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LIBERTARIANISM: BOGUS ANARCHY
Peter Sabatini
A distinct mainstream movement specific to the
United States, Libertarianism had its inception during the
1960s. In 1971 it formed into a political party and went on
to make a strong showing in several elections.[1]
Libertarianism is at times referred to as ``anarchism,''
and certain of its adherents call themselves
``anarchists,'' e.g., the economist James Buchanan.[2]
More significant, the work of US individualist anarchists
(Benjamin Tucker et al.) is cited by some Libertarians.[3]
Accordingly, it may rightly be asked whether Libertarianism
is in fact anarchism. Exactly what is the relationship
between the two? To properly decide the question requires a
synopsis of anarchist history.
The chronology of anarchism within the United States
corresponds to what transpired in Europe and other locations.
An organized anarchist movement imbued with a
revolutionary collectivist, then communist, orientation
came to fruition in the late 1870s. At that time, Chicago
was a primary center of anarchist activity within the
USA, due in part to its large immigrant population.4
(Chicago was also where the Haymarket affair occurred in
1886. An unknown assailant threw a bomb as police broke
up a public protest demonstration. Many radicals
were arrested, and several hanged on the flimsiest of
evidence.) Despite off and on political repression, the US
anarchist movement continued in an expansive mode until the
mid-1890s, when it then began to flounder. By 1900, anarchy
was visibly in decline.[5]
But like its counterpart in Europe, anarchism's
marginalization in the United States was temporarily slowed
by the arrival of syndicalism. North American syndicalism
appeared 1904-1905 in the form of a militant unionism known
as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Anarchists
entered the IWW along with revolutionary socialists. The
alliance did not last long. [6] Internal squabbles soon split
the IWW, and for a time there existed anarchist and
socialist versions. Finally, with involvement of the US in
WWI, the anarchist IWW, and anarchism in general, dropped
>from the public domain.[7]
Anarchy in the USA consisted not only of the
Bakunin-collectivist/syndicalist and Kropotkin-communist
strains, but also the Proudhon-mutualist/individualist
variant associated most closely with Benjamin Tucker.
Individualist anarchy actually had a longer history of
duration within the United States than the other two, but
not only because Proudhon preceded Bakunin and
Kropotkin. There were other individualist anarchists
before Tucker who had ties to various radical movements
which predate Proudhon. Within the United States of early to
mid-19th century, there appeared an array of communal
and "utopian" counterculture groups (including the
so-called free love movement). William Godwin's anarchism
exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but
more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles
Fourier. [8] After success of his British venture, Owen himself
established a cooperative community within the United
States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of
this commune was Josiah Warren (1798-1874), considered to be
the first individualist anarchist.[9] After New Harmony
failed Warren shifted his ideological loyalties from
socialism to anarchism (which was no great leap, given that
Owen's socialism had been predicated on Godwin's anarchism).[10]
Then he founded his own commune ("Modern Times") and propounded an
individualist doctrine which nicely dovetailed with
Proudhon's mutualism arriving from abroad.[11] Warren's
activities attracted a number of converts, some of whom
helped to further develop American mutualism. The most
important of these were Ezra Heywood (1829-1893), William
B. Greene (1819-1878), and Lysander Spooner (1808-1887).
The advent of the Civil War put an end to much of the
utopian movement and its communal living experiments.
Individualist anarchism was itself reduced to an agitprop
journalistic enterprise of some measurable popularity.[12]
And in this form it found its most eloquent voice with
Benjamin Tucker and his magazine Liberty. Tucker had
been acquainted with Heywood and other individualist
anarchists, and he subsequently converted to
mutualism.[13] Thereafter he served as the movement's chief
polemist and guiding hand.
The Proudhonist anarchy that Tucker represented was
largely superseded in Europe by revolutionary collectivism
and anarcho-communism. The same changeover occurred in
the US, although mainly among subgroups of working class
immigrants who were settling in urban areas. For these
recent immigrants caught up in tenuous circumstances within
the vortex of emerging corporate capitalism, a
revolutionary anarchy had greater relevancy than go slow
mutualism. On the other hand, individualist anarchism also
persisted within the United States because it had the
support of a different (more established, middle class, and
formally educated) audience that represented the earlier
stream of indigenous North American radicalism reflecting
this region's unique, and rapidly fading, decentralized
economic development. Although individualist and communist
anarchy are fundamentally one and the same doctrine, their
respective supporters still ended up at loggerheads over
tactical differences. [14] But in any event, the clash between
the two variants was ultimately resolved by factors
beyond their control. Just as anarcho-communism entered a
political twilight zone in the 1890s, American mutualism did
likewise. Tucker's bookstore operation burned down in 1908,
and this not only terminated publication of Liberty, but
also what remained of the individualist anarchism
``movement.'' The aggregate of support upon which this thread
of thought had depended was already in dissipation.[15]
Individualist anarchy after 1900 receded rapidly to the
radical outback.
