth the listen:

And here is the director’s comment on what he intended as the message of the movie:

Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia says the film’s key message is that “humanity will have to move towards the fair distribution of wealth”, with an exploration of the importance of individual initiative in driving political change that critiques both capitalism and “socialist systems”.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Platform_(film)

He seems to be arguing for a “third way” that is a mix of both systems, and while on the surface this seems plausible and even what we currently have – but as Ludwig von Mises points out in his excellent essay “The Middle Road Leads to Socialism”, there is no third-way as capitalism and socialism are diametrically opposed and the action of one is the negation of the other:

https://mises.org/library/middle-road-leads-socialism

Speaking of the Mises Institute, there’s a better than zero chance we’ll have the President, Jeff Deist on with us next week for a Memorial Day episode on “Apocalypse Now”, and if not, we’ve got a solid plan B – just in case.

Also, be on the lookout for our episode on Cannabis Heals Me with our prior guest, Rachel Kennerly to talk about “The Gentlemen” on show in the coming weeks.

Behold the new show artwork with the space theme for the Last Nighters:

You can find the website for the Last Nighters at: www.LastNighters.com

You can find Last Nighters Podcast feed on iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-last-nighters/id1384886334

And also at Anchor.FM where you can even leave us messages of up to one-minute long that we can plug into the show, and respond to. Give it a try and we’ll see how it works together!

Check out our Patreon page to become a supporting listener and get access to this full recording and the other dozens of shows available: www.patreon.com/ReadRothbard

Check out Robert’s “Trubbster” designs on the Tee Public:

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Here is the link for the Mises Quotes page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/MisesQuote/

And here is the Black and [Dot] Gold link chronicling my efforts at being an Entrepreneurial AnCap to earn multiple income streams independent of location:

Black and [Dot} Gold Facebook page

Here is how to get access to the Rothbard Repository:

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Having an argument on Facebook about economics?

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Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Actual Anarchy Podcast!

The Actual Anarchy Podcast is all about Maximum Freedom.

Robert and I analyze popular movies from a Rothbardian/Anarcho-Capitalist perspective. If it’s voluntary, we’re cool with it. If it’s not, then it violated the Non-Aggression Principle and Property Rights – the core tenants of Libertarian Theory – and hence – human freedom.

We use movies as a starting point for people who may not be familiar with this way of thinking. Discussion of the plot and decisions that characters make in relation to morality and violations of the non-aggression principle are our bread and butter.

We also will highlight and discuss any themes or lessons from Austrian Economics that we can glean from the film.

The point is to show what anarchy actually is with instances that are presented in film.

We publish new episodes on Sunday just in time for your Monday commute; and occasionally will do specials surrounding holidays or events (elections/olympics).

For our show where we talk about movies from a Rothbardian/Anarcho-Capitalist perspective, we often watch them on our various devices via Netflix, Amazon Prime or on VUDU (which lets you redeem UV content as well). The VUDU one is nice because once it is in there, you know it will still be there a few months later:

ABOUT

Actual Anarchy, an anarchy unlike what the average idiot thinks it would be. Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules. The non-aggression principle and a respect of property rights are what makes it go.

We host a podcast where we take pop culture movies and showcase moments or scenes or themes throughout that are literally actual examples of anarchy.

Any place, around the world, there are always examples of Actual Anarchy all about you. Sometimes you just have to sit back and take a look. It’s easy once they’ve been pointed out a few times.

Actual Anarchy is real-world examples of anarchy in action.

Movies, Shows, Books, News, etc… we host all sorts of content on the site from a bevy of writers enthusiastic for one goal: human freedom

Read Rothbard – Become an Actual Anarchist

PRESENTED BY

Read Rothbard is comprised of a small group of voluntaryists who are fans of Murray N. Rothbard. We curate content at www.ActualAnarchy.com and on the www.ReadRothbard.com site including books, lectures, articles, speeches, and we make a weekly podcast based on his free-market approach to economics. Our focus is on education and how advancement in technology improves the living standards of the average person.

Hit us up on our Tip Jar page to see all the myriad was you can support the show and the site: www.actualanarchy.com/tipjar

Also, be sure to give us your likes, comments, shares, ratings, reviews, and other feedbacks!

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The post Episode 181 – The Platform (1:21:40) appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

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We commemorate the 101st anniversary of the armistice marking cease-fire and the end to hostilities in the Great War, now known as World War I, as it, unfortunately, set the table for a 2nd conflict that was even larger and now featured nazis and communists.

Peter Jackson’s documentary-take on the conflict in “They Shall Not Grow Old” which is a bringing-to-life account of the footage that is over 100 years old, with interviews from about 50 years ago mated with modern technology to bring vibrancy and color to the footage to bring a never-before-experienced look at the horrors of the Great War.

Our pal, Mike C. joins us for the discussion as our stars went out alignment with Jeff Deist of the Mises Institute who is running an event with Ron Paul this weekend. You can view that event here (the Scott Horton talk ties right into our discussion, but they are all excellent): https://youtu.be/IgoEFSrRnds

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Google Description

They Shall Not Grow Old

Using state-of-the-art technology and materials from the BBC and Imperial War Museum, filmmaker Peter Jackson allows the story of World War I to be told by the men who were there. Life on the front is explored through the voices of the soldiers, who discuss their feelings about the conflict, the food they ate, the friends they made and their dreams of the future.

Mike C. is a six-time returning guest and he always makes for a fascinating discussion:

Episode 47 – Night of the Living Dead (1:10:49)

Episode 56 – Scrooged (1:27:46)

Episode 113 – Collateral (1:05:31)

Episode 114 – Starship Troopers (1:10:43)

Episode 123 – The Truman Show (1:16:47)

Episode 144 – The Warriors (1:14:42)

You can check out the rest of Mike C’s music on SoundCloud by searching for “Mechanical Dream Revolution” or click through on this embedded player:

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We also talk about Tulsi being the only establishment anti war…the left seems more mongery than the right.

And I also expound on my theory that as war coverage revealed more and more of the carnage, you started to see more anti-war sentiment as evidenced by the Vietnam embedded reporting showing the horrors of war, the destruction and loss of life – support for war became unpopular. The establishment learned their lesson. Now it’s video games (Gulf War I in 1991) or totally staged embedded reporters who are all on the same team to the point where an unauthorized photo of caskets is moving enough to win a Pulitzer.

Now you only see leaked video of the Carnage and it is those exposing the war crimes being demonized rather than the heinous acts seeing the light of day.

Here is a list of things to check out related to our episode:

Jeff Deist’s excellent review of “They Shall Not Grow Old” that inspired me to invite him on as a guest (which unfortunately did not work out due to several factors – including me and the kids being at a waterpark for the only days that were even possible to record with him – but then he had thought we were recording a week later – and – he was running the event with Ron Paul mentioned above):
https://mises.org/wire/they-shall-not-grow-old-superb-antiwar-film

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History six-part-series on World War I: Blueprint for Armageddon:

Part 1: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-blueprint-for-armageddon-i/
Part 2: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-51-blueprint-for-armageddon-ii/
Part 3: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-52-blueprint-for-armageddon-iii/
Part 4: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-53-blueprint-for-armageddon-iv/
Part 5: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-54-blueprint-armageddon-v/
Part 6: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-vi/

World War I as Fulfilment – Murray N. Rothbard

https://mises.org/library/world-war-i-fulfillment-power-and-intellectuals-2

The Progressive Era – Murray N. Rothbard

Ralph Raico article and lecture on the World Wars

https://mises.org/library/why-world-war-i-ralph-raico

https://mises.org/wire/ralph-raico-lecture-world-war-i

The Costs of War – John V. Denson

Against Leviathan – Robert Higgs (where he discussed the Ratchet Effect)

How were English soldiers recruited to fight in World War I:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zqhyb9q/articles/z4v9mfr

We will be back next week to discuss the Breaking Bad movie, “El Camino” (available now on Netflix) with Jared Wall of Breaking Liberty. Check out his recent appearance on Free Man Beyond the Wall where he talks about his analysis of Breaking Bad:

Peter R. Quinones AKA “Mance Rayder” of the Free Man Beyond the Wall Podcast and the Libertarian Institute, among other projects was our guest for our recent episode on “Waterworld”.

Behold the new show artwork with the space theme for the Last Nighters:

You can find the website for the Last Nighters at: www.LastNighters.com

You can find Last Nighters Podcast feed on iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-last-nighters/id1384886334

And also at Anchor.FM where you can even leave us messages of up to one-minute long that we can plug into the show, and respond to. Give it a try and we’ll see how it works together!

Check out our Patreon page to become a supporting listener and get access to this full recording and the other dozens of shows available: www.patreon.com/ReadRothbard

Check out Robert’s “Trubbster” designs on the Tee Public:

For the history you didn’t learn in school, check out Liberty Classroom:

Get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in libertarian thought and free-market economics online for just 24 cents a day….

Here is the link for the Mises Quotes page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/MisesQuote/

And here is the Black and [Dot] Gold link chronicling my efforts at being an Entrepreneurial AnCap to earn multiple income streams independent of location:

Black and [Dot} Gold Facebook page

Here is how to get access to the Rothbard Repository:

http://repository.readrothbard.com/

Having an argument on Facebook about economics?

Is someone bashing Uber in favor of the taxi industry?

Which lecture(s) was it where Rothbard discussed taxi medallions and price controls in the taxi industry?

It can be hard to remember.

The Rothbard Repository is a keyword searchable database of Murray Rothbard lectures.

You can quickly find what you are looking for.
This tool will help you find the exact timestamp of when Rothbard talks about a specific topic you searched.

---

Purchase of Liberty Classroom by Tom Woods on our affiliate link (We also include a free basic membership to Readitfor.me).

Support us on Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/readrothbard

Get your web hosting via our Bluehost affiliate link, and we will also give you a mention on our show and backlink on our website.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Actual Anarchy Podcast!

The Actual Anarchy Podcast is all about Maximum Freedom.

Robert and I analyze popular movies from a Rothbardian/Anarcho-Capitalist perspective. If it’s voluntary, we’re cool with it. If it’s not, then it violated the Non-Aggression Principle and Property Rights – the core tenants of Libertarian Theory – and hence – human freedom.

We use movies as a starting point for people who may not be familiar with this way of thinking. Discussion of the plot and decisions that characters make in relation to morality and violations of the non-aggression principle are our bread and butter.

We also will highlight and discuss any themes or lessons from Austrian Economics that we can glean from the film.

The point is to show what anarchy actually is with instances that are presented in film.

We publish new episodes on Sunday just in time for your Monday commute; and occasionally will do specials surrounding holidays or events (elections/olympics).

For our show where we talk about movies from a Rothbardian/Anarcho-Capitalist perspective, we often watch them on our various devices via Netflix, Amazon Prime or on VUDU (which lets you redeem UV content as well). The VUDU one is nice because once it is in there, you know it will still be there a few months later:

ABOUT

Actual Anarchy, an anarchy unlike what the average idiot thinks it would be. Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules. The non-aggression principle and a respect of property rights are what makes it go.

We host a podcast where we take pop culture movies and showcase moments or scenes or themes throughout that are literally actual examples of anarchy.

Any place, around the world, there are always examples of Actual Anarchy all about you. Sometimes you just have to sit back and take a look. It’s easy once they’ve been pointed out a few times.

Actual Anarchy is real world examples of anarchy in action.

Movies, Shows, Books, News, etc… we host all sorts of content on the site from a bevy of writers enthusiastic for one goal: human freedom

Read Rothbard – Become an Actual Anarchist

PRESENTED BY

Read Rothbard is comprised of a small group of voluntaryists who are fans of Murray N. Rothbard. We curate content at www.ActualAnarchy.com and on the www.ReadRothbard.com site including books, lectures, articles, speeches, and we make a weekly podcast based on his free-market approach to economics. Our focus is on education and how advancement in technology improves the living standards of the average person.

Hit us up on our Tip Jar page to see all the myriad was you can support the show and the site: www.actualanarchy.com/tipjar

Also, be sure to give us your likes, comments, shares, ratings, reviews, and other feedbacks!

Never miss an episode. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to get new episodes as they become available.

For the history you didn’t learn in school, check out Liberty Classroom:

Get the equivalent of a Ph.D. in libertarian thought and free-market economics online for just 24 cents a day….

The post Episode 154 – They Shall Not Grow Old (1:14:39) appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

The road to Civil War must be divided into two parts:

1.  the causes of the controversy over slavery leading to secession, and
2.  the immediate causes of the war itself.

The reason for such split is that secession need not have led to Civil War, despite the assumption to the contrary by most historians.

The basic root of the controversy over slavery to secession, in my opinion, was the aggressive, expansionist aims of the Southern “slavocracy.” Very few Northerners proposed to abolish slavery in the Southern states by aggressive war; the objection – and certainly a proper one – was to the attempt of the Southern slavocracy to extend the slave system to the Western territories. The apologia that the Southerners feared that eventually they might be outnumbered and that federal abolition might ensue is no excuse; it is the age-old alibi for “preventive war.” Not only did the expansionist aim of the slavocracy to protect slavery by federal fiat in the territories as “property” aim to foist the immoral system of slavery on Western territories; it even violated the principles of states’ rights to which the South was supposedly devoted – and which would logically have led to a “popular sovereignty” doctrine.

Actually, with Texas in the Union, there was no hope of gaining substantial support for slavery in any of the territories except Kansas, and this had supposedly been settled by the Missouri Compromise. “Free-Soil” principles for the Western territories could therefore have been easily established without disruption of existing affairs, if not for the continual aggressive push and trouble making of the South.

If Van Buren had been president, he might have been able to drive through Congress the free-soil principles of the Wilmot Proviso, and that would have been that. As it was, President Taylor’s bill would have settled the Western territory problem by simply adopting “popular sovereignty” principles in New Mexico, Utah, Oregon, and California territories – admitting them all eventually as free states. Instead, the unfortunate death of President Taylor, and the accession of Fillmore, ended this simple and straightforward solution, and brought forth the pernicious so-called “Compromise” of 1850, which exacerbated rather than reduced interstate tensions by adding to the essential Taylor program provisions for stricter enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. Since the Fugitive Slave Law not only forced the Northern people to collaborate in what they considered – correctly – to be moral crime, but also violated Northern state rights, the strict Fugitive Slave Law was a constant irritant to the North.

The shift from free-soil principles in the Democratic Party and toward the Compromise of 1850 wrecked the old Jacksonian Democracy. The open break became apparent in Van Buren and the Free Soil candidacy of 1848; the failure of the Democratic Party to take an antislavery stand pushed the old libertarians into Free Soil or other alliances, even into the new Republican Party eventually: this tragic split in the Democratic Party lost it its libertarian conscience and drive.

Pro-southern domination of the Democratic Party in the 1850s, with Pierce and Buchanan, the opening up of the Kansas territory to slave expansion (or potential slave expansion) in 1854, led to the creation of the antislavery Republican Party. One tragedy here is that the surrender of the Democrat and Whig parties to the spirit of the Compromise of 1850 forced the free-soilers into a new party that was not only free soil, but showed dangerous signs (in Seward and others) of ultimately preparing for an abolitionist war against the South. Thus, Southern trouble making shifted Northern sentiment into potentially dangerous channels. Not only that: it also welded in the Republican Party a vehicle dedicated, multifold, to old Federalist-Whig principles: to high tariffs, to internal improvements and government subsidies, to paper money and government banking, etc. Libertarian principles were now split between the two parties.

The fantastic Dred Scott decision changed the political scene completely: for in it the Supreme Court had apparently outlawed free-soil principles, even including the Missouri Compromise. There was now only one course left to the lovers of freedom short of open rebellion against the Court, or Garrison’s secession by the North from a Constitution that had indeed become a “compact with Hell”; and that escape hatch was Stephen Douglas’s popular sovereignty doctrine, in its “Freeport” corollary: i.e., in quiet, local nullification of the Dred Scott decision.

At this critical juncture, the South continued on its suicidal course by breaking with Douglas, insistent on the full Dred Scott principle, and leading to the victory of their enemy Lincoln. Here again, secession was only “preventive,” as Lincoln had given no indication of moving to repress slavery in the South.

It is here that we must split our analysis of the “causes of the Civil War”; for, while this analysis leads, in my view, to a “pro-Northern” position in the slavery-in-the-territories struggles of the 1850s, it leads, paradoxically, to a “pro-Southern” position in the Civil War itself. For secession need not, and should not, have been combated by the North; and so we must pin the blame on the North for aggressive war against the seceding South. The war was launched in the shift from the original Northern position (by Garrison included) to “let our erring sisters depart in peace” to the determination to crush the South to save that mythical abstraction known as the “Union” – and in this shift, we must put a large portion of the blame upon the maneuvering of Lincoln to induce the Southerners to fire the first shot on Fort Sumter – after which point, flag-waving could and did take over.

The War Against the South and Its Consequences

The Civil War was one of the most momentous events in American history, not only for its inherent drama and destruction, but because of the fateful consequences for America that flowed from it.

We have said above that the War of 1812 had devastating consequences for the libertarian movement; indeed, it might be said that it took twenty years of devotion and hard work for the Jacksonian movement to undo the étatist consequences of that utter failure of a war. It is the measure of the statist consequences of the Civil War that America never recovered from it: never again was the libertarian movement to have a party of its own, or as close a chance at success. Hamiltonian neo-Federalism beyond the wildest dreams of even a J.Q. Adams had either been foisted permanently on America, or had been inaugurated, to be later fulfilled.

Let us trace the leading consequences of the War Against the South: there is, first, the enormous toll of death, injury, and destruction. There is the complete setting aside of the civilized “rules of war” that Western civilization had laboriously been erecting for centuries: instead, a total war against the civilian population was launched against the South. The symbol of this barbaric and savage oppression was, of course, Sherman’s march through Georgia and the rest of the South, the burning of Atlanta, etc. (For the military significance of this reversion to barbarism, see F.J.P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism). Another consequence, of course, was the ending of effective states’ rights, and of the perfectly logical and reasonable right of secession – or, for that matter, nullification. From now on, the Union was a strictly compulsory entity.

