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NOTE 15. A Strategy for Liberty

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Chapter 15, A Strategy for Liberty

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Education, Theory and Movement

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And so we have it, a body of truth, sound in theory and capable of application to our political problems, the new libertarianism.

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But now that we have the truth, how can we achieve victory?

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We face the great strategic problem of all radical creeds throughout history.

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There is no magic formula for strategy.

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Any strategy for social change, resting as it does on persuasion and conversion, can

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only be an art rather than an exact science.

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But having said this, we are still not bereft of wisdom in the pursuit of our goals.

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There can be a fruitful theory, or at the very least theoretical discussion of the proper

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strategy for change.

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On one point there can scarcely be disagreement.

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A prime and necessary condition for libertarian victory, or indeed for victory for any social

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movement from Buddhism to vegetarianism, is education, the persuasion and conversion of

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large numbers of people to the cause.

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Human Action in turn has two vital aspects, calling people's attention to the existence

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of such a system, and converting people to the libertarian system.

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If our movement consisted only of slogans, publicity and other attention-getting devices,

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then we might be heard by many people, but it would soon be discovered that we had nothing

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to say, and so the hearing would be fitful and ephemeral.

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Students must therefore engage in hard thinking and scholarship, put forth theoretical and

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systematic books, articles and journals, and engage in conferences and seminars.

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On the other hand, a mere elaboration of the theory will get nowhere if no one has ever

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heard of the books and articles, hence the need for publicity, slogans, student activism,

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lectures, radio and TV spots, etc.

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True education cannot proceed without theory and activism, without an ideology and people

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to carry that ideology forward.

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Thus, just as the theory needs to be carried to the attention of the public, so does the

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theory need people to hold the banner, discuss, agitate, and carry the message forward and

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outward to the public.

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Once again, both theory and movement become futile and sterile without each other.

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The theory will die on the vine without a self-conscious movement which dedicates itself

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to advancing the theory and the goal.

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The movement will become mere pointless motion if it loses sight of the ideology and the

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goal in view.

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Some libertarian theorists feel that there is something impure or disreputable about

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Without a living movement with acting individuals, but how can liberty be achieved without libertarians

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to advance the cause?

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On the other hand, some militant activists in their haste for action, any action, scorn

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what seems to be parlor discussions of theory, yet their action becomes futile and wasted

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energy if they have only a dim idea of what they are being active about.

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Furthermore, one often hears libertarians, as well as members of other social movements,

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bewail that they are only talking to themselves with their books and journals and conferences,

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that few people of the outside world are listening.

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But this frequent charge gravely misconceives the many-sided purpose of education in the

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broadest sense.

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It is not only necessary to educate others.

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Educational self-education is also and equally necessary.

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The core of libertarians must always try to recruit others to their ranks, to be sure.

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But they must also keep their own ranks vibrant and healthy.

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Education of ourselves accomplishes two vital goals.

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One is the refining and advancing of the libertarian theory, the goal and purpose of our whole

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enterprise.

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Libertarianism, while vital and true, cannot be merely graven in stone tablets.

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It must be a living theory, advancing through writing and discussion, and through refuting

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and combating errors as they arise.

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The libertarian movement has dozens of small newsletters and magazines, ranging from mimeographed

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sheets to slick publications, constantly emerging and dying.

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This is a sign of a healthy growing movement, a movement that consists of countless individuals

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thinking, arguing and contributing.

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But there is another critical reason for talking to ourselves, even if that were all the talking

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that was going on, and that is reinforcement, the psychologically necessary knowledge that

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there are other people of like mind to talk to, argue with, and generally communicate

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and interact with.

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At present, the libertarian creed is still that of a relatively small minority, and furthermore,

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it proposes radical changes in the status quo.

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Hence, it is bound to be a lonely creed, and the reinforcement of having a movement of

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talking to ourselves can combat and overcome that isolation.

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The contemporary movement is now old enough to have had a host of defectors.

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Analysis of these defections shows that in almost every case, the libertarian has been

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Are We Utopians?

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All right we are to have education through both theory and movement, but what then should

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be the content of that education?

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Every radical creed has been subjected to the charge of being utopian, and the libertarian

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movement is no exception.

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Some libertarians themselves maintain that we should not frighten people off by being

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too radical, and that therefore the full libertarian ideology and program should be kept hidden

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from view.

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These people counsel a Fabian program of gradualism, concentrating solely on a gradual whittling

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away of state power.

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One example would be in the field of taxation.

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Instead of advocating the radical measure of abolition of all taxation, or even of abolishing

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income taxation, we should confine ourselves to a call for tiny improvements, say for a

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two percent cut in income tax.

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In the field of strategic thinking, it behooves libertarians to heed the lessons of the Marxists,

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because they have been thinking about strategy for radical social change longer than any

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The Critics of Libertarian Extremist Principles are the analog of the Marxian right-wing opportunists.

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The major problem with the opportunists is that by confining themselves strictly to gradual

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and practical programs, programs that stand a good chance of immediate adoption, they

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are in grave danger of completely losing sight of the ultimate objective, the libertarian

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goal.

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He who confines himself to calling for a two percent reduction in taxes helps to bury the

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ultimate goal of abolition of taxation altogether.

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By concentrating on the immediate means, he helps liquidate the ultimate goal, and therefore

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the point of being a libertarian in the first place.

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If libertarians refuse to hold aloft the banner of the pure principle of the ultimate goal,

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who will?

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The answer is no one.

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Hence, another major source of defection from the ranks in recent years has been the erroneous

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path of opportunism.

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A prominent case of defection through opportunism is someone we shall call Robert, who became

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a dedicated and militant libertarian back in the early 1950s.

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Reaching quickly for activism and immediate gains, Robert concluded that the proper strategic

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path was to play down all talk of the libertarian goal, and in particular to play down libertarian

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hostility to government.

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His aim was to stress only the positive and the accomplishments that people could achieve

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through Voluntary Action.

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As his career advanced, Robert began to find uncompromising libertarians an encumbrance,

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so he began systematically to fire anyone in his organization caught being negative

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about government.

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It did not take very long for Robert to abandon the libertarian ideology openly and explicitly,

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and to call for a partnership between government and private enterprise, between coercion and

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The Free Market Economist F. A. Hayek, himself in no sense an extremist, has written eloquently

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of the vital importance for the success of liberty, of holding the pure and extreme ideology

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Hayek has written that one of the great attractions of socialism has always been the continuing

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stress on its ideal goal, an ideal that permeates, informs, and guides the actions of all those

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striving to attain it.

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Hayek then adds,

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We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.

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What we lack is a liberal utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are, nor a diluted kind of socialism,

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but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibility of the mighty, including the trade unions,

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which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible.

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We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence,

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and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization.

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They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote.

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Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may rouse the imaginations

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of large numbers, but a mere reasonable freedom of trade or a mere relaxation of controls

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is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm.

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The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is

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that it was their courage to be utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals

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and thereby an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently

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seemed utterly remote.

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Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing

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state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible

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as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide.

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Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual

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issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of

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our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark.

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But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism

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at its best, the battle is not lost.

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Hayek is here highlighting an important truth and an important reason for stressing the

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ultimate goal, the excitement and enthusiasm that a logically consistent system can inspire,

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who in contrast will go to the barricades for a 2% tax reduction.

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There is another vital tactical reason for cleaving to pure principle.

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It is true that day-to-day social and political events are the resultance of many pressures,

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and the often unsatisfactory outcome of the push and pull of conflicting ideologies and interests.

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But if only for that reason, it is all the more important for the libertarian to keep upping the ante.

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The call for a 2% tax reduction may achieve only the slight moderation of a projected tax increase.

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A call for a drastic tax cut may indeed achieve a substantial reduction.

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And over the years, it is precisely the strategic role of the extremist to keep pushing the matrix of day-to-day action further and further in his direction.

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The socialists have been particularly adept at this strategy.

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If we look at the socialist program, advanced 60 or even 30 years ago, it will be evident that measures considered dangerously socialistic a generation or two ago are now considered an indispensable part of the mainstream of the American heritage.

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In this way, the day-to-day compromises of supposedly practical politics get pulled inexorably in the collectivist direction.

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There is no reason why the libertarian cannot accomplish the same result.

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In fact, one of the reasons that the conservative opposition to collectivism has been so weak

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is that conservatism by its very nature offers not a consistent political philosophy,

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but only a practical defense of the existing status quo enshrined as embodiments of the

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The American tradition. Yet as statism grows and decretes, it becomes by definition increasingly

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entrenched and therefore traditional. Conservatism can then find no intellectual weapons to accomplish

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its overthrow. Cleaving to principle means something more

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than holding high and not contradicting the ultimate libertarian ideal. It also means

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striving to achieve that ultimate goal as rapidly as is physically possible.

