Rothbard and the Left and Right

[TheSchoolofAthens]

I just read a short piece by Rothbard, here, where he talks about his experience - and the libertarian experience - working with the old right and the new left hoping to create positive change in the world. First things that come to my mind are my own experience with YAL and SFL because he talks about organizations such as YAF and SDS. Today, YAL stands for Young Americans for Liberty and SFL stands for Students for Liberty. I believe YAF is still around, then and still now it stands for Young Americans for Freedom and SDS stood for Students for a Democratic Society. It is interesting how similar these modern left and right organizations are to these older organizations, even though they are 40 years apart. I mean, even the acronyms are creepily similar. I of course am hopeful that less people in the future will involve themselves in the political process and will instead focus on other causes such as child abuse and peaceful parenting, and teaching logic to children. 

But we are not yet in the future, we are still surrounded by a cesspool of dangerous philosophy and the same tactics and strategies that lead the human race in a direction no where near to freedom and liberty. This is why I am such a big fan of Ayn Rand, Stefan Molyneux, and the FDR community - doses of reason among the irrationality and intellectual murder-suicide of the masses. 

Unfortunately, so many still hold onto this idea of collaborating and making alliances with the left and right by making big tent organizations with attractive libertarian ideas that both irked conservatives and exasperated liberals find appealing. I think that as a community we could communicate for hundreds of pages about why libertarian politics fails - because they can't get lobbying support, because they attract left and right wing people who end up disagreeing on core beliefs and thus the organization or movement disintegrates, etc. - but I am curious as to what exactly Rothbard thought about political action as well as what you guys think about Rothbard's views. 

Please do read the piece, as I am about to post a bit about the conclusion below:
Rothbard's last sentence is both positive and true, "We have it in our power to reclaim the American Dream." I agree with this, but the way he thinks the American Dream - of individual rights and prosperity - is to be achieved is just insane to me. This entire piece is a truly well written, often humorous work, but I can't understand how he can possibly explain how the left and right coalition failed miserably, and then conclude with:

"Just as conservatives and liberals have effectively blended into a consensus to uphold the Establishment, so what America needs now — and can have — is a countercoalition in opposition to the Welfare-Warfare State, a coalition that would favor the short-term libertarian goals of militant opposition to the Vietnam War and the Cold War generally, and to conscription, the military-industrial complex, and the high taxes and accelerated inflation that the state has needed to finance these statist measures. It would be a coalition to advance the cause of both civil liberty and economic freedom from government dictation. It would be, in many ways, a renaissance of a coalition between the best of the Old Right and the old New Left, a return to the glorious days when elements of Left and Right stood shoulder to shoulder to oppose the conquest of the Philippines and America's entry into World Wars I and II. Here would be a coalition that could appeal to all groups throughout America, to the middle class, workers, students, liberals, and conservatives alike. But Middle America, for the sake of gaining freedom from high taxes, inflation, and monopoly, would have to accept the idea of personal liberty and a loss of national face abroad. And liberals and leftists, for the sake of dismantling the war machine and the American Empire, would have to give up the cherished Old Left-liberal dream of high taxes and federal expenditures for every goody on the face of the earth. The difficulties are great, but the signs are excellent that such an anti-Establishment and antistatist coalition can and might come into being. Big government and corporate liberalism are showing themselves to be increasingly incapable of coping with the problems that they have brought into being. And so objective reality is on our side." 

It is as if he has forgotten absolutely everything he just wrote. What are your thoughts on this paper? SDS/SFL and YAF/YAL? Rothbard's views and perhaps his cognitive dissonance? Or whatever else you are inspired to share by this post and the following discussion. 

[shirgall]

What lies at the heart of the evolutionary changes is a sudden shift of the debate to an unexpected place, where the battle lines have not been drawn and fought over for a century. Only a third of the people in the colonies wanted to break away from England, and the American Revolution happened because they manage to force confrontation. They never expected to win and forge a new country.

 

But look at the attempts to move the debate that happened recently: the Tea Party and Occupy. Both started with a dissatisfaction with bailing out Wall Street, and then went in wildly different directions because of the old groups that co-opted them (conservative religionists on one side, and communists on the other). Once co-opted, neither side really did anything useful again, because they returned to the old battle lines that have existed for decades.

 

The anti-Establishment rallying cry in Rothbard's work above reminds me a great deal of the same thing I was hearing when I was young and watching the struggles of Nixon, Carter, and Ford.