Further, the Civil War foisted upon the country the elimination of Jacksonian hard money: the greenbacks established government fiat paper, which it took 14 long years to tame; and the National Bank Act ended the separation of government from banking, effectively quasi-nationalizing and regulating the banking system, and creating an engine of governmentally sponsored inflation.

So ruthlessly did the Lincoln administration overturn the old banking system (including the effective outlawing of state bank notes) that it became almost impossible to achieve a return – impossible that is, without a radical and almost revolutionary will for hard money, which did not exist. On the tariff, the virtual destruction of the Democratic Party led to the foisting of a high, protective tariff to remain for a generation – indeed, permanently, for the old prewar low tariff was never to return. It was behind this wall of tariff-subsidy that the “trusts” were able to form. Further, the administration embarked on a vast program of subsidies to favored businesses: land grants to railroads, etc. The Post Office was later monopolized and private postal services outlawed. The national debt skyrocketed, the budget increased greatly and permanently, and taxes increased greatly – including the first permanent foisting on America of excise taxation, especially on whiskey and tobacco.

Thus, on every point of the old Federalist-Whig vs. Democrat-Republican controversy, the Civil War and the Lincoln administration achieved a neo-Federalist triumph that was complete right down the line. And the crushing of the South, the military Reconstruction period, etc. assured that the Democratic Party would not rise again to challenge this settlement for at least a generation. And when it did rise, it would have a much tougher row to hoe than did Van Buren and Co. in an era much more disposed to laissez-faire.

But this was not all: for the Civil War saw also the inauguration of despotic and dictatorial methods beyond the dreams of the so-called “despots of ’98.” Militarism ran rampant, with the arrogant suspension of habeas corpus, the crushing and mass arrests in Maryland, Kentucky, etc.; the suppression of civil liberties and opposition against the war, among the propeace “Copperheads” – the persecution of Vallandigham, etc.; and the institution of conscription. Also introduced on the American scene at this time was the income tax, reluctantly abandoned later, but to reappear. Federal aid to education began in earnest and permanently with federal land grants for state agricultural colleges. There was no longer any talk, of course, about abolition of the standing army or the navy. Almost everything, in short, that is currently evil on the American political scene, had its roots and its beginnings in the Civil War.

Because of the slavery controversy of the 1850s, there was no longer a single libertarian party in America, as the Democratic had been. Now the free-soilers had left the Democrat ranks. But, especially after Dred Scott had pushed the Douglas “Freeport Doctrine” to the fore as libertarian policy, there was hope for a reunited Democracy, especially since the Democrat party was still very good on all questions except slavery. But the Civil War wrecked all that, and monolithic Republican rule could impress its neo-Federalist program on America to such an extent as to make it extremely difficult to uproot.

[This article by Murray N. Rothbard is excerpted from a 30,000-word report to the Volker Fund, written in September 1961, giving a very detailed description of everything wrong with A History of the American Republic by George B. DeHuszar. The full memo will be included in the forthcoming collection Renaissance Man, edited by David Gordon.]

Source:  https://mises.org/blog/road-civil-war

The post The Road to Civil War appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

By Murray N. Rothbard

[Given Donald Trump’s recent comments regarding Andrew Jackson and the Civil War, it is a good time point out the historical context and the justifications as presented in the modern classroom vs. a more informed interpretation.  It is our view that Donald Trump was making a point that the Civil War and its attendant horrors were avoidable and the absolution of slavery still possible had a tyrant such as Lincoln not been in the dictatorial seat of power.]

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.

During my lifetime, my ideological and political activism has focused on opposition to America’s wars, first because I have believed our waging them to be unjust, and, second, because war, in the penetrating phrase of the libertarian Randolph Bourne in World War I, has always been “the health of the State,” an instrument for the aggrandizement of State power over the health, the lives, and the prosperity, of their subject citizens and social institutions. Even a just war cannot be entered into lightly; an unjust one must therefore be anathema.

There have been only two wars in American history that were, in my view, assuredly and unquestionably proper and just; not only that, the opposing side waged a war that was clearly and notably unjust. Why? Because we did not have to question whether a threat against our liberty and property was clear or present; in both of these wars, Americans were trying to rid themselves of an unwanted domination by another people. And in both cases, the other side ferociously tried to maintain their coercive rule over Americans. In each case, one side — “our side” if you will — was notably just, the other side — “their side” — unjust.

To be specific, the two just wars in American history were the American Revolution and the War for Southern Independence.

I would like to mention a few vital features of the treatment of war by the classical international natural lawyers, and to contrast this great tradition with the very different “international law” that has been dominant since 1914, by the dominant partisans of the League of Nations and the United Nations.

The classical international lawyers from the 16th through the 19th centuries were trying to cope with the implications of the rise and dominance of the modern nation-state. They did not seek to “abolish war,” the very notion of which they would have considered absurd and utopian. Wars will always exist among groups, peoples, nations; the desideratum, in addition to trying to persuade them to stay within the compass of “just wars,” was to curb and limit the impact of existing wars as much as possible. Not to try to “abolish war,” but to constrain war with limitations imposed by civilization.

Specifically, the classical international lawyers developed two ideas, which they were broadly successful in getting nations to adopt:

1. Above all, don’t target civilians. If you must fight, let the rulers and their loyal or hired retainers slug it out, but keep civilians on both sides out of it, as much as possible. The growth of democracy, the identification of citizens with the State, conscription, and the idea of a “nation in arms,” all whittled away this excellent tenet of international law.
2. Preserve the rights of neutral states and nations. In the modern corruption of international law that has prevailed since 1914, “neutrality” has been treated as somehow deeply immoral. Nowadays, if countries A and B get into a fight, it becomes every nation’s moral obligation to figure out, quickly, which country is the “bad guy,” and then if, say, A is condemned as the bad guy, to rush in and pummel A in defense of the alleged good guy B.

Classical international law, which should be brought back as quickly as possible, was virtually the opposite. In a theory which tried to limit war, neutrality was considered not only justifiable but a positive virtue. In the old days, “he kept us out of war” was high tribute to a president or political leader; but now, all the pundits and professors condemn any president who “stands idly by” while “people are being killed” in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, or the hot spot of the day. In the old days, “standing idly by” was considered a mark of high statesmanship. Not only that: neutral states had “rights” which were mainly upheld, since every warring country knew that someday it too would be neutral. A warring state could not interfere with neutral shipping to an enemy state; neutrals could ship to such an enemy with impunity all goods except “contraband,” which was strictly defined as arms and ammunition, period. Wars were kept limited in those days, and neutrality was extolled.

In modern international law, where “bad-guy” nations must be identified quickly and then fought by all, there are two rationales for such worldwide action, both developed by Woodrow Wilson, whose foreign policy and vision of international affairs has been adopted by every president since. The first is “collective security against aggression.” The notion is that every war, no matter what, must have one “aggressor” and one or more “victims,” so that naming the aggressor becomes a prelude to a defense of “heroic little” victims. The analogy is with the cop-on-the-corner. A policeman sees A mugging B; he rushes after the aggressor, and the rest of the citizens join in the pursuit. In the same way, supposedly, nations, as they band together in “collective security” arrangements, whether they be the League, the United Nations, or NATO, identify the “aggressor” nation and then join together as an “international police force,” like the cop-on-the-corner, to zap the criminal.

In real life, however, it’s not so easy to identify one warring “aggressor.” Causes become tangled, and history intervenes. Above all, a nation’s current border cannot be considered as evidently just as a person’s life and property. Therein lies the problem. How about the very different borders 10 years, 20 years, or even centuries ago? How about wars where claims of all sides are plausible? But any complication of this sort messes up the plans of our professional war crowd. To get Americans stirred up about intervening in a war thousands of miles away about which they know nothing and care less, one side must be depicted as the clear-cut bad guy, and the other side pure and good; otherwise, Americans will not be moved to intervene in a war that is really none of their business. Thus, feverish attempts by American pundits and alleged foreign-policy “experts” to get us to intervene against the demonized Serbs ran aground when the public began to realize that all three sides in the Bosnian war were engaging in “ethnic cleansing” whenever they got the chance. This is even forgetting the fatuity of the propaganda about the “territorial integrity” of a so-called Bosnian state which has never existed even formally until a year or two ago, and of course in actuality does not exist at all.

If classical international law limited and checked warfare, and kept it from spreading, modern international law, in an attempt to stamp out “aggression” and to abolish war, only insures, as the great historian Charles Beard put it, a futile policy of “perpetual war for perpetual peace.”

The second Wilsonian excuse for perpetual war, particularly relevant to the “Civil War,” is even more utopian: the idea that it is the moral obligation of America and of all other nations to impose “democracy” and “human rights” throughout the globe. In short, in a world where “democracy” is generally meaningless, and “human rights” of any genuine sort virtually nonexistent, that we are obligated to take up the sword and wage a perpetual war to force topia on the entire world by guns, tanks, and bombs.

The Somalian intervention was a perfect case study in the workings of this Wilsonian dream. We began the intervention by extolling a “new kind of army” (a new model army if you will) engaged in a new kind of high moral intervention: the US soldier with a CARE package in one hand, and a gun in the other. The new “humanitarian” army, bringing food, peace, democracy, and human rights to the benighted peoples of Somalia, and doing it all the more nobly and altruistically because there was not a scrap of national interest in it for Americans. It was this prospect of a purely altruistic intervention — of universal love imposed by the bayonet — that swung almost the entire “antiwar” Left into the military intervention camp. Well, it did not take long for our actions to have consequences, and the end of the brief Somalian intervention provided a great lesson if we only heed it: the objects of our “humanitarianism” being shot down by American guns, and striking back by highly effective guerrilla war against American troops, culminating in savaging the bodies of American soldiers. So much for “humanitarianism,” for a war to impose democracy and human rights; so much for the new model army.

In both of these cases, the modern interventionists have won by seizing the moral high ground; theirs is the cosmic “humanitarian” path of moral principle; those of us who favor American neutrality are now derided as “selfish,” “narrow,” and “immoral.” In the old days, however, interventionists were more correctly considered propagandists for despotism, mass murder, and perpetual war, if not spokesmen for special interest groups, or agents of the “merchants of death.” Scarcely a high ground.

The cause of “human rights” is precisely the critical argument by which, in retrospect, Abraham Lincoln’s War of Northern Aggression against the South is justified and even glorified. The “humanitarian” goes forth and rights the wrong of slavery, doing so through mass murder, the destruction of institutions and property, and the wreaking of havoc which has still not disappeared.

Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine, one of the great books on political philosophy of this century, zeroed in on what she aptly called “the humanitarian with the guillotine.” “The humanitarian,” Mrs. Paterson wrote, “wishes to be a prime mover in the lives of others. He cannot admit either the divine or the natural order, by which men have the power to help themselves. The humanitarian puts himself in the place of God.” But Mrs. Paterson notes, the humanitarian is “confronted by two awkward facts: first that the competent do not need his assistance; and second, that the majority of people, if unperverted, positively do not want to be ‘done good’ by the humanitarian.” Having considered what the “good” of others might be, and who is to decide on the good and on what to do about it, Mrs. Paterson points out, “Of course what the humanitarian actually proposes is that he shall do what he thinks is good for everybody. It is at this point that the humanitarian sets up the guillotine.” Hence, she concludes, “the humanitarian in theory is the terrorist in action.”

There is an important point about old-fashioned, or classical, international law which applies to any sort of war, even a just one:

Even if country A is waging a clearly just war against country B, and B’s cause is unjust, this fact by no means imposes any sort of moral obligation on any other nation, including those who wish to abide by just policies, to intervene in that war. On the contrary, in the old days neutrality was always considered a more noble course, if a nation had no overriding interest of its own in the fray, there was no moral obligation whatever to intervene. A nation’s highest and most moral course was to remain neutral; its citizens might cheer in their heart for A’s just cause, or, if someone were overcome by passion for A’s cause he could rush off on his own to the front to fight, but generally citizens of nation C were expected to cleave to their own nation’s interests over the cause of a more abstract justice. Certainly, they were expected not to form a propaganda pressure group to try to bulldoze their nation into intervening; if champions of country A were sufficiently ardent, they could go off on their own to fight, but they could not commit their fellow countrymen to do the same.

Many of my friends and colleagues are hesitant to concede the existence of universal natural rights, lest they find themselves forced to support American, or worldwide intervention, to try to enforce them. But for classical natural-law international jurists, that consequence did not follow at all. If, for example, Tutsis are slaughtering Hutus in Rwanda or Burundi, or vice versa, these natural lawyers would indeed consider such acts as violations of the natural rights of the slaughtered; but that fact in no way implies any moral or natural-law obligation for any other people in the world to rush in to try to enforce such rights. We might encapsulate this position into a slogan: “Rights may be universal, but their enforcement must be local,” or, to adopt the motto of the Irish rebels: Sinn Fein, “ourselves alone.” A group of people may have rights, but it is their responsibility, and theirs alone, to defend or safeguard such rights.

To put it another way, I have always believed that when the Left claims that all sorts of entities — animals, alligators, trees, plants, rocks, beaches, the earth, or “the ecology” — have “rights,” the proper response is this: when those entities act like the Americans who set forth their declaration of rights, when they speak for themselves and take up arms to enforce them, then and only then can we take such claims seriously.

I want to now return to America’s two just wars. It is plainly evident that the American Revolution, using my definition, was a just war, a war of peoples forming an independent nation and casting off the bonds of another people insisting on perpetuating their rule over them. Obviously, the Americans, while welcoming French or other support, were prepared to take on the daunting task of overthrowing the rule of the most powerful empire on earth, and to do it alone if necessary.

What I want to focus on here is not the grievances that led the American rebels to the view that it had become “necessary for One People to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another.” What I want to stress here is the ground on which the Americans stood for this solemn and fateful act of separation. The Americans were steeped in the natural-law philosophy of John Locke and the Scholastics, and in the classical republicanism of Greece and Rome. There were two major political theories in Britain and in Europe during this time. One was the older, but by this time obsolete, absolutist view: the king was the father of his nation, and absolute obedience was owed to the king by the lesser orders; any rebellion against the king was equivalent to Satan’s rebellion against God.

The other, natural-law, view countered that sovereignty originated not in the king but in the people, but that the people had delegated their powers and rights to the king. Hugo Grotius and conservative natural lawyers believed that the delegation of sovereignty, once transferred, was irrevocable, so that sovereignty must reside permanently in the king. The more radical libertarian theorists, such as Father Mariana, and John Locke and his followers, believed, quite sensibly, that since the original delegation was voluntary and contractual, the people had the right to take back that sovereignty should the king grossly violate his trust.

The American revolutionaries, in separating themselves from Great Britain and forming their new nation, adopted the Lockean doctrine. In fact, if they hadn’t done so, they would not have been able to form their new nation. It is well known that the biggest moral and psychological problem the Americans had, and could only bring themselves to overcome after a full year of bloody war, was to violate their oaths of allegiance to the British king. Breaking with the British Parliament, their de facto ruler, posed no problem; Parliament they didn’t care about. But the king was their inherited sovereign lord, the person to whom they had all sworn fealty. It was the king to whom they owed allegiance; thus, the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence mentioned only the king, even though Parliament was in reality the major culprit.

Hence, the crucial psychological importance, to the American revolutionaries, of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which not only adopted the Lockean view of a justified reclaiming of sovereignty by the American people but also particularly zeroed in on the office of the king. In the words of the New Left, Paine delegitimized and desanctified the king in American eyes. The king of Great Britain, Paine wrote, is only the descendent of “nothing better than the principal ruffian of some restless gang; whose savage manner or preeminence in subtlety obtained him the title of chief among plunderers.” And now the kings, including the “Royal Brute of Great Britain,” are but “crowned ruffians.”

In making their revolution, then, the Americans cast their lot, permanently, with a contractual theory or justification for government. Government is not something imposed from above, by some divine act of conferring sovereignty; but contractual, from below, by “consent of the governed.” That means that American polities inevitably become republics, not monarchies. What happened, in fact, is that the American Revolution resulted in something new on earth. The people of each of the 13 colonies formed new, separate, contractual, republican governments. Based on libertarian doctrines and on republican models, the people of the 13 colonies each set up independent sovereign states: with powers of each government strictly limited, with most rights and powers reserved to the people, and with checks, balances, and written constitutions severely limiting state power.

These 13 separate republics, in order to wage their common war against the British Empire, each sent representatives to the Continental Congress, and then later formed a Confederation, again with severely limited central powers, to help fight the British. The hotly contested decision to scrap the Articles of Confederation and to craft a new Constitution demonstrates conclusively that the central government was not supposed to be perpetual, not to be the sort of permanent one-way trap that Grotius had claimed turned popular sovereignty over to the king forevermore. In fact, it would be very peculiar to hold that the American Revolutionaries had repudiated the idea that a pledge of allegiance to the king was contractual and revocable, and break their vows to the king, only to turn around a few short years later to enter a compact that turned out to be an irrevocable one-way ticket for a permanent central government power. Revocable and contractual to a king, but irrevocable to some piece of paper!

And finally, does anyone seriously believe for one minute that any of the 13 states would have ratified the Constitution had they believed that it was a perpetual one-way Venus fly trap — a one-way ticket to sovereign suicide? The Constitution was barely ratified as it is!

So, if the Articles of Confederation could be treated as a scrap of paper, if delegation to the confederate government in the 1780s was revocable, how could the central government set up under the Constitution, less than a decade later, claim that its powers were permanent and irrevocable? Sheer logic insists that: if a state could enter a confederation it could later withdraw from it; the same must be true for a state adopting the Constitution.