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In short, the libertarian must never advocate or prefer a gradual as opposed to an immediate

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and rapid approach to his goal.

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For by doing so, he undercuts the overriding importance of his own goals and principles.

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And if he himself values his own goals so lightly, how highly will others value them?

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In short, to really pursue the goal of liberty, the libertarian must desire it attained by

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the most effective and speediest means available.

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It was in this spirit that the classical liberal Leonard E. Reed, advocating immediate and

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total abolition of price and wage controls after World War II, declared in a speech,

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If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would release all wage and price controls instantaneously, I would put my finger on it and push.

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The libertarian, then, should be a person who would push the button, if it existed, for the instantaneous abolition of all invasions of liberty.

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Of course, he knows, too, that such a magic button does not exist, but his fundamental preference colors and shapes his entire strategic perspective.

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Such an abolitionist perspective does not mean, again, that the libertarian has an unrealistic assessment of how rapidly his goal will, in fact, be achieved.

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Thus, the libertarian abolitionist of slavery, William Lloyd Garrison, was not being unrealistic

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when in the 1830s he first raised the glorious standard of immediate emancipation of the

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slaves. His goal was the morally proper one, and his strategic realism came in the fact

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that he did not expect his goal to be quickly reached.

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We have seen in chapter 1 that Garrison himself distinguished urge immediate abolition as

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As earnestly as we may, it will, alas, be gradual abolition in the end.

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We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow.

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That it ought to be, we shall always contend.

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Otherwise, as Garrison trenchantly warned, gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.

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Gradualism in theory indeed undercuts the goal itself by conceding that it must take

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second or third place to other non- or anti-libertarian considerations, for a preference for gradualism

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implies that these other considerations are more important than liberty.

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Thus suppose that the abolitionist of slavery had said, I advocate an end to slavery but

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only after ten years' time.

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But this would imply that abolition eight or nine years from now, or a fortiori immediately,

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would be wrong, and that therefore it is better for slavery to be continued a while longer.

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But this would mean that considerations of justice have been abandoned, and that the

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goal itself is no longer held highest by the abolitionist or libertarian.

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In fact, for both the abolitionist and libertarian, this would mean they are advocating the prolongation

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of Crime and Injustice.

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While it is vital for the libertarian to hold his ultimate and extreme ideal aloft,

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this does not, contrary to Hayek, make him a utopian.

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The true utopian is one who advocates a system that is contrary to the natural law of human

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beings and of the real world.

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A utopian system is one that could not work even if everyone were persuaded to try to

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to put it into practice.

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The utopian system could not work, that is, could not sustain itself in operation.

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The utopian goal of the left, communism, the abolition of specialization and the adoption

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of uniformity, could not work even if everyone were willing to adopt it immediately.

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It could not work because it violates the very nature of man and the world, especially

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In short, the term utopian in popular parlance confuses two kinds of obstacles in the path

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of a program radically different from the status quo.

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One is that it violates the nature of man and of the world and therefore could not work

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once it was put into effect.

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This is the utopianism of communism.

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The second is the difficulty in convincing enough people that the program should be adopted.

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The former is a bad theory because it violates the nature of man.

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The latter is simply a problem of human will, of convincing enough people of the rightness

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In the deepest sense, then, the libertarian doctrine is not utopian, but eminently realistic,

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because it is the only theory that is really consistent with the nature of man and the

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world.

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The libertarian does not deny the variety and diversity of man.

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He glories in it, and seeks to give that diversity full expression in a world of complete freedom.

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And in doing so, he also brings about an enormous increase in productivity and in the living standards of everyone, an eminently practical result, generally scorned by true utopians as evil materialism.

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The libertarian is also eminently realistic because he alone understands fully the nature of the state and its thrust for power.

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and more.

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In contrast, it is the seemingly far more realistic conservative believer in limited

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government who is the truly impractical utopian.

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This conservative keeps repeating the litany that the central government should be severely

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limited by a constitution, yet at the same time that he rails against the corruption

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of the original constitution and the widening of federal power since 1789, the conservative

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If it fails to draw the proper lesson from that degeneration, the idea of a strictly

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limited constitutional state was a noble experiment that failed, even under the most favorable

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and propitious circumstances.

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If it failed then, why should a similar experiment fare any better now?

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No, it is the conservative laissez-fairest, the man who puts all the guns and all the

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decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, limit yourself

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There is another deep sense in which libertarians scorn the broader utopianism of the left.

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The left utopians invariably postulate a drastic change in the nature of man.

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To the left, man has no nature.

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The individual is supposed to be infinitely malleable by his institutions, and so the

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The Communist Ideal, or the Transitional Socialist System, is supposed to bring about the New

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Communist Man.

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The Libertarian believes that in the ultimate analysis, every individual has free will and

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molds himself.

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It is therefore folly to put one's hope in a uniform and drastic change in people brought

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about by the projected new order.

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The Libertarian would like to see a moral improvement in everyone, although his moral

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Social goals scarcely coincide with those of the socialists.

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He would, for example, be overjoyed to see all desire for aggression by one man against

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another disappear from the face of the earth.

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But he is far too much of a realist to put his trust in this sort of change.

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Instead, the libertarian system is one that will at once be far more moral and work much

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better than any other, given any existing human values and attitudes.

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The more the desire for aggression disappears, of course, the better any social system will

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work, including the libertarian.

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The less need there will be, for example, for any resort to police or to the courts.

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But the libertarian system places no reliance on any such change.

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If then, the libertarian must advocate the immediate attainment of liberty and abolition

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of Statism, and if gradualism in theory is contradictory to this overriding end, what

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further strategic stance may a libertarian take in today's world?

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Must he necessarily confine himself to advocating immediate abolition?

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Are transitional demands, steps toward liberty in practice, necessarily illegitimate?

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No, for this would fall into the other self-defeating strategic trap of left-wing sectarianism.

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For while libertarians have too often been opportunists who lose sight of or undercut

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their ultimate goal, some have erred in the opposite direction, fearing and condemning

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any advances toward the idea as necessarily selling out the goal itself.

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The tragedy is that these sectarians in condemning all advances that fall short of the goal serve

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to render vain and futile the cherished goal itself.

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For much as all of us would be overjoyed to arrive at total liberty at a single bound,

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the realistic prospects for such a mighty leap are limited.

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If social change is not always tiny and gradual, neither does it usually occur in a single

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leap.

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In rejecting any transitional approaches to the goal, then, these sectarian libertarians

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make it impossible for the goal itself ever to be reached.

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Thus the sectarians can eventually be as fully liquidationist of the pure goal as the opportunists themselves.

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Sometimes, curiously enough, the same individual will undergo alterations from one of these opposing errors to the other,

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in each case scorning the proper strategic path.

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Thus, despairing after years of futile reiteration of his purity while making no advances in the real world,

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The left sectarian may leap into the heady thickets of right opportunism in the quest for some short-run advance even at the cost of his ultimate goal.

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Or the right opportunist, growing disgusted at his own or his colleagues' compromise of their intellectual integrity and their ultimate goals, may leap into left sectarianism and decry any setting of strategic priorities toward those goals.

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In this way, the two opposing deviations feed on and reinforce each other, and are both destructive of the major task of effectively reaching the libertarian goal.

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How, then, can we know whether any halfway measure or transitional demand should be hailed as a step forward or condemned as an opportunistic betrayal?

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There are two vitally important criteria for answering this crucial question.

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One, that whatever the transitional demands, the ultimate end of liberty be always held

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aloft as the desired goal.

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And two, that no steps or means ever explicitly or implicitly contradict the ultimate goal.

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A short-run demand may not go as far as we would like, but it should always be consistent

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with the final end.

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If not, the short-run goal will work against the long-run purpose, and opportunistic liquidation

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of libertarian principle will have arrived.

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An example of such counterproductive and opportunistic strategy may be taken from the tax system.

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The libertarian looks forward to eventual abolition of taxes.

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It is perfectly legitimate for him, as a strategic measure in that desired direction, to push

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Push for a drastic reduction or repeal of the income tax.

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But the libertarian must never support any new tax or tax increase.

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For example, he must not, while advocating a large cut in income taxes, also call for

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its replacement by a sales or other form of tax.

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The reduction, or better, the abolition of a tax, is always a non-contradictory reduction

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of State Power and a Significant Step Toward Liberty. But its replacement by a new or increased

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tax elsewhere does just the opposite, for it signifies a new and additional imposition

296
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of the state on some other front. The imposition of a new or higher tax flatly contradicts

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and undercuts the libertarian goal itself. Similarly, in this age of permanent federal

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Deficits, we are often faced with the practical problem, should we agree to a tax cut even

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though it may well result in an increased government deficit?

