Murray Rothbard addresses all the critical questions. Do libertarians believe that individuals are isolated, acting without influence? Are we libertines? Naive rationalists? Utopians? Do we promote selfishness? Before judging and evaluating libertarianism, it is vitally important to find out precisely what that doctrine is, and, more particularly, what it is not.
It is especially important to clear up a number of misconceptions about libertarianism that are held by most people, and particularly by conservatives.
Murray Rothbard enumerates and critically analyzes six of the most common myths that are held about libertarianism. FULL ARTICLE
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Rothbard ROCKS.
“the institution of the state establishes a socially legitimatized and sanctified channel for bad people to do bad things, to commit regularized theft and to wield dictatorial power.
Statism therefore encourages the bad, or at least the criminal elements of human nature.”
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No way, The LACK of regulation and enforcement encourage people to do bad things. Corruption is proportional to the lack of punishment.
When are libertarians gonna get it that people are not angels, and regulation is necessary.
“the institution of the state establishes a socially legitimatized and sanctified channel for bad people to do bad things, to commit regularized theft and to wield dictatorial power.
Statism therefore encourages the bad, or at least the criminal elements of human nature.”
——-
No way, The LACK of regulation and enforcement encourage people to do bad things. Corruption is proportional to the lack of punishment.
When are libertarians gonna get it that people are not angels, and regulation is necessary.
“the institution of the state establishes a socially legitimatized and sanctified channel for bad people to do bad things, to commit regularized theft and to wield dictatorial power.
Statism therefore encourages the bad, or at least the criminal elements of human nature.”
——-
No way, The LACK of regulation and enforcement encourage people to do bad things. Corruption is proportional to the lack of punishment.
When are libertarians gonna get it that people are not angels, and regulation is necessary.
“The state is the only social institution which is able to extract its income and wealth by coercion”
The state is *not* the only institution capable of theft. You can only say that if a state exists to enforce such a monopoly (and even then only if its criminal justice system is 100% effective). Once the barriers to entry are removed (Iraq without Saddam as an example) criminals and other bad actors come out of the woodwork to wreck havoc (including theft) by coercive means.
Well Nelson, Murry Rothbard could reply (if he were still with us) that the criminals were indiviudals rather than an “institution” – and you would reply that there were organizations that were like institutions – and Rothbard would reply that if they ever became institutions with the power to declare their theft legal they had become governments – and you would reply…..
And so it would go on.
However, over all I think you would agree that it was a very good essay by the late Murry Rothbard – refuting a lot of myths about libertarianism.
Although, sadly, these myths still get taught.
Kent Welton, you assess that human nature is “baaad”, out of a special knowledge that most don’t share here on this Mises.org IMHO
The reason is maybe that we are talking basic philosophy and you are talking (sad and limited) experience.
Per definition human nature is what humans cannot prevent to be out of choice. It’s the natural law. Were you to judge this to be bad, you wouldn’t be quite human…
In fact, “Good” and “Human Nature” can only be synonyms, whether you believe in Jesus or not doesn’t matter.
Is a lion “bad” because it kills a sheep? No, nature designed him like that.
Now, certain people believe – and you are one telling us that perhaps – humans were designed to steal and to deceive… but if you were serious, nobody would even one to deal with you. This opinion really is a dead end.
The state is *not* the only institution capable of theft.
To be more precise, the state is the only “legitimate” institution capable of theft. And I can’t think of any criminal institution capable of theft on such a large and continuous scale.
The LACK of regulation and enforcement encourage people to do bad things. Corruption is proportional to the lack of punishment.
Hmm…just like the lack of drug laws led to massive drug abuse? Just like harsh gun control laws hasn’t led to proportional decreases in gun-related crime?
When are YOU people going to understand that law and enforcement of law is not handled very well by giving some people authoritarian powers over other people? Punishment isn’t the solution to crime–restitution is.
Kent, you are perpetuating yet two more myths about libertarianism. First, not all libertarians are anarchists. Libertarianism simply maintains that in general more liberty is preferable to less. If we are to have a state, everyone will be better off in all respects if the state sticks to defending us against violence, rather than trying to regulate every facet of our lives to the nth degree. Second, anarchism, for those that adhere to it, means an opposition to the State, not an opposition to government. History is full of examples of private, traditional systems of defense, law, and dispute resolution. That is the essence of government, is it not? “The Law of the Somalis” by Michael Van Notten gives a good example of this. No, people are not angels. Yes, regulation is necessary. Anarchism maintains, however, that competing agencies providing these services will give better results, and thus promote a better society, than an enforced state monopoly. Your comments fly in the face of Tom Paine’s and FA Harper’s pointed question: If people are so bad, who then can wield State power justly?