What then does any of this have to do with
Libertarianism? In effect, nothing, aside from a few
unsupported claims. Libertarianism is not
anarchism, but actually a form of liberalism. It does,
however, have a point of origin that is traceable to
the same juncture as anarchism's marginalization.
So in this limited sense there is a shared commonality. To be
more precise, the rapid industrialization that
occurred within the United States after the Civil War
went hand in glove with a sizable expansion of the
American state.[16] At the turn of the century, local
entrepreneurial (proprietorship/partnership)
business was overshadowed in short order by transnational
corporate capitalism.[17] The catastrophic transformation of
US society that followed in the wake of corporate
capitalism fueled not only left wing radicalism
(anarchism and socialism), but also some prominent right wing
opposition from dissident elements anchored within
liberalism. The various stratum comprising the
capitalist class responded differentially to these
transpiring events as a function of their respective
position of benefit. Small business that remained as such
came to greatly resent the economic advantage corporate
capitalism secured to itself, and the sweeping changes the
latter imposed on the presumed ground rules of bourgeois
competition.[18]
Nevertheless, because capitalism is liberalism's raison d'tre,
small business operators had little choice but to blame the
state for their financial woes, otherwise they moved
themselves to another ideological camp
(anti-capitalism). Hence, the enlarged state was imputed as
the primary cause for capitalism's ``aberration''
into its monopoly form, and thus it became the scapegoat
for small business complaint. Such sentiments are found
vented within a small body of literature extending from this
time, e.g., Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, The State (1935);
what may now rightly be called proto-Libertarianism.[19]
As a self-identified ideological movement, however,
Libertarianism took more definite shape from the 1940s
onward through the writings of novelist Ayn Rand. The
exaltation of liberal individualism and minimal
state laissez-faire capitalism that permeates Rand's
fictional work as a chronic theme attracted a cult
following within the United States. To further accommodate
supporters, Rand fashioned her own popular philosophy
(``Objectivism'') and a membership organization. Many
of those who would later form the nucleus of Libertarianism
came out of Objectivism, including two of its chief
theoreticians, John Hospers and Murray Rothbard.[20] Another
conduit into Libertarianism carried a breakaway faction
>from William F. Buckley's college youth club, the Edmund
Burke-style conservative Young Americans For Freedom. [21] More
academic input arrived from the Austrian school of
neoclassical economics promulgated by F.A. Hayek and
Ludwig von Mises (of which the economist Rothbard
subscribes).[22] All these marginal streams intermingled
during the mid to late 1960s, and finally settled out as
Libertarianism in the early 1970s.[23]
It is no coincidence that Libertarianism solidified and
conspicuously appeared on the scene just after the United
States entered an economic downturn (at the same time
Keynesian economics was discredited and neoclassical
theory staged a comeback). The world-wide retrenchment of
capitalism that began in the late 1960s broke the
ideological strangle hold of a particular variant of
(Locke-Rousseau) liberalism, thereby allowing the public
airing of other (Locke-Burke) strains representing
disaffected elements within the capitalist class,
including small business interests. Libertarianism was
one aspect of this New Right offensive. It appeared to be
something sui generis. Libertarianism provided a
simplistic status quo explanation to an anxious
middle class threatened by the unfathomed malaise of
capitalism and growing societal deterioration, i.e.,
blame the state. And this prevalent grasping at straws
attitude accounts for the success of Robert Nozick's
popularization of Libertarianism, Anarchy,
State, And Utopia (1974). It rode the crest of this polemic
rift within liberalism. The book was deemed controversial,
even extreme, by establishment liberals (and social democrats
long pacified by the welfare state), who, secure in power
for decades, were now under sustained attack by their own
right wing. Yet at bedrock, Nozick's treatise was nothing
more than old wine in a new bottle, an updating of John
Locke.[24]
Libertarianism is not anarchism. Some Libertarians
readily admit this. For example, Ayn Rand, the radical
egoist, expressly disavows the communal individuality of
Stirner in favor of liberalism's stark individualism.[25]
Plus Robert Nozick makes pointed reference
to the US individualist anarchists, and summarily
dismisses them. [26] This explicit rejection of
anarchism is evidence of the basic liberalist ideology that
Libertarians hold dear. But more specifically, within the
movement itself there exist factional interests. [27] There
are Libertarians who emphasize lifestyle issues and civil
liberties (an amplification of John Stuart Mill's On
Liberty). They want the state out of their "private" lives,
e.g., in drug use and sexual activity. Others are chiefly
concerned with economics. They champion laissez-faire/``free-market''/
neoclassical economics, and fault the state for corrupting
``natural'' capitalism. Although both groups despise
the state intensely, neither wants to completely do away
with it. This minimal state position, sufficient by itself
to debar Libertarianism from classification as anarchism,
is embraced by Rand, Buchanan, Hospers, and Nozick. [28] More
revealing, however, is why Libertarians retain the state.