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Conservatives, who from their particular perspective prefer budget balancing to tax reduction,

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invariably oppose any tax cut which is not immediately and strictly accompanied by an

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equivalent or greater cut in government expenditures.

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But since taxation is an illegitimate act of aggression, any failure to welcome a tax

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cut, any tax cut, with alacrity, undercuts and contradicts the libertarian goal.

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The time to oppose government expenditures is when the budget is being considered or

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voted upon.

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Then the libertarian should call for drastic slashes in expenditures as well.

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In short, government activity must be reduced whenever it can.

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Any opposition to a particular cut in taxes or expenditures is impermissible, for it contradicts

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libertarian principles and the libertarian goal.

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A particularly dangerous temptation for practicing opportunism is the tendency of some libertarians,

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especially in the libertarian party, to appear responsible and realistic by coming up with

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with some sort of four-year plan for destatization.

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The important point here is not the number of years in the plan, but the idea of setting

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forth any sort of comprehensive and planned program of transition to the goal of total

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liberty.

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For example, that in year one, Law A should be repealed, Law B modified, Tax C cut by

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10%, etc.

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In year two, Law D should be repealed, tax C cut by a further 10%, etc.

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The grave problem with such a plan, the severe contradiction with libertarian principle,

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is that it strongly implies, for example, that Law D should not be repealed until the

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second year of the planned program.

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Hence the trap of gradualism in theory would be fallen into on a massive scale.

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The would-be libertarian planners would have fallen into a position of seeming to oppose

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any faster pace toward liberty than is encompassed by their plan.

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And indeed there is no legitimate reason for a slower than a faster pace, quite the contrary.

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There is another grave flaw in the very idea of a comprehensive planned program toward

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liberty.

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For the very care and studied pace, the very all-embracing nature of the program implies

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that the state is not really the common enemy of mankind, that it is possible and desirable

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to use the state for engineering a planned and measured pace toward liberty.

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The insight that the state is the major enemy of mankind, on the other hand, leads to a

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very different strategic outlook, namely that libertarians should push for and accept with

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with alacrity, any reduction of state power or activity on any front.

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Any such reduction at any time should be a welcome decrease of crime and aggression.

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Therefore, the libertarian's concern should not be to use the state to embark on a measured

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course of destatization, but rather to hack away at any and all manifestations of statism

338
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whenever and wherever he or she can.

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In keeping with this analysis, the National Committee of the Libertarian Party in October

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1977 adopted a declaration of strategy which included the following.

341
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We must hold high the banner of pure principle and never compromise our goal.

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The moral imperative of libertarian principle demands that tyranny, injustice, the absence

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of full liberty and violation of rights continue no longer.

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Any intermediate demand must be treated, as it is in the Libertarian Party platform, as

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pending achievement of the pure goal, and inferior to it.

346
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Therefore, any such demand should be presented as leading toward our ultimate goal, not as

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an end in itself.

348
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Holding high our principles means avoiding completely the quagmire of self-imposed obligatory

349
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gradualism.

350
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We must avoid the view that in the name of fairness, abating suffering or fulfilling expectations,

351
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we must temporize and stall on the road to liberty.

352
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Achieving liberty must be our overriding goal.

353
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We must not commit ourselves to any particular order of destatization, for that would be

354
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construed as our endorsing the continuation of statism and the violation of rights.

355
00:33:37.400 --> 00:33:42.320
Since we must never be in the position of advocating the continuation of tyranny, we

356
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should accept any and all destatization measures, wherever and whenever we can.

357
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Thus, the libertarian must never allow himself to be trapped into any sort of proposal for

358
00:33:55.880 --> 00:33:58.720
positive governmental action.

359
00:33:58.720 --> 00:34:03.760
In his perspective, the role of government should only be to remove itself from all spheres

360
00:34:33.760 --> 00:34:41.280
do is add to his support of a tax cut such unprincipled rhetoric as, well, of course,

361
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some taxation is essential, etc.

362
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Only harm to the ultimate objective can be achieved by rhetorical flourishes which confuse

363
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the public and contradict and violate principle.

364
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Is Education Enough?

365
00:34:59.680 --> 00:35:06.000
All libertarians of whatever faction or persuasion lay great stress on education, on convincing

366
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an ever larger number of people to become libertarians, and, hopefully, highly dedicated

367
00:35:11.840 --> 00:35:13.020
ones.

368
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The problem, however, is that the great bulk of libertarians hold a very simplistic view

369
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of the role and scope of such education.

370
00:35:21.720 --> 00:35:27.740
They do not, in short, even attempt to answer the question, after education, what?

371
00:35:27.740 --> 00:35:28.940
What then?

372
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What happens after X number of people are convinced?

373
00:35:32.440 --> 00:35:36.220
And how many need to be convinced to press on to the next stage?

374
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Everyone?

375
00:35:37.220 --> 00:35:38.660
A majority?

376
00:35:38.660 --> 00:35:40.660
Many people?

377
00:35:40.660 --> 00:35:46.380
The implicit view of many libertarians is that only education is needed, because everyone

378
00:35:46.380 --> 00:35:50.340
is an equally likely prospect for conversion.

379
00:35:50.340 --> 00:35:52.900
Everyone can be converted.

380
00:35:52.900 --> 00:35:59.620
While logically, of course, this is true, sociologically this is a feeble strategy indeed.

381
00:35:59.620 --> 00:36:05.900
Libertarians of all people should recognize that the state is a parasitic enemy of society,

382
00:36:05.900 --> 00:36:10.920
and that the state creates an elite of rulers who dominate the rest of us and extract their

383
00:36:10.920 --> 00:36:13.500
income by coercion.

384
00:36:13.500 --> 00:36:18.820
Convincing the ruling groups of their own iniquity, while logically possible and perhaps

385
00:36:18.820 --> 00:36:24.580
is almost impossible in practice.

386
00:36:24.580 --> 00:36:29.580
How much chance is there, for example, of convincing the executives of General Dynamics

387
00:36:29.580 --> 00:36:34.020
or of Lockheed that they should not take government largesse?

388
00:36:34.020 --> 00:36:38.660
How much likelihood is there that the President of the United States will read this book or

389
00:36:38.660 --> 00:36:42.420
any other piece of libertarian literature and then exclaim,

390
00:36:42.420 --> 00:36:46.420
They're right. I've been wrong. I resign.

391
00:36:46.420 --> 00:36:54.420
Clearly, the chances of converting those who are waxing fat by means of state exploitation are negligible, to say the least.

392
00:36:54.420 --> 00:37:03.420
Our hope is to convert the mass of the people who are being victimized by state power, not those who are gaining by it.

393
00:37:03.420 --> 00:37:10.420
But when we say this, we are also saying that beyond the problem of education lies the problem of power.

394
00:37:10.420 --> 00:37:14.680
After a substantial number of people have been converted, there will be the additional

395
00:37:14.680 --> 00:37:20.580
task of finding ways and means to remove state power from our society.

396
00:37:20.580 --> 00:37:26.620
Since the state will not gracefully convert itself out of power, other means than education,

397
00:37:26.620 --> 00:37:29.720
means of pressure, will have to be used.

398
00:37:29.720 --> 00:37:35.600
What particular means or what combination of means, whether by voting, alternative institutions

399
00:37:35.600 --> 00:37:46.640
Depends on the conditions of the time and what will be found to work or not to work.

400
00:37:46.640 --> 00:37:52.280
In contrast to matters of theory and principle, the particular tactics to be used, so long

401
00:37:52.280 --> 00:37:57.720
as they are consistent with the principles and ultimate goal of a purely free society,

402
00:37:57.720 --> 00:38:05.380
are a matter of pragmatism, judgment, and the inexact art of the tactician.

403
00:38:05.380 --> 00:38:08.120
Which Groups?

404
00:38:08.120 --> 00:38:14.380
But education is the current strategic problem for the foreseeable and indefinite future.

405
00:38:14.380 --> 00:38:17.880
An important strategic question is who.

406
00:38:17.880 --> 00:38:23.580
If we cannot hope to convert our rulers in substantial numbers, who are the most likely

407
00:38:23.580 --> 00:38:26.160
prospects for conversion?

408
00:38:26.160 --> 00:38:32.020
Which social, occupational, economic or ethnic classes?

409
00:38:32.020 --> 00:38:36.220
Businesses have often placed their central hopes in big businessmen.

