What Happened?
“come realize that to break once and for all with statism is to break once and for all with the Right-wing.” – Murray Rothbard
In Stop Fronting for Despots, a 1960s “anarchocapitalist” supports Students for a Democratic Society and blasts the “moneybags” who buy out dissent.
Geez, I sure hope the SDS never broke a corporate window. Because that would make Rothbard a vandarcho-capitalist for writing this article, and then who would Stephen Kinsella look up to?
H/T to Nick Manley
May 18th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Personally, I’m a fan of SDS-era Rothbard. But then, he made some paleocon alliances in the 90′s that are more than a bit creepy. This is a demerit in my mind, but I think I can still consider myself a Rothbardian. He never really compromised any principles in his alliances, but he was willing to gauge his rhetoric to suit his intended audience, as when he penned (anonymously) a tribute to Che Guevera in the journal Left and Right, or later when gave a nod to the Bible as the fount of morality in the western world.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Rothbard was definitely badass in the 60s and 70s. My thoughts on what happened to him are that he tried to make any alliance he could to work for liberty, and then when he was older and things didn’t seem to be working he found the palecons shared the same disappointment he did and grew closer to them as he worked with them.
May 21st, 2009 at 2:25 am
I disagree with the revisionism of Rothbard being more effective in the 60′s & 70′s (simply due to being aligned with a different Statist party), & think that if people are going to criticize his alliance with the Statist-Rightist’sm they ought to extend the same courtesy to his alliance with the Statist-Leftist, as neither, to my memory, turned out to be “successes” (although I suppose that depends on what success would be, attempting to sway statists to anti-statist rhetoric & ideas, especially before the Internet’s massive popularity).
I also think it glosses over the fact that Rothbard, as a man, perhaps made mistakes in strategy along the way, which I would think would be apply to both the Left & Right equally, but perhaps the alliance with the Right is more stinging because it persisted towards his later years before he passed away.
On an a side note, I always found this particular interview with SEK very illuminating (thankfully, Google cache has kept a cop of it alive), with respect to how effective said alliancing may have actually been, regarding partyarchy:
[from: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:FyV-hcli-2IJ:www.spaz.org/~dan/individualist-anarchist/software/konkin-interview.html+konkin+interview+rothbard&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a ]
“…Basically, I had expressed the internal contradictions of partyarchy. I simply demanded that the LP apply the same tactics of decentralization and weakening of authority to its own structure as it wish to do to the State. Rothbard and Gary Greenberg led the Centralists who argued that the LP had to have disciplined cadre and a minimum of internal bickering (i.e. debate and dissent). Strangely enough, my approach seemed to appeal more to libertarians than their Leninoid tactic.
Murray Rothbard, viewing the chaos he could no longer control with frustration, pointed to me through the open door of the convention hall and said, “Is he the only other person who understands what’s going on here?”"
For some reason, I always felt this would make a great scene in an independent movie on either Rothbard or the early days of the LP
Btw, Darian, I miss your darker theme, it was much easier to read text
May 21st, 2009 at 8:12 am
I don’t think I really addressed whether Rothbard was more effective in attracting people to libertarianism in the 60s and 70s versus his later life. I do think his work was of a higher quality in the earlier time period though.
Perhaps if I was more of a Rothbard scholar I’d be better able to judge the effectiveness of Rothbard over time. It’s hard to say though considering all the other things that were going on in politics, especially libertarian politics, during those years.
Speaking of Konkin, he has an interesting take on Rothbard in a footnote of New Libertarian Manifesto (on pg 15 of the NLM ebook).
I agree that Rothbard made errors when he praised Che Guevara and the fall of Saigon (if someone has a link to his actual statements, I’d like to see them). I think the rightward shift was worse though because it added cultural baggage that persists, especially in the Mises Institute crowd, and because the right became even less relevant to liberty after the end of the Cold War showed the leaders of the right were more about world domination than about stemming communism. The opposition to Clinton used libertarian rhetoric and had many libertarian elements, but was too eager to oppress after their guys got in power.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:13 am
>I miss your darker theme, it was much easier to read text
Really? I think this theme is easier. Maybe I should change the font to something bolder?
May 21st, 2009 at 9:19 am
>that would make Rothbard a vandarcho-capitalist
You, sir, are genius for coining that term.