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The Essence of Libety

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Liberty knows no compromise

A Condensed Version of For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by Murray N. Rothbard

Compiled by

Dr. Jimmy T. (Gunny) LaBaume

Part III: Epilogue

Chapter 15: A Strategy for Liberty

Education: Theory and Movement

How can we get from our State-ridden world to the goal of liberty?

There is no magic formula but a prime and necessary condition for victory is education which has two essential parts: calling people's attention to the system, and then converting them to it. Furthermore, true education cannot be achieved without theory and activism. There must be an ideology and people to carry it forward. Both theory and movement become futile and sterile without each other. The theory will die without a movement and the movement will become pointless if it loses sight of the ideology of the goal.

Educating others is necessary but so is continuous self-education. Educating ourselves will achieve two essential goals. First it serves to refine and advance libertarian "theory" and enables us to refute and combat errors and objections as they arise. The second reason for "talking to ourselves" is reinforcement— the psychological boost we get from knowing that there are other people of like mind to talk, argue, communicate and interact with. This is the best antidote against giving up liberty as a hopeless, impractical or lost cause.

Are We "Utopians"?

So, what should be the content of that education?

Every "radical" creed has been subjected to the charge of being "utopian." Also, some amongst us believe that we should not “frighten” people by being too “radical." Such people generally favor gradualism or a gradual whittling away of State power.

Marxists have been thinking about strategy for radical social change longer than any other group. Therefore it behooves us to heed the lessons they have learned. They see two strategic errors that deviate from the proper approach. One is "left-wing sectarianism" and the other is "right-wing opportunism." The critics of libertarian "extremist" principles are the analog of the right-wing opportunists. Their problem is that they confine themselves to gradual and "practical" programs. This approach poses a danger of losing sight of the ultimate goal. If libertarians will not fly the banner of the pure principle, who will?

F. A. Hayek wrote of the importance to liberty of “holding the pure and ‘extreme' ideology aloft as a never-to-be-forgotten creed.” He pointed out that one of the great attractions of socialism is its stress on the "ideal" goal.

The building of a free society must be an intellectual adventure and deed of courage. We need intellectual leaders who resist the temptations of power and influence and are willing to work for the ideal, no matter how small the probability of its realization. The main lesson to be learned from the socialists is that their courage to be Utopian is what gained them the support of the intellectuals and thereby an influence on public opinion. Those who concerned themselves with the “practical” have found that even that is now politically impossible because of changes in public opinion, which they have done nothing to guide.

There is another tactical reason for sticking to pure principle. It is true that day-to-day social events are often the unsatisfactory outcome of the push-and-pull of conflicting ideologies. Therefore, it is important to keep upping the ante over the years. The strategic role of the "extremist" is to keep pushing. The socialists have been particularly effective at this. Programs that were considered dangerously socialistic a generation ago are now an indispensable part of the "mainstream" of American heritage. The day-to-day compromises of "practical" politics have pulled society in the direction of collectivism. There is no reason the libertarian cannot do the same. The conservative opposition to collectivism has been so weak is because it does not offer a consistent political philosophy. It only offers a "practical" defense of the status quo which it has enshrined as the American "tradition." As statism grows, it becomes increasingly "traditional" by definition and conservatism cannot find the intellectual weapons to effect its overthrow.

Sticking to principle also means attempting to achieve the ultimate goal as rapidly as possible. We must never advocate or prefer a gradual approach. Doing so would undercut the importance of our principles and, if we value our principles so lightly, we have no reason to expect others value them. Although we know that there is no magic button, our basic preferences must shape our whole strategic perspective.

Furthermore, our "abolitionism" does not mean that we have unrealistic expectations for how quickly our goal will be achieved. William Lloyd Garrison first advocated the idea of immediate emancipation of the slaves in the 1830s. Although his goal was morally proper, he was realistic in that he did not expect emancipation to happen quickly. But, in his own words, he knew that "Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice."

