The New Left Was Great (Before It Collapsed)
Here is Murray Rothbard's hilarious and exciting story of the rise and fall of the libertarian involvement in New Left politics.
Not only was it militant on the war, but it was also no longer doctrinaire socialist — a pleasant change indeed from the Old Left. On the contrary, its ideology was vague enough to encompass even "right-wing libertarians." In fact, there was a good deal of instinctive libertarian sentiment in that early SDS which was to intensify for the next several years. There was a new hunger for individual freedom, for self-development, and a new concern about bureaucracy and technocratic statism that boded well for SDS's future.
And here was the New Left which, while admittedly inchoate and lacking a constructive theory, was at least arising to zero in on many of the educational evils that we had been denouncing unheeded for over a generation.
FULL ARTICLE
Comments (4)
Kristian Joensen
I really enjoy these articles by Murray Rothbard, what an EXCELLENT writer he was. VERY interesting.
Published: December 14, 2007 11:03 AM
Miklos Hollender
The reason I like to read mises.org is that I think Libertarianism and Conservativism could be, and ought to be, reconciled. After all there isn't such a huge difference between the views of Ludwig von Mises and Michael Oakeshott: it's just that to me it seems Libertarians tend to concentrate on the _mechanisms_ (the market, the goverment, rights and laws) and Conservatives prefer to put this into a broader cultural context: that the bourgois values (which are based on the the Anglo-Scottish Enlightment and the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman values) in people's "hearts and minds" are what (can) make the Libertarian mechanism work.
Despite that I tend to like most of the articles, Murray Rothbard's writings can really piss me off each and every time. In this case:
"a namby-pamby "peace" group like SANE, which always carefully balanced its criticism of the United States and of Russia"
I don't think I need to comment on this. Do I really have to explain why do I find it repulsive?
And I'm not even American.
Published: December 14, 2007 1:41 PM
DS
Finding common cause with socialists set the libertarian movement back decades. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic is always bankrupt. The left's opposition to Vietnam was very simple: it had nothing to do with pacifism or love of their fellow man or some deep aversion to violence. Vietnam was a war to stop the spread of communism; regardless of the realities that is how both the right and the left (both new and old) viewed it. While the "new" left may have been disorganized and "inchoate" that didn't mean that they dreamed of unbridled capitalism in a world without a welfare state. Quite the contrary.
In my view the biggest mistake of Rothbard's life was allowing himself to be used by these "useful idiots", when it should have been the other way around.
The enemy of my enemy is NOT necessarily my friend.
Published: December 15, 2007 9:10 AM
Brainpolice
Not that finding common cause with "conservatives" has been any more fruitful. In my view, the movement has been partially infiltrated with neo-cons on foreign policy and paleo-cons on domestic policy. And these groups have not been "converted" more towards libertarianism, rather, libertarianism has been "converted" more towards them. The official party has also lost its radical edge and has been drifting towards "moderation" for years (see the Portland Purge, in which the platform was spliced and gutted, for a recent example).
The way I see it, one's personal preferences are practically entirely irrelevant to one's compatibility with libertarianism. Libertarianism is about an axis of political vs. voluntary means, while the cultural "left" and "right" can either be compatible or incompatible based on which of these means are persued. Thus, we can have people such as Roderick Long (a feminist, anti-racist with pro-labor sentiments) and Hans Hoppe (a traditionalist and cultural separatist) within the same paradime.
The libertarian can be a socialist, racist, feminist, atheist, fundamentalist christian, primitivist, objectivist, traditionalist, and so on. Pick your fancy. It matters not one whit if it is all voluntaristic. A libertarian society is not a monolithic utopia in which everyone cherishes Judeo-Christian values. It is a pluralistic society by definition, because free association has pluralistic implications due to the vast diversity in people's personal preferences and consumer tastes.
Now, it is of course worthy of debate as to which cultural preferences may be more conductive then others to a libertarian society. But this has no bearing as to wether or not they are able to exist within one. Any non-invasive personal preferences can co-exist in liberty. Some might out-compete others, but only as a result of a peaceful market process.
Published: December 17, 2007 6:47 AM