To Rule Is To Destroy
Think of the contest between power and market (in Rothbard's phrase) as two parallel foot races on a track that never ends. One group of runners have worked out rules for how closely they can run to others, which lanes they can stay in, how often they stop for breaks, agreements on what constitutes good behavior and what to do with offenders, and all the rest. Let's call them market runners. But none of these rules apply to the motley crew of runners one lane over. These runners represent the state — the power runners. They see their job as productive interference. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (18)
Beautifully put, Lew!
More than any other pro-freedom site, the Mises Institute has become the premier place to look for creative insights and valuable ideas about liberty.
Best to you and all of the other people at Mises.org!
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/
Published: May 7, 2006 3:44 PM
Good Article by Lew.
However, we still have the "so what?" problem. Yes, the government fails at everything it does, and yes, a fiat currency is the height of despotism. But what are we going to do about it? As Lew points out, education helps. But that CANNOT be enough.
I feel that the single biggest detriment to the cause of liberty today is the lack of any type of plan to get us from A to Z.
The only possible solution I can forsee is secession; we just hold on to our ideals until the Republic grows too despotic, then we leave. We create a new republic, founded on principles quite similar to those found in the Articles of Confederation, then invite other American states to join. We resurrect the legitimate Republic of the United States, based on the revolutionary liberal principles of the American Revolution.
If that's the only possible solution long-term, why not pursue it? We're all very good at pointing out problems, but that's about it.
Published: May 7, 2006 5:48 PM
Does an audio version of this exist?
Published: May 7, 2006 8:51 PM
Hmm mises was right, education and the courage to stand up for the truth is the key that will change the course of the future. Sooo, i suggest that a great focus of the libertarian movement would be to remove the compulsory education law of state and federal governments. Remember that this was the very first major domestic regulation of the U.S. back in 1840 (everything else was foriegn) sooo i the greatest focus be put on educational choice. How did tabor (taxpayer's bill of rights) in colorado get passed, and how can we do that for k-12 education (like an SBOR, Student's Bill of Rights)??
Published: May 7, 2006 9:28 PM
Lew,
Thank you very much, and thanks also to Drs. Hoppe and Gordon and everyone else at the Mises Institute, for putting on the Mises Circle event in Costa Mesa on saturday. This was an excellent speech, and I know the audience was impressed with you. Hopefully this is just the first of many such events here in southern California.
--Daniel
Published: May 7, 2006 11:44 PM
Let the illiberal bubble of the state
Be shrunken where pretense is overweight.
Published: May 8, 2006 8:07 AM
Great speech Lou. Very moving, very wise.
Published: May 8, 2006 8:42 AM
Great Speach. Points out why the Founding Fathers limited the activities of the Federal Government. What they can not regulate, they can no use to control, use to gain bribes or campain donations, can not use to give assistance to friends. Moreover, when the governemtn hires someone to do something, the parties assisted lose their capability, training, and experience in taking care of themselves, leading to more support from the govenment. As pointed out, a truely self supporting process.
Thanks for a great speech.
CDR Price
Published: May 8, 2006 10:59 AM
Lew,
Great speech. It was good to hear it and have this chance to read it also.
It was a pleasure meeting you, others associated with the Mises Institute and some of the contributors to LewRockwell.com, particularly Professor Shaffer.
I hope Orange County continues to be a venue for meetings like these.
FC Bock
Published: May 8, 2006 11:12 AM
While I realize that Mr. Rockwell is often branded an "extremist" by those so-called "libertarians" whose idea of advancing liberty is to suck up to the establishment, I actually think Lew understates the parasitical nature of the state on the rest of society. He's mostly focusing on the economic costs of the state here, which are gargantuan, but he barely addresses some of the other costs like American's imperialist empire and the domestic police state and prison-industrial complex. I'm not criticizing him for this. Only so much ground can be covered in one speech and it sounds like he was speaking mostly to economists, so it makes sense to focus on the economic questions.
I get asked the same questions as Lew all the time: "Why do you want to abolish the government when this is such a free, open, society which so much wealth, opportunity, the government takes care of us, yadda, yadda, yadda,?"
Most of the people who make this argument are typically middle-class persons with little or no direct experience with the full force of the state up close and in person. When I discuss my radically anti-state, anarchist views with persons who do have such experience (like people from the inner-cities), I get much more sympathy.
Nick Bradley raises the issue of strategy. As I recently said in a post on another thread on this blog, this is one of the areas of libertarian thinking that is the most underdeveloped. Perhaps some of the lessons I learned from experience might be helpful here. When I started out in anti-state radicalism nearly two decades ago, I was pretty much an orthodox traditional anarcho-syndicalist influenced by Marxist thought and Noam Chomsky-like "anarcho-social democracy". I used to hold positions in groups like the IWW (Wobblies) and the US section of the IWA (which also includes the Spanish CNT of Spanish Civil War fame). I was a hard-core leftist for about five years and then I started moving away from the left and towards libertarians like Rothbard, Hess and Dr. Thomas Szasz. However, I discovered that libertarians, while being intellectually much superior to the left, had many of the same problems as the left: an orientation towards middle-class radicals, intellectuals, students, youth, bohemians, etc. I think this accounts for many of the weaknesses of the present state of libertarian strategy. Having had this experience with both the left and libertarians, I fell back on my Bakuninist roots. Bakunin argued that an anarchist insurgency would have to be rooted in those social groups with the smallest stake in the present system,i.e., "those with the least to lose".
Persons who have a relatively affluent lifestyle in spite of the state (or because of the state in some cases: we have to consider all of those middle-class persons who make their living staffing state burueaucracies or the bureaucracies of nominally "private" entities who live off the state)obviously have little motivatiion "to take action" against the state. There's not enough for them to gain and too much to lose. Middle-class persons typically favor security and stability, not radicalism or political upheaval.
