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Title: Are Republican “Libertarians” Anarchists? Author: Wayne Price Date: October 2013 Language: en Topics: liberal, FAQ, anarkismo, capital Source: Retrieved on July 2, 2014 from http://anarkismo.net/article/26338?search_text=wayne%20price&print_page=true
Democratic Party politicians have denounced right-wing Republicans as
“anarchists.” Why? Are they “anarchists”? What about rightwingers who
call themselves “libertarians”? Are “anarcho-capitalists” really
anarchists? Are they consistent with the tradition of “individualist
anarchism”?
Historically this is very unusual. Far-rightists have usually been
called “conservatives.” (They are rarely called the more accurate term,
“reactionaries” — those who want to go backward.) Those in the center or
the left may call them other names, such as “nuts” or “fascists.” (They
are mostly not “fascists” in the sense of wanting to overthrow bourgeois
democracy and replace it with a rightwing dictatorship — but they shade
into such people.) But they were rarely, if ever, called “anarchists.”
Why now?
---
A strange thing happened during the October 2013 battle in the US
Congress over a government shutdown and threat of default. The Senate
Majority Leader, Harry Reid, denounced the Republicans as “anarchists.”
So did Elizabeth Warren, one of the most liberal Senators. As did the
editorial page of the New York Times. Other leading politicians and
pundits also called the far-right Republicans (who dominate their party
caucus) “anarchists.”
Historically this is very unusual. Far-rightists have usually been
called “conservatives.” (They are rarely called the more accurate term,
“reactionaries” — those who want to go backward.) Those in the center or
the left may call them other names, such as “nuts” or “fascists.” (They
are mostly not “fascists” in the sense of wanting to overthrow bourgeois
democracy and replace it with a rightwing dictatorship — but they shade
into such people.) But they were rarely, if ever, called “anarchists.”
Why now?
There may be three reasons. One is that the real anarchist movement has
grown and impacted on popular consciousness. Anarchists were part of the
Occupy movement. Calling rightists “anarchists” manages to smear them
with the conventional opprobrium of the left-wing, masked,
bomb-throwing, window-smashing, anarchists (as widely pictured).
Simultaneously it smears real anarchists with the opprobrium of the
far-right politicians. For once, the Democrats have turned the tables on
the Republicans. After all, the latter regularly denounce Obama and the
Democrats as “socialists,” or even “communists” or “Marxists” (leaving
aside “Muslims”). If only.
A second reason is that the far-right is loudly “anti-statist,” due to
its supposed love of “liberty” and “freedom” (but not “democracy” and
certainly not “equality”). The newspapers refer to them as
“libertarians,” meaning pro-capitalist anti-statists (almost no one
knows that “libertarian” once meant socialist-anarchist, and still does
in much of the world). They declare, in the famous words of President
Ronald Reagan, “The government is not the solution; the government is
the problem.” They claim they oppose Obama’s Affordable Care Act because
they want “to keep government out of health care.”
A third reason, I suspect, was that the far-rightists were generally
acting in a destructive, uncompromising, and chaotic fashion. For the
Democratic politicians and editorialists, this brought to mind the
behavior of the “anarchic” anarchists, who are supposedly committed to
chaos, destruction, and ruin.
It is true that the far-right loudly declares its opposition to
government and a love of liberty. An analogy might be seen in 1920s
Germany. Then there were large workers’ parties, the Socialist and the
Communist parties. The far-right organized its own party, which aimed to
draw off some of the discontent channeled through the left parties. It
called itself, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. So it was
“national” and “German” but also “socialist” and “workers” — in short,
“National Socialist” (“Nazi”). But its leaders really aimed to provide
benefits for German big business, not for the workers. (Again, I am not
calling the Republicans “fascist.”) Today, in the US, there is a strong,
valuable, belief in freedom and individual rights, as well as (a wholly
justified) distrust of government. So it makes sense for the right to
claim to represent that anti-government, pro-freedom sentiment, whatever
its real program.
In certain ways the right really is against government. Of course it
opposes taxes, or at least taxes on its core constituency, the wealthy.
It does not agree with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s comment, “Taxes are
the price of living in a civilized society.” It wants others to pay this
price. (An anarchist society would not have taxes because it would not
have either a state or capitalism.)
Further, it is against any use of the government for social benefits for
the middle class, the working class, or the poor. It has opposed every
social program ever implemented, no matter how popular they became: from
Social Security to Aid to Dependent Children to “Obamacare.” They oppose
any government enterprise, no matter how efficient, from the post office
to the Tennessee Valley Authority. The question for them is the class
issue. Benefits for the working class strengthens it, makes it more
independent of the boss class. If the government provided enough
services, then people might ask whether business is necessary, and think
in terms of some sort of socialism.