What they always insist on maintaining are the state's
coercive apparatuses of law, police, and military.[29] The
reason flows directly from their view of human nature,
which is a hallmark of liberalism, not anarchism.
That is, Libertarianism ascribes social problems
within society (crime, poverty, etc.) to an inherent
disposition of humans (re: why Locke argues people leave the
``state of nature''), hence the constant need for
``impartial'' force supplied by the state. Human corruption
and degeneracy stemming from structural externalities as a
function of power is never admitted because Libertarianism, like
liberalism, fully supports capitalism. It does not object
to its power, centralization, economic inequality,
hierarchy, and authority. The ``liberty'' to exploit labor
and amass property unencumbered by the state is
the quintessence of capitalism, and the credo of
Libertarianism ne liberalism, all of which is the utter
negation of anarchism.
Lastly to be addressed is the apparent anomaly of Murray
Rothbard. Within Libertarianism, Rothbard represents a minority
perspective that actually argues for the total
elimination of the state. However Rothbard's claim as an
anarchist is quickly voided when it is shown that he only
wants an end to the public state. In its place he allows
countless private states, with each person supplying their
own police force, army, and law, or else purchasing these
services from capitalist venders.[30] Rothbard has no
problem whatsoever with the amassing of wealth, therefore
those with more capital will inevitably have greater
coercive force at their disposal, just as they do now.
Additionally, in those rare moments when Rothbard (or any
other Libertarian) does draw upon individualist anarchism,
he is always highly selective about what he pulls out. Most
of the doctrine's core principles, being decidedly
anti-Libertarianism, are conveniently ignored, and so
what remains is shrill anti-statism conjoined to a
vacuous freedom in hackneyed defense of capitalism. In sum,
the ``anarchy'' of Libertarianism reduces to a
liberal fraud. David Wieck's critique of Rothbard,
applicable to Libertarianism in general, will close this
discussion.
``Out of the history of anarchist thought and action
Rothbard has pulled forth a single thread, the thread of
individualism, and defines that individualism in a way
alien even to the spirit of a Max Stirner or a Benjamin
Tucker, whose heritage I presume he would claim - to
say nothing of how alien is his way to the spirit of
Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and the
historically anonymous persons who through their thoughts and
action have tried to give anarchism a living meaning.
Out of this thread Rothbard manufactures one more
bourgeois ideology.''[31]
END NOTES
1 David DeLeon, The American As Anarchist:
Reflections On Indigenous Radicalism
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University,
1978), p. 147; Jay Kinney,
``What's Left? Revisiting The Revolution'', in Stewart
Brand, ed., The Next Whole Earth Catalog (Sausalito, CA:
Point, 1980), p. 393;
David Miller, Anarchism (London:
J.M. Dent & Sons, 1984), p. 4.
By itself, the fact that Libertarianism formed a
political party and has attempted to attain power
through the electoral system seriously undermines its claim
to be anarchism.
2 James M. Buchanan, "A Contractarian Perspective On
Anarchy", in J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds.,
Anarchism: NOMOS XIX (New York: New York University,
1978), p. 29. Libertarianism is also referred to as
"anarcho-capitalism" and "philosophical anarchism." The
word "libertarian" was used by French anarchists in the 1890s
as a synonym for "anarchist." Consequently, some
contemporary anarchists refer to themselves and/or anarchy
as "libertarian." But here there is no implied connection
to Libertarianism. Michael P. Smith, The Libertarians And
Education (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), pp. 2, 3.