Anti-state radicals need to direct their message to those with the smallest stake in the present system. This would be those populations who are most under attack by the state on a day-to-day basis, like the residents of the inner-cities, remote rural areas, Indian reservations, immigrants along the border areas, along with the millions of Americans who have family members in prison because of the drug war, disaffected military veterans, those hit the hardest by taxes (the working poor), farmers who have lost their lands because of disastrous federal agricultural policy, etc.
Read the book "Harvest of Rage" by Joel Dyer. It describes the rise of the militia movement of the 1990s from a critical but sympathethic left-liberal perspective. The militiamen were actually putting into practice was many "anarchists" and "libertarians" only talk or fantasize about.
Published: May 8, 2006 11:54 AM
Here's another interesting question: Lew discusses the overwhelming opposition to France's liberalization of employment law. From what I followed of that controversy, libertarians were divided along left/right lines on this question. Kevin Carson discussed this on these posts from his blog:
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/03/in-solidarity-with-students-and.html
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/03/step-in-right-direction-followup.html
My take on the issue? I agree with the "left-libertarian" criticisms of the French law advanced by Carson, Roderick Long, Brad Spangler, etc. but I favor its implementation anyway. Not because it's necessarily an advancement for liberty within the context of state-capitalism, but because the more state-imposed benefits are removed the more the benevolent state notion is dis-inculcated among ordinary people.
I would apply the same idea to the US. Things like Social Security, Medicare, welfare, etc. are used to buy the loyalty of the traditional poor and working class. The welfare state provides things like cushy government jobs and affirmative action to buy off the more affluent minority sectors, left-wing of the middle class, et.al. who are then expected to rally their underclass constituents in support of the state who are made wards of the state via social services, public housing, etc.
Lew notes that the uprising in France came originally from civil servants (i.e., bureaucrats) and the educationists (beneficiaries of the state youth prisons,i.e, public schools whose attendance is mandatory). It is precisely these classes that the welfare state is designed for.
I'm all for removing the aspects of the welfare state directed at those on the low end of the socioeconomic ladder. Then those classes will have nothing rather than little to lose by renouncing the system. That's when the insurgency will begin. Here's an older article of mine where I talk a little more about this question:
http://www.attackthesystem.com/reply.html
Published: May 8, 2006 12:16 PM
Yes, truly a fine speech. I, myself not being there, wonder what the reaction to the closing paragraph was...
As well, as Mr.Preston pointed out: in a speech, as with all else, there are opportunity costs, I wonder why the idea of Government funding of Research at Institutes of higher learning, wasn't called out for its queering effects on the knowledge gained, or, better yet, distributed.
A potential example in link below:
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2006/0508.html
Published: May 8, 2006 12:21 PM
I agree with nick. Education is not enough if based only on theory. You need to set an example and prove that a stateless society is possible and desirable, and step up the propaganda from there.
So for god's sake start a fund to buy a caribbean island as social laboratory, tax haven and future refuge for libertarians when things get too bad.
The only other realistic option to live consistently by libertarian principles in the present is to become a PT, unfortunately not everyone can afford it.
Published: May 8, 2006 1:33 PM
Thanks flix,
I am suprised that nobody else has thrown out ideas on this board. I am afraid that us at LvMI and LRC are educating people, but not much more.
Published: May 8, 2006 3:30 PM
This has to be one of the finest, most cogent, most succinct and most persuasive talks in favor of liberty that I have ever come across. Good job, good job indeed.
Published: May 8, 2006 4:41 PM
You need to set an example and prove that a stateless society is possible and desirable, and step up the propaganda from there.
In fact, there's such society, right in the middle of the USA, and it is growing faster than any other established segment of population in the US; there are over 200000 of them (so it couldn't be dismissed as a small-scale exception). They are strongly religious, and they reject use of violence (not even in self-defence). And they reject the government (though do not resist it).
They are the Amish: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/legal_systems_very_different_06/final_papers_04/baxter_amish_04.htm
Published: May 9, 2006 11:03 PM
impressive
they seem to do quite well without police, govt. justice, social security and the like...
So, no private island, but maybe a small rural community? Galt´s Gulch anyone?
Published: May 10, 2006 6:49 AM
As usual Rockwell is inspiring. Public education is a key to freedom but focused private education has a role to play. Galt's gulch is not necessarily only a physical place. Family patriarchs can build their own relatively free domain. The libertarian school of thought can be lived in the space created when parasites must permit freedom some head in order to allow enough wealth to be created for them to suck on.
Parents can teach their children powerful principles and these principles can be used to create, diversify, and shelter wealth as well as provide a code for progressive living. Small private nation states of freemen can (and do) exist in a world of slaves and slavers, even though it is getting harder to maintain them.
Teaching strong principles within the private business family nation state is indispensable. One of the many reasons principles are indispensable is because powerful families can easily develop contempt for sheeplike people who set the stage for slavers to crush everyones freedom. Members must be continuously reminded that it is more consistent to look for better ways to hide Galt’s gulch than to join the slavers (obviously no one wants to join the slaves). Joining slavers is an act that would undermine a freeman’s principles (and eventually themselves) over time while doing the world no good.
People are already living libertarian principles but in secret where they will never be a visible example to others. But if you look and listen very carefully you can see their adoptable techniques all around. Getting the two types of libertarians together, the ones who live it and the ones who teach it has not happened, probably because the ones who live it (financially at least) will not come out of the woodwork.
Published: May 15, 2006 7:41 AM