WEBVTT NOTE 30. Toward a Theory of Strategy for Liberty 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 PART 5. TOWARD A THEORY OF STRATEGY FOR LIBERTY 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:11.000 CHAPTER 30. TOWARD A THEORY OF STRATEGY FOR LIBERTY 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:18.000 The elaboration of a systematic theory of liberty has been rare enough, but exposition of a 4 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:25.000 theory of strategy for liberty has been virtually non-existent. Indeed, not only for liberty, 5 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:31.080 Strategy toward reaching any sort of desired social goal has been generally held to be 6 00:00:31.080 --> 00:00:37.800 catch-as-catch-can, a matter of hit or miss experimentation of trial and error. 7 00:00:37.800 --> 00:00:43.680 Yet if philosophy can set down any theoretical guidelines for a strategy for liberty, it 8 00:00:43.680 --> 00:00:47.160 is certainly its responsibility to search for them. 9 00:00:47.160 --> 00:00:52.880 But the reader should be warned that we are setting out on an uncharted sea. 10 00:00:52.880 --> 00:00:58.240 The responsibility of philosophy to deal with strategy, with the problem of how to move 11 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:04.680 from the present, any present, mixed state of affairs, to the goal of consistent liberty, 12 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:10.280 is particularly important for a libertarianism grounded in natural law. 13 00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:16.460 For as the libertarian historian Lord Acton realized, natural law and natural rights theory 14 00:01:16.460 --> 00:01:23.340 provide an iron benchmark with which to judge, and to find wanting, any existing brand of 15 00:01:23.340 --> 00:01:25.100 statism. 16 00:01:25.100 --> 00:01:31.700 In contrast to legal positivism, or to various brands of historicism, natural law provides 17 00:01:31.700 --> 00:01:38.020 a moral and political higher law with which to judge the edicts of the state. 18 00:01:38.020 --> 00:01:44.900 As we have seen above, natural law, properly interpreted, is radical rather than conservative, 19 00:01:44.900 --> 00:01:49.580 and implicit questing after the reign of ideal principle. 20 00:01:49.580 --> 00:01:55.260 As Acton wrote, classical liberalism wishes for what ought to be, irrespective of what 21 00:01:55.260 --> 00:01:56.260 is. 22 00:01:56.260 --> 00:02:02.320 Hence, as Himmelfarb writes of Acton, the past was allowed no authority, except as it 23 00:02:02.320 --> 00:02:05.020 happened to conform to morality. 24 00:02:05.020 --> 00:02:12.140 Further, Acton proceeded to distinguish between Whiggism and liberalism, between, in effect, 25 00:02:12.140 --> 00:02:18.220 Conservative adherence to the status quo and radical libertarianism. 26 00:02:18.220 --> 00:02:20.900 The Whig governed by compromise. 27 00:02:20.900 --> 00:02:24.660 The liberal begins the reign of ideas. 28 00:02:24.660 --> 00:02:28.580 How to distinguish the Whigs from the liberal? 29 00:02:28.580 --> 00:02:32.860 One is practical, gradual, ready for compromise. 30 00:02:32.860 --> 00:02:36.500 The other works out a principle philosophically. 31 00:02:36.500 --> 00:02:39.400 One is a policy aiming at a philosophy. 32 00:02:39.400 --> 00:02:45.000 The other is a philosophy seeking a policy. 33 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:48.620 Libertarianism, then, is a philosophy seeking a policy. 34 00:02:48.620 --> 00:02:55.000 But what else can a libertarian philosophy say about strategy, about policy? 35 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:00.800 In the first place, surely, again in Acton's words, it must say that liberty is the highest 36 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:06.720 political end, the overriding goal of libertarian philosophy. 37 00:03:06.720 --> 00:03:12.760 Just political end, of course, does not mean highest end for man in general. 38 00:03:12.760 --> 00:03:18.560 Indeed, every individual has a variety of personal ends and differing hierarchies of 39 00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:23.640 importance for these goals on his personal scale of values. 