410
00:38:36.220 --> 00:38:41.260
This view of big business was most starkly expressed in Ayn Rand's dictum that big business

411
00:38:41.260 --> 00:38:44.580
is America's most persecuted minority.

412
00:38:44.580 --> 00:38:46.140
Persecuted?

413
00:38:46.140 --> 00:38:50.980
With a few honorable exceptions, big business jostles one another eagerly to line up at

414
00:38:50.980 --> 00:38:52.780
the public trough.

415
00:38:52.780 --> 00:38:59.980
Does Lockheed or General Dynamics or AT&T or Nelson Rockefeller feel persecuted?

416
00:38:59.980 --> 00:39:06.100
Big business support for the corporate welfare warfare state is so blatant and so far ranging,

417
00:39:06.100 --> 00:39:11.620
on all levels from the local to the federal, that even many conservatives have had to acknowledge

418
00:39:11.620 --> 00:39:14.240
it, at least to some extent.

419
00:39:14.240 --> 00:39:20.200
How then explain such fervent support from America's most persecuted minority?

420
00:39:20.200 --> 00:39:26.180
The only way out for conservatives is to assume, A, that these businessmen are dumb and don't

421
00:39:26.180 --> 00:39:31.660
not understand their own economic interests, and or, b, that they have been brainwashed

422
00:39:31.660 --> 00:39:38.580
by left liberal intellectuals who have poisoned their souls with guilt and misguided altruism.

423
00:39:38.580 --> 00:39:44.300
Neither of these explanations will wash, however, as only a glance at AT&T or Lockheed will

424
00:39:44.300 --> 00:39:46.100
amply show.

425
00:39:46.100 --> 00:39:51.740
Big businessmen tend to be admirers of statism, to be corporate liberals, not because their

426
00:40:21.740 --> 00:40:27.340
Altruism. It is generally admitted even by liberals, for example, that the vast

427
00:40:27.340 --> 00:40:32.620
network of government regulatory agencies is being used to cartelize each

428
00:40:32.620 --> 00:40:38.560
industry on behalf of the large firms and at the expense of the public. But to

429
00:40:38.560 --> 00:40:43.300
salvage their New Deal worldview, liberals have to console themselves with

430
00:40:43.300 --> 00:40:47.660
the thought that these agencies and similar reforms enacted during the

431
00:40:47.660 --> 00:40:56.100
were launched in good faith, with the public wheel grandly in view.

432
00:40:56.100 --> 00:41:02.100
The idea and genesis of the agencies and other liberal reforms were therefore good.

433
00:41:02.100 --> 00:41:07.860
It was only in practice that the agencies somehow slipped into sin and into subservience

434
00:41:07.860 --> 00:41:10.740
to private corporate interests.

435
00:41:10.740 --> 00:41:15.980
But what Kolko, Weinstein, Domhoff and other revisionist historians have shown clearly

436
00:41:15.980 --> 00:41:20.200
and Thoroughly is that this is a piece of liberal mythology.

437
00:41:20.200 --> 00:41:27.200
In reality, all of these reforms on the national and local levels alike were conceived, written,

438
00:41:27.200 --> 00:41:31.940
and lobbied for by these very privileged groups themselves.

439
00:41:31.940 --> 00:41:37.960
The work of these historians reveals conclusively that there was no golden age of reform before

440
00:41:37.960 --> 00:41:39.460
sin crept in.

441
00:41:39.460 --> 00:41:43.560
Sin was there from the beginning, from the moment of conception.

442
00:41:43.560 --> 00:41:49.100
The liberal reforms of the progressive New Deal welfare state were designed to create

443
00:41:49.100 --> 00:41:56.160
what they did in fact create, a world of centralized statism, of partnership between government

444
00:41:56.160 --> 00:42:02.420
and industry, a world which subsists in granting subsidies and monopoly privileges to business

445
00:42:02.420 --> 00:42:06.040
and other favored groups.

446
00:42:06.040 --> 00:42:10.480
Expecting the Rockefellers or the legion of other favored big businessmen to convert to

447
00:42:10.480 --> 00:42:16.280
to a libertarian or even a laissez-faire view is a vain and empty hope.

448
00:42:16.280 --> 00:42:23.040
But this is not to say that all big businessmen or businessmen in general must be written off.

449
00:42:23.040 --> 00:42:29.440
Contrary to the Marxists, not all businessmen or even big businessmen constitute a homogeneous

450
00:42:29.440 --> 00:42:33.480
economic class with identical class interests.

451
00:42:33.480 --> 00:42:39.680
On the contrary, when the CAB confers monopoly privileges on a few large airlines or when

452
00:42:39.680 --> 00:42:46.120
When the FCC confers a monopoly on AT&T, there are numerous other firms and businessmen,

453
00:42:46.120 --> 00:42:51.520
small and large, who are injured and excluded from the privileges.

454
00:42:51.520 --> 00:42:57.960
The conferring of a monopoly of communications on AT&T by the FCC, for example, for a long

455
00:42:57.960 --> 00:43:04.600
while kept the now rapidly growing data communications industry stagnating in infancy.

456
00:43:04.600 --> 00:43:11.100
It was only an FCC decision to allow competition that enabled the industry to grow by leaps

457
00:43:11.100 --> 00:43:13.040
and bounds.

458
00:43:13.040 --> 00:43:18.960
Privilege implies exclusion, so there will always be a host of businessmen and businesses,

459
00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:25.240
large and small, who will have a solid economic interest in ending state control over their

460
00:43:25.240 --> 00:43:26.640
industry.

461
00:43:26.640 --> 00:43:31.520
There are therefore a host of businessmen, especially those remote from the privileged

462
00:43:31.520 --> 00:43:38.720
and Eastern Establishment who are potentially receptive to free market and libertarian ideas.

463
00:43:38.720 --> 00:43:44.240
Which groups, then, could we expect to be particularly receptive to libertarian ideas?

464
00:43:44.240 --> 00:43:50.340
Where, as the Marxists would put it, is our proposed agency for social change?

465
00:43:50.340 --> 00:43:54.880
This is, of course, an important strategic question for libertarians, since it gives

466
00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:59.880
us leads on where to direct our educational energies.

467
00:43:59.880 --> 00:44:04.920
This youth is one group that has been prominent in the rising libertarian movement.

468
00:44:04.920 --> 00:44:06.800
This is not surprising.

469
00:44:06.800 --> 00:44:11.980
College is the time when people are most open to reflection and to considering basic questions

470
00:44:11.980 --> 00:44:14.040
of our society.

471
00:44:14.040 --> 00:44:19.800
As youth enamored of consistency and unvarnished truth, as collegians accustomed to a world

472
00:44:19.800 --> 00:44:25.640
of scholarship and abstract ideas, and not yet burdened with the care and the often narrower

473
00:44:25.640 --> 00:44:32.640
and the provision of adult employment, these youngsters provide a fertile field for libertarian conversion.

474
00:44:32.640 --> 00:44:37.640
We can expect far greater growth of libertarianism on the nation's campuses in the future,

475
00:44:37.640 --> 00:44:46.640
a growth that is already being matched by the adherence of an expanding number of young scholars, professors and graduate students.

476
00:44:46.640 --> 00:44:53.640
Youth in general should also be attracted by the libertarian position on subjects that are often closest to their concerns,

477
00:44:53.640 --> 00:45:05.640
Specifically, our call for complete abolition of the draft, withdrawal from the Cold War, civil liberties for everyone, and legalization of drugs and other victimless crimes.

478
00:45:05.640 --> 00:45:11.640
The media, too, have proved to be a rich source of favorable interest in the new libertarian creed.

479
00:45:11.640 --> 00:45:22.640
Not simply for its publicity value, but because the consistency of libertarianism attracts a group of people who are most alert to new social and political trends,

480
00:45:22.640 --> 00:45:30.640
and who, while originally liberals, are most alert to the growing failures and breakdowns of establishment liberalism.

481
00:45:30.640 --> 00:45:36.640
Media people generally find that they cannot be attracted to a hostile conservative movement,

482
00:45:36.640 --> 00:45:44.640
which automatically writes them off as leftists and which takes uncongenial positions on foreign policy and civil liberties.

483
00:45:44.640 --> 00:45:50.640
But these same media persons can be and are favorably disposed to a libertarian movement,

484
00:45:50.640 --> 00:45:56.160
which wholeheartedly agrees with their instincts on peace and personal liberty, and then links

485
00:45:56.160 --> 00:46:01.480
up their opposition to big government in these areas to government intervention in the economy

486
00:46:01.480 --> 00:46:03.820
and in property rights.