And yet of course, that monstrous illogic is precisely the doctrine proclaimed by the North, by the Union, during the War Between the States.

In 1861, the Southern states, believing correctly that their cherished institutions were under grave threat and assault from the federal government, decided to exercise their natural, contractual, and constitutional right to withdraw, to “secede” from that Union. The separate Southern states then exercised their contractual right as sovereign republics to come together in another confederation, the Confederate States of America. If the American Revolutionary War was just, then it follows as the night the day that the Southern cause, the War for Southern Independence, was just, and for the same reason: casting off the “political bonds” that connected the two peoples. In neither case was this decision made for “light or transient causes.” And in both cases, the courageous seceders pledged to each other “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.”

What of the grievances of the two sets of seceders? Were they comparable? The central grievance of the American rebels was the taxing power: the systematic plunder of their property by the British government. Whether it was the tax on stamps, or the tax on imports, or finally the tax on imported tea, taxation was central. The slogan “no taxation without representation” was misleading; in the last analysis, we didn’t want “representation” in Parliament; we wanted not to be taxed by Great Britain. The other grievances, such as opposition to general search warrants, or to overriding of the ancient Anglo-Saxon principle of trial by jury, were critical because they involved the power to search merchants’ properties for goods that had avoided payment of the customs taxes, that is for “smuggled” goods, and trial by jury was vital because no American jury would ever convict such smugglers.

One of the central grievances of the South, too, was the tariff that Northerners imposed on Southerners whose major income came from exporting cotton abroad. The tariff at one and the same time drove up prices of manufactured goods, forced Southerners and other Americans to pay more for such goods, and threatened to cut down Southern exports. The first great constitutional crisis with the South came when South Carolina battled against the well named Tariff of Abomination of 1828. As a result of South Carolina’s resistance, the North was forced to reduce the tariff, and finally, the Polk administration adopted a two-decade long policy of virtual free trade.

John C. Calhoun, the great intellectual leader of South Carolina, and indeed of the entire South, pointed out the importance of a very low level of taxation. All taxes, by their very nature, are paid, on net, by one set of people, the “taxpayers,” and the proceeds go to another set of people, what Calhoun justly called the “tax-consumers.” Among the net tax-consumers, of course, are the politicians and bureaucrats who live full-time off the proceeds. The higher the level of taxation, the higher the percentage which the country’s producers have to give the parasitic ruling class that enforces and lives off of taxes. In zeroing in on the tariff, Calhoun pointed out that “the North has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion appropriated to the North, and for the monopolization of Northern industry.”

What of the opposition to these two just wars? Both were unjust since in both the case of the British and of the North, they were waging fierce war to maintain their coercive and unwanted rule over another people. But if the British wanted to hold on and expand their empire, what were the motivations of the North? Why, in the famous words of the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, at least early in the struggle, didn’t the North “let their erring sisters go in peace?”

The North, in particular the North’s driving force, the “Yankees” — that ethnocultural group who either lived in New England or migrated from there to upstate New York, northern and eastern Ohio, northern Indiana, and northern Illinois — had been swept by a new form of Protestantism. This was a fanatical and emotional neo-Puritanism driven by a fervent “postmillenialism” which held that as a precondition for the Second Advent of Jesus Christ, man must set up a thousand-year Kingdom of God on Earth.

The Kingdom is to be a perfect society. In order to be perfect, of course, this Kingdom must be free of sin; sin, therefore, must be stamped out, and as quickly as possible. Moreover, if you didn’t try your darndest to stamp out sin by force you yourself would not be saved. It was very clear to these neo-Puritans that in order to stamp out sin, government, in the service of the saints, is the essential coercive instrument to perform this purgative task. As historians have summed up the views of all the most prominent of these millennialists, “government is God’s major instrument of salvation.”

Sin was very broadly defined by the Yankee neo-Puritans as anything which might interfere with a person’s free will to embrace salvation, anything which, in the words of the old Shadow radio serial, could “cloud men’s minds.” The particular cloud-forming occasions of sin, for these millennialists, were liquor (“demon rum”), any activity on the Sabbath except reading the Bible and going to church, slavery, and the Roman Catholic Church.

If antislavery, prohibitionism, and anti-Catholicism were grounded in fanatical postmillennial Protestantism, the paternalistic big government required for this social program on the state and local levels led logically to a big-government paternalism in national economic affairs. Whereas the Democratic Party in the 19th century was known as the “party of personal liberty,” of states’ rights, of minimal government, of free markets and free trade, the Republican Party was known as the “party of great moral ideas,” which amounted to the stamping-out of sin. On the economic level, the Republicans adopted the Whig program of statism and big government: protective tariffs, subsidies to big business, strong central government, large-scale public works, and cheap credit spurred by government.

The Northern war against slavery partook of fanatical millennialist fervor, of a cheerful willingness to uproot institutions, to commit mayhem and mass murder, to plunder and loot and destroy, all in the name of high moral principle and the birth of a perfect world. The Yankee fanatics were veritable Patersonian humanitarians with the guillotine: the Anabaptists, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks of their era. This fanatical spirit of Northern aggression for an allegedly redeeming cause is summed up in the pseudo-Biblical and truly blasphemous verses of that quintessential Yankee Julia Ward Howe, in her so-called “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Modern left-liberal historians of course put this case in a slightly different way. Take for example, the eminent abolitionist historian of the Civil War James McPherson. Here’s the way McPherson revealingly puts it: “Negative liberty [he means “liberty”] was the dominant theme in early American history — freedom from constraints on individual rights imposed by a powerful state.” “The Bill of Rights,” McPherson goes on, “is the classic expression of negative liberty, or Jeffersonian humanistic liberalism. These first ten amendments to the Constitution protect individual liberties by placing a straitjacket of ‘shall not’ on the federal government.” “In 1861,” McPherson continues, “Southern states invoked the negative liberties of state sovereignty and individual rights of property [i.e., slaves] to break up the United States.”

What was McPherson’s hero Abraham Lincoln’s response? Lincoln, he writes, “thereby gained an opportunity to invoke the positive liberty [he means “statist tyranny”] of reform liberalism, exercised through the power of the army and the state, to overthrow the negative liberties of disunion and ownership of slaves.” Another New Model Army at work! McPherson calls for a “blend” of positive and negative liberties, but as we have seen, any such “blend” is nonsense, for statism and liberty are always at odds. The more that “reform liberalism” “empowers” one set of people, the less “negative liberty” there is for everyone else. It should be mentioned that the southern United States was the only place in the 19th century where slavery was abolished by fire and by “terrible swift sword.” In every other part of the New World, slavery was peacefully bought out by agreement with the slaveholders. But in these other countries, in the West Indies or Brazil, for example, there were no Puritan millennialists to do their bloody work, armed with gun in one hand and hymn book in the other.

In the Republican Party, the “party of great moral ideas,” different men and different factions emphasized different aspects of this integrated despotic world-outlook. In the fateful Republican convention of 1860, the major candidates for president were two veteran abolitionists: William Seward, of New York, and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Seward, however, was distrusted by the anti-Catholic hotheads because he somehow did not care about the alleged Catholic menace; on the other hand, while Chase was happy to play along with the former Know-Nothings, who stressed the anti-Catholic pant of the coalition, he was distrusted by Sewardites and others who were indifferent to the Catholic question. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was a dark horse who was able to successfully finesse the Catholic question. His major emphasis was on Whig economic statism: high tariffs, huge subsidies to railroads, public works. As one of the nation’s leading lawyers for Illinois Central and other big railroads, indeed, Lincoln was virtually the candidate from Illinois Central and the other large railroads.

One reason for Lincoln’s victory at the convention was that Iowa railroad entrepreneur Grenville M. Dodge helped swing the Iowa delegation to Lincoln. In return, early in the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Dodge to army general. Dodge’s task was to clear the Indians from the designated path of the country’s first heavily subsidized federally chartered transcontinental railroad, the Union Pacific. In this way, conscripted Union troops and hapless taxpayers were coerced into socializing the costs on constructing and operating the Union Pacific. This sort of action is now called euphemistically “the cooperation of government and industry.”

But Lincoln’s major focus was on raising taxes, in particular raising and enforcing the tariff. His convention victory was particularly made possible by support from the Pennsylvania delegation. Pennsylvania had long been the home and the political focus of the nation’s iron and steel industry which, ever since its inception during the War of 1812, had been chronically inefficient, and had therefore constantly been bawling for high tariffs and, later, import quotas. Virtually the first act of the Lincoln administration was to pass the Morrill protective tariff act, doubling existing tariff rates, and creating the highest tariff rates in American history.

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln was conciliatory about maintaining slavery; what he was hard-line about toward the South was insistence on collecting all the customs tariffs in that region. As Lincoln put it, the federal government would “collect the duties and imposts, but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against … people anywhere.” The significance of the federal forts is that they provided the soldiers to enforce the customs tariffs; thus, Fort Sumter was at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, the major port, apart from New Orleans, in the entire South. The federal troops at Sumter were needed to enforce the tariffs that were supposed to be levied at Charleston Harbor.

Of course, Abraham Lincoln’s conciliatory words on slavery cannot be taken at face value. Lincoln was a master politician, which means that he was a consummate conniver, manipulator, and liar. The federal forts were the key to his successful prosecution of the war. Lying to South Carolina, Abraham Lincoln managed to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Stimson did at Pearl Harbor 80 years later — maneuvered the Southerners into firing the first shot. In this way, by manipulating the South into firing first against a federal fort, Lincoln made the South appear to be “aggressors” in the eyes of the numerous waverers and moderates in the North.

Outside of New England and territories populated by transplanted New Englanders, the idea of forcing the South to stay in the Union was highly unpopular. In many middle-tier states, including Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, there was a considerable sentiment to mimic the South by forming a middle Confederacy to isolate the pesky and fanatical Yankees. Even after the war began, the mayor of New York City and many other dignitaries of the city proposed that the city secede from the Union and make peace and engage in free trade with the South. Indeed, Jefferson Davis’s lawyer after the war was what we would now call the “paleo-libertarian” leader of the New York City bar, Irish-Catholic Charles O’Conor, who ran for president in 1878 on the Straight Democrat ticket, in protest that his beloved Democratic Party’s nominee for president was the abolitionist, protectionist, socialist, and fool Horace Greeley.

The Lincoln administration and the Republican Party took advantage of the overwhelmingly Republican Congress after the secession of the South to push through almost the entire Whig economic program. Lincoln signed no less than ten tariff-raising bills during his administration. Heavy “sin” taxes were levied on alcohol and tobacco, the income tax was levied for the first time in American history, huge land grants and monetary subsidies were handed out to transcontinental railroads (accompanied by a vast amount of attendant corruption), and the government went off the gold standard and virtually nationalized the banking system to establish a machine for printing new money and to provide cheap credit for the business elite. And furthermore, the New Model Army and the war effort rested on a vast and unprecedented amount of federal coercion against Northerners as well as the South; a huge army was conscripted, dissenters and advocates of a negotiated peace with the South were jailed, and the precious Anglo-Saxon right of habeas corpus was abolished for the duration.

While it is true that Lincoln himself was not particularly religious, that did not really matter because he adopted all the attitudes and temperament of his evangelical allies. He was stern and sober, he was personally opposed to alcohol and tobacco, and he was opposed to the private carrying of guns. An ambitious seeker of the main chance from early adulthood, Lincoln acted viciously toward his own humble frontier family in Kentucky. He abandoned his fiancée in order to marry a wealthier Mary Todd, whose family were friends of the eminent Henry Clay, he repudiated his brother, and he refused to attend his dying father or his father’s funeral, monstrously declaring that such an experience “would be more painful than pleasant.” No doubt!

Lincoln, too, was a typical example of a humanitarian with the guillotine in another dimension: a familiar modern “reform liberal” type whose heart bleeds for and yearns to “uplift” remote mankind, while he lies to and treats abominably actual people whom he knew. And so Abraham Lincoln, in a phrase prefiguring our own beloved Mario Cuomo, declared that the Union was really “a family, bound indissolubly together by the most intimate organic bonds.” Kick your own family, and then transmute familial spiritual feelings toward a hypostatized and mythical entity, “The Union,” which then must be kept intact regardless of concrete human cost or sacrifice.

Indeed, there is a vital critical difference between the two unjust causes we have described: the British and the North. The British, at least, were fighting on behalf of a cause which, even if wrong and unjust, was coherent and intelligible: that is, the sovereignty of a hereditary monarch. What was the North’s excuse for their monstrous war of plunder and mass murder against their fellow Americans? Not allegiance to an actual, real person, the king, but allegiance to a nonexistent, mystical, quasi-divine alleged entity, “the Union.” The King was at least a real person, and the merits or demerits of a particular king or the monarchy in general can be argued. But where is “the Union” located? How are we to gauge the Union’s deeds? To whom is this Union accountable?

The Union was taken, by its Northern worshipers, from a contractual institution that can either be cleaved to or scrapped, and turned into a divinized entity, which must be worshipped, and which must be permanent, unquestioned, all-powerful. There is no heresy greater, nor political theory more pernicious, than sacralizing the secular. But this monstrous process is precisely what happened when Abraham Lincoln and his northern colleagues made a god out of the Union. If the British forces fought for bad King George, the Union armies pillaged and murdered on behalf of this pagan idol, this “Union,” this Moloch that demanded terrible human sacrifice to sustain its power and its glory.

For in this War Between the States, the South may have fought for its sacred honor, but the Northern war was the very opposite of honorable. We remember the care with which the civilized nations had developed classical international law. Above all, civilians must not be targeted; wars must be limited. But the North insisted on creating a conscript army, a nation in arms, and broke the 19th-century rules of war by specifically plundering and slaughtering civilians, by destroying civilian life and institutions so as to reduce the South to submission. Sherman’s infamous March through Georgia was one of the great war crimes, and crimes against humanity, of the past century-and-a-half. Because by targeting and butchering civilians, Lincoln and Grant and Sherman paved the way for all the genocidal honors of the monstrous 20th century. There has been a lot of talk in recent years about memory, about never forgetting about history as retroactive punishment for crimes of war and mass murder. As Lord Acton, the great libertarian historian, put it, the historian, in the last analysis, must be a moral judge. The muse of the historian, he wrote, is not Clio, but Rhadamanthus, the legendary avenger of innocent blood. In that spirit, we must always remember, we must never forget, we must put in the dock and hang higher than Haman, those who, in modern times, opened the Pandora’s Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians: Sherman, Grant, and Lincoln.

Perhaps, some day, their statues, like Lenin’s in Russia, will be toppled and melted down; their insignias and battle flags will be desecrated, their war songs tossed into the fire. And then Davis and Lee and Jackson and Forrest, and all the heroes of the South, “Dixie” and the Stars and Bars, will once again be truly honored and remembered. The classic comment on that meretricious TV series The Civil War was made by that marvelous and feisty Southern writer Florence King. Asked her views on the series, she replied, “I didn’t have time to watch The Civil War. I’m too busy getting ready for the next one.” In that spirit, I am sure that one day, aided and abetted by Northerners like myself in the glorious “copperhead” tradition, the South shall rise again.

The post Just War appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

For well over a century, the Left has generally been conceded to have morality, justice, and “idealism” on its side; the Conservative opposition to the Left has largely been confined to the “impracticality” of its ideals. A common view, for example, is that socialism is splendid “in theory,” but that it cannot “work” in practical life. What the Conservatives failed to see is that while short-run gains can indeed be made by appealing to the impracticality of radical departures from the status quo, that by conceding the ethical and the “ideal” to the Left they were doomed to long-run defeat. For if one side is granted ethics and the “ideal” from the start, then that side will be able to effect gradual but sure changes in its own direction; and as these changes accumulate, the stigma of “impracticality” becomes less and less directly relevant. The Conservative opposition, having staked its all on the seemingly firm ground of the “practical” (that is, the status quo) is doomed to lose as the status quo moves further in the left direction. The fact that the unreconstructed Stalinists are universally considered to be the “Conservatives” in the Soviet Union is a happy logical joke upon conservatism; for in Russia the unrepentant statists are indeed the repositories of at least a superficial “practicality” and of a clinging to the existing status quo.

Never has the virus of “practicality” been more widespread than in the United States, for Americans consider themselves a “practical” people, and hence, the opposition to the Left, while originally stronger than elsewhere, has been perhaps the least firm at its foundation. It is now the advocates of the free market and the free society who have to meet the common charge of “impracticality.”

In no area has the Left been granted justice and morality as extensively and almost universally as in its espousal of massive equality. It is rare indeed in the United States to find anyone, especially any intellectual, challenging the beauty and goodness of the egalitarian ideal. So committed is everyone to this ideal that “impracticality”—that is, the weakening of economic incentives—has been virtually the only criticism against even the most bizarre egalitarian programs. The inexorable march of egalitarianism is indication enough of the impossibility of avoiding ethical commitments; the fiercely “practical” Americans, in attempting to avoid ethical doctrines, cannot help setting forth such doctrines, but they can now only do so in unconscious, ad hoc, and unsystematic fashion. Keynes’s famous insight that “practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”—is true all the more of ethical judgments and ethical theory.1

The unquestioned ethical status of “equality” may be seen in the common practice of economists. Economists are often caught in a value-judgment bind—eager to make political pronouncements. How can they do so while remaining “scientific” and value-free? In the area of egalitarianism, they have been able to make a flat value judgment on behalf of equality with remarkable impunity. Sometimes this judgment has been frankly personal; at other times, the economist has pretended to be the surrogate of “society” in the course of making its value judgment. The result, however, is the same. Consider, for example, the late Henry C. Simons. After properly criticizing various “scientific” arguments for progressive taxation, he came out flatly for progression as follows:

The case for drastic progression in taxation must be rested on the case against inequality—on the ethical or aesthetic judgment that the prevailing distribution of wealth and income reveals a degree (and/or kind) of inequality which is distinctly evil or unlovely.2

Another typical tactic may be culled from a standard text on public finance. According to Professor John F. Due,

[t]he strongest argument for progression is the fact that the consensus of opinion in society today regards progression as necessary for equity. This is, in turn, based on the principle that the pattern of income distribution, before taxes, involves excessive inequality.