Nelson, post-Saddam Iraq has nothing to do with criminality as discussed in this article. What we see there is simply a power struggle over who will pick up the reins of State power and use it to ride roughshod over everyone else. Right now the US-backed group has the upper hand. Rothbard’s point: without a State, there can be no struggle for State power, only isolated gangsterism.
According to Kent, if the State were not prohibiting me, I should be going on a murderous rampage!
“To be more precise, the state is the only “legitimate” institution capable of theft. And I can’t think of any criminal institution capable of theft on such a large and continuous scale. ”
Exactly. It is precisely the illusion of legitimacy with which the State is regarded by its subjects that enables it to carry out its predations on such an enormous scale. Indeed, this is how its exploitations are relatively easy in comparison to ordinary criminals, which by
contrast operate on a rather limited, local scale and operate almost entirely through force and fear of physical violence. States usually resort to violence as a last resort, again because their actions are (falsely) regarded as valid by a sufficiently high number of its subjects.
“Rothbard’s point: without a State, there can be no struggle for State power, only isolated gangsterism.”
Then Rothbard is obviously wrong and fails at logic. Before civilization, there were no states. States exist. Therefore at one or more points in time there *must* have been a struggle for State power without a state.
State power exists in the imaginations of the ruled. When the illuson is dispelled, ‘state power’ is indistinguishable from ‘gangsterism’.
People agree gangsterism sucks. People do not agree the state sucks. This is because people refuse to see (having been deceived, confused, and beaten into submission through a childhood of state education) that they are the same thing.
This is the origin of ‘state power’. It does not pre-exist agression, but grows from it.
Jean Paul, it’s a bit subtler than that. Contrary to received opinion around here, most states don’t start out as gangsters ruling by force and then bullying people into accepting their legitimacy, which reduces the amount of force they have to apply or equivalently extends the reach of the force they have got (with a vicious circle, since their reach determines how much capacity to obtain force they have).
No, most states start out as “our crooks”, defending from recognised gangsters but, fighting fire with fire, become ever more like them. They are initially accepted as saviours, and keep being accepted less from bullying – though that also happens – than from psychological denial on the part of the victims, who are often unwilling to face up to the reality that they have let themselves in for.
Case in point: the rebels were actually doing a frying pan/fire thing in the American War of Independence, and the best outcome to aim for all round would have been mutually agreed reform and letting centralising British power know its practical limits (simple submission would only have encouraged that centralising power, however).
That is true – a lot of states, and especially monarchies, arose organically. Unfortunately, they became the very thing they were meant to protect us from, and in effect their histories are so tainted with blood, that it makes little difference how they came to be.
the myth I always hear is oh if there isn’t a “strong” (meaning more spendthrift not actually strong) central government than all the rich people will take advantage of the poor people, no one will go arrest perverts and they will roam the streets free, the infrastructure will crumble. my response is “as opposed to now?”
you know, ther terrorists will take over the middle east russia and china will move in here and there “as opposed to now?”
IMHO Rothbard’s article explains why whatever little success Libertarianism had in politics was achieved via using it as an economic tool for creating incentives for implementing Conservative values (Reagan, Thatcher) and whatever success it had in literature was achieved via using it as a tool for promoting alternative lifestyles (Heinlein’s approach to sexuality, for example) or objectivistic materialism (Ayn Rand): it is NOT a complete worldview on it’s own. Which I consider a very serious weakness but apparently Rothbard likes it this way.
I appreciate the fact that Mises posted this and the other article about whether or not libertarians are anarchists, because it helped me to figure out where some people are on the libertarian spectrum.
I’ve met two individuals who claim to be libertarians, but they seem to be a strange hybrid of sorts, so I give them a wide berth. Now I understand why…they’re anarcho-communists.
I’ve also found that there are a lot of people who consider themselves to be libertarians; but after you sit down and talk with them, realize that they are anything but. They are reluctant to read even the most basic of literature, and instead prefer to swap the equivalent of sound bites at local bulletin boards.
I admit that much of what gets discussed here is over my head (for now); but when I hear someone say that they don’t care to read any literature because they know EVERYTHING they need to know and then confuse the term “Wasabi” with “Wahabi” when defending their position on the Middle East (which is pro-war), I realize I’m better off here.
Market anarchists/anarcho-capitalists/individualist anarchists and to a lesser extent mutualist anarchists are generally the libertarian anarchists. Anarcho-communists and the like the libertarian socialist anarchists.
I’ll take the socialist anarchist like counterpounch and them over the dems anyday
Ken Zahringer: Your comments fly in the face of Tom Paine’s and FA Harper’s pointed question: If people are so bad, who then can wield State power justly?
Apparently you are unaware that human beings sprout angel’s wings when they go into guvmint service. There is something about heaping additional power onto an already bad human that makes them kinder and gentler than before. Heck, we should all go into guvmint service. If “we” can eliminate the private sector, then evil, in turn, will be eliminated. Eliminate, or be eliminated!
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