40 00:03:23.640 --> 00:03:30.240 Political philosophy is that subset of ethical philosophy which deals specifically with politics, 41 00:03:30.240 --> 00:03:36.640 that is, the proper role of violence in human life, and hence the explication of such concepts 42 00:03:36.640 --> 00:03:43.360 as Crime and Property. Indeed, a libertarian world would be one in which every individual 43 00:03:43.360 --> 00:03:50.340 would at last be free to seek and pursue his own ends, to pursue happiness, in the Felicitous 44 00:03:50.340 --> 00:03:56.640 Jeffersonian phrase. It might be thought that the libertarian, the person committed to the 45 00:03:56.640 --> 00:04:02.520 natural system of liberty, in Adam Smith's phrase, almost by definition holds the goal 46 00:04:02.520 --> 00:04:06.200 The goal of liberty as his highest political end. 47 00:04:06.200 --> 00:04:08.760 But this is often not true. 48 00:04:08.760 --> 00:04:14.200 For many libertarians, the desire for self-expression, or for bearing witness to the truth of the 49 00:04:14.200 --> 00:04:19.680 excellence of liberty, frequently takes precedence over the goal of the triumph of liberty in 50 00:04:19.680 --> 00:04:21.720 the real world. 51 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:26.640 Yet surely, as will be seen further below, the victory of liberty will never come to 52 00:04:26.640 --> 00:04:32.560 to pass unless the goal of victory in the real world takes precedence over more aesthetic 53 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:35.360 and passive considerations. 54 00:04:35.360 --> 00:04:41.640 If liberty should be the highest political end, then what is the grounding for that goal? 55 00:04:41.640 --> 00:04:47.840 It should be clear from this work that first and foremost liberty is a moral principle, 56 00:04:47.840 --> 00:04:50.360 grounded in the nature of man. 57 00:04:50.360 --> 00:04:55.600 In particular, it is a principle of justice, of the abolition of aggressive violence in 58 00:04:55.600 --> 00:04:57.600 and the Affairs of Men. 59 00:04:57.600 --> 00:05:06.600 Hence, to be grounded and pursued adequately, the libertarian goal must be sought in the spirit of an overriding devotion to justice. 60 00:05:06.600 --> 00:05:15.600 But to possess such devotion on what may well be a long and rocky road, the libertarian must be possessed of a passion for justice, 61 00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:24.600 an emotion derived from and channeled by his rational insight into what natural justice requires. 62 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:31.040 Justice, not the weak reed of mere utility, must be the motivating force if liberty is 63 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:33.880 to be attained. 64 00:05:33.880 --> 00:05:38.720 If liberty is to be the highest political end then, this implies that liberty is to 65 00:05:38.720 --> 00:05:44.840 be pursued by the most efficacious means, that is, those means which will most speedily 66 00:05:44.840 --> 00:05:48.040 and thoroughly arrive at the goal. 67 00:05:48.040 --> 00:05:53.600 This means that the libertarian must be an abolitionist, that is, he must wish to achieve 68 00:05:53.600 --> 00:06:00.100 the goal of liberty as rapidly as possible. If he balks at abolitionism, then he is no 69 00:06:00.100 --> 00:06:07.280 longer holding liberty as the highest political end. The libertarian, then, should be an abolitionist 70 00:06:07.280 --> 00:06:15.000 who would, if he could, abolish instantaneously all invasions of liberty. Following the classical 71 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:21.220 liberal Leonard Reed, who advocated immediate and total abolition of price and wage controls 72 00:06:21.220 --> 00:06:28.220 after World War II, we might refer to this as the button-pushing criterion. Thus Reed 73 00:06:28.220 --> 00:06:33.620 declared that if there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would release 74 00:06:33.620 --> 00:06:41.020 all wage and price controls instantaneously, I would put my finger on it and push. The 75 00:06:41.020 --> 00:06:45.940 libertarian, then, should be a person who would push a button, if it existed, for the 76 00:06:45.940 --> 00:06:55.940 The instantaneous abolition of all invasions of liberty. Not something, by the way, that any utilitarian would ever be likely to do. 77 00:06:55.940 --> 00:07:04.940 Anti-libertarians and anti-radicals, generally, characteristically make the point that such abolitionism is unrealistic. 78 00:07:04.940 --> 00:07:13.940 By making such a charge, they hopelessly confuse the desired goal with a strategic estimate of the probable path toward that goal. 79 00:07:13.940 --> 00:07:23.940 It is essential to make a clear-cut distinction between the ultimate goal itself and the strategic estimate of how to reach that goal. 80 00:07:23.940 --> 00:07:30.940 In short, the goal must be formulated before questions of strategy or realism enter the scene. 81 00:07:30.940 --> 00:07:40.940 The fact that such a magic button does not and is not likely to exist has no relevance to the desirability of abolitionism itself. 82 00:07:40.940 --> 00:07:55.940 We might agree, for example, on the goal of liberty and the desirability of abolitionism in liberty's behalf, but this does not mean that we believe that abolition will in fact be attainable in the near or far future. 