The latter “can be condemned on the basis of inherent unfairness in terms of the standards accepted by society.”3

Whether the economist boldly advances his own value judgments or whether he presumes to reflect the values of “society,” his immunity from criticism has been remarkable nonetheless. While candor in proclaiming one’s values may be admirable, it is surely not enough; in the quest for truth it is scarcely sufficient to proclaim one’s value judgments as if they must be accepted as tablets from above that are not themselves subject to intellectual criticism and evaluation. Is there no requirement that these value judgments be in some sense valid, meaningful, cogent, true? To raise such considerations, of course, is to flout the modern canons of pure wertfreiheit in social science from Max Weber onward, as well as the still older philosophic tradition of the stern separation of “fact and value,” but perhaps it is high time to raise such fundamental questions. Suppose, for example, that Professor Simons’s ethical or aesthetic judgment was not on behalf of equality but of a very different social ideal. Suppose, for example, he had been in favor of the murder of all short people, of all adults under five feet, six inches in height. And suppose he had then written: “The case for the liquidation of all short people must be rested on the case against the existence of short people—on the ethical or aesthetic judgment that the prevailing number of short adults is distinctly evil or unlovely.” One wonders if the reception accorded to Professor Simons’s remarks by his fellow economists or social scientists would have been quite the same. Or, we can ponder Professor Due writing similarly on behalf of the “opinion of society today” in the Germany of the 1930s with regard to the social treatment of Jews. The point is that in all these cases the logical status of Simons’s or Due’s remarks would have been precisely the same, even though their reception by the American intellectual community would have been strikingly different.

My point so far has been twofold:

(1) that it is not enough for an intellectual or social scientist to proclaim his value judgments—that these judgments must be rationally defensible and must be demonstrable to be valid, cogent, and correct: in short, that they must no longer be treated as above intellectual criticism; and

(2) that the goal of equality has for too long been treated uncritically and axiomatically as the ethical ideal.

Thus, economists in favor of egalitarian programs have typically counterbalanced their uncriticized “ideal” against possible disincentive effects on economic productivity; but rarely has the ideal itself been questioned.4

Let us proceed, then, to a critique of the egalitarian ideal itself—should equality be granted its current status as an unquestioned ethical ideal? In the first place, we must challenge the very idea of a radical separation between something that is “true in theory” but “not valid in practice.” If a theory is correct, then it does work in practice; if it does not work in practice, then it is a bad theory. The common separation between theory and practice is an artificial and fallacious one. But this is true in ethics as well as anything else. If an ethical ideal is inherently “impractical,” that is, if it cannot work in practice, then it is a poor ideal and should be discarded forthwith. To put it more precisely, if an ethical goal violates the nature of man and/or the universe and, therefore, cannot work in practice, then it is a bad ideal and should be dismissed as a goal. If the goal itself violates the nature of man, then it is also a poor idea to work in the direction of that goal.

Suppose, for example, that it has come to be adopted as a universal ethical goal that all men be able to fly by flapping their arms. Let us assume that “pro-flappers” have been generally conceded the beauty and goodness of their goal, but have been criticized as “impractical.” But the result is unending social misery as society tries continually to move in the direction of arm-flying, and the preachers of arm-flapping make everyone’s lives miserable for being either lax or sinful enough not to live up to the common ideal. The proper critique here is to challenge the “ideal” goal itself; to point out that the goal itself is impossible in view of the physical nature of man and the universe; and, therefore, to free mankind from its enslavement to an inherently impossible and, hence, evil goal. But this liberation could never occur so long as the anti-armfliers continued to be solely in the realm of the “practical” and to concede ethics and “idealism” to the high priests of arm-flying. The challenge must take place at the core—at the presumed ethical superiority of a nonsensical goal. The same, I hold, is true of the egalitarian ideal, except that its social consequences are far more pernicious than an endless quest for man’s flying unaided. For the condition of equality would wreak far more damage upon mankind.

What, in fact, is “equality”? The term has been much invoked but little analyzed. A and B are “equal” if they are identical to each other with respect to a given attribute. Thus, if Smith and Jones are both exactly six feet in height, then they may be said to be “equal” in height. If two sticks are identical in length, then their lengths are “equal,” etc. There is one and only one way, then, in which any two people can really be “equal” in the fullest sense: they must be identical in all of their attributes. This means, of course, that equality of all men—the egalitarian ideal—can only be achieved if all men are precisely uniform, precisely identical with respect to all of their attributes. The egalitarian world would necessarily be a world of horror fiction—a world of faceless and identical creatures, devoid of all individuality, variety, or special creativity.

Indeed, it is precisely in horror fiction where the logical implications of an egalitarian world have been fully drawn. Professor Schoeck has resurrected for us the depiction of such a world in the British anti-Utopian novel Facial Justice, by L.P. Hartley, in which envy is institutionalized by the State’s making sure that all girls’ faces are equally pretty, with medical operations being performed on both beautiful and ugly girls to bring all of their faces up or down to the general common denominator.5 A short story by Kurt Vonnegut provides an even more comprehensive description of a fully egalitarian society.

Thus, Vonnegut begins his story, “Harrison Bergeron”:

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

The “handicapping” worked partly as follows:

Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.6

The horror we all instinctively feel at these stories is the intuitive recognition that men are not uniform, that the species, mankind, is uniquely characterized by a high degree of variety, diversity, differentiation; in short, inequality. An egalitarian society can only hope to achieve its goals by totalitarian methods of coercion; and, even here, we all believe and hope the human spirit of individual man will rise up and thwart any such attempts to achieve an ant-heap world. In short, the portrayal of an egalitarian society is horror fiction because, when the implications of such a world are fully spelled out, we recognize that such a world and such attempts are profoundly antihuman; being antihuman in the deepest sense, the egalitarian goal is, therefore, evil and any attempts in the direction of such a goal must be considered evil as well.

The great fact of individual difference and variability (that is, inequality) is evident from the long record of human experience; hence, the general recognition of the antihuman nature of a world of coerced uniformity. Socially and economically, this variability manifests itself in the universal division of labor, and in the “Iron Law of Oligarchy”—the insight that, in every organization or activity, a few (generally the most able and/or the most interested) will end up as leaders, with the mass of the membership filling the ranks of the followers. In both cases, the same phenomenon is at work— outstanding success or leadership in any given activity is attained by what Jefferson called a “natural aristocracy”— those who are best attuned to that activity.

The age-old record of inequality seems to indicate that this variability and diversity is rooted in the biological nature of man. But it is precisely such a conclusion about biology and human nature that is the most galling of all possible irritants to our egalitarians. Even egalitarians would be hard put to deny the historical record, but their answer is that “culture” has been to blame; and since they obviously hold that culture is a pure act of the will, then the goal of changing the culture and inculcating society with equality seems to be attainable. In this area, the egalitarians slough off any pretense to scientific caution; they are scarcely content with acknowledging biology and culture as mutually interacting influences. Biology must be read out of court quickly and totally.

Let us ponder an example that is deliberately semi-frivolous. Suppose that we observe our culture and find a common dictum to be: “Redheads are excitable.” Here is a judgment of inequality, a conclusion that redheads as a group tend to differ from the nonredhead population. Suppose, then, that egalitarian sociologists investigate the problem, and they find that redheads do, indeed, tend to be more excitable than nonredheads by a statistically significant amount. Instead of admitting the possibility of some sort of biological difference, the egalitarian will quickly add that the “culture” is responsible for the phenomenon: the generally accepted “stereotype” that redheads are excitable had been instilled into every redheaded child from an early age, and he or she has simply been internalizing these judgments and acting in the way society was expecting him to act. Redheads, in brief, had been “brainwashed” by the predominant nonredhead culture.

While not denying the possibility of such a process occurring, this common complaint seems decidedly unlikely on rational analysis. For the egalitarian culture-bugaboo implicitly assumes that the “culture” arrives and accumulates haphazardly, with no reference to social facts. The idea that “redheads are excitable” did not originate out of the thin air or as a divine commandment; how, then, did the idea come into being and gain general currency? One favorite egalitarian device is to attribute all such group-identifying statements to obscure drives. The public had a psychological need to accuse some social group of excitability, and redheads were fastened on as scapegoats. But why were redheads singled out? Why not blondes or brunettes? The horrible suspicion begins to loom that perhaps redheads were singled out because they were and are indeed more excitable and that, therefore, society’s “stereotype” is simply a general insight into the facts of reality. Certainly this explanation accounts for more of the data and the processes at work and is a much simpler explanation besides. Regarded objectively, it seems to be a far more sensible explanation than the idea of the culture as an arbitrary and ad hoc bogeyman. If so, then we might conclude that redheads are biologically more excitable and that propaganda beamed at redheads by egalitarians urging them to be less excitable is an attempt to induce redheads to violate their nature; therefore, it is this latter propaganda that may more accurately be called “brainwashing.”

This is not to say, of course, that society can never make a mistake and that its judgments of group-identity are always rooted in fact. But it seems to me that the burden of proof is far more on the egalitarians than on their supposedly “unenlightened” opponents.

Since egalitarians begin with the a priori axiom that all people, and hence all groups of peoples, are uniform and equal, it then follows for them that any and all group differences in status, prestige, or authority in society must be the result of unjust “oppression” and irrational “discrimination.” Statistical proof of the “oppression” of redheads would proceed in a manner all too familiar in American political life; it might be shown, for example, that the median redhead income is lower than nonredheaded income, and further that the proportion of redheaded business executives, university professors, or congressmen is below their quotal representation in the population. The most recent and conspicuous manifestation of this sort of quotal thinking was in the McGovern movement at the 1972 Democratic Convention. A few groups are singled out as having been “oppressed” by virtue of delegates to previous conventions falling below their quotal proportion of the population as a whole. In particular, women, youth, blacks, Chicanos (or the so-called Third World) were designated as having been oppressed; as a result, the Democratic Party, under the guidance of egalitarian-quota thinking, overrode the choices of the voters in order to compel their due quotal representation of these particular groups.

In some cases, the badge of “oppression” was an almost ludicrous construction. That youths of 18 to 25 years of age had been “underrepresented” could easily have been placed in proper perspective by a reductio ad absurdum, surely some impassioned McGovernite reformer could have risen to point out the grievous “underrepresentation” of five-year olds at the convention and to urge that the five-year-old bloc receive its immediate due. It is only commonsense biological and social insight to realize that youths win their way into society through a process of apprenticeship; youths know less and have less experience than mature adults, and so it should be clear why they tend to have less status and authority than their elders. But to accept this would be to cast the egalitarian creed into some substantial doubt; further, it would fly into the face of the youth-worship that has long been a grave problem of American culture. And so young people have been duly designated as an “oppressed class,” and the coercing of their population quota is conceived as only just reparation for their previously exploited condition.7

Women are another recently discovered “oppressed class,” and the fact that political delegates have habitually been far more than 50 percent male is now held to be an evident sign of their oppression. Delegates to political conventions come from the ranks of party activists, and since women have not been nearly as politically active as men, their numbers have understandably been low. But, faced with this argument, the widening forces of “women’s liberation” in America again revert to the talismanic argument about “brainwashing” by our “culture.” For the women’s liberationists can hardly deny the fact that every culture and civilization in history, from the simplest to the most complex, has been dominated by males. (In desperation, the liberationists have lately been countering with fantasies about the mighty Amazonian empire.) Their reply, once again, is that from time immemorial a male-dominated culture has brainwashed oppressed females to confine themselves to nurture, home, and the domestic hearth. The task of the liberationists is to effect a revolution in the female condition by sheer will, by the “raising of consciousness.” If most women continue to cleave to domestic concerns, this only reveals the “false consciousness” that must be extirpated.

Of course, one neglected reply is that if, indeed, men have succeeded in dominating every culture, then this in itself is a demonstration of male “superiority”; for if all genders are equal, how is it that male domination emerged in every case? But apart from this question, biology itself is being angrily denied and cast aside. The cry is that there are no, can be no, must be no biological differences between the sexes; all historical or current differences must be due to cultural brainwashing. In his brilliant refutation of the women’s liberationist Kate Millett, Irving Howe outlines several important biological differences between the sexes, differences important enough to have lasting social effects. They are: (1) “the distinctive female experience of maternity” including what the anthropologist Malinowski calls an “intimate and integral connection with the child… associated with physiological effects and strong emotions”; (2) “the hormonic components of our bodies as these vary not only between the sexes but at different ages within the sexes”; (3) “the varying possibilities for work created by varying amounts of musculature and physical controls”; and (4) “the psychological consequences of different sexual postures and possibilities,” in particular the “fundamental distinction between the active and passive sexual roles” as biologically determined in men and women respectively.8

Howe goes on to cite the admission by Dr. Eleanor Maccoby in her study of female intelligence that

it is quite possible that there are genetic factors that differentiate the two sexes and bear upon their intellectual performance. … For example, there is good reason to believe that boys are innately more aggressive than girls—and I mean aggressive in the broader sense, not just as it implies fighting, but as it implies dominance and initiative as well—and if this quality is one which underlies the later growth of analytic thinking, then boys have an advantage which girls … will find difficult to overcome.

Dr. Maccoby adds that “if you try to divide child training among males and females, we might find out that females need to do it and males don’t.”9

The sociologist Arnold W. Green points to the repeated emergence of what the egalitarians denounce as “stereotyped sex roles” even in communities originally dedicated to absolute equality. Thus, he cites the record of the Israeli kibbutzim:

The phenomenon is worldwide: women are concentrated in fields which require, singly or in combination, housewifely skills, patience and routine, manual dexterity, sex appeal, contact with children. The generalization holds for the Israeli kibbutz, with its established ideal of sexual equality. A “regression” to a separation of “women’s work” from “men’s work” occurred in the division of labor, to a state of affairs which parallels that elsewhere. The kibbutz is dominated by males and traditional male attitudes, on balance to the content of both sexes.10

Irving Howe unerringly perceives that at the root of the women’s liberation movement is resentment against the very existence of women as a distinctive entity:

For what seems to trouble Miss Millett isn’t merely the injustices women have suffered or the discriminations to which they continue to be subject. What troubles her most of all … is the sheer existence of women. Miss Millett dislikes the psychobiological distinctiveness of women, and she will go no further than to recognize— what choice is there, alas?—the inescapable differences of anatomy. She hates the perverse refusal of most women to recognize the magnitude of their humiliation, the shameful dependence they show in regard to (not very independent) men, the maddening pleasures they even take in cooking dinners for the “master group” and wiping the noses of their snotty brats. Raging against the notion that such roles and attitudes are biologically determined, since the very thought of the biological seems to her a way of forever reducing women to subordinate status, she nevertheless attributes to “culture” so staggering a range of customs, outrages, and evils that this culture comes to seem a force more immovable and ominous than biology itself.11

In a perceptive critique of the women’s liberation movement, Joan Didion perceives its root to be a rebellion not only against biology but also against the “very organization of nature” itself:

If the necessity for conventional reproduction of the species seemed unfair to women, then let us transcend, via technology, “the very organization of nature,” the oppression, as Shulamith Firestone saw it, “that goes back through recorded history to the animal kingdom itself.” I accept the Universe, Margaret Fuller had finally allowed: Shulamith Firestone did not.12

To which one is tempted to paraphrase Carlyle’s admonition: “Egad, madam, you’d better.”

Another widening rebellion against biological sex norms, as well as against natural diversity, has been the recently growing call for bisexuality by Left intellectuals. The avoidance of “rigid, stereotyped” heterosexuality and the adoption of indiscriminate bisexuality is supposed to expand consciousness, to eliminate “artificial” distinctions between the sexes and to make all persons simply and unisexually “human.” Once again, brainwashing by a dominant culture (in this case, heterosexual) has supposedly oppressed a homosexual minority and blocked off the uniformity and equality inherent in bisexuality. For then every individual could reach his or her fullest “humanity” in the “polymorphous perversity” so dear to the hearts of such leading New Left social philosophers as Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse.

That biology stands like a rock in the face of egalitarian fantasies has been made increasingly clear in recent years. The researches of biochemist Roger J. Williams have repeatedly emphasized the great range of individual diversity throughout the entire human organism. Thus:

Individuals differ from each other even in the minutest details of anatomy and body chemistry and physics; finger and toe prints; microscopic texture of hair; hair pattern on the body, ridges and “moons” on the finger and toenails; thickness of skin, its color, its tendency to blister; distribution of nerve endings on the surface of the body; size and shape of ears, of ear canals, or semi-circular canals; length of fingers; character of brain waves (tiny electrical impulses given off by the brain); exact number of muscles in the body; heart action; strength of blood vessels; blood groups; rate of clotting of blood—and so on almost ad infinitum.

We now know a great deal about how inheritance works and how it is not only possible but certain that every human being possesses by inheritance an exceedingly complex mosaic, composed of thousands of items, which is distinctive for him alone.13

The genetic basis for inequality of intelligence has also become increasingly evident, despite the emotional abuse heaped upon such studies by fellow scientists as well as the lay public. Studies of identical twins raised in contrasting environments have been among the ways that this conclusion has been reached; and Professor Richard Herrnstein has recently estimated that 80 percent of the variability in human intelligence is genetic in origin. Herrnstein concludes that any political attempts to provide environmental equality for all citizens will only intensify the degree of socioeconomic differences caused by genetic variability.14

The egalitarian revolt against biological reality, as significant as it is, is only a subset of a deeper revolt: against the ontological structure of reality itself, against the “very organization of nature”; against the universe as such. At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will—in short, that reality can be instantly transformed by the mere wish or whim of human beings. Surely this sort of infantile thinking is at the heart of Herbert Marcuse’s passionate call for the comprehensive negation of the existing structure of reality and for its transformation into what he divines to be its true potential.