The right vigorously opposes any sort of government regulation which
effects the rich. Anti-pollution laws may be good for the whole
community, but cut into profits. Worker safety laws, anti-discrimination
in hiring laws, and protection of the right to unionize strengthen the
workers against the owners. All are opposed. They oppose laws against
landlords’ discrimination against African-Americans or GLBT people.
In short, the wealthy do not want to be told what to do with “their”
property or “their” workers. That is what the right’s “anti-state”
program comes down to.
The right also campaigns around any government limitation on gun
ownership. The right raises this topic in order to get support, helping
it to fight for its real, pro-business, agenda. It is almost impossible
in the US to have a sensible discussion about guns at this time, or for
the majority to get its voice heard. Authentic anarchists are not for
banning guns, but might be for some reasonable community regulations for
safety. In any case the right is not for replacing the standing,
official, army with a popular militia, which is what the Second
Amendment is really about — and which anarchists favor.
However, the rest of their program is quite heavily pro-statist. There
are parts of the government which they cannot get enough of.
The Republican Party is strongly for the expansion of the US military
(so are most Democrats). They never see a weapon, or missile, or base
they do not like, especially if it is built or located in their
district. This is consistent with their mostly pro-war stance. Military
spending is actually a huge subsidy to a central group of big
businesses. It is a form of government underwriting of the corporate
economy.
Similarly, the rightists are strongly pro-police and heavily subsidize
police forces, local and national. They support big government snooping
into everyone’s lives through the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and all the
other alphabetical agencies — unless it involves spying on business
secrets. They want a strong police force to prevent immigrants from
coming over the border, and to expel as many immigrants as possible. For
justification, they build up hysteria about war, terrorism, and crime.
(Again, these policies overlap with most Democrats.)
Finally is their use of government to impose their cultural and
religious values on everyone else. To whip up support for their core
program of supporting big business, they deliberately play up cultural
and “moral” issues, especially around sex. They have vigorously
campaigned to outlaw abortion at all stages. They have tried to limit
contraceptives. They have opposed sexual education for youth. They have
sought to suppress homosexuals in every way. These very intrusive
policies are to be carried out through the legislatures, courts, and
police of local and national governments.
This ties in with their effort to use the government to impose (their
version of) Christianity onto everyone, in the form of school prayers,
other public prayers, denial of evolution in the schools, twisting
school curricula in other ways, public displays of Christian symbols,
and open rejection of Islam and other religions. They are also among the
strongest supporters of the drug laws. They campaign for “getting tough
on crime,” that is, more police, more prisons, more executions.
These are not the policies of “anarchists,” nor of “libertarians,”
however you stretch the definitions.
I have been writing of “the right,” “the far-right,” and “the
Republicans.” A conservative reader might object that I have been
melding together a range of people with quite a variety of views. There
is some truth in this complaint. I have been summarizing the
overwhelmingly common views held within today’s Republican Party,
especially its dominant right wing. Yet there are many variants of these
views, often subtle.
For example, Rand Paul and his son Ron Paul are well-known far-right
Republicans, with their own quirks. The oppose the Fed (the central bank
of the US, without which it would not work very well) and want to put US
money back on a “gold standard,” which would no doubt cause a
depression. They call themselves “libertarians” and oppose most of the
laws and rules that let the government spy on US citizens. They oppose
the big military and the US’s current wars. Their pro-civil liberties
and anti-war stance has made them somewhat popular among people who
might otherwise be attracted to anarchism.
Yet they are both strongly against women’s right to choice to have an
abortion if they want. For this, the Rands do not mind having the police
intervene in the most personal of matters. Similarly, they are for
repressive governmental anti-immigration policies. These are hardly
“libertarian” opinions.
There are those who have tried to be more consistent than the Rands or
the Republican right. Calling themselves “libertarians,” they oppose the
big military and overseas wars, are against large police forces, are
against government spying (but are not against all military and police
forces), are for civil liberties and free speech (but not for civil
rights for oppressed people), against government regulation of business,
big or small, against government support of unions, against laws related
to drugs, sex, abortion, and “morality,” etc. They even have a party,
the Libertarian Party. Ron Paul ran for president on the party’s ticket
(a compromise on the part of both, since he does not agree with its
pro-choice position).
Even if these so-called “libertarians” fully reject the pro-state
opinions of the Republicans — they still have an inconsistency. They
reject the big, bureaucratic, centralized state. But they accept big,
bureaucratic, centralized businesses. Why is this any better? Would not
the big corporations of today’s monopoly capitalism work together and be
the new (big, bureaucratic, centralized) state?