83 00:07:55.940 --> 00:08:12.940 The libertarian goals, including immediate abolition of invasions of liberty, are realistic in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on them, and that if achieved, the resulting libertarian system would be viable. 84 00:08:12.940 --> 00:08:27.940 The goal of immediate liberty is not unrealistic or utopian because, in contrast to such goals as the elimination of poverty, its achievement is entirely dependent on man's will. 85 00:08:27.940 --> 00:08:38.940 If, for example, everyone suddenly and immediately agreed on the overriding desirability of liberty, then total liberty would be immediately achieved. 86 00:08:38.940 --> 00:08:50.940 Elsewhere, I have written, other traditional radical goals, such as the abolition of poverty, are in contrast to this one, liberty, truly utopian. 87 00:08:50.940 --> 00:09:06.940 For man, simply by exerting his will, cannot abolish poverty. Poverty can only be abolished through the operation of certain economic factors, which can only operate by transforming nature over a long period of time. 88 00:09:06.940 --> 00:09:13.740 But injustices are deeds that are inflicted by one set of men on another. 89 00:09:13.740 --> 00:09:20.420 They are precisely the actions of men, and hence they and their elimination are subject 90 00:09:20.420 --> 00:09:23.580 to man's instantaneous will. 91 00:09:23.580 --> 00:09:28.780 The fact that, of course, such decisions do not take place instantaneously is not the 92 00:09:28.780 --> 00:09:30.100 point. 93 00:09:30.100 --> 00:09:36.460 The point is that the very failure is an injustice that has been decided upon and imposed by 94 00:09:36.460 --> 00:09:39.580 by the perpetrators of injustice. 95 00:09:39.580 --> 00:09:43.380 In the field of justice, man's will is all. 96 00:09:43.380 --> 00:09:48.300 Men can move mountains, if only men so decide. 97 00:09:48.300 --> 00:09:56.140 A passion for instantaneous justice, in short, a radical passion, is therefore not utopian, 98 00:09:56.140 --> 00:10:01.700 as would be a desire for the instant elimination of poverty, or the instant transformation 99 00:10:01.700 --> 00:10:05.060 of everyone into a concert pianist. 100 00:10:05.060 --> 00:10:11.140 for instant justice could be achieved if enough people so willed. 101 00:10:11.140 --> 00:10:16.900 The strategic estimate of how the path toward liberty is likely to be achieved is, of course, 102 00:10:16.900 --> 00:10:20.020 an entirely separate question. 103 00:10:20.020 --> 00:10:26.500 Thus the libertarian abolitionist of slavery, William Lloyd Garrison, was not being unrealistic 104 00:10:26.500 --> 00:10:32.340 when in the 1830s he raised the standard of the goal of immediate emancipation of the 105 00:10:32.340 --> 00:10:33.540 slaves. 106 00:10:33.540 --> 00:10:40.380 His goal was the proper, moral and libertarian one, and was unrelated to the realism or probability 107 00:10:40.380 --> 00:10:42.220 of its achievement. 108 00:10:42.220 --> 00:10:48.380 Indeed, Garrison's strategic realism was expressed by the fact that he did not expect the end 109 00:10:48.380 --> 00:10:53.140 of slavery to arrive immediately or at a single blow. 110 00:10:53.140 --> 00:10:59.560 As Garrison carefully distinguished, urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may. 111 00:10:59.560 --> 00:11:05.300 It will, alas, be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would 112 00:11:05.300 --> 00:11:13.000 be overthrown by a single blow. That it ought to be, we shall always contend. Otherwise, 113 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:21.280 as Garrison trenchantly warned, gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice. 114 00:11:21.280 --> 00:11:27.960 Gradualism in theory, in fact, totally undercuts the overriding goal of liberty itself. Its 115 00:11:27.960 --> 00:11:34.560 Its import, therefore, is not simply strategic, but an opposition to the end itself, and hence 116 00:11:34.560 --> 00:11:39.040 impermissible as any part of a strategy toward liberty. 117 00:11:39.040 --> 00:11:44.880 The reason is that once immediate abolitionism is abandoned, then the goal is conceded to 118 00:11:44.880 --> 00:11:52.240 take second or third place to other anti-libertarian considerations, for these considerations are 119 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:54.960 now placed higher than liberty. 120 00:11:54.960 --> 00:12:02.960 Thus suppose that the abolitionist of slavery had said, I advocate an end to slavery, but only after five years' time. 121 00:12:02.960 --> 00:12:11.960 But this would imply that abolition in four or three years' time, or a fortiori immediately, would be wrong, 122 00:12:11.960 --> 00:12:16.960 and that therefore it is better for slavery to be continued a while longer. 