Nowhere is the Left Wing attack on ontological reality more apparent than in the Utopian dreams of what the future socialist society will look like. In the socialist future of Charles Fourier, according to Ludwig von Mises:

all harmful beasts will have disappeared, and in their places will be animals which will assist man in his labors—or even do his work for him. An antibeaver will see to the fishing; an antiwhale will move sailing ships in a calm; an antihippopotamus will tow the river boats. Instead of the lion there will be an antilion, a steed of wonderful swiftness, upon whose back the rider will sit as comfortably as in a well-sprung carriage. “It will be a pleasure to live in a world with such servants.”15

Furthermore, according to Fourier, the very oceans would contain lemonade rather than salt water.16

Similarly absurd fantasies are at the root of the Marxian utopia of communism. Freed from the supposed confines of specialization and the division of labor (the heart of any production above the most primitive level and hence of any civilized society), each person in the communist utopia would fully develop all of his powers in every direction.17 As Engels wrote in his Anti-Dühring, communism would give “each individual the opportunity to develop and exercise all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions.”18 And Lenin looked forward in 1920 to the “abolition of the division of labor among people … the education, schooling, and training of people with an all-around development and an all-around training, people able to do everything. Communism is marching and must march toward this goal, and will reach it.19

In his trenchant critique of the communist vision, Alexander Gray charges:

That each individual should have the opportunity of developing all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions, is a dream which will cheer the vision only of the simple-minded, oblivious of the restrictions imposed by the narrow limits of human life. For life is a series of acts of choice, and each choice is at the same time a renunciation.

Even the inhabitant of Engels’s future fairyland will have to decide sooner or later whether he wishes to be Archbishop of Canterbury or First Sea Lord, whether he should seek to excel as a violinist or as a pugilist, whether he should elect to know all about Chinese literature or about the hidden pages in the life of a mackerel.20

Of course one way to try to resolve this dilemma is to fantasize that the New Communist Man of the future will be a superman, superhuman in his abilities to transcend nature. William Godwin thought that, once private property was abolished, man would become immortal. The Marxist theoretician Karl Kautsky asserted that in the future communist society, “a new type of man will arise … a superman … an exalted man.” And Leon Trotsky prophesied that under communism:

man will become incomparably stronger, wiser, finer. His body more harmonious, his movements more rhythmical, his voice more musical. … The human average will rise to the level of an Aristotle, a Goethe, a Marx. Above these other heights new peaks will arise.21

We began by considering the common view that the egalitarians, despite a modicum of impracticality, have ethics and moral idealism on their side. We end with the conclusion that egalitarians, however intelligent as individuals, deny the very basis of human intelligence and of human reason: the identification of the ontological structure of reality, of the laws of human nature, and the universe. In so doing, the egalitarians are acting as terribly spoiled children, denying the structure of reality on behalf of the rapid materialization of their own absurd fantasies. Not only spoiled but also highly dangerous; for the power of ideas is such that the egalitarians have a fair chance of destroying the very universe that they wish to deny and transcend, and to bring that universe crashing around all of our ears. Since their methodology and their goals deny the very structure of humanity and of the universe, the egalitarians are profoundly antihuman; and, therefore, their ideology and their activities may be set down as profoundly evil as well. Egalitarians do not have ethics on their side unless one can maintain that the destruction of civilization, and even of the human race itself, may be crowned with the laurel wreath of a high and laudable morality.

Source:  https://mises.org/library/egalitarianism-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays/html/c/346

• 1. John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936), p. 383.
• 2. Henry C. Simons, Personal Income Taxation (1938), pp. 18–19, quoted in Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven, Jr.,The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 72.
• 3. John F. Due, Government Finance (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1954), pp. 128–29.
• 4. Thus:
  A third line of objection to progression, and undoubtedly the one which has received the most attention, is that it lessens the economic productivity of the society. Virtually everyone who has advocated progression in an income tax has recognized this as a counterbalancing consideration. (Blum and Kalven,The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation, p. 21)The “ideal” vs. the “practical” once again!
• 5. Helmut Schoeck, Envy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1970), pp. 149–55.
• 6. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Harrison Bergeron,” in Welcome to the Monkey House (New York: Dell, 1970), p. 7.
• 7. Egalitarians have, among their other activities, been busily at work “correcting” the English language. The use of the word “girl,” for example, is now held to grievously demean and degrade female youth and to imply their natural subservience to adults. As a result, Left egalitarians now refer to girls of virtually any age as “women,” and we may confidently look forward to reading about the activities of “a five-year-old woman.”
• 8. Irving Howe, “The Middle-Class Mind of Kate Millett,” Harper’s (December, 1970): 125–26.
• 9. Ibid., p. 126.
• 10. Arnold W. Green, Sociology (6th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), p. 305. Green cites the study by A.I. Rabin, “The Sexes: Ideology and Reality in the Israeli Kibbutz,” in G.H. Seward and R.G. Williamson, eds., Sex Roles in Changing Society(New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 285–307.
• 11. Howe, “The Middle-Class Mind of Kate Millett,” p. 124.
• 12. Joan Didion, “The Women’s Movement,” New York Times Review of Books (July 30, 1972), p. 1.
• 13. Roger J. Williams, Free and Unequal (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1953), pp. 17, 23. See also by Williams Biochemical Individuality (New York: John Wiley, 1963) and You are Extraordinary (New York: Random House, 1967).
• 14. Richard Herrnstein, “IQ,” Atlantic Monthly (September, 1971).
• 15. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1951), pp. 163–64.
• 16. Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 71. Mises cites the first and fourth volumes of Fourier’s Oeuvres Complètes.
• 17. For more on the communist utopia and the division of labor, see Murray N. Rothbard, Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor (chap. 16, present volume).
• 18. Quoted in Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition (London: Longmans, Green, 1947), p. 328.
• 19. Italics are Lenin’s. V.I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder(New York: International Publishers, 1940), p. 34.
• 20. Gray, The Socialist Tradition, p. 328.
• 21. Quoted in Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, p. 164.

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THE NONAGGRESSION AXIOM

The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the “nonaggression axiom.” “Aggression” is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore synonymous with invasion.

If no man may aggress against another; if, in short, everyone has the absolute right to be “free” from aggression, then this at once implies that the libertarian stands foursquare for what are generally known as “civil liberties”: the freedom to speak, publish, assemble, and to engage in such “victimless crimes” as pornography, sexual deviation, and prostitution (which the libertarian does not regard as “crimes” at all, since he defines a “crime” as violent invasion of someone else’s person or property). Furthermore, he regards conscription as slavery on a massive scale. And since war, especially modern war, entails the mass slaughter of civilians, the libertarian regards such conflicts as mass murder and therefore totally illegitimate.

All of these positions are now considered “leftist” on the contemporary ideological scale. On the other hand, since the libertarian also opposes invasion of the rights of private property, this also means that he just as emphatically opposes government interference with property rights or with the freemarket economy through controls, regulations, subsidies, or prohibitions. For if every individual has the right to his own property without having to suffer aggressive depredation, then he also has the right to give away his property (bequest and inheritance) and to exchange it for the property of others (free contract and the free market economy) without interference. The libertarian favors the right to unrestricted private property and free exchange; hence, a system of “laissez-faire capitalism.”

In current terminology again, the libertarian position on property and economics would be called “extreme right wing.” But the libertarian sees no inconsistency in being “leftist” on some issues and “rightist” on others. On the contrary, he sees his own position as virtually the only consistent one, consistent on behalf of the liberty of every individual. For how can the leftist be opposed to the violence of war and conscription while at the same time supporting the violence of taxation and government control? And how can the rightist trumpet his devotion to private property and free enterprise while at the same time favoring war, conscription, and the outlawing of noninvasive activities and practices that he deems immoral? And how can the rightist favor a free market while seeing nothing amiss in the vast subsidies, distortions, and unproductive inefficiencies involved in the military-industrial complex?

While opposing any and all private or group aggression against the rights of person and property, the libertarian sees that throughout history and into the present day, there has been one central, dominant, and overriding aggressor upon all of these rights: the State. In contrast to all other thinkers, left, right, or in-between, the libertarian refuses to give the State the moral sanction to commit actions that almost everyone agrees would be immoral, illegal, and criminal if committed by any person or group in society. The libertarian, in short, insists on applying the general moral law to everyone, and makes no special exemptions for any person or group. But if we look at the State naked, as it were, we see that it is universally allowed, and even encouraged, to commit all the acts which even non-libertarians concede are reprehensible crimes. The State habitually commits mass murder, which it calls “war,” or sometimes “suppression of subversion”; the State engages in enslavement into its military forces, which it calls “conscription”; and it lives and has its being in the practice of forcible theft, which it calls “taxation.” The libertarian insists that whether or not such practices are supported by the majority of the population is not germane to their nature: that, regardless of popular sanction, War is Mass Murder, Conscription is Slavery, and Taxation is Robbery. The libertarian, in short, is almost completely the child in the fable, pointing out insistently that the emperor has no clothes.

Throughout the ages, the emperor has had a series of pseudo-clothes provided for him by the nation’s intellectual caste. In past centuries, the intellectuals informed the public that the State or its rulers were divine, or at least clothed in divine authority, and therefore what might look to the naive and untutored eye as despotism, mass murder, and theft on a grand scale was only the divine working its benign and mysterious ways in the body politic. In recent decades, as the divine sanction has worn a bit threadbare, the emperor’s “court intellectuals” have spun ever more sophisticated apologia: informing the public that what the government does is for the “common good” and the “public welfare,” that the process of taxation-and-spending works through the mysterious process of the “multiplier” to keep the economy on an even keel, and that, in any case, a wide variety of governmental “services” could not possibly be performed by citizens acting voluntarily on the market or in society. All of this the libertarian denies: he sees the various apologia as fraudulent means of obtaining public support for the State’s rule, and he insists that whatever services the government actually performs could be supplied far more efficiently and far more morally by private and cooperative enterprise.

The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the “democratic” State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the very existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule, and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects.

Take, for example, the institution of taxation, which statists have claimed is in some sense really “voluntary.” Anyone who truly believes in the “voluntary” nature of taxation is invited to refuse to pay taxes and to see what then happens to him. If we analyze taxation, we find that, among all the persons and institutions in society, only the government acquires its revenues through coercive violence. Everyone else in society acquires income either through voluntary gift (lodge, charitable society, chess club) or through the sale of goods or services voluntarily purchased by consumers. If anyone but the government proceeded to “tax,” this would clearly be considered coercion and thinly disguised banditry. Yet the mystical trappings of “sovereignty” have so veiled the process that only libertarians are prepared to call taxation what it is: legalized and organized theft on a grand scale.

PROPERTY RIGHTS

If the central axiom of the libertarian creed is nonaggression against anyone’s person and property, how is this axiom arrived at? What is its 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. The emotivists assert that they take liberty or nonaggression as their premise purely on subjective, emotional grounds. 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.

The utilitarians declare, from their study of the consequences of liberty as opposed to alternative systems, that liberty will lead more surely to widely approved goals: harmony, peace, prosperity, etc. Now no one disputes that relative consequences should be studied in assessing the merits or demerits of respective creeds. But there are many problems in confining ourselves to a utilitarian ethic. For one thing, utilitarianism assumes that we can weigh alternatives, and decide upon policies, on the basis of their good or bad consequences. But if it is legitimate to apply value judgments to the consequences of X, why is it not equally legitimate to apply such judgments to X itself? May there not be something about an act itself which, in its very nature, can be considered good or evil?

Another problem with the utilitarian is that he will rarely adopt a principle as an absolute and consistent yardstick to apply to the varied concrete situations of the real world. He will only use a principle, at best, as a vague guideline or aspiration, as a tendency which he may choose to override at any time. This was the major defect of the nineteenth-century English Radicals, who had adopted the laissez-faire view of the eighteenth-century liberals but had substituted a supposedly “scientific” utilitarianism for the supposedly “mystical” concept of natural rights as the groundwork for that philosophy. Hence the nineteenth-century laissez-faire liberals came to use laissez-faire as a vague tendency rather than as an unblemished yardstick, and therefore increasingly and fatally compromised the libertarian creed. To say that a utilitarian cannot be “trusted” to maintain libertarian principle in every specific application may sound harsh, but it puts the case fairly. A notable contemporary example is the free-market economist Professor Milton Friedman who, like his classical economist forebears, holds to freedom as against State intervention as a general tendency, but in practice allows a myriad of damaging exceptions, exceptions which serve to vitiate the principle  almost completely, notably in the fields of police and military affairs, education, taxation, welfare, “neighborhood effects,” antitrust laws, and money and banking.

Let us consider a stark example: Suppose a society which fervently considers all redheads to be agents of the Devil and therefore to be executed whenever found. Let us further assume that only a small number of redheads exist in any generation—so few as to be statistically insignificant. The utilitarian-libertarian might well reason: “While the murder of isolated redheads is deplorable, the executions are small in number; the vast majority of the public, as non-redheads, achieves enormous psychic satisfaction from the public execution of redheads. The social cost is negligible, the social, psychic benefit to the rest of society is great; therefore, it is right and proper for society to execute the redheads.” The natural rights libertarian, overwhelmingly concerned as he is for the justice of the act, will react in horror and staunchly and unequivocally oppose the executions as totally unjustified murder and aggression upon nonaggressive persons. The consequence of stopping the murders—depriving the bulk of society of great psychic pleasure—would not influence such a libertarian, the “absolutist” libertarian, in the slightest. Dedicated to justice and to logical consistency, the naturalrights libertarian cheerfully admits to being “doctrinaire,” to being, in short, an unabashed follower of his own doctrines.

Let us turn then to the natural-rights basis for the libertarian creed, a basis which, in one form or another, has been adopted by most of the libertarians, past and present. “Natural rights” is the cornerstone of a political philosophy which, in turn, is embedded in a greater structure of “natural law.” Natural law theory rests on the insight that we live in a world of more than one—in fact, a vast number—of entities, and that each entity has distinct and specific properties, a distinct “nature,” which can be investigated by man’s reason, by his sense perception and mental faculties. Copper has a distinct nature and behaves in a certain way, and so do iron, salt, etc. The species man, therefore, has a specifiable nature, as does the world around him and the ways of interaction between them. To put it with undue brevity, the activity of each inorganic and organic entity is determined by its own nature and by the nature of the other entities with which it comes in contact. Specifically, while the behavior of plants and at least the lower animals is determined by their biological nature or perhaps by their “instincts,” the nature of man is such that each individual person must, in order to act, choose his own ends and employ his own means in order to attain them. Possessing no automatic instincts, each man must learn about himself and the world, use his mind to select values, learn about cause and effect, and act purposively to maintain himself 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.

Individualists have always been accused by their enemies of being “atomistic”—of postulating that each individual lives in a kind of vacuum, thinking and choosing without relation to anyone else in society. This, however, is an authoritarian straw man; few, if any, individualists have ever been “atomists.” On the contrary, 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. But the point is that each individual makes the final choice of which influences to adopt and which to reject, or of which to adopt first and which afterwards. The libertarian welcomes the process of voluntary exchange and cooperation between freely acting individuals; what he abhors is the use of violence to cripple such voluntary cooperation and force someone to choose and act in ways different from what his own mind dictates.

The most viable method of elaborating the natural-rights statement of the libertarian position is to divide it into parts, and to begin with the basic axiom of the “right to self-ownership.” The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to “own” his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation.

Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (1) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that while Class A deserves the rights of being human, Class B is in reality subhuman and therefore deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, as we shall see, allowing Class A to own Class B means that the former is allowed to exploit, and therefore to live parasitically, at the expense of the latter. But this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange.

The second alternative, what we might call “participatory communalism” or “communism,” holds that every man should have the right to own his equal quotal share of everyone else. If there are two billion people in the world, then everyone has the right to own one two-billionth of every other person. In the first place, we can state that this ideal rests on an absurdity: proclaiming that every man is entitled to own a part of everyone else, yet is not entitled to own himself. Secondly, we can picture the viability of such a world: a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of “communist” world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero self-ownership and one hundred percent other ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the natural law of what is best for man and his life on earth.

Finally, however, the participatory communist world cannot be put into practice. For it is physically impossible for everyone to keep continual tabs on everyone else, and thereby to exercise his equal quotal share of partial ownership over every other man. In practice, then, the concept of universal and equal other-ownership is utopian and impossible, and supervision and therefore control and ownership of others necessarily devolves upon a specialized group of people, who thereby become a ruling class. Hence, in practice, any attempt at communist rule will automatically become class rule, and we would be back at our first alternative.

The libertarian therefore rejects these alternatives and concludes by adopting as his primary axiom the universal right of self-ownership, a right held by everyone by virtue of being a human being. A more difficult task is to settle on a theory of property in nonhuman objects, in the things of this earth. It is comparatively easy to recognize the practice when someone is aggressing against the property right of another’s person: If A assaults B, he is violating the property right of B in his own body. But with nonhuman objects the problem is more complex. 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.

Some libertarians attempt to resolve the problem by asserting that whoever the existing government decrees has the property title should be considered the just owner of the property. At this point, we have not yet delved deeply into the nature of government, but the anomaly here should be glaring enough: it is surely odd to find a group eternally suspicious of virtually any and all functions of government suddenly leaving it to government to define and apply the precious concept of property, the base and groundwork of the entire social order. It is particularly the utilitarian laissez-fairists who believe it most feasible to begin the new libertarian world by confirming all existing property titles; that is, property titles and rights as decreed by the very government that is condemned as a chronic aggressor.