487
00:46:03.820 --> 00:46:09.080
More and more media people are making these new and illuminating connections, and they,

488
00:46:09.080 --> 00:46:13.720
of course, are extremely important in their influence and leverage on the rest of the

489
00:46:13.720 --> 00:46:16.000
public.

490
00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:21.720
What of middle America, that vast middle class and working class that constitute the bulk

491
00:46:21.720 --> 00:46:27.560
of the American population, and which is often at polar opposites from campus youth?

492
00:46:27.560 --> 00:46:29.740
Do we have any appeal for them?

493
00:46:29.740 --> 00:46:34.140
Logically, our appeal to middle America should be even greater.

494
00:46:34.140 --> 00:46:39.560
We direct ourselves squarely to the aggravated and chronic discontent that afflicts the mass

495
00:46:39.560 --> 00:46:48.000
of the American People, Rising Taxes, Inflation, Urban Congestion, Crime, Welfare Scandals.

496
00:46:48.000 --> 00:46:54.000
Only libertarians have concrete and consistent solutions to these pressing ills, solutions

497
00:46:54.000 --> 00:46:59.280
that center on getting them out from under government in all these areas and turning

498
00:46:59.280 --> 00:47:02.920
them over to private and voluntary action.

499
00:47:02.920 --> 00:47:07.620
We can show that government and statism have been responsible for these evils and that

500
00:47:07.620 --> 00:47:13.100
Getting Coercive Government Off Our Backs Will Provide The Remedies.

501
00:47:13.100 --> 00:47:19.700
To small businessmen, we can promise a truly free enterprise world, shorn of monopoly privilege,

502
00:47:19.700 --> 00:47:24.500
cartels and subsidies engineered by the state and the establishment.

503
00:47:24.500 --> 00:47:29.640
And to them and to the big businessmen outside the monopoly establishment, we can promise

504
00:47:29.640 --> 00:47:35.940
a world where their individual talents and energies can at last have full room to expand

505
00:47:35.940 --> 00:47:42.860
and to provide improved technology and increased productivity for them and for us all.

506
00:47:42.860 --> 00:47:47.740
To various ethnic and minority groups, we can show that only under Liberty is their

507
00:47:47.740 --> 00:47:54.020
full freedom for each group to cultivate its concerns and to run its own institutions,

508
00:47:54.020 --> 00:47:58.380
unimpeded and uncoerced by majority rule.

509
00:47:58.380 --> 00:48:03.960
In short, the potential appeal of libertarianism is a multi-class appeal.

510
00:48:03.960 --> 00:48:10.600
It is an appeal that cuts across race, occupation, economic class and the generations.

511
00:48:10.600 --> 00:48:17.700
Any and all people not directly in the ruling elite are potentially receptive to our message.

512
00:48:17.700 --> 00:48:23.160
Every person or group that values its liberty or prosperity is a potential adherent to the

513
00:48:23.160 --> 00:48:26.100
libertarian creed.

514
00:48:26.100 --> 00:48:32.040
Liberty then has the potential for appealing to all groups across the public spectrum.

515
00:48:32.040 --> 00:48:37.240
Yet it is a fact of life that when things are going smoothly, most people fail to develop

516
00:48:37.240 --> 00:48:40.440
any interest in public affairs.

517
00:48:40.440 --> 00:48:46.560
For radical social change, a change to a different social system to take place, there must be

518
00:48:46.560 --> 00:48:49.940
what is called a crisis situation.

519
00:48:49.940 --> 00:48:55.280
There must, in short, be a breakdown of the existing system which calls forth a general

520
00:48:55.280 --> 00:48:58.380
search for alternative solutions.

521
00:48:58.380 --> 00:49:04.420
When such a widespread search for social alternatives takes place, then activists of a dissenting

522
00:49:04.420 --> 00:49:10.000
movement must be available to supply that radical alternative, to relate the crisis

523
00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:15.640
to the inherent defects of the system itself, and to point out how the alternative system

524
00:49:15.640 --> 00:49:21.220
would solve the existing crisis and prevent any similar breakdowns in the future.

525
00:49:21.220 --> 00:49:26.300
Hopefully, the dissenters would also have provided a track record of predicting and

526
00:49:26.300 --> 00:49:30.380
and Warning Against the Crisis that now exists.

527
00:49:30.380 --> 00:49:35.900
Furthermore, one of the characteristics of crisis situations is that even the ruling

528
00:49:35.900 --> 00:49:40.300
elites begin to weaken their support for the system.

529
00:49:40.300 --> 00:49:45.980
Because of the crisis, even part of the state begins to lose its zest and enthusiasm for

530
00:49:45.980 --> 00:49:46.980
rule.

531
00:49:46.980 --> 00:49:51.740
In short, a failure of nerve by segments of the state occurs.

532
00:49:51.740 --> 00:49:57.900
Thus, in these situations of breakdown, even members of the ruling elite may convert to

533
00:49:57.900 --> 00:50:05.220
an alternative system, or, at the least, may lose their enthusiasm for the existing one.

534
00:50:05.220 --> 00:50:10.660
Thus the historian Lawrence Stone stresses, as a requirement for radical change, a decay

535
00:50:10.660 --> 00:50:14.040
in the will of the ruling elite.

536
00:50:14.040 --> 00:50:20.500
The elite may lose its manipulative skill, or its military superiority, or its self-confidence,

537
00:50:20.500 --> 00:50:38.180
Why Liberty Will Win?

538
00:50:38.180 --> 00:50:43.680
Having set forth the libertarian creed and how it applies to vital current problems,

539
00:50:43.680 --> 00:50:49.240
and having sketched which groups in society that creed can be expected to attract and

540
00:50:49.240 --> 00:50:50.920
at what times.

541
00:50:50.920 --> 00:50:55.360
We must now assess the future prospects for liberty.

542
00:50:55.360 --> 00:51:00.600
In particular, we must examine the firm and growing conviction of the present author not

543
00:51:00.600 --> 00:51:06.560
only that libertarianism will triumph eventually and in the long run, but also that it will

544
00:51:06.560 --> 00:51:10.820
emerge victorious in a remarkably short period of time.

545
00:51:10.820 --> 00:51:15.640
For I am convinced that the dark night of tyranny is ending and that a new dawn of

546
00:51:15.640 --> 00:51:18.720
liberty is now at hand.

547
00:51:18.720 --> 00:51:23.700
Many libertarians are highly pessimistic about the prospects for liberty, and if we focus

548
00:51:23.700 --> 00:51:28.860
on the growth of statism in the 20th century and on the decline of classical liberalism

549
00:51:28.860 --> 00:51:36.340
that we adumbrated in the introductory chapter, it is easy to fall prey to a pessimistic prognosis.

550
00:51:36.340 --> 00:51:41.580
This pessimism may deepen further if we survey the history of man and see the black record

551
00:51:41.580 --> 00:51:47.320
of despotism, tyranny, and exploitation in civilization after civilization.

552
00:51:47.320 --> 00:51:52.180
We could be pardoned for thinking that the classical liberal upsurge of the 17th through

553
00:51:52.180 --> 00:51:58.020
the 19th centuries in the West would prove to be an atypical burst of glory in the grim

554
00:51:58.020 --> 00:52:01.740
annals of past and future history.

555
00:52:01.740 --> 00:52:07.260
But this would be succumbing to the fallacy of what the Marxists call impressionism, a

556
00:52:07.260 --> 00:52:12.420
superficial focus on the historical events themselves without a deeper analysis of the

557
00:52:12.420 --> 00:52:16.420
causal laws and trends at work.

558
00:52:16.420 --> 00:52:21.540
The case for libertarian optimism can be made in a series of what might be called concentric

559
00:52:21.540 --> 00:52:27.260
circles, beginning with the broadest and longest run considerations and moving to the sharpest

560
00:52:27.260 --> 00:52:30.300
focus on short run trends.

561
00:52:30.300 --> 00:52:37.100
In the broadest and longest run sense, libertarianism will win eventually because it and only it

562
00:52:37.100 --> 00:52:41.660
is compatible with the nature of man and of the world.

563
00:52:41.660 --> 00:52:46.980
Only liberty can achieve man's prosperity, fulfillment, and happiness.

564
00:52:46.980 --> 00:52:52.520
In short, libertarianism will win because it is true, because it is the correct policy

565
00:52:52.520 --> 00:52:57.480
for mankind, and truth will eventually out.

566
00:52:57.480 --> 00:53:02.700
But such long-run considerations may be very long indeed, and waiting many centuries for

567
00:53:02.700 --> 00:53:07.980
truth to prevail may be small consolation for those of us living at any particular moment

568
00:53:07.980 --> 00:53:09.380
in history.