Gradualism undercuts the goal by conceding that it must take second or third place to other considerations. This, in turn, implies that the other considerations are more important. Advocating the gradual achievement of liberty is advocating for the prolongation of crime and injustice.

Furthermore, liberty is not a utopian idea. Utopia is contrary to the natural law of human beings. It is a system that would never work even if everyone tried to put it into practice. Take, for example, the Utopian goal of the left, communism. Pure communism would not work even if everyone immediately adopted it because it violates the very nature of man and would doom the human race to starvation.

So in the first place a utopian system could not work because it violates the nature of man. Another problem is that it would be difficult to convince enough people that it should be adopted. Libertarian doctrine is not Utopian. In fact, it is the only theory that is really consistent with the nature of man and the world.

The libertarian fully understands the nature of the State and its lust for power. This renders him eminently realistic. By contrast, the (seemingly) more realistic conservative believer in "limited government" is the one that is the truly impractical Utopian. The idea of a constitutionally limited State, although a noble experiment, has been a catastrophic failure. It is the conservative who puts all the guns and decision-making power into the hands of the central government and says, "Limit yourself." Is it not he that is the truly impractical Utopian?

The left Utopians postulate a change in the basic nature of man. To them, man has no real nature. He is considered to be infinitely malleable by institutions (such as the communist ideal) into a New Communist Man. But ultimately every individual has free will and moulds himself. It is folly to believe that any projected New Order will bring about a uniform and drastic change in man's basic nature. Libertarians place no reliance on any such change. Regardless, given existing human values, the libertarian system will be more moral and work better than any other.

But none of this is to say that the libertarian must necessarily confine himself to immediate abolition. The realistic prospects for a mighty leap to liberty are obviously limited. Transitional steps are necessary and legitimate. Condemning advances that fall short of the goal renders the goal itself vain and futile. In this way, such sectarian libertarians make it impossible for the goal itself to ever be reached.

There are two criteria by which we can judge whether any halfway measure or transitional step should be hailed or condemned: (1) whatever the transitional measure, liberty must be always held aloft as the desired goal; and (2) no intermediate step should, explicitly or implicitly, contradict the ultimate goal. Any short-run measure should always be consistent with the final goal of liberty.

For example libertarians want the eventual abolition of taxes and consider it legitimate to push for a drastic reduction or repeal of the income tax. But, while advocating a large cut in income taxes, we must not also call for its replacement by some other form of tax.

Similarly, conservatives prefer budget balancing to tax reduction. They oppose any tax cut which is not accompanied by at least an equivalent cut in government spending. But taxation is an illegitimate act of aggression. Therefore, any failure to advocate for a tax cut contradicts the libertarian goal. The time to oppose government expenditures is when the budget is being considered, not during discussions of tax cuts. All government activity (taxes or spending) must be reduced whenever it can because it contradicts the libertarian goal.

A particularly dangerous temptation is to attempt to appear "responsible" and "realistic" by coming up with some sort of "four-year plan" for destatization. This is the trap of gradualism. It also seemingly opposes a faster pace toward liberty. To the contrary, there is no legitimate reason for a slower than a faster pace.

Another flaw of a planned program is that it implies that the State is not really the common enemy of mankind. The implication is that it is possible and desirable to use the State to achieve liberty. However, the insight that the State is the enemy of mankind leads us to push for any reduction of State power on any front. Any such reduction would mean a corresponding decrease in crime and aggression.

We must never be trapped into any sort of proposal for "positive" governmental action. The role of government should only be to remove itself from all spheres of society just as rapidly as it can be pressured to do so.

Is Education Enough?

All libertarians stress education. But, the problem is that the majority of them hold a very simplistic view its role and scope. They make no attempt to answer such questions as: What happens after a certain number of people are convinced and how many need to be convinced before we move to the next stage?

The State is a parasitic enemy of society. Its ruling elite dominate the rest of us, extract their income by coercion and wax fat from this State exploitation. C onvincing the ruling class that it is wicked and unjust might be theoretically possible but, realistically, the chances are negligible. We can hope to convince the mass of people who are being victimized by the State. But, we cannot hope to convince those who are gaining by it.

