power.Wbst@Xerox.COM (08/21/86)
Tom Bensons' note to this DL professing his disappointment with the tendency towards endless speeches about libertarianism, and his perception of this philosophy as basically racist, prompted me to post this reply. Three things: One - In defense of this DL, the libertarianism faction is actually very small, but quite vocal. And this small faction is in fact totally dominated by one person. Two - I don't seperate people's talk from their actions, or rather I feel that what people say is only meaningful when one also knows how they act. The few libertarians I know are racist, although they talk a good non-racist argument. The basic tone of the libertarian philosophy has strong elements of social darwinism in it, long used as a scientific veneer for racist thinking. (I'm perfectly willing to defend this assesment of social darwinism if anyone wants to debate it.) Three - I find libertarianism fascinating, but I'm not sure why. To me it has a very fundamental flaw in its premise; the same flaw as in true Marxism, true Monarchy, true Socialism, among others. It's a very simple flaw: they base their premises on false pictures of human beings. In libertarianism the false picture is to deny the existance of society as a sum greater than the whole of its parts (people). I'm not saying that humans beings are mere ants in the ant colony of society. (It was a popular notion earlier this century that the 'animal' was the ant colony as a whole, and that the ants were merely the equivalent of the cells in the human body. I'm not sure why this fell out of favor.) Rather I'm saying that to evaluate all 'rights' as belonging only to individuals and never to society goes to the other extreme. The answer lies somewhere in the middle, but I'm not sure where. I contend that the concept of 'rights' are a conveniant tool, a useful fiction that serves the survival of our species. They are an abstraction, and to give all rights to the second abstraction called 'indivdual' (libertarianism) is as anti-survival as giving all rights to another abstraction called 'society' (Socialist communism?). But more important than being anti-survival, such a designation is impossible, BECAUSE HUMAN BEINGS DON'T WORK THAT WAY. They never have. -Jim -------
hibbert.pa@XEROX.COM (08/24/86)
Just to add a few things to Kieth Lynch's reply to Eyal Mozes... To start with, I'd summarize my reaction thusly: Eyal said a lot of things that don't seem even remotely true. A reply seems needed only because the author spoke with such certainty. "Murray Rothbard, who is widely regarded as the intellectual leader of libertarianism, you can see that most of the views he holds on concrete issues - such as his praise for the PLO, his sympathetic evaluation of soviet foreign policy, and his view of the USA as the world's "main danger to peace and freedom" - are totally incompatible with genuine advocacy of individual rights, and identical with the views of most socialists." I would place Murray Rothbard as an intellectual leader among Libertarians, but one who holds many opinions that are quite controversial among libertarians. The ones you mention in particular are (mostly) ones that I don't agree with. Most of the times that I have heard Murray speak, he was specifically introduced (to libertarian audiences) as someone with whom everyone would have some disagreement. I believe his main claim to authority in in the field of economics. Eyal goes on to explain that "the correct approach to political theory is the one diametrically opposed to libertarianism's," and mentions in particular Ayn Rand's as one who follows this model. Rand is much more widely regarded as THE person who set out the principle's on which libertarianism is based. Chris -------