569
00:53:09.380 --> 00:53:22.380
Fortunately, there is a shorter run reason for hope, particularly one that allows us to dismiss the grim record of pre-18th century history as no longer relevant to the future prospects of liberty.

570
00:53:22.380 --> 00:53:35.380
Our contention here is that history made a great leap, a sea change, when the classical liberal revolutions propelled us into the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.

571
00:53:35.380 --> 00:53:41.120
For in the pre-industrial world, the world of the old order and the peasant economy,

572
00:53:41.120 --> 00:53:47.420
there was no reason why the reign of despotism could not continue indefinitely for many centuries.

573
00:53:47.420 --> 00:53:52.060
The peasants grew the food and the kings, nobles and feudal landlords extracted all

574
00:53:52.060 --> 00:53:57.680
of the peasants' surplus above what was necessary to keep them all alive and working.

575
00:53:57.680 --> 00:54:04.580
As brutish, exploitative and dismal as agrarian despotism was, it could survive for two main

576
00:54:04.580 --> 00:54:10.580
One, the economy could readily be maintained, even though at subsistence level.

577
00:54:10.580 --> 00:54:21.580
And two, because the masses knew no better, had never experienced a better system, and hence could be induced to keep serving as beasts of burden for their lords.

578
00:54:21.580 --> 00:54:30.580
But the Industrial Revolution was a great leap in history, because it created conditions and expectations which were irreversible.

579
00:54:30.580 --> 00:54:43.580
For the first time in the history of the world, the Industrial Revolution created a society where the standard of living of the masses leapt up from subsistence and rose to previously unheard of heights.

580
00:54:43.580 --> 00:54:53.580
The population of the West, previously stagnant, now proliferated to take advantage of the greatly increased opportunities for jobs and the good life.

581
00:54:53.580 --> 00:54:58.580
The clock cannot be turned back to a pre-industrial age.

582
00:54:58.580 --> 00:55:05.580
Not only would the masses not permit such a drastic reversal of their expectations for a rising standard of living,

583
00:55:05.580 --> 00:55:12.580
but return to an agrarian world would mean the starvation and death of the great bulk of the current population.

584
00:55:12.580 --> 00:55:17.580
We are stuck with the industrial age, whether we like it or not.

585
00:55:17.580 --> 00:55:21.580
But if that is true, then the cause of liberty is secured.

586
00:55:21.580 --> 00:55:31.580
For economic science has shown, as we have partially demonstrated in this book, that only freedom and a free market can run an industrial economy.

587
00:55:31.580 --> 00:55:43.580
In short, while a free economy and a free society would be desirable and just in a pre-industrial world, in an industrial world it is also a vital necessity.

588
00:55:43.580 --> 00:55:50.260
For, as Ludwig von Mises and other economists have shown, in an industrial economy, statism

589
00:55:50.260 --> 00:55:52.380
simply does not work.

590
00:55:52.380 --> 00:55:58.140
Hence, given a universal commitment to an industrial world, it will eventually, and

591
00:55:58.140 --> 00:56:03.620
much sooner eventually than the simple emergence of truth, become clear that the world will

592
00:56:03.620 --> 00:56:09.180
have to adopt freedom and the free market as the requisite for industry to survive and

593
00:56:09.180 --> 00:56:10.820
flourish.

594
00:56:10.820 --> 00:56:15.820
It was this insight that Herbert Spencer and other 19th century libertarians were perceiving

595
00:56:15.820 --> 00:56:21.220
in their distinction between the military and the industrial society, between a society

596
00:56:21.220 --> 00:56:24.820
of status and a society of contract.

597
00:56:24.820 --> 00:56:30.660
In the 20th century, Mises demonstrated, A, that all statist intervention distorts and

598
00:56:30.660 --> 00:56:37.980
cripples the market and leads, if not reversed, to socialism, and B, that socialism is a disaster

599
00:56:37.980 --> 00:56:44.060
in particular because it cannot plan an industrial economy for lack of profit and loss incentives

600
00:56:44.060 --> 00:56:49.640
and for lack of a genuine price system or property rights in capital, land and other

601
00:56:49.640 --> 00:56:51.800
means of production.

602
00:56:51.800 --> 00:56:58.140
In short, as Mises predicted, neither socialism nor the various intermediary forms of statism

603
00:56:58.140 --> 00:57:00.900
and interventionism can work.

604
00:57:00.900 --> 00:57:06.760
Hence, given a general commitment to an industrial economy, these forms of statism would have

605
00:57:06.760 --> 00:57:12.520
have to be discarded and be replaced by freedom and free markets.

606
00:57:12.520 --> 00:57:17.700
Now this was a much shorter run than simply waiting for the truth, but to the classical

607
00:57:17.700 --> 00:57:23.440
liberals at the turn of the 20th century, the Summers, Spencers and Pareto's, it seemed

608
00:57:23.440 --> 00:57:29.040
like an unbearably long run indeed, and they cannot be blamed, for they were witnessing

609
00:57:29.040 --> 00:57:34.280
the decline of classical liberalism and the birth of the new despotic forms which they

610
00:57:34.280 --> 00:57:40.920
They opposed so strongly and steadfastly. They were, alas, present at the creation.

611
00:57:40.920 --> 00:57:46.520
The world would have to wait, if not centuries, then at least decades, for socialism and corporate

612
00:57:46.520 --> 00:57:53.580
statism to be shown up as utter failures. But the long run is now here. We do not have

613
00:57:53.580 --> 00:57:58.800
to prophesy the ruinous effects of statism. They are here at every hand.

614
00:57:58.800 --> 00:58:04.200
Lord Keynes once scoffed at criticisms by free market economists that his inflationist

615
00:58:04.200 --> 00:58:07.280
policies would be ruinous in the long run.

616
00:58:07.280 --> 00:58:11.940
In his famous reply, he chortled that in the long run we are all dead.

617
00:58:11.940 --> 00:58:17.780
But now Keynes is dead, and we are alive, living in his long run.

618
00:58:17.780 --> 00:58:21.720
The statist chickens have come home to roost.

619
00:58:21.720 --> 00:58:27.900
At the turn of the 20th century and for decades thereafter, things were not nearly that clear.

620
00:58:27.900 --> 00:58:32.900
Statist intervention in its various forms tried to preserve and even extend an industrial

621
00:58:32.900 --> 00:58:38.460
economy while scuttling the very requirements of freedom and the free market, which, in

622
00:58:38.460 --> 00:58:41.980
the long run, are necessary for its survival.

623
00:58:41.980 --> 00:58:48.140
For half a century, statist intervention could wreak its depredations through planning, controls,

624
00:58:48.140 --> 00:58:54.140
high and crippling taxation, and paper money inflation without causing clear and evident

625
00:58:54.140 --> 00:58:56.940
crises and dislocations.

626
00:58:56.940 --> 00:59:01.900
For the free market industrialization of the 19th century had created a vast cushion of

627
00:59:01.900 --> 00:59:06.140
fat in the economy against such depredations.

628
00:59:06.140 --> 00:59:11.940
The government could impose taxes, restrictions and inflation upon the system and not reap

629
00:59:11.940 --> 00:59:15.440
rapid and evidently bad effects.

630
00:59:15.440 --> 00:59:20.900
But now, statism has advanced so far and been in power so long that the cushion is worn

631
00:59:20.900 --> 00:59:22.260
thin.

632
00:59:22.260 --> 00:59:28.540
As Mises pointed out as long ago as the 1940s, the reserve fund created by laissez-faire

633
00:59:28.540 --> 00:59:34.380
has been exhausted, so that now, whatever the government does brings about an instant

634
00:59:34.380 --> 00:59:41.060
negative feedback, ill effects that are evident to all, even to many of the most ardent apologists

635
00:59:41.060 --> 00:59:43.240
for statism.

636
00:59:43.240 --> 00:59:47.780
In the communist countries of Eastern Europe, the communists themselves have increasingly

637
00:59:47.780 --> 00:59:59.780
In the Western world, too, state capitalism is everywhere in crisis, as it becomes clear that, in the most profound way, the government has run out of money.

638
00:59:59.780 --> 01:00:04.780
Increasing taxes will cripple industry and incentives beyond repair.

639
01:00:04.780 --> 01:00:12.780
In the Western world, too, state capitalism is everywhere in crisis, as it becomes clear that, in the most profound way, the government has run out of money.

640
01:00:12.780 --> 01:00:22.780
Increasing taxes will cripple industry and incentives beyond repair, while increased creation of new money will lead to a disastrous runaway inflation.

641
01:00:22.780 --> 01:00:32.780
And so we hear more and more about the necessity of lowered expectations from government from among the state's once most ardent champions.

