tdh@frog.UUCP (06/16/85)
The following concerns an article "Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty", the first segment of which was published in the May 10 issue of *The Intellectual Activist*. The distortion involved is primarily that of painting the whole movement with the colors of but a part of it, and secondarily that of impugning the motives of those who are dealing with others holding different philosophies. Rothbard, to whose writing I was exposed before ever joining up with the LP, is given greatest (and undeserved) prominence, and is remarked upon as being "widely regarded as the intellectual father of the Libertarian movement [!]", and "known as Libertarianism's leading theorist." Quotes from the misnamed Radical Caucus were in an abundance far exceeding their membership and influence within the LP (but not their noise). What has always been stressed in the meetings that I have attended has been: find some common ground with those you are trying to convince and use it as a base for further argument. What Schwartz twisted that into was a lack of respect for ideas (even if true in individual cases). I decided to cull out all of the smears in Schwartz's article. I hope I got most of them (all are direct quotes; there is no evidence that the qualifier "some", for example, was implied or overlooked, although there were a few unquoted but qualified statements). They are actually funny, considering that I know some Objectivists within the LP.: 1) Libertarians are not pro-liberty, but simply anti-state. 2) ... the Libertarian, whose premise is simply that *any* activity of the state is inherently tainted, regardless of its nature and purpose. 3) The freeze movement ... is embraced by Libertarians ... 4) The goals of achieving liberty and destroying the state are incompatible -- yet Libertarians choose the latter. ... [A] properly functioning government ... is of no concern to Libertarians -- *all* states are the enemy. 5) To Libertarians, whatever harms the state is categorically good; whatever helps the state is categorically bad -- regardless of the effect on human liberty. 6) Any legitimate proponent of liberty realizes that a show of force by the state should be morally evaluated according to whether it is being used for aggression or self-defense. But not the Libertarian. 7) Because neither the pursuit of freedom nor the exercise of reason is important to the Libertarian. What he cares about is the extermination of government and the inculcation of anti-state hostility. 8) Although anyone with the most rudimentary understanding of liberty realizes the life-and-death difference between a U.S. government and a Soviet government, the Libertarian -- focusing only on denouncing all states -- does not. To him, if America is at war, even if it is fighting a Nazi Germany or a Soviet Russia, it is always just "two sets of thieves and aggressors." 9) But the reason behind a particular view -- i.e. the philosophical framework -- is insignificant to Libertarians. They see only isolated, unconnected stands on concrete issues. They want to be able to uphold a position without having to understand its root. They don't want to have to know what thinking lies behind it or where that thinking leads. They do not acknowledge the role of a basic philosophy in shaping those concrete positions. They want to concern themselves only with the here-and-now -- with whether ... the state is being denounced or not. *Why* it is being denounced, by whom, with what intellectual implications, with what long-range consequences for the moment after next -- are considerations too philosophical for Libertarians to entertain. The fact that each of these liberal crusades represents a *system* of thought is of no account to Libertarians. They want to grab onto a tiny fragment of that system, wrench it out of its intellectual context, assess it in a vacuum, and then praise it -- while ignoring the entire statist structure that gives rise to it and without which it would not exist. 10) Let someone invent a better way to execrate the state and Libertarians will beat a path to his door, irrespective of his underlying philosophy. 11) After all, the values of a liberated proletariat or of a purified Aryan race cannot really be achieved -- the Libertarian would argue -- except through uncoerced action. 12) Only when some tyrant misguidedly believes that ["the basic moral tenets of dictatorship"] can be implemented by force do Libertarians begin to tsk. 13) By dispensing with ethical fundamentals, not only are Libertarians unable to justify liberty, but they cannot even *define* it. ... but what is force? 14) They cannot utter a sentence about force, or about liberty, until they construct an appropriate foundation -- a foundation the necessity of which Libertarians adamantly reject. 15) Libertarians want to transform the present system not by force of argument, but by plain force. And they broadcast this openly. 16) The goal of Libertarians is to topple the state by force. They see no way to oust the power elite except through armed struggle. To them, the state rules not because its activities are sanctioned by the prevailing ideas of the culture, but because it has guns ... Even the election campaigns Libertarians engage in are not intended to educate the public about the meaning of liberty. Rather, they are merely holding actions, designed to pave the way for violent revolution and to sneak some Libertarians into the seats of power before the fighting starts. 17) The Libertarian wants to incite the masses and organize them for pitched battle against the power elite who have kept them enslaved for so long. He sees a vast wellspring of dormant revolutionaries... 18) But the mind is the one realm Libertarians categorically abandon. 19) They hold an opposite view [from intellectuality and the inculcation of an "*ideology* of liberty", respectively] of both the nature of this conflict [against statism] and the nature of the goal they hope victory will achieve. They interpret the conflict as purely material, to be won by the physically stronger army. And they regard the objective of liberty to mean the destruction of the American state... 20) ... to Libertarians, any anti-state uprising means that freedom is being advanced... 21) America is far more contemptible than even the Soviet Union, according to the Libertarian definition of liberty. 22) Libertarians thus see America as their mortal foe. 23) To the Libertarian, liberty is attained when the state is destroyed. 24) ...the Soviet threat is a myth to Libertarians. They consider Russia to be an exemplary, peace-loving country. 25) Libertarians are openly laudatory of the New Left... 26) ...the present-day Libertarian is a fervent emotionalist. He wants to act on whatever feelings he happens to experience, no matter how capricious and irrational. He wants no constraints whatsoever on his behavior. 27) The Libertarian interprets liberty to mean the license to do whatever he feels like doing. His seeming disapproval of coercion means nothing since he has no way of even *defining* force, and finds its use undesirable solely because it is an obstacle in the path of people's whims. He can only come up with a pseudo-definition: force is that which interferes with someone's desires. 28) Should there be laws against libel and slander? No, say Libertarians... 29) It is not mere indifference, but overt antagonism, that Libertarians display toward the subject of morality... 30) The only assertion a true Libertarian would make is that whatever one happens to prefer -- production or privation, long-range planning or range-of-the-moment consumption, knowledge or ignorance, health or sickness, cleanliness or filth, electricity or candles -- liberty is the ideal condition for its achievement.