[TheSchoolofAthens]

What lies at the heart of the evolutionary changes is a sudden shift of the debate to an unexpected place, where the battle lines have not been drawn and fought over for a century. Only a third of the people in the colonies wanted to break away from England, and the American Revolution happened because they manage to force confrontation. They never expected to win and forge a new country.

 

But look at the attempts to move the debate that happened recently: the Tea Party and Occupy. Both started with a dissatisfaction with bailing out Wall Street, and then went in wildly different directions because of the old groups that co-opted them (conservative religionists on one side, and communists on the other). Once co-opted, neither side really did anything useful again, because they returned to the old battle lines that have existed for decades.

 

The anti-Establishment rallying cry in Rothbard's work above reminds me a great deal of the same thing I was hearing when I was young and watching the struggles of Nixon, Carter, and Ford.

Could you tell me more about such struggles? 

[shirgall]

Could you tell me more about such struggles? 

 

That's kinda broad, but the anti-establishment thing from that era is kinda legendary, don't you think? Maybe it looms larger to me as a child of the late-60s.

[TheSchoolofAthens]

That's kinda broad, but the anti-establishment thing from that era is kinda legendary, don't you think? Maybe it looms larger to me as a child of the late-60s.

Ahh, so the free love, anti war, let's do drugs and live on communes and say fuck the man while at the same time advocate for socialism - that sort of thing? Please excuse any ignorance of mine on this subject as I'm only 19.

[Zerubbabel]

Rothbard's last sentence is both positive and true, "We have it in our power to reclaim the American Dream."

 

 

Yes, but it is his second to last sentence which establishes the premise which he builds this hope upon:

 

"But more than that: the passion for justice and moral principle that is infusing more and more people can only move them in the same direction; morality and practical utility are fusing ever more clearly to greater numbers of people in one great call: for the liberty of people — of individuals and voluntary groups — to work out their own destiny, to take control over their own lives. We have it in our power to reclaim the American Dream."

 

"morality and practical utility are fusing"???   Throughout the history of mankind morality and practical utility usually find themselves at odds with each other. But I do have to admit that sometimes a thing's great usefulness overpowers moral sentiments and creates a morality custom-made to justify the useful thing. 

[J. D. Stembal]

Libertarians are always willing to accept your money to in order play winless political games. The real reason none of the libertarian political action ever worked is because half of their families would be out of a job in a minarchist state among other people. Libertarians discovered that playing the political game was far more profitable then actually doing anything. If Barry Goldwater managed to get elected to the presidency, he would have been ousted by force within weeks if he actually attempted to run the Federal government like a business. Nowadays, liberty political action groups and anti-establishment media are such an entrenched (anti)statist business model that there is no way they actually want to bring about the change they claim to desire.

 

How would Alex Jones afford to keep eating like a welfare queen if the Tea Party got into the White House and slowly dismantled the Federal government from the inside? There is no chance that AJ would be rooting for them. He would have nothing to provoke his trademark haughty cry of "I'm sick of it!"

 

Incidentally, watching Rothbard speeches on Youtube is how I found Stefan Molyneux's The Story of Your Enslavement.

 

On a related note, in the Men's Rights Movement there is a schism or debate between the traditional conservative activists and the sometimes left-leaning Men Going Their Own Way. The older, more traditional voices from the A Voice for Men community are marginalizing the MGTOWs as do-nothing whiners who aren't promoting activism or political action, while the MGTOWs who are typically the younger members of the MRM, eschew political action instead opting to promote their lifestyle as individual ethical philosophy, not as social justice or political agendas. In contradiction, they criticize the traditional conservatives as dinosaurs that still erroneously believe that politics can ever again be a male pursuit when, in fact, it has been drowning in gynocentrism since the feminist movement first got underway nearly one hundred years ago.

 

Of course, there is at least one false dichotomy in there somewhere, but the efficacy and truth of philosophy and first principles will eventually out and resolve the dispute. I mention the schism in MRM because I believe it mirrors the familiar battle lines Shirgall mentions between the old right wing and new left in Rothbard's time.

[J. D. Stembal]

(FDR edit)

 

Oh, Nicholas, if you want to get a feel for the zeitgeist of the late 60s, watch Born on the Fourth of July or The Doors.

 

Are there any documentaries about the anti-war movement in the 1960s? Like Nicholas, I was not yet alive during the Vietnam war. I don't think I've ever seen or heard of one documentary, but it the protest movement is featured prominently in many dramas.

 

http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?genre=Anti-War+Film&decade=1960

 

I found one on Youtube that is a student project.