Let us illustrate with a hypothetical example. Suppose that libertarian agitation and pressure has escalated to such a point that the government and its various branches are ready to abdicate. But they engineer a cunning ruse. Just before the government of New York state abdicates it passes a law turning over the entire territorial area of New York to become the private property of the Rockefeller family. The Massachusetts legislature does the same for the Kennedy family. And so on for each state. The government could then abdicate and decree the abolition of taxes and coercive legislation, but the victorious libertarians would now be confronted with a dilemma. Do they recognize the new property titles as legitimately private property? The utilitarians, who have no theory of justice in property rights, would, if they were consistent with their acceptance of given property titles as decreed by government, have to accept a new social order in which fifty new satraps would be collecting taxes in the form of unilaterally imposed “rent.” The point is that only natural-rights libertarians, only those libertarians who have a theory of justice in property titles that does not depend on government decree, could be in a position to scoff at the new rulers’ claims to have private property in the territory of the country, and to rebuff these claims as invalid. As the great nineteenth-century liberal Lord Acton saw clearly, the natural law provides the only sure ground for a continuing critique of governmental laws and decrees.1 What, specifically, the natural-rights position on property titles may be is the question to which we now turn.

We have established each individual’s right to self-ownership, to a property right in his own body and person. But people are not floating wraiths; they are not self-subsistent entities; they can only survive and flourish by grappling with the earth around them. They must, for example, stand on land areas; they must also, in order to survive and maintain themselves, transform the resources given by nature into “consumer goods,” into objects more suitable for their use and consumption. Food must be grown and eaten; minerals must be mined and then transformed into capital and then useful consumer goods, etc. Man, in other words, must own not only his own person, but also material objects for his control and use. How, then, should the property titles in these objects be allocated?

Let us take, as our first example, a sculptor fashioning a work of art out of clay and other materials; and let us waive, for the moment, the question of original property rights in the clay and the sculptor’s tools. The question then becomes: Who owns the work of art as it emerges from the sculptor’s fashioning? It is, in fact, the sculptor’s “creation,” not in the sense that he has created matter, but in the sense that he has transformed nature-given matter—the clay—into another form dictated by his own ideas and fashioned by his own hands and energy. Surely, it is a rare person who, with the case put thus, would say that the sculptor does not have the property right in his own product. Surely, if every man has the right to own his own body, and if he must grapple with the material objects of the world in order to survive, then the sculptor has the right to own the product he has made, by his energy and effort, a veritable extension of his own personality. He has placed the stamp of his person upon the raw material, by “mixing his labor” with the clay, in the phrase of the great property theorist John Locke. And the product transformed by his own energy has become the material embodiment of the sculptor’s ideas and vision. John Locke put the case this way:

. . . every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined it to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to.2

As in the case of the ownership of people’s bodies, we again have three logical alternatives: (1) either the transformer, or “creator” has the property right in his creation; or (2) another man or set of men have the right in that creation, i.e., have the right to appropriate it by force without the sculptor’s consent; or (3) every individual in the world has an equal, quotal share in the ownership of the sculpture—the “communal” solution. Again, put baldly, there are very few who would not concede the monstrous injustice of confiscating the sculptor’s property, either by one or more others, or on behalf of the world as a whole. By what right do they do so? By what right do they appropriate to themselves the product of the creator’s mind and energy? In this clear-cut case, the right of the creator to own what he has mixed his person and labor with would be generally conceded. (Once again, as in the case of communal ownership of persons, the world communal solution would, in practice, be reduced to an oligarchy of a few others expropriating the creator’s work in the name of “world public” ownership.)

The main point, however, is that the case of the sculptor is not qualitatively different from all cases of “production.” The man or men who had extracted the clay from the ground and had sold it to the sculptor may not be as “creative” as the sculptor, but they too are “producers,” they too have mixed their ideas and their technological know-how with the nature-given soil to emerge with a useful product. They, too, are “producers,” and they too have mixed their labor with natural materials to transform those materials into more useful goods and services. These persons, too, are entitled to the  ownership of their products. Where then does the process begin? Again, let us turn to Locke:

He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? When he digested? or when he ate? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? And ‘tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common. That added something to them more than Nature, the common mother of all, had done, and so they became his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him. . . . Thus, the grass my horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and the ore I have digged in my place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.

By making an explicit consent of every commoner necessary to any one’s appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat which their father or master had provided for them in common without assigning to every one his peculiar part. Though the water running in the fountain be every one’s, yet who can doubt but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of Nature where it was common . . . and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.

Thus the law of reason makes the deer that Indian’s who killed it; ‘tis allowed to be his goods who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though, before, it was the common right of every one. And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind . . . this original law of nature for the beginning of property, in what was before common, still takes place, and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind; or what ambergris any one takes up here is by the labour that removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made his property who takes that pains about it.3

If every man owns his own person and therefore his own labor, and if by extension he owns whatever property he has “created” or gathered out of the previously unused, unowned, “state of nature,” then what of the last great question: the right to own or control the earth itself? In short, if the gatherer has the right to own the acorns or berries he picks, or the farmer the right to own his crop of wheat or peaches, who has the right to own the land on which these things have grown? It is at this point that Henry George and his followers, who have gone all the way so far with the libertarians, leave the track and deny the individual’s right to own the piece of land itself, the ground on which these activities have taken place. The Georgists argue that, while every man should own the goods which he produces or creates, since Nature or God created the land itself, no individual has the right to assume ownership of that land. Yet, if the land is to be used at all as a resource in any sort of efficient manner, it must be owned or controlled by someone or some group, and we are again faced with our three alternatives: either the land belongs to the first user, the man who first brings it into production; or it belongs to a group of others; or it belongs to the world as a whole, with every individual owning a quotal part of every acre of land. George’s option for the last solution hardly solves his moral problem: If the land itself should belong to God or Nature, then why is it more moral for every acre in the world to be owned by the world as a whole, than to concede individual ownership? In practice, again, it is obviously impossible for every person in the world to exercise effective ownership of his four-billionth portion (if the world population is, say, four billion) of every piece of the world’s land surface. In practice, of course, a small oligarchy would do the controlling and owning, and not the world as a whole.

But apart from these difficulties in the Georgist position, the natural-rights justification for the ownership of ground land is the same as the justification for the original ownership of all other property. For, as we have seen, no producer really “creates” matter; he takes nature-given matter and transforms it by his labor energy in accordance with his ideas and vision. But this is precisely what the pioneer—the “homesteader”— does when he brings previously unused land into his own private ownership. Just as the man who makes steel out of iron ore transforms that ore out of his know-how and with his energy, and just as the man who takes the iron out of the ground does the same, so does the homesteader who clears, fences, cultivates, or builds upon the land. The homesteader, too, has transformed the character of the nature-given soil by his labor and his personality. The homesteader is just as legitimately the owner of the property as the sculptor or the manufacturer; he is just as much a “producer” as the others.

Furthermore, if the original land is nature- or God-given then so are the people’s talents, health, and beauty. And just as all these attributes are given to specific individuals and not to “society,” so then are land and natural resources. All of these resources are given to individuals and not to “society,” which is an abstraction that does not actually exist. There is no existing entity called “society”; there are only interacting individuals. To say that “society” should own land or any other property in common, then, must mean that a group of oligarchs—in practice, government bureaucrats—should own the property, and at the expense of expropriating the creator or the homesteader who had originally brought this product into existence.

Moreover, no one can produce anything without the cooperation of original land, if only as standing room. No man can produce or create anything by his labor alone; he must have the cooperation of land and other natural raw materials.

Man comes into the world with just himself and the world around him—the land and natural resources given him by nature. He takes these resources and transforms them by his labor and mind and energy into goods more useful to man. Therefore, if an individual cannot own original land, neither can he in the full sense own any of the fruits of his labor. The farmer cannot own his wheat crop if he cannot own the land on which the wheat grows. Now that his labor has been inextricably mixed with the land, he cannot be deprived of one without being deprived of the other.

Moreover, if a producer is not entitled to the fruits of his labor, who is? It is difficult to see why a newborn Pakistani baby should have a moral claim to a quotal share of ownership of a piece of Iowa land that someone has just transformed into a wheatfield—and vice versa of course for an Iowan baby and a Pakistani farm. Land in its original state is unused and unowned. Georgists and other land communalists may claim that the whole world population really “owns” it, but if no one has yet used it, it is in the real sense owned and controlled by no one. The pioneer, the homesteader, the first user and transformer of this land, is the man who first brings this simple valueless thing into production and social use. It is difficult to see the morality of depriving him of ownership in favor of people who have never gotten within a thousand miles of the land, and who may not even know of the existence of the property over which they are supposed to have a claim.

The moral, natural-rights issue involved here is even clearer if we consider the case of animals. Animals are “economic land,” since they are original nature-given resources. Yet will anyone deny full title to a horse to the man who finds and domesticates it—is this any different from the acorns and berries that are generally conceded to the gatherer? Yet in land, too, some homesteader takes the previously “wild,” undomesticated land, and “tames” it by putting it to productive use. Mixing his labor with land sites should give him just as clear a title as in the case of animals. As Locke declared: 

“As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common.”4

The libertarian theory of property was eloquently summed up by two nineteenth-century laissez-faire French economists:

If man acquires rights over things, it is because he is at once active, intelligent and free; by his activity he spreads over external nature; by his intelligence he governs it, and bends it to his use; by his liberty, he establishes between himself and it the relation of cause and effect and makes it his own. . . .

Where is there, in a civilized country, a clod of earth, a leaf, which does not bear this impress of the personality of man? In the town, we are surrounded by the works of man; we walk upon a level pavement or a beaten road; it is man who made healthy the formerly muddy soil, who took from the side of a far-away hill the flint or stone which covers it. We live in houses; it is man who has dug the stone from the quarry, who has hewn it, who has planed the woods; it is the thought of man which has arranged the materials properly and made a building of what was before rock and wood. And in the country, the action of man is still everywhere present; men have cultivated the soil and generations of laborers have mellowed and enriched it; the works of man have dammed the rivers and created fertility where the waters had brought only desolation. . . . Everywhere a powerful hand is divined which has moulded matter, and an intelligent will which has adapted it . . . to the satisfaction of the wants of one same being. Nature has recognized her master, and man feels that he is at home in nature. Nature has been appropriated by him for his use; she has become his own; she is his property. This property is legitimate; it constitutes a right as sacred for man as is the free exercise of his faculties. It is his because it has come entirely from himself, and is in no way anything but an emanation from his being. Before him, there was scarcely anything but matter; since him, and by him, there is interchangeable wealth, that is to say, articles having acquired a value by some industry, by manufacture, by handling, by extraction, or simply by transportation. From the picture of a great master, which is perhaps of all material production that in which matter plays the smallest part, to the pail of water which the carrier draws from the river and takes to the consumer, wealth, whatever it may be, acquires its value only by communicated qualities, and these qualities are part of human activity, intelligence, strength. The producer has left a fragment of his own person in the thing which has thus become valuable, and may hence be regarded as a prolongation of the faculties of man acting upon external nature. As a free being he belongs to himself; now the cause, that is to say, the productive force, is himself; the effect, that is to say, the wealth produced, is still himself. Who shall dare contest his title of ownership so clearly marked by the seal of his personality? . . .

It is then, to the human being, the creator of all wealth, that we must come back . . . it is by labor that man impresses his personality on matter. It is labor which cultivates the earth and makes of an unoccupied waste an appropriated field; it is labor which makes of an untrodden forest a regularly ordered wood; it is labor, or rather, a series of labors often executed by a very numerous succession of workmen, which brings hemp from seed, thread from hemp, cloth from thread, clothing from cloth; which transforms the shapeless pyrite, picked up in the mine, into an elegant bronze which adorns some public place, and repeats to an entire people the thought of an artist. . . .

Property, made manifest by labor, participates in the rights of the person whose emanation it is; like him, it is inviolable so long as it does not extend so far as to come into collision with another right; like him, it is individual, because it has origin in the independence of the individual, and because, when several persons have cooperated in its formation, the latest possessor has purchased with a value, the fruit of his personal labor, the work of all the fellow-laborers who have preceded him: this is what is usually the case with manufactured articles. When property has passed, by sale or by inheritance, from one hand to another, its conditions have not changed; it is still the fruit of human liberty manifested by labor, and the holder has the rights as the producer who took possession of it by right.5

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

We have talked at length of individual rights; but what, it may be asked, of the “rights of society”? Don’t they supersede the rights of the mere individual? The libertarian, however, is an individualist; he believes that one of the prime errors in social theory is to treat “society” as if it were an actually existing entity. “Society” is sometimes treated as a superior or quasi-divine figure with overriding “rights” of its own; at other times as an existing evil which can be blamed for all the ills of the world. The individualist holds that only individuals exist, think, feel, choose, and act; and that “society” is not a living entity but simply a label for a set of interacting individuals. Treating society as a thing that chooses and acts, then, serves to obscure the real forces at work. If, in a small community, ten people band together to rob and expropriate three others then this is clearly and evidently a case of a group of individuals acting in concert against another group. In this situation, if the ten people presumed to refer to themselves as “society” acting in “its” interest, the rationale would be laughed out of court; even the ten robbers would probably be too shamefaced to use this sort of argument. But let their size increase, and this kind of obfuscation becomes rife and succeeds in duping the public.

The fallacious use of a collective noun like “nation,” similar in this respect to “society,” has been trenchantly pointed out by the historian Parker T. Moon:

When one uses the simple monosyllable “France” one thinks of France as a unit, an entity. When . . . we say “France sent her troops to conquer Tunis”—we impute not only unit but personality to the country. The very words conceal the facts and make international relations a glamorous drama in which personalized nations are the actors, and all too easily we forget the flesh-and-blood men and women who are the true actors . . . if we had no such word as “France” . . . then we should more accurately describe the Tunis expedition in some such way as this: “A few of these thirty-eight million persons sent thirty thousand others to conquer Tunis.” This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who were the “few”? Why did they send the thirty thousand to Tunis? And why did these obey? Empire-building is done not by “nations,” but by men. The problem before us is to discover the men, the active, interested minorities in each nation, who are directly interested in imperialism and then to analyze the reasons why the majorities pay the expense and fight the war necessitated by imperialist expansion.6

The individualist view of “society” has been summed up in the phrase: “Society” is everyone but yourself. Put thus bluntly, this analysis can be used to consider those cases where “society” is treated, not only as a superhero with superrights, but as a supervillain on whose shoulders massive blame is placed. Consider the typical view that not the individual criminal, but “society,” is responsible for his crime. Take, for example, the case where Smith robs or murders Jones. The “old-fashioned” view is that Smith is responsible for his act. The modern liberal counters that “society” is responsible. This sounds both sophisticated and humanitarian, until we apply the individualist perspective. Then we see that what liberals are really saying is that everyone but Smith, including of course the victim Jones, is responsible for the crime. Put this baldly, almost everyone would recognize the absurdity of this position. But conjuring up the fictive entity “society” obfuscates this process. As the sociologist Arnold W. Green puts it: 

“It would follow, then, that if society is responsible for crime, and criminals are not responsible for crime, only those members of society who do not commit crime can be held responsible for crime. Nonsense this obvious can be circumvented only by conjuring up society as devil, as evil being apart from people and what they do.”7

The great American libertarian writer Frank Chodorov stressed this view of society when he wrote that “Society Are People.”

Society is a collective concept and nothing else; it is a convenience for designating a number of people. So, too, is family or crowd or gang, or any other name we give to an agglomeration of persons. Society . . . is not an extra “person”; if the census totals a hundred million, that’s all there are, not one more, for there cannot be any accretion to Society except by procreation. The concept of Society as a metaphysical person falls flat when we observe that Society disappears when the component parts disperse; as in the case of a “ghost town” or of a civilization we learn about by the artifacts they left behind. When the individuals disappear so does the whole. The whole has no separate existence. Using the collective noun with a singular verb leads us into a trap of the imagination; we are prone to personalize the collectivity and to think of it as having a body and a psyche of its own.8

FREE EXCHANGE AND FREE CONTRACT

The central core of the libertarian creed, then, is to establish the absolute right to private property of every man: first, in his own body, and second, in the previously unused natural resources which he first transforms by his labor. These two axioms, the right of self-ownership and the right to “homestead,” establish the complete set of principles of the libertarian system. The entire libertarian doctrine then becomes the spinning out and the application of all the implications of this central doctrine. For example, a man, X, owns his own person and labor and the farm he clears on which he grows wheat. Another man, Y, owns the fish he catches; a third man, Z, owns the cabbages he has grown and the land under it. But if a man owns anything, he then has the right to give away or exchange these property titles to someone else, after which point the other person also has absolute property title. From this corollary right to private property stems the basic justification for free contract and for the free-market economy. Thus, if X grows wheat, he may and probably will agree to exchange some of that wheat for some of the fish caught by Y or for some of the cabbages grown by Z. With both X and Y making voluntary agreements to exchange property titles (or Y and Z, or X and Z) the property then becomes with equal legitimacy the property of the other person. If X exchanges wheat for Y’s fish, then that fish becomes X’s property to do with as he wishes, and the wheat becomes Y’s property in precisely the same way.

Further, a man may exchange not only the tangible objects he owns but also his own labor, which of course he owns as well. Thus, Z may sell his labor services of teaching farmer X’s children in return for some of the farmer’s produce.

It so happens that the free-market economy, and the specialization and division of labor it implies, is by far the most productive form of economy known to man, and has been responsible for industrialization and for the modern economy on which civilization has been built. This is a fortunate utilitarian result of the free market, but it is not, to the libertarian, the prime reason for his support of this system. That prime reason is moral and is rooted in the natural-rights defense of private property we have developed above. Even if a society of despotism and systematic invasion of rights could be shown to be more productive than what Adam Smith called “the system of natural liberty,” the libertarian would support this system. Fortunately, as in so many other areas, the utilitarian and the moral, natural rights and general prosperity, go hand in hand.