642
01:00:32.780 --> 01:00:38.780
In West Germany, the Social Democratic Party has long since abandoned the call for socialism.

643
01:00:38.780 --> 01:00:47.780
In Great Britain, suffering from a tax-crippled economy and aggravated inflation, what even the British are calling the English disease,

644
01:00:47.780 --> 01:00:54.780
the Tory party, for years in the hands of dedicated statists, has now been taken over by a free-market oriented faction,

645
01:00:54.780 --> 01:01:01.780
while even the Labour party has been drawing back from the planned chaos of galloping statism.

646
01:01:01.780 --> 01:01:05.780
But it is in the United States that we can be particularly optimistic,

647
01:01:05.780 --> 01:01:10.780
for here we can narrow the circle of optimism to a short run dimension

648
01:01:10.780 --> 01:01:16.780
indeed we can confidently say that the United States has now entered a permanent crisis situation

649
01:01:16.780 --> 01:01:24.780
and we can even pinpoint the years of origin of that crisis, 1973 to 1975

650
01:01:24.780 --> 01:01:30.780
happily for the cause of liberty not only has a crisis of statism arrived in the United States

651
01:01:30.780 --> 01:01:32.780
The Theory of Money and Credit

652
01:02:00.780 --> 01:02:16.040
Let us quickly run down these areas of systemic crisis and see how many of them dovetailed

653
01:02:16.040 --> 01:02:21.620
in 1973 to 1975 and in the years since.

654
01:02:21.620 --> 01:02:28.380
From the fall of 1973 through 1975, the United States experienced an inflationary depression

655
01:02:28.380 --> 01:02:34.680
after 40 years of alleged Keynesian fine-tuning, which was supposed to eliminate both problems

656
01:02:34.680 --> 01:02:36.580
for all time.

657
01:02:36.580 --> 01:02:42.940
It was also in this period that inflation reached frightening double-digit proportions.

658
01:02:42.940 --> 01:02:49.380
It was, furthermore, in 1975 that New York City experienced its first great debt crisis,

659
01:02:49.380 --> 01:02:52.960
a crisis that resulted in partial default.

660
01:02:52.960 --> 01:02:57.260
The dread name default was avoided, to be sure.

661
01:02:57.260 --> 01:03:03.140
The virtual act of bankruptcy was instead called a stretch-out, forcing short-term creditors

662
01:03:03.140 --> 01:03:07.060
to accept long-term New York City bonds.

663
01:03:07.060 --> 01:03:12.980
This crisis is only the first of many state and local bond defaults across the country,

664
01:03:12.980 --> 01:03:19.020
for state and local governments will be increasingly forced into unpleasant crisis choices between

665
01:03:19.020 --> 01:03:24.400
radical cuts in expenditure, higher taxes that will drive businesses and middle-class

666
01:03:24.400 --> 01:03:54.400
The Theory of Money and Credit The Theory of Money and Credit

667
01:03:54.400 --> 01:04:04.400
The Social Security System, once so sacred in American opinion that it was literally above criticism, is now seen to be as fully in disrepair as it was before.

668
01:04:04.400 --> 01:04:14.400
The social security system, once so sacred in American opinion that it was literally above criticism, is now seen to be as fully in disrepair as it was before.

669
01:04:14.400 --> 01:04:28.400
The social security system, once so sacred in American opinion that it was literally above criticism, is now seen to be as fully in disrepair as libertarian and free market writers have long warned.

670
01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:38.400
Even the establishment now recognizes that the social security system is bankrupt, that it is in no sense a genuine insurance scheme.

671
01:04:38.400 --> 01:04:48.900
Regulation of industry is increasingly seen to be such a failure that even such statists as Senator Edward Kennedy have been calling for deregulation of the airlines.

672
01:04:48.900 --> 01:04:54.900
There has even been considerable talk about abolition of the ICC and CAB.

673
01:04:54.900 --> 01:05:02.400
On the social front, the once sacrosanct public school system has come under increasing fire.

674
01:05:02.400 --> 01:05:15.400
Public schools, necessarily making educational decisions for the entire community, have been generating intense social conflicts over race, sex, religion and the content of learning.

675
01:05:15.400 --> 01:05:21.400
Government practices on crime and incarceration are under increasing fire.

676
01:05:21.400 --> 01:05:26.980
The libertarian Dr. Thomas Szasz has almost single-handedly managed to free many citizens

677
01:05:26.980 --> 01:05:32.900
from involuntary commitment, while the government now concedes that its cherished policy of

678
01:05:32.900 --> 01:05:37.820
trying to rehabilitate criminals is an abject failure.

679
01:05:37.820 --> 01:05:43.480
There has been a total breakdown of enforcement of such drug laws as prohibition of marijuana

680
01:05:43.480 --> 01:05:47.700
and laws against various forms of sexual relations.

681
01:05:47.700 --> 01:05:53.380
is rising across the nation for repeal of all victimless crime laws, that is, laws that

682
01:05:53.380 --> 01:05:57.240
designate crimes where there are no victims.

683
01:05:57.240 --> 01:06:02.740
It is increasingly seen that attempts at enforcement of these laws can only bring about hardship

684
01:06:02.740 --> 01:06:05.200
and a virtual police state.

685
01:06:05.200 --> 01:06:10.640
The time is fast approaching when prohibitionism in areas of personal morality will be seen

686
01:06:10.640 --> 01:06:16.700
to be as ineffective and unjust as it was in the case of alcohol.

687
01:06:16.700 --> 01:06:21.780
Along with the disastrous consequences of statism on the economic and social fronts,

688
01:06:21.780 --> 01:06:27.560
there came the traumatic defeat in Vietnam, culminating in 1975.

689
01:06:27.560 --> 01:06:33.220
The utter failure of American intervention in Vietnam has led to a growing re-examination

690
01:06:33.220 --> 01:06:38.260
of the entire interventionist foreign policy that the United States has been pursuing since

691
01:06:38.260 --> 01:06:41.540
Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

692
01:06:41.540 --> 01:06:47.060
The growing view that American power must be cut back, that the American government cannot

693
01:06:47.060 --> 01:06:53.220
successfully run the world, is the neo-isolationist analogue of cutting back the interventions

694
01:06:53.220 --> 01:06:56.180
of big government at home.

695
01:06:56.180 --> 01:07:02.380
While America's foreign policy is still aggressively globalist, this neo-isolationist sentiment

696
01:07:02.380 --> 01:07:09.220
did succeed in limiting American intervention in Angola during 1976.

697
01:07:09.220 --> 01:07:14.660
Perhaps the best sign of all, the most favorable indication of the breakdown of the mystique

698
01:07:14.660 --> 01:07:23.940
of the American state, of its moral groundwork, was the Watergate exposures of 1973 and 1974.

699
01:07:23.940 --> 01:07:29.340
It is Watergate that gives us the greatest single hope for the short-run victory of liberty

700
01:07:29.340 --> 01:07:31.100
in America.

701
01:07:31.100 --> 01:07:36.740
For Watergate, as politicians have been warning us ever since, destroyed the public's faith

702
01:07:36.740 --> 01:07:43.700
in Government, and it was high time, too. Watergate engendered a radical shift in the deep-seated

703
01:07:43.700 --> 01:07:49.540
attitudes of everyone, regardless of their explicit ideology, toward government itself.

704
01:07:50.260 --> 01:07:55.780
For in the first place, Watergate awakened everyone to the invasions of personal liberty

705
01:07:55.780 --> 01:08:02.180
and private property by government, to its bugging, drugging, wiretapping, mail covering,

706
01:08:02.180 --> 01:08:06.180
Agent Provocateur, even assassinations.

707
01:08:06.180 --> 01:08:13.680
Watergate at last desanctified our previously sacrosanct FBI and CIA and caused them to

708
01:08:13.680 --> 01:08:16.500
be looked at clearly and coolly.

709
01:08:16.500 --> 01:08:21.620
But more important, by bringing about the impeachment of the president, Watergate permanently

710
01:08:21.620 --> 01:08:27.100
desanctified an office that had come to be virtually considered as sovereign by the American

711
01:08:27.100 --> 01:08:28.520
public.

712
01:08:28.520 --> 01:08:32.020
No longer will the president be considered above the law.

713
01:08:32.020 --> 01:08:36.340
No longer will the President be able to do no wrong.

714
01:08:36.340 --> 01:08:42.740
But most important of all, government itself has been largely desanctified in America.

715
01:08:42.740 --> 01:08:46.220
No one trusts politicians or government anymore.