Beyond education lies the problem of finding ways to remove State power from society. The particular means—i.e. voting, alternative institutions, or massive refusal to cooperate, etc—depends on the conditions existing at the time. As long as they are consistent with the principles of a purely free society, the specific tactics to be used are a matter of “pragmatism, judgment, and the inexact ‘art' of the tactician.”

Which Groups?

Education is the main strategic problem for the foreseeable future. The question is who are the most likely prospects for conversion?

Conservatives place their hopes in big business. Some see big business as being “persecuted” but, the fact is that they constantly jostle each other for a favorable place at the public trough. Do you really think that Lockheed feels persecuted?

Government support for the Corporate Welfare-Warfare State is open and blatant. Big businessmen admire statism. They are "corporate liberals" because they know a good thing when they see it—not because they have been contaminated by intellectuals.

Big businessmen use the powers of State contracts, subsidies and cartelization to carve out privileges for themselves. They have used the vast network of government regulatory agencies to cartelize each industry on behalf of the large firms and at the expense of the public. All these regulations were conceived, written, and lobbied for by these very privileged groups themselves. The reforms of the New Deal were designed to create centralized statism in the form of subsidies and monopoly privileges for business and other favored groups under the rhetoric of establishing a "partnership" between government and industry.

It is vain to expect most big businessmen to convert to a laissez-faire view. On the other hand, when the government confers monopoly privileges on a few large firms, there are numerous other firms who are injured and excluded from the privileges. In other words, privilege implies exclusion. Therefore, there will always be a number of businesses that will have an interest in ending State control. There are a number of businessmen (especially those remote from the privileged "Eastern Establishment") who may be receptive to free-market ideas.

So, as the Marxists put it, w hich groups can we expect to become our proposed "agency for social change"?

Campus youth are generally open to reflection and to considering basic questions of society. They are accustomed to scholarship and abstract ideas while not yet burdened with the narrower vision of adult employment.

The media has potential because the consistency of libertarianism attracts people who are alert to new social and political trends. While originally liberals, they are aware of the growing failures and breakdowns of Establishment liberalism. But, they are not attracted to the hostile conservative movement which automatically writes them off as leftists. And finally, they are extremely important in their influence on the rest of the public.

Then there is the aggravated and chronic discontent that afflicts the mass of " Middle America "— the bulk of the American population. We can show them that government and statism have been responsible for evils such as rising taxes, inflation, urban congestion, crime, welfare scandals and so fourth.

We can offer small businessmen free-enterprise with no monopoly privileges, cartels, ominous regulations or subsidies engineered by the State.

We can show ethnic and minority groups that only liberty brings full freedom for each group to “cultivate its concerns and to run its own institutions, unimpeded and un-coerced by majority rule.”

In short, libertarianism has a multi-class appeal that cuts across race, occupation, economic class, and the generations—i.e. an appeal to all people not directly in the ruling elite.

It is a fact of life that as long as things are going well, most people do not develop any interest in public affairs. There must be a “crisis situation,” a breakdown of the existing system, for radical social change to take place. When that happens, “activists must be available to supply that radical alternative, to relate the crisis to the inherent defects of the system itself, and to point out how the alternative system would solve the existing crisis and prevent any similar breakdowns in the future.”

Decay in the will of the ruling elite is a requirement for radical change. Fortunately, a characteristic of any crisis situation is that the ruling elite's supports for the system weakens and the State loses some of its zest for rule—a failure of nerve so to speak.

Why Liberty Will Win

Many libertarians are pessimistic about the prospects for liberty. This pessimism may deepen if we survey the history of man and his dark record of despotism, tyranny, and exploitation in civilization after civilization. But this would be what the Marxists call "impressionism"—a superficial focus on historical events without a deeper analysis of the laws that caused them.