3 David Friedman, The Machinery Of Freedom: Guide To
Radical Capitalism, Second Edition (La Salle, IL: Open
Court, 1989), pp. 37, 113; Murray Rothbard, For A New
Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 1978), pp. 51-52.
4 Bruce Nelson, Beyond The Martyrs: A Social History of
Chicago's Anarchists, 1870-1900 (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University, 1988), pp. 4, 15, 25; Laurence Veysey,
The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical
Counter-Cultures in America (New York: Harper & Row,
1973), p. 35.
5 Ibid., p. 35.
6 Sima Lieberman, Labor Movements And Labor Thought:
Spain, France, Germany, and the United States (New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1986), p. 247.
Dorothy Gallagher, All The Right Enemies: The Life
and Murder of Carlo Tresca (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University, 1988), pp. 60-61.
7 James Joll, The Anarchists. Second Edition
(London: Metheun, 1979), pp. 201-203; Miller, pp. 134-135;
Terry M. Perlin, Anarchist-Communism In
America, 1890-1914 (Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis
University, 1970), p. 294.
8 John C. Spurlock, Free Love: Marriage and
Middle-Class Radicalism in America, 1825-1860 (New York:
New York University, 1988), pp. 28, 62.
9 James J. Martin, Men Against The State: The
Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America 1827-1908
(New York: Libertarian Book Club, 1957), pp. 14, 17;
William O. Reichert, Partisans Of Freedom: A Study in
American Anarchism (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green
University, 1976), p. 66.
10 G.D.H. Cole, Socialist Thought: The Forerunners
1789-1859 (London: Macmillan, 1953), pp. 87-88.
11 Martin, p. 97.
12 Veysey, pp. 35, 36.
13 Edward K. Spann, Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements
for a Cooperative Society in America 1820-1920 (New York:
Columbia University, 1989), p. 146.
14 For example, see the vitriolic exchange between
Kropotkin and Tucker.
Peter Kropotkin, Modern Science And
Anarchism, Second Edition (London: Freedom Press, 1923),
pp. 70-71.
Benjamin R. Tucker, Instead Of A Book, By A Man
Too Busy To Write One (New York: Haskell House, 1969),
pp. 388-389.
15 Martin, pp. 258-259.
16 See, Stephen Skowronek, Building A New American State:
The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities,
1877-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1982).
17 See, Olivier Zunz, Making America Corporate
1870-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990).
18 David M. Gordon, Richard Edwards and Michael Reich,
Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical
Transformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1982), pp. 109, 110.
19 Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State (Caldwell,
ID: Caxton Printers, 1935).
Peter Marshall, Demanding The Impossible: A History of
Anarchism (London: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 560.
Veysey, p. 36.
20 John Hospers, Libertarianism: A Political
Philosophy for Tomorrow (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing,
1971), p. 466.
Ted Goertzel, Turncoats And True Believers:
The Dynamics of Political Belief and Disillusionment
(Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992), pp. 141, 263.
21 DeLeon, pp. 119-123; Micheal G. Newbrough,
Individualist Anarchism In American Political Thought
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of California,
Santa Barbara, 1975), p. 216.
22 Murray Rothbard is the "academic vice president" of
the Ludwig von Mises Institute at Auburn, Alabama, and
contributing editor to its publication, The Free Market.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., ed., The Free Market 11(7-8),
July-August 1993, 1-8.
23 Newbrough, p. 217.
24 John Gray, Liberalism (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota, 1986), pp. xi, 41; J.G. Merquior, Liberalism: Old
and New (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991), p. 138.
25 Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden, The Virtue of
Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (New York: Signet
Books, 1964), p. 135.
26 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, And Utopia (New York:
Basic Books, 1974), p. 276.
Also see, Tibor Machan, "Libertarianism: The Principle
of Liberty", in George W. Carey, ed., Freedom And
Virtue: The Conservative/Libertarian Debate (Lanham, MD: University
Press of America and The Intercollegiate Studies
Institute, 1984), pp. 40-41.
27 Goertzel, p. 262.
28 Gray, p. 42; Hospers, p. 417; Nozick, p. 276; Rand and
Branden, pp. 112, 113.
29 Hospers, p. 419; Nozick, p. ix; Rand and Branden, p.
112.
30 Murray N. Rothbard, "Society Without A State", in
Pennock and Chapman, eds., p. 192.
31 David Wieck, "Anarchist Justice", in Pennock and
Chapman, eds., pp. 227-228.
[This article appears in issue #41 (Fall/Winter 1994-95) of