716
01:08:46.220 --> 01:08:51.460
All government is viewed with abiding hostility, thus returning us to that state of healthy

717
01:08:51.460 --> 01:08:57.020
distrust of government that marked the American public and the American revolutionaries of

718
01:08:57.020 --> 01:08:59.520
the 18th century.

719
01:08:59.520 --> 01:09:05.000
For a while it looked as if Jimmy Carter might be able to accomplish his declared task of

720
01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:08.960
bringing back people's faith and trust in government.

721
01:09:08.960 --> 01:09:14.320
But thanks to the Burt Lantz fiasco and to other peccadillos, Carter has fortunately

722
01:09:14.320 --> 01:09:15.320
failed.

723
01:09:15.320 --> 01:09:19.280
The permanent crisis of government continues.

724
01:09:19.280 --> 01:09:24.080
The conditions are therefore ripe, now and in the future in the United States, for the

725
01:09:24.080 --> 01:09:26.000
triumph of liberty.

726
01:09:26.000 --> 01:09:31.520
All that is needed is a growing and vibrant libertarian movement to explain this systemic

727
01:09:31.520 --> 01:09:38.240
crisis and to point out the libertarian path out of our government-created morass.

728
01:09:38.240 --> 01:09:43.000
But as we have seen at the beginning of this work, that is precisely what we have been

729
01:09:43.000 --> 01:09:44.120
getting.

730
01:09:44.120 --> 01:09:49.800
And now we come at last to our promised answer to the question we posed in our introductory

731
01:09:49.800 --> 01:09:51.040
chapter.

732
01:09:51.040 --> 01:09:52.640
Why now?

733
01:09:52.640 --> 01:09:59.120
If America has a deep-seated heritage of libertarian values, why have they surfaced now in the

734
01:09:59.120 --> 01:10:01.920
last four or five years?

735
01:10:01.920 --> 01:10:07.520
Our answer is that the emergence and rapid growth of the libertarian movement is no accident,

736
01:10:07.520 --> 01:10:14.480
that it is a function of the crisis situation that struck America in 1973 to 1975 and has

737
01:10:14.480 --> 01:10:17.320
continued ever since.

738
01:10:17.320 --> 01:10:22.760
These situations always stimulate interest and a search for solutions, and this crisis

739
01:10:22.760 --> 01:10:28.000
has inspired numbers of thinking Americans to realize that government has gotten us into

740
01:10:28.000 --> 01:10:34.080
this mess, and that only liberty, the rolling back of government, can get us out.

741
01:10:34.080 --> 01:10:37.480
We are growing because the conditions are ripe.

742
01:10:37.480 --> 01:10:43.640
In a sense, as on the free market, demand has created its own supply.

743
01:10:43.640 --> 01:10:50.960
And so that is why the Libertarian Party received 174,000 votes in its first try for national

744
01:10:50.960 --> 01:10:53.720
office in 1976.

745
01:10:53.720 --> 01:10:58.920
And that is why the authoritative newsletter on Washington politics, The Barron Report,

746
01:10:58.920 --> 01:11:06.000
a report that is in no sense libertarian-oriented, denied in a recent issue media claims of a

747
01:11:06.000 --> 01:11:10.460
current trend toward conservatism in the electorate.

748
01:11:10.460 --> 01:11:15.660
The report points out, to the contrary, that if any trend in opinion is evident, it's

749
01:11:15.660 --> 01:11:21.020
toward libertarianism, the philosophy that argues against government intervention and

750
01:11:21.020 --> 01:11:23.420
for personal rights.

751
01:11:23.420 --> 01:11:30.120
The report adds that libertarianism has an appeal to both ends of the political spectrum.

752
01:11:30.120 --> 01:11:35.800
Conservatives welcome that trend when it indicates public skepticism over federal programs.

753
01:11:35.800 --> 01:11:40.340
Liberals welcome it when it shows growing acceptance of individual rights in such areas

754
01:11:40.340 --> 01:11:46.740
as Drugs, Sexual Behavior, etc. and increasing reticence of the public to support foreign

755
01:11:46.740 --> 01:11:50.780
intervention.

756
01:11:50.780 --> 01:11:53.900
Toward a Free America

757
01:11:53.900 --> 01:11:59.460
The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past

758
01:11:59.460 --> 01:12:03.100
along with the promise of a far better future.

759
01:12:03.100 --> 01:12:07.540
Even more than conservatives, who are often attached to the monarchical traditions of

760
01:12:07.540 --> 01:12:14.140
of a Happily Obsolete European Past, Libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal

761
01:12:14.140 --> 01:12:20.100
tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual

762
01:12:20.100 --> 01:12:26.980
liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government and a free market economy.

763
01:12:26.980 --> 01:12:33.980
Libertarians are the only genuine current heirs of Jefferson, Payne, Jackson and the Abolitionists.

764
01:12:33.980 --> 01:12:40.300
And yet, while we are more truly traditional and more rootedly American than the conservatives,

765
01:12:40.300 --> 01:12:43.860
we are in some ways more radical than the radicals.

766
01:12:43.860 --> 01:12:48.940
Not in the sense that we have either the desire or the hope of remolding human nature by the

767
01:12:48.940 --> 01:12:55.340
path of politics, but in the sense that only we provide the really sharp and genuine break

768
01:12:55.340 --> 01:12:59.100
with the encroaching statism of the 20th century.

769
01:12:59.100 --> 01:13:03.540
The old left wants only more of what we are suffering from now.

770
01:13:03.540 --> 01:13:09.440
The New Left in the last analysis proposes only still more aggravated statism or compulsory

771
01:13:09.440 --> 01:13:12.740
egalitarianism and uniformity.

772
01:13:12.740 --> 01:13:18.940
Libertarianism is the logical culmination of the now forgotten old right of the 1930s

773
01:13:18.940 --> 01:13:25.880
and 40s, opposition to the New Deal, war, centralization and state intervention.

774
01:13:25.880 --> 01:13:32.100
Only we wish to break with all aspects of the liberal state, with its welfare and its

775
01:13:32.100 --> 01:13:39.260
warfare, its monopoly privileges and its egalitarianism, its repression of victimless crimes, whether

776
01:13:39.260 --> 01:13:42.620
personal or economic.

777
01:13:42.620 --> 01:13:48.620
Only we offer technology without technocracy, growth without pollution, liberty without

778
01:13:48.620 --> 01:13:55.180
chaos, law without tyranny, the defense of property rights in one's person and in one's

779
01:13:55.180 --> 01:13:58.260
material possessions.

780
01:13:58.260 --> 01:14:09.260
The strands and remnants of libertarian doctrines are indeed all around us, in large parts of our glorious past, and in values and ideas in the confused present.

781
01:14:09.260 --> 01:14:18.260
But only libertarianism takes these strands and remnants and integrates them into a mighty, logical and consistent system.

782
01:14:18.260 --> 01:14:27.260
The enormous success of Karl Marx and Marxism has been due not to the validity of his ideas, all of which indeed are fallacious,

783
01:14:27.260 --> 01:14:33.300
but to the fact that he dared to weave socialist theory into a mighty system.

784
01:14:33.300 --> 01:14:39.140
Liberty cannot succeed without an equivalent and contrasting systematic theory, and until

785
01:14:39.140 --> 01:14:45.340
the last few years, despite our great heritage of economic and political thought and practice,

786
01:14:45.340 --> 01:14:50.420
we have not had a fully integrated and consistent theory of liberty.

787
01:14:50.420 --> 01:14:53.340
We now have that systematic theory.

788
01:14:53.340 --> 01:14:59.700
We come fully armed with our knowledge, prepared to bring our message and to capture the imagination

789
01:14:59.700 --> 01:15:03.620
of all groups and strands in the population.

790
01:15:03.620 --> 01:15:07.780
All other theories and systems have clearly failed.

791
01:15:07.780 --> 01:15:12.140
Socialism is in retreat everywhere, and notably in Eastern Europe.

792
01:15:12.140 --> 01:15:16.380
Liberalism has bogged us down in a host of insoluble problems.

793
01:15:16.380 --> 01:15:21.700
Conservatism has nothing to offer but sterile defense of the status quo.

794
01:15:21.700 --> 01:15:24.700
has never been fully tried in the modern world.

795
01:15:24.700 --> 01:15:34.700
Libertarians now propose to fulfill the American dream and the world dream of liberty and prosperity for all mankind.

796
01:15:36.700 --> 01:15:41.700
The Ludwig von Mises Institute hopes that you have enjoyed this audiobook.

797
01:15:41.700 --> 01:15:48.700
For a world of free market literature, media and discussion, visit Mises.org.

798
01:15:51.700 --> 01:15:55.700
The Theory of Money and Credit