The developed-market economy, as complex as the system appears to be on the surface, is nothing more than a vast network of voluntary and mutually agreed-upon two-person exchanges such as we have shown to occur between wheat and cabbage farmers, or between the farmer and the teacher. Thus, when I buy a newspaper for a dime, a mutually beneficial two-person exchange takes place: I transfer my ownership of the dime to the newsdealer and he transfers ownership of the paper to me. We do this because, under the division of labor, I calculate that the paper is worth more to me than the dime, while the newsdealer prefers the dime to keeping the paper. Or, when I teach at a university, I estimate that I prefer my salary to not expending my labor of teaching, while the university authorities calculate that they prefer gaining my teaching services to not paying me the money. If the newsdealer insisted on charging 50¢ for the paper, I might well decide that it isn’t worth the price; similarly, if I should insist on triple my present salary, the university might well decide to dispense with my services.

Many people are willing to concede the justice and propriety of property rights and the free-market economy, to concede that the farmer should be able to charge whatever his wheat will bring from consumers or the worker to reap whatever others are willing to pay for his services. But they balk at one point: inheritance. If Willie Stargell is ten times as good and “productive” a ball player as Joe Jack, they are willing to concede the justice of Stargell’s earning ten times the amount; but what, they ask, is the justification for someone whose only merit is being born a Rockefeller inheriting far more wealth than someone born a Rothbard? The libertarian answer is to concentrate not on the recipient, the child Rockefeller or the child Rothbard, but to concentrate on the giver, the man who bestows the inheritance. For if Smith and Jones and Stargell have the right to their labor and property and to exchange the titles to this property for the similar property of others, they also have the right to give their property to whomever they wish. And of course most such gifts consist of the gifts of the property owners to their children—in short, inheritance. If Willie Stargell owns his labor and the money he earns from it, then he has the right to give that money to the baby Stargell.

In the developed free-market economy, then, the farmer exchanges the wheat for money; the wheat is bought by the miller who processes and transforms the wheat into flour; the miller sells the flour to the baker who produces bread; the baker sells the bread to the wholesaler, who in turn sells it to the retailer, who finally sells it to the consumer. And at each step of the way, the producer may hire the labor services of the workers in exchange for money. How “money” enters the equation is a complex process; but it should be clear that conceptually the use of money is equivalent to any single or group of useful commodities that are exchanged for the wheat, flour, etc. Instead of money, the commodity exchanged could be cloth, iron, or whatever. At each step of the way, mutually beneficial exchanges of property titles are agreed upon and transacted.

We are now in a position to see how the libertarian defines the concept of “freedom” or “liberty.” Freedom is a condition in which a person’s ownership rights in his own body and his legitimate material property are not invaded, are not aggressed against. A man who steals another man’s property is invading and restricting the victim’s freedom, as does the man who beats another over the head. Freedom and unrestricted property right go hand in hand. On the other hand, to the libertarian, “crime” is an act of aggression against a man’s property right, either in his own person or his materially owned objects. Crime is an invasion, by the use of violence, against a man’s property and therefore against his liberty. “Slavery”—the opposite of freedom—is a condition in which the slave has little or no right of self-ownership; his person and his produce are systematically expropriated by his master by the use of violence.

The libertarian, then, is clearly an individualist but not an egalitarian. The only “equality” he would advocate is the equal right of every man to the property in his own person, to the property in the unused resources he “homesteads,” and to the property of others he has acquired either through voluntary exchange or gift.

PROPERTY RIGHTS AND “HUMAN RIGHTS”

Liberals will generally concede the right of every individual to his “personal liberty,” to his freedom to think, speak, write, and engage in such personal “exchanges” as sexual activity between “consenting adults.” In short, the liberal attempts to uphold the individual’s right to the ownership of his own body, but then denies his right to “property,” i.e., to the ownership of material objects. Hence, the typical liberal dichotomy between “human rights,” which he upholds, and “property rights,” which he rejects. Yet the two, according to the libertarian, are inextricably intertwined; they stand or fall together.

Take, for example, the liberal socialist who advocates government ownership of all the “means of production” while upholding the “human” right of freedom of speech or press. How is this “human” right to be exercised if the individuals constituting the public are denied their right to ownership of property? If, for example, the government owns all the newsprint and all the printing shops, how is the right to a free press to be exercised? If the government owns all the newsprint, it then necessarily has the right and the power to allocate that newsprint, and someone’s “right to a free press” becomes a mockery if the government decides not to allocate newsprint in his direction. And since the government must allocate scarce newsprint in some way, the right to a free press of, say, minorities or “subversive” antisocialists will get short shrift indeed. The same is true for the “right to free speech” if the government owns all the assembly halls, and therefore allocates those halls as it sees fit. Or, for example, if the government of Soviet Russia, being atheistic, decides not to allocate many scarce resources to the production of matzohs, for Orthodox Jews the “freedom of religion” becomes a mockery; but again, the Soviet government can always rebut that Orthodox Jews are a small minority and that capital equipment should not be diverted to matzoh production.

The basic flaw in the liberal separation of “human rights” and “property rights” is that people are treated as ethereal abstractions. If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his “human right”—or his property rights in his own person—he must also have the property right in the material world, in the objects which he produces. Property rights are human rights, and are essential to the human rights which liberals attempt to maintain. The human right of a free press depends upon the human right of private property in newsprint.

In fact, there are no human rights that are separable from property rights. The human right of free speech is simply the property right to hire an assembly hall from the owners, or to own one oneself; the human right of a free press is the property right to buy materials and then print leaflets or books and to sell them to those who are willing to buy. There is no extra “right of free speech” or free press beyond the property rights we can enumerate in any given case. And furthermore, discovering and identifying the property rights involved will resolve any apparent conflicts of rights that may crop up.

Consider, for example, the classic example where liberals generally concede that a person’s “right of freedom of speech” must be curbed in the name of the “public interest”: Justice Holmes’ famous dictum that no one has the right to cry “fire” falsely in a crowded theater. Holmes and his followers have used this illustration again and again to prove the supposed necessity for all rights to be relative and tentative rather than precise and absolute.

But the problem here is not that rights cannot be pushed too far but that the whole case is discussed in terms of a vague and wooly “freedom of speech” rather than in terms of the rights of private property. Suppose we analyze the problem  under the aspect of property rights. The fellow who brings on a riot by falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is, necessarily, either the owner of the theater (or the owner’s agent) or a paying patron. If he is the owner, then he has committed fraud on his customers. He has taken their money in exchange for a promise to put on a movie or play, and now, instead, he disrupts the show by falsely shouting “fire” and breaking up the performance. He has thus welshed on his contractual obligation, and has thereby stolen the property—the money—of his patrons and has violated their property rights.

Suppose, on the other hand, that the shouter is a patron and not the owner. In that case, he is violating the property right of the owner—as well as of the other guests to their paidfor performance. As a guest, he has gained access to the property on certain terms, including an obligation not to violate the owner’s property or to disrupt the performance the owner is putting on. His malicious act, therefore, violates the property rights of the theater owner and of all the other patrons.

There is no need, therefore, for individual rights to be restricted in the case of the false shouter of “fire.” The rights of the individual are still absolute; but they are property rights. The fellow who maliciously cried “fire” in a crowded theater is indeed a criminal, but not because his so-called “right of free speech” must be pragmatically restricted on behalf of the “public good”; he is a criminal because he has clearly and obviously violated the property rights of another person.

Source:  https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto

1 See Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1962), pp. 294–305. Compare also John Wild, Plato’s Modern Enemies and the Theory of Natural Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 176.

 2 John Locke, “An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent and End of Civil Government,” In E. Barker, ed., Social Contract (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 17–18.

3 Locke, Civil Government, pp. 18–49. While Locke was a brilliant property theorist, we are not claiming that he developed and applied his theory with anything like complete consistency.

4 Locke, Civil Government, p. 20.

5 Leon Wolowski and Emile Levasseur, “Property,” in Lalor’s Cyclopedia of Political Science (Chicago: M.B. Cary, 1884), vol. III, pp. 392–93.

6 Parker Thomas Moon, Imperialism and World Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1930), p. 58.

7 Arnold W. Green, “The Reified Villain,” Social Research (Winter, 1968): 656.

8 Frank Chodorov, The Rise and Fall of Society (New York: Devin Adair, 1959), pp. 29–30.

The post Property and Exchange appeared first on Actual Anarchy.

Now that the New Left has abandoned its earlier loose, flexible, nonideological stance, two ideologies have been adopted as guiding theoretical positions by New Leftists—Marxism–Stalinism and anarcho-communism. Marxism–Stalinism has unfortunately conquered SDS, but anarcho-communism has attracted many leftists who are looking for a way out of the bureaucratic and statist tyranny that has marked the Stalinist road. Also, many libertarians, who are looking for forms of action and for allies in such actions, have become attracted by an anarchist creed which seemingly exalts the voluntary way and calls for the abolition of the coercive State. It is fatal, however, to abandon and lose sight of one’s own principles in the quest for allies in specific tactical actions. Anarcho-communism, both in its original Bakunin–Kropotkin form and in its current irrationalist and “post-scarcity” variety, is poles apart from genuine libertarian principle. If there is one thing, for example, that anarcho-communism hates and reviles more than the State, it is the right of private property. As a matter of fact, the major reason that Anarcho-Communists oppose the State is because they wrongly believe that it is the creator and protector of private property, and, therefore, that the only route toward abolition of property is by destruction of the State apparatus. They totally fail to realize that the State has always been the great enemy and invader of the rights of private property. Furthermore, scorning and detesting the free market, the profit-and-loss economy, private property, and material affluence—all of which are corollaries of each other—Anarcho-Communists wrongly identify anarchism with communal living, with tribal sharing, and with other aspects of our emerging drug-rock “youth culture.”

The only good thing that one might say about anarchocommunism is that, in contrast to Stalinism, its form of communism would, supposedly, be voluntary. Presumably, no one would be forced to join the communes, and those who would continue to live individually and to engage in market activities would remain unmolested. Or would they? AnarchoCommunists have always been extremely vague and cloudy about the lineaments of their proposed anarchist society of the future. Many of them have been propounding the profoundly antilibertarian doctrine that the anarcho-communist revolution will have to confiscate and abolish all private property, so as to wean everyone from their psychological attachment to the property they own. Furthermore, it is hard to forget the fact that when the Spanish Anarchists (anarchocommunists of the Bakunin–Kropotkin type) took over large sections of Spain during the Civil War of the 1930s, they confiscated and destroyed all the money in their areas and promptly decreed the death penalty for the use of money. None of this can give one confidence in the good, voluntarist intentions of anarcho-communism.

On all other grounds, anarcho-communism ranges from mischievous to absurd. Philosophically, this creed is an allout assault on individuality and on reason. The individual’s desire for private property, drive to better himself, to specialize, to accumulate profits and income are reviled by all branches of communism. Instead, everyone is supposed to live in communes, sharing all his meager possessions with his fellows and each being careful not to advance beyond his communal brothers. At the root of all forms of communism, compulsory or voluntary, lies a profound hatred of individual excellence, a denial of the natural or intellectual superiority of some men over others, and a desire to tear down every individual to the level of a communal ant-heap. In the name of a phony “humanism,” an irrational and profoundly antihuman egalitarianism is to rob every individual of his specific and precious humanity. 

Furthermore, anarcho-communism scorns reason, and its corollaries: long-range purpose, forethought, hard work, and individual achievement; instead, it exalts irrational feelings, whim, and caprice—all this in the name of “freedom.” The “freedom” of the Anarcho-Communist has nothing to do with the genuine libertarian absence of interpersonal invasion or molestation; it is, instead, a “freedom” that means enslavement to unreason, to unexamined whim, and to childish caprice. Socially and philosophically, anarcho-communism is a misfortune.

Economically, anarcho-communism is an absurdity. The Anarcho-Communist seeks to abolish money, prices and employment, and proposes to conduct a modern economy purely by the automatic registry of “needs” in some central data bank. No one who has the slightest understanding of economics can trifle with this theory for a single second. Fifty years ago, Ludwig von Mises exposed the total inability of a planned, moneyless economy to operate above the most primitive level. He showed that money-prices are indispensable for the rational allocation of all of our scarce resources—labor, land, and capital goods—to the fields and the areas where they are most desired by the consumers and where they could operate with greatest efficiency. The Socialists conceded the correctness of Mises’s challenge and set about—in vain—to find a way to have a rational, marketprice system within the context of a socialist planned economy.

The Russians, after trying an approach to the communist, moneyless economy in their “War Communism” shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution, reacted in horror as they saw the Russian economy heading toward disaster. Even Stalin never tried to revive it; and since World War II, the East European countries have seen a total abandonment of this communist ideal and a rapid movement toward free markets, a free-price system, profit-and-loss tests, and a promotion of consumer affluence. It is no accident that it was precisely the economists in the communist countries who led the rush away from communism, socialism, and central planning and toward free markets. It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a “dismal science.” But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance. Yet, this sort of aggressive ignorance is inherent in the creed of anarcho-communism.

The same comment can be made on the widespread belief, held by many New Leftists and by all Anarcho-Communists, that there is no longer a need to worry about economics or production because we are supposedly living in a “postscarcity” world, where such problems do not arise. But while our condition of scarcity is clearly superior to that of the caveman, we are still living in a world of pervasive economic scarcity. How will we know when the world has achieved “post-scarcity”? Simply, we will know when all the goods and services that we may want have become so superabundant that their prices have fallen to zero, in short, when we can acquire all goods and services as in a Garden of Eden—without effort, without work, without using any scarce resources.

The antirational spirit of anarcho-communism was expressed by Norman O. Brown, one of the gurus of the new “counter-culture”:

The great economist Ludwig von Mises tried to refute socialism by demonstrating that, in abolishing exchange, socialism made economic calculation, and hence economic rationality, impossible. . . . But if Mises is right, then what he discovered is not a refutation but a psychoanalytical justification of socialism. . . . It is one of the sad ironies of contemporary intellectual life that the reply of socialist economists to Mises’s arguments was to attempt to show that socialism was not incompatible with “rational economic calculation”— that is to say, that it could retain the inhuman principle of economizing.1

The fact that the abandonment of rationality and economics in behalf of “freedom” and whim will lead to the scrapping of modern production and civilization and return us to barbarism does not faze our Anarcho-Communists and other exponents of the new “counter-culture.” But what they do not seem to realize is that the result of this return to primitivism would be starvation and death for nearly all of mankind and a grinding subsistence for the ones remaining. If they have their way, they will find that it is difficult indeed to be jolly and “unrepressed” while starving to death.

All this brings us back to the wisdom of the great Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset:

[i]n the disturbances caused by scarcity of food, the mob goes in search of bread, and the means it employs is generally to wreck the bakeries. They may serve as a symbol of the attitude adopted, on a greater and more complicated scale, by the masses of today towards the civilization by which they are supported. . . . Civilization is not “just here,” it is not self-supporting. It is artificial. . . . If you want to make use of the advantages of civilization, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilization—you are done. In a trice you find yourself left without civilization. Just a slip, and when you look everything has vanished into air. The primitive forest appears in its native state, just as if curtains covering pure Nature had been drawn back. The jungle is always primitive and vice versa, everything primitive is mere jungle.2

THIS ESSAY IS CHAPTER 12 OF THE BOOK EGALITARIANISM AS A REVOLT AGAINST NATURE.

Source:  https://mises.org/library/egalitarianism-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays/html/c/357

1. Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death (New York: Random House, 1959), pp. 238–39.

2. José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: W.W. Norton, 1932), p. 97.

For the history you didn’t learn in school, check out Liberty Classroom:

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Fifty years ago, on Easter Monday, April 25, 1916, began the glorious Irish Revolution, a revolution that was to end by sweeping away a monstrous record of brutality and oppression that had been foisted for centuries upon the long-suffering Irish people.

In defeating the mighty armies of the greatest and most ruthless empire on the face of the earth, the Irish were the first people to have the courage and the stamina to follow through on the promise of the American Revolution against the same imperial oppressors: a Revolution that had been the first successful war of national liberation in modern history. The Irish Revolution was the second such successful war. For other wars of national liberation prompted by the American Revolution (e. g. Belgium, the Netherlands. Geneva, and later the revolutions of 1848) had been beaten back by the forces of armed international counter-revolution. The Irish Revolution was fought and won in the only way such wars can be won: in relentless guerrilla fashion, by an armed people. Characteristically, it was begun heedlessly, recklessly by a relatively small band of idealistic young people, young people who did not sit around waiting for the ripening of ‘objective conditions” before launching their rebellion. The Easter Rising was hopeless, bungled, quixotic, doomed–and yet was eventually to succeed, thus confirming the unquenchable convictions of the rebel leaders. As the historian of the Irish Revolution writes:

The leaders realized with complete clarity that the majority of the Irish people were almost lost to all sense of the rights of Ireland as a nation, had learned to rely on the vague optimism of the Parliamentarians and were ready to give thanks for a petty instalment of Home Rule. The Independence movement was the movement of a minority still, and those who were ready to give and take life in arm-ed insurrection were a minority in that movement. They believed, however, that the inherent native passion for freedom was dormant, not extinguished, and that only bold action was needed > to arouse the people to a sense of their rights, their needs, and the strength that still lay within them unused.’ 1

While their actions were quixotic in the short-run, the rebel leaders were astute enough to realize that England’s troubles were Ireland’s opportunity, and that therefore England’s embroilment in World War I furnished an indispensable opportunity for launching the revolution. This illustrates the general historical rule that imperialist wars form the seedbed of revolution. The linkage between America and the Irish cause has not been confined to the influence of the American Revolution. The Irish cause has long been sustained and nurtured, materially and morally, by IrishAmericans, in such influential organizations as the Clan-na-Gael. Irish-and-American linkage has also run the other way: for the methods and procedures used by the English to suppress the Irish then served as models for English imperial rule over the American colonies. Not only that; for the genocidal racism directed against the Irish also served as model for the English-American treatment of the American Indian. The pattern of dehumanization was for the English to ste a 1 Irish land, murder and drive out the inhabitants, and then to sneer at the unfortunate Irish as inhuman because they somehow chose to live in squalor and misery. Thus, the English historian William Thomas wrote in 1552:

. . .the wild Irish, as unreasonable beasts, lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children, and every other thing. . .And hereof it followed that because their savage and idle life could not be satisfied with the only fruit of the natural unlaboured earth, therefore continually they invaded the f e r t i 1 e possessions of their Irish neighbours that inhabited the. . .English pale.’2

During its relatively brief career, the government of the United States of America has come down unerringly on the wrong side of virtually every issue in foreign affairs. Its record during the Irish rebellion was all too consistent with this bleak record. Rather than being favorable, or even neutral, toward the Irish struggle for freedom, that great Anglophiliac fighter for national self-determination and the rights of small nations, Woodrow Wilson, did his best to rivet the chains of oooression uoon Ireland. Desoite our suoposed neutraiity in the world War, age& of the U. ^s. Secret Service illenallv raided the offices of the German Consul in ~ew ~~ork on April 18, 1916, and there broke into and confiscated the files of correspondence. On finding news of the imminent Easter rising, the U. S. government lost no time in transmitting the information to the British Embassy, and this act of invasion and belligerence played an important part in crushing the initial stage of the rebellion. The resulting summary execution of the rebel leaders by the British may thus be partly laid to the door of the Wilson Administration.