Once upon a time, there were small businesses and a weak state. Over
time these businesses evolved into gigantic multinational
semi-monopolies. The weak state also evolved, partly to try to control
the huge businesses for the good of all but mainly to serve the big
businesses for the good of the corporate rich. A magical return to the
days of small businesses and a weak state would just start the cycle all
over.
Finally, there are those who believe in a free-market capitalist
economy, completely unregulated because there is no state at all
(Rothbard 1978). Besides labeling themselves “libertarians,” they have
also called themselves “anarcho-capitalists” or similar terms. That is,
they themselves claim to be “anarchists.”
Anarchism, as a historical movement, has never been simply an
anti-statist struggle. Anarchists have opposed all oppressions, in every
sphere: political, social, familial, religious, and economic. A
hypothetical society without a state but with, say, human slavery, would
hardly be regarded as “anarchist.” In particular, anarchists have always
opposed both the state and capitalism as such. The “anarcho-capitalists”
do not.
Nor would their program work very well. As they see it, the state would
be “replaced” by private security forces, armed rent-a-cops. We could
expect the big corporations to hire the largest private police forces.
Then they would work together to develop common policies, including
coordinating their private police/military forces. This would then be
the new (capitalist) state, in all but name. (Socialist-anarchists also
propose to replace the state’s police and military by voluntary armed
people, so long as it remains necessary. But this would be in a society
of equality, with coordination by workers’ and community assemblies and
councils.)
“Anarcho-capitalism” was created by mixing classical liberalism with
“individualist anarchism.” But there were core aspects of individualist
anarchism which were left out of the mixture.
Benjamin Tucker was a great US individualist-anarchist of the 19^(th)
century. He opposed “state-socialism” and advocated use of the market
rather than planning. But he regarded himself as anti-capitalist and a
“socialist.” He saw anarchism and state-socialism as “the two schools of
socialistic thought” which were “united by the common claim that labor
shall be put in possession of its own” (Tucker, 1966; p. 62). Like
Proudhon, he wanted enterprises larger than an individual to be be
“voluntary associations” (p. 67), self-managed by the workers. “The
anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian democrats” (p. 69). He
based his analysis and his program on the labor theory of value — as it
appeared in various versions in Smith, Proudhon, and Marx. He saw this
as “the basis of a new economic philosophy” (p. 63).
Rothbard and other theorists of libertarian capitalism reject both the
anti-capitalism/pro-socialism of Tucker’s individualist anarchism and
the labor theory of value. They advocate the wage system of capitalism,
where workers work for a boss, who pays them as little as possible and
works them as hard as possible, producing a profit from their labor
(that is, exploiting them). Instead, anarchists advocate self-managed
workers’ associations.
In my opinion, Tucker’s theory (and Proudhon’s) pointed in two
contradictory directions. One was toward revolutionary
socialist-anarchism, as began to be developed by Bakunin and Kropotkin.
(For example, Voltairine de Cleyre developed from a follower of Tucker
to a class-struggle anarchist, without abandoning her basic beliefs —
Brigati 2004.) The other was to pro-capitalist, pro-market, politics.
That is, out of anarchism.
I am usually pretty broad-minded about “who is an anarchist?” questions.
There have been debates among anarchists as whether to include
“primitivists,” “mutualists,” Pareconists, gradualists, etc. In general
I do not care. I would rather argue that, say, “primitivist” anarchists
are wrong on various topics, than argue whether they are anarchists.
(People have accused me of not “really” being an anarchist, due to my
various unorthodoxies, although I think I am in the broad anarchist
tradition.) However, I draw the line at “anarcho-capitalists.” People
who support capitalism may be good people with all sorts of virtues, but
they are not anarchists. As I have shown, even the historical
individualist (pro-market) anarchists believed in a version of
decentralized, libertarian, socialism.
It is a sort of back-handed compliment that even conventional
politicians and editorialists raise “anarchism” as an insult to attack
the far-right Republicans, who present themselves as against the state.
It shows that anarchism has made an impression on society. It is also a
compliment that some supporters of unfettered capitalism declare
themselves to be anarchists. Unfortunately, both uses of anarchism are
misleading. Anarchism is the struggle for the fullest achievement of
freedom in all spheres, the end of the state, of capitalism, of classes,
and of all other oppressions. Nothing else.
Brigati, A.J. (Ed.) (2004). The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader. Oakland CA:
AK Press.
Tucker, Benjamin (1893/1966). “State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far
they Agree and Wherein they Differ.” In Patterns of Anarchy (eds.: L. I.
Krimerman & L. Perry). Garden City NY: Anchor Books/Doubleday. Pp.
61—69).
Rothbard, Murray (1978). For a New Liberty; The Libertarian Manifesto
(revised ed.). NY: Collier Books.