In the longest-run, libertarianism will win because it is the only philosophy compatible with the nature of man and of world. Only liberty can bring prosperity, fulfillment, and happiness. Libertarianism will win because it is it is the true and correct policy for mankind and truth eventually wins out. But that may take a very long time indeed. Fortunately, there is a shorter-run reason for hope. To writ:

History took a great leap when the classical liberal revolutions of the 18 th and 19 th centuries propelled us into the Industrial Revolution. Until then, there was no reason why, in the pre-industrial, peasant economy, despotism could not continue indefinitely. Peasants grew the food and feudal landlords extracted the entire surplus above that necessary to keep them alive and working. Such agrarian despotism could survive for two reasons: (1) the subsistence level economy could readily be maintained and (2) because the masses knew no better.

But the Industrial Revolution was indeed a great leap in that it created irreversible conditions and expectations by raising the standard of living of for masses from subsistence to unheard of levels.

A return to an agrarian society would mean starvation. We are stuck with the industrial age.

Economic science has shown…that only freedom and a free market can run an industrial economy. While freedom would be desirable and just in a pre-industrial world, it is a necessity in an industrial world . The world will have to adopt freedom and free markets for industry to survive and flourish. Ludwig von Mises demonstrated that statist intervention distorts and cripples the market and leads to socialism. He also established that socialism is a disaster because of a lack of profit-and-loss incentive, a price system, and property rights. (Editor's Note: the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union supports the accuracy of von Mises contentions.)

The turn of the 20 th century marked the birth of the new despotic forms of socialism and corporate statism. The world would have to wait for the demonstration that these are utter failures. The long run is now here. The ruinous effects of statism are abundantly obvious. The statist chickens are home.

By the turn of the 20th century free-market industrialization had created a cushion of "fat." Government could impose taxes, restrictions, and inflation without quickly reaping the bad effects. But now that cushion is worn thin. The "reserve fund" created by laissez-faire is "exhausted" so that now whatever the government does brings instant negative feedback.

A quick run down of areas of systemic crisis will illustrate the point:

• After 40 years of Keynesian “fine tuning” inflationary depression (inflation coupled with unemployment) first introduced itself in the 1970s and is a continuing menace.
• The New York City debt crises (resulting in a partial default) was only the first of many state and local bond defaults.
• High taxes on income, savings and investment are crippling business productivity. This, combined with inflation, has led to increasing scarcity of capital and a danger of consuming America 's stock of capital.
• Tax rebellions (against high property, income and sales taxes) are sweeping the country.
• The social security system is fully in despair.
• Regulation of industry has been a failure.
• Public schools are generating intense social conflicts over race, sex, religion and content of learning.
• Government practices on crime and incarceration are under fire. The policy of trying to “rehabilitate” criminals is an abject failure. There has been a total breakdown of enforcement of laws against drugs and other victimless crimes. Attempts at enforcing these laws are creating a virtual police state.
• The American failure in Vietnam (and now again in the Middle East ) is responsible for the growing realization that the uS government cannot run the world. Yet, American foreign policy remains aggressively globalist.
• The first indication of the breakdown of the mystique and moral groundwork of the American State came with Watergate—the first incident that destroyed the public's “faith in government.” Since then, government has been de-sanctified. No one trusts politicians. Everyone views them with hostility.

The emergence and rapid growth of the libertarian movement is a function of this crisis situation because crisis situations always stimulate interest and a search for solutions.

Toward a Free America

Only libertarians wish to break with all aspects of the liberal State—its welfare and its warfare, its monopoly privileges and egalitarianism, and its repression of victimless crimes.

Only libertarians offer technology without technocracy, growth without pollution, liberty without chaos, law without tyranny, and the defense of property rights in one's person and material possessions.

The enormous success of Marxism was not because of the validity of Marx ideas, but because of the fact that he wove socialist theory into a mighty system. Only libertarianism offers a logical, fully integrated and consistent theory of liberty.

All other theories and systems—socialism, liberalism, conservatism, etc—have been tried and all have proven to be failures. That only leaves liberty. Here is to freedom in our lifetimes.

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