America’s entry into World War I provided the Wilson Administration with the opportunity to harass and persecute American friends of Irish liberation. Confiscated German documents were leaked to the press smearing Irish-American leaders. Particularly severe was the persecution of Jeremiah A. O’Leary. O’Leary was indicted by the Administration for conspiring to obstruct recruiting in the armed forces and to commit treason, and documents were released to the press chareine him with beine readv to commit sabotage on behab Gf Germany. So ill that his trial had to betostDoned. svstematic brutalities were inflicted uoon O’Learv in the’~6mbs prison. Finally acquitted in .Tan;ary, 1919, O’Leary was given a hero’s welcome by thousands of Irish-Americans in New York City.

In the summer of 1917, the Friends of Irish Freedom circulated a petition in the United States for Irish indeoendence. Woodrow Wilson’s resoonse was charactehstic: ordering Secret Service Hgents to engage in rigorous examination of the finances of the Friends. Was -their campaign financed by “German gold?”3

Neither were local governments hesitant about getting into the patriotic act. Peaceful meetings of the Friends in New York City were broken up by the police and by federal soldiers, who had been creative enough to include the “preaching of sedition” in their definitions of ‘disorderly conduct” and “obstructing traffic.’  The Espionage Act was also invoked to break up pkb-Irish meetings. The good, grey Anglophiliac New Yorkhailed this ‘forward step” in preventing expressions of sedition; but, it sententiously hastened to add, ‘free speech, in a reasonable sense, will not be interfered with.” 4

But the implacable ruthlessness of the British Empire, assisted by its mighty U. S. ally, could not suffice to keep Lreland in thrall forever. The Irish Republic proclaimed by seven gallant and seemingly quixotic rebel leaders on Easter Monday, 1916, was destined to prevail, despite their execution by the vengeful British. Perhaps the best epitaph to these men was the deeply moving revolutionary speech delivered the previous August by the young lawyer and poet, Padraic Pearse, who was to read this proclamation of the Irish Republic and be named its President. Pearse’s great speech was a eulogy at the funeral of the grand old Fenian rebel, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, and the enthusiasm lit by Pearse at that eulogy may be considered the spark for. the Easter Rising eight months later. Pearse had stirringly proclaimed:

. . .if there is anything that makes it fitting that I rather. . .than one of the grey-haired men who were young with him and shared in his labour and in his suffering, should speak here, it is perhaps that I may be taken as speaking on behalf of a new generation that has been rebaptised in the Fenian faith, and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the Fenian program. I propose to you then that, here by the grave of this unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of Cod, each one for himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such unbreakable strength of soul as belonged to O’Donovan Rossa. .. We stand at Rossa’s grave not in sadness but rather in exaltation of spirit that it has been given to us to come into so close a communion With that brave and splendid Gael …

In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before or perhaps ever again, in spiritual communion with those of his day, living and dead, who suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit too with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons today, and speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate. This is a place of peace sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity and all restraint; but I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and hating them, to strive to overthrow them. Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, thefools!– they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace. 5

1. Dorothy Macardle, ne Irish Re~ubliC (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965). pp. 145-46.

2. In Howard Mumford Jones, Q Strang &y XG& (New York: The Viking Press, 1964). p. 169.

3. See Charles C. Tansill, America a& -Irish Freedom (New York:Devin-Adair, 1957). pp. 233ff.

4. H. C. Peterson and Gilbert C. Fite, Q~~onents of War, 1917-1918 (Madison, Wisc.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1957). p. 74.

5. Macardle, g~.u., pp. 136-37.

Rothbard, Murray N. “The Irish Revolution” Left and Right 2, No. 2 (Spring 1966): 3-7.

Source:  https://mises.org/library/irish-revolution

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Thеrе іѕ nо сlеаrеr dеmоnѕtrаtіоn оf the essential identity оf thе twо роlіtісаl раrtіеѕ thаn thеіr роѕіtіоn on thе mіnіmum wage. The Dеmосrаtѕ рrороѕеd tо raise thе lеgаl mіnіmum wаgе frоm $3.35 аn hour, tо which it had bееn rаіѕеd by the Rеаgаn administration durіng іtѕ аllеgеdlу free-market salad dауѕ іn 1981. Thе Rерublісаn counter was tо аllоw a “subminimum” wаgе fоr tееnаgеrѕ, who, as mаrgіnаl wоrkеrѕ, are the оnеѕ whо are іndееd hаrdеѕt hіt bу аnу lеgаl mіnіmum.

This ѕtаnd wаѕ quickly mоdіfіеd by the Republicans in Cоngrеѕѕ, whо proceeded tо argue fоr a teenage subminimum that wоuld lаѕt only a piddling 90 days, after whісh the rаtе wоuld rіѕе to thе hіghеr Dеmосrаtіс mіnіmum (оf $4.55 аn hоur.) It was lеft, іrоnісаllу еnоugh, for Sеnаtоr Edward Kеnnеdу tо роіnt оut the ludісrоuѕ есоnоmіс еffесt оf thіѕ рrороѕаl: tо іnduсе employers to hire teenagers and thеn fire them after 89 dауѕ, tо rеhіrе others the dау аftеr.

Finally, аnd characteristically, Gеоrgе Bush gоt the Rерublісаnѕ оut оf this hоlе by thrоwіng іn thе tоwеl altogether, and рlumріng for a Dеmосrаtіс рlаn, реrіоd. Wе wеrе lеft wіth thе Democrats fоrthrіghtlу рrороѕіng a bіg increase іn thе mіnіmum wаgе, аnd thе Rерublісаnѕ, after a series оf іllоgісаl wаfflеѕ, fіnаllу gоіng аlоng wіth the рrоgrаm.

In truth, thеrе is only оnе wау to regard a mіnіmum wаgе law: іt іѕ compulsory unеmрlоуmеnt, реrіоd. The lаw ѕауѕ: it is іllеgаl, and therefore сrіmіnаl, for anyone to hire аnуоnе else below the level оf X dоllаrѕ an hоur. Thіѕ means, plainly аnd ѕіmрlу, thаt a large number оf free and voluntary wage соntrасtѕ аrе now оutlаwеd and hеnсе thаt thеrе will be a lаrgе аmоunt оf unеmрlоуmеnt. Rеmеmbеr thаt thе mіnіmum wаgе lаw рrоvіdеѕ nо jоbѕ; it оnlу оutlаwѕ thеm; аnd оutlаwеd jobs аrе the inevitable rеѕult.

All demand сurvеѕ аrе fаllіng, аnd the demand for hiring labor іѕ nо еxсерtіоn. Hence, laws thаt prohibit еmрlоуmеnt аt аnу wаgе thаt is relevant to thе market (а minimum wage оf 10 сеntѕ аn hоur wоuld hаvе little or nо impact) muѕt rеѕult in оutlаwіng employment аnd hence causing unеmрlоуmеnt.
If thе mіnіmum wаgе іѕ, іn ѕhоrt, raised from $3.35 to $4.55 аn hоur, thе соnѕеԛuеnсе is tо dіѕеmрlоу, реrmаnеntlу, thоѕе whо wоuld hаvе been hіrеd аt rаtеѕ іn bеtwееn thеѕе twо rаtеѕ. Sіnсе the dеmаnd сurvе fоr аnу ѕоrt оf lаbоr (as fоr аnу fасtоr of рrоduсtіоn) is ѕеt by thе реrсеіvеd marginal рrоduсtіvіtу of that lаbоr, thіѕ means that the реорlе whо wіll be disemployed аnd devastated bу thіѕ рrоhіbіtіоn wіll bе precisely the “marginal” (lоwеѕt wаgе) wоrkеrѕ, е.g. blacks аnd tееnаgеrѕ, thе very workers whоm thе аdvосаtеѕ оf the mіnіmum wаgе are claiming tо fоѕtеr аnd рrоtесt.

Thе аdvосаtеѕ оf the minimum wаgе аnd its periodic bооѕtіng rерlу that all this іѕ ѕсаrе tаlk аnd thаt mіnіmum wаgе rаtеѕ do nоt аnd nеvеr have саuѕеd аnу unеmрlоуmеnt. The рrореr rіроѕtе іѕ tо rаіѕе them оnе bеttеr; аll rіght, if the mіnіmum wage іѕ such a wоndеrful аntі-роvеrtу mеаѕurе, аnd саn hаvе nо unеmрlоуmеnt-rаіѕіng effects, whу аrе you such ріkеrѕ? Why аrе уоu hеlріng the working рооr bу ѕuсh piddling amounts? Whу ѕtор аt $4.55 аn hоur? Why nоt $10 аn hоur? $100? $1,000?

It іѕ оbvіоuѕ thаt the mіnіmum wage аdvосаtеѕ dо nоt рurѕuе their оwn lоgіс, bесаuѕе іf thеу рuѕh it tо such hеіghtѕ, vіrtuаllу the entire lаbоr force wіll be dіѕеmрlоуеd. In ѕhоrt, you саn have as muсh unemployment аѕ you want, simply bу pushing thе legally minimum wаgе hіgh еnоugh.

It is соnvеntіоnаl аmоng есоnоmіѕtѕ to be polite, tо assume thаt economic fаllасу іѕ ѕоlеlу the rеѕult of іntеllесtuаl еrrоr. But there are times whеn decorousness іѕ seriously mіѕlеаdіng, оr, as Oѕсаr Wіldе оnсе wrоtе, “whеn ѕреаkіng оnе’ѕ mіnd becomes more thаn a duty; it bесоmеѕ a роѕіtіvе pleasure.” Fоr іf рrороnеntѕ оf the higher mіnіmum wаgе wеrе ѕіmрlу wrоnghеаdеd реорlе оf gооd wіll, they would not ѕtор at $3 оr $4 an hоur, but indeed wоuld рurѕuе thеіr dimwit lоgіс into thе ѕtrаtоѕрhеrе.

The fасt is thаt they hаvе always bееn ѕhrеwd enough tо ѕtор thеіr minimum wаgе dеmаndѕ аt the point whеrе only mаrgіnаl wоrkеrѕ аrе аffесtеd, and where thеrе is nо dаngеr of disemploying, fоr еxаmрlе, whіtе аdult male wоrkеrѕ wіth unіоn seniority. Whеn we see that the mоѕt аrdеnt аdvосаtеѕ оf thе mіnіmum wage law hаvе bееn thе AFL-CIO, and thаt the соnсrеtе effect of the mіnіmum wаgе lаwѕ hаѕ bееn tо сrіррlе the low-wage competition оf thе marginal wоrkеrѕ аѕ аgаіnѕt hіghеr-wаgе wоrkеrѕ wіth unіоn ѕеnіоrіtу, thе truе mоtіvаtіоn of thе аgіtаtіоn for the minimum wаgе becomes арраrеnt.

Thіѕ іѕ оnlу оnе оf a lаrgе number оf саѕеѕ whеrе a ѕееmіnglу purblind реrѕіѕtеnсе іn economic fallacy only ѕеrvеѕ аѕ a mаѕk fоr ѕресіаl рrіvіlеgе at thе expense оf thоѕе whо аrе ѕuрроѕеdlу tо bе “hеlреd.”

In thе сurrеnt agitation, іnflаtіоn – supposedly brоught tо a hаlt bу thе Rеаgаn аdmіnіѕtrаtіоn – has еrоdеd the іmрасt оf the last minimum wаgе hіkе in 1981, reducing the real іmрасt of thе mіnіmum wаgе bу 23%. Pаrtіаllу аѕ a result, the unеmрlоуmеnt rаtе hаѕ fallen from 11% in 1982 tо undеr ѕіx percent іn 1988. Pоѕѕіblу chagrined by this drop, thе AFL-CIO аnd іtѕ аllіеѕ аrе рuѕhіng tо rесtіfу thіѕ соndіtіоn, аnd to bооѕt the minimum wаgе rate by 34%.

Onсе in a whіlе, AFL-CIO есоnоmіѕtѕ аnd оthеr knowledgeable lіbеrаlѕ will drор their mask оf есоnоmіс fаllасу аnd саndіdlу аdmіt that thеіr асtіоnѕ will cause unеmрlоуmеnt; they thеn proceed tо juѕtіfу thеmѕеlvеѕ bу claiming thаt іt іѕ more “dignified” fоr a wоrkеr tо be on wеlfаrе thаn tо wоrk аt a lоw wаgе. This оf соurѕе, is thе dосtrіnе оf mаnу реорlе оn wеlfаrе themselves. It іѕ truly a ѕtrаngе соnсерt оf “dіgnіtу” thаt hаѕ been fоѕtеrеd by thе іntеrlосkіng mіnіmum wаgе-wеlfаrе ѕуѕtеm.

Unfortunately, thіѕ ѕуѕtеm does not gіvе thоѕе numеrоuѕ wоrkеrѕ whо ѕtіll рrеfеr tо bе рrоduсеrѕ rather thаn раrаѕіtеѕ thе privilege оf mаkіng their оwn free сhоісе.

[This piece originally appeared in the December 1988 issue of The Free Market and is also included in the collection Making Economic Sense.]

Source: https://mises.org/library/outlawing-jobs-minimum-wage

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Aрrіl 15, that drеаd Inсоmе Tаx dау, іѕ around again, and gіvеѕ uѕ a chance to ruminate оn the nаturе оf tаxеѕ аnd оf thе gоvеrnmеnt іtѕеlf.

The first grеаt lesson tо lеаrn аbоut tаxаtіоn is that taxation іѕ ѕіmрlу rоbbеrу.

Nо mоrе аnd no less. For whаt іѕ “robbery”? Robbery is the tаkіng оf a mаn’ѕ рrореrtу bу thе uѕе of vіоlеnсе or thе threat thereof, and therefore wіthоut thе vісtіm’ѕ соnѕеnt. And уеt whаt еlѕе is tаxаtіоn?

Thоѕе who сlаіm that taxation іѕ, in ѕоmе mystical ѕеnѕе, rеаllу “voluntary” should then hаvе no qualms about gеttіng rіd оf thаt vіtаl fеаturе of thе lаw whісh ѕауѕ that fаіlurе to рау оnе’ѕ taxes іѕ сrіmіnаl and ѕubjесt tо appropriate реnаltу. But does аnуоnе seriously believe thаt if thе рауmеnt оf taxation were rеаllу mаdе vоluntаrу, ѕау in the ѕеnѕе оf contributing tо thе American Cаnсеr Society, that аnу appreciable revenue wоuld fіnd іtѕеlf іntо the соffеrѕ оf gоvеrnmеnt? Thеn why dоn’t wе try it аѕ аn experiment for a few уеаrѕ, оr a fеw decades, аnd fіnd оut?

But іf taxation іѕ rоbbеrу, then іt fоllоwѕ as thе night thе dау that thоѕе people whо еngаgе іn, аnd lіvе оff, rоbbеrу аrе a gаng of thіеvеѕ. Hence thе government іѕ a group оf thieves, and deserves, mоrаllу, aesthetically, аnd philosophically, tо be trеаtеd еxасtlу аѕ a grоuр оf less ѕосіаllу rеѕресtаblе ruffіаnѕ wоuld be treated.

This іѕѕuе оf The Lіbеrtаrіаn іѕ dedicated tо that grоwіng lеgіоn оf Amеrісаnѕ whо аrе engaging in vаrіоuѕ fоrmѕ оf that оnе wеароn, thаt оnе act оf thе public whісh оur rulеrѕ fеаr thе most: tаx rеbеllіоn, the сuttіng off thе funds bу whісh the hоѕt public іѕ ѕарреd tо maintain thе parasitic ruling сlаѕѕеѕ. Here is a burnіng іѕѕuе whісh соuld арреаl tо еvеrуоnе, уоung аnd оld, poor and wеаlthу, “wоrkіng сlаѕѕ” and middle class, rеgаrdlеѕѕ оf rасе, соlоr, оr creed. Here іѕ an issue which еvеrуоnе understands, оnlу tоо wеll. Taxation.

This appeared in the April 15, 1969, issue of The Libertarian (soon to become The Libertarian Forum).

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was dean of the Austrian School, founder of modern libertarianism, and chief academic officer of the Mises Institute. He was also editor – with Lew Rockwell – of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, and appointed Lew as his executor.

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