123 00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:28.960 But this would mean that considerations of justice have been abandoned, and that the goal itself is no longer highest on the abolitionists' or libertarians' political value scale. 124 00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:35.960 In fact, it would mean that the libertarian advocated the prolongation of crime and injustice. 125 00:12:35.960 --> 00:12:47.960 Hence, a strategy for liberty must not include any means which undercut or contradict the end itself, as gradualism in theory clearly does. 126 00:12:47.960 --> 00:12:51.960 Are we then saying that the end justifies the means? 127 00:12:51.960 --> 00:13:00.960 This is a common but totally fallacious charge, often directed toward any group that advocates fundamental or radical social change. 128 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:09.360 Change. For what else but an end could possibly justify any means? The very concept of means 129 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:16.200 implies that this action is merely an instrument toward arriving at an end. If someone is hungry 130 00:13:16.200 --> 00:13:21.760 and eats a sandwich to alleviate his hunger, the act of eating a sandwich is merely a means 131 00:13:21.760 --> 00:13:29.280 to an end. Its sole justification arises from its use as an end by the consumer. Why else 132 00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:52.760 What then do the critics of the end justifies the means truly mean when they say that bad 133 00:13:52.760 --> 00:13:57.380 means can or will lead to bad ends? 134 00:13:57.380 --> 00:14:02.820 What they are really saying is that the means in question will violate other ends, which 135 00:14:02.820 --> 00:14:08.260 the critics deem to be more important or more valuable than the goal of the group being 136 00:14:08.260 --> 00:14:09.260 criticized. 137 00:14:09.260 --> 00:14:15.220 Thus, suppose that communists hold that murder is justified if it leads to a dictatorship 138 00:14:15.220 --> 00:14:18.900 by the vanguard party of the proletariat. 139 00:14:18.900 --> 00:14:25.060 The critics of such murder, or of such advocacy of murder, are really asserting not that the 140 00:14:25.060 --> 00:14:31.760 The ends do not justify the means, but rather that murder violates a more valuable end, 141 00:14:31.760 --> 00:14:38.660 to say the least, namely the end of not committing murder or non-aggression against persons. 142 00:14:38.660 --> 00:14:44.040 And of course, from the libertarian point of view, the critics would be correct. 143 00:14:44.040 --> 00:14:49.680 Hence the libertarian goal, the victory of liberty, justifies the speediest possible 144 00:14:49.680 --> 00:15:19.680 The Theory of Money and Credit 145 00:15:19.680 --> 00:15:29.680 are all competing and impermissible means to pursue, for the employment of such aggression would directly violate the goal of non-aggression itself. 146 00:15:30.680 --> 00:15:37.680 If then the libertarian must call for immediate abolition of the state as an organized engine of aggression, 147 00:15:37.680 --> 00:15:44.680 and if gradualism in theory is contradictory to the overriding end, and therefore impermissible, 148 00:15:44.680 --> 00:15:50.720 What further strategic stance should a libertarian take in a world in which states continue 149 00:15:50.720 --> 00:15:54.120 all too starkly to exist? 150 00:15:54.120 --> 00:16:00.440 Must the libertarian necessarily confine himself to advocating immediate abolition? 151 00:16:00.440 --> 00:16:06.960 Are transitional demands steps toward liberty and practice, therefore illegitimate? 152 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:13.120 Surely not, since realistically there would then be no hope of achieving the final goal. 153 00:16:13.120 --> 00:16:19.720 It is therefore incumbent upon the libertarian, eager to achieve his goal as rapidly as possible, 154 00:16:19.720 --> 00:16:25.280 to push the polity ever further in the direction of that goal. 155 00:16:25.280 --> 00:16:30.680 Clearly such a course is difficult, for the danger always exists of losing sight of, or 156 00:16:30.680 --> 00:16:34.660 even undercutting, the ultimate goal of liberty. 157 00:16:34.660 --> 00:16:39.480 But such a course, given the state of the world in the past, present and foreseeable 158 00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:45.160 Transitional Future is vital if the victory of liberty is ever to be achieved. 159 00:16:45.160 --> 00:16:51.760 The transitional demands then must be framed while a. always holding up the ultimate goal 160 00:16:51.760 --> 00:16:59.460 of liberty as the desired end of the transitional process, and b. never taking steps or using 161 00:16:59.460 --> 00:17:05.960 means which explicitly or implicitly contradict that goal. 162 00:17:05.960 --> 00:17:11.520 Let us consider, for example, a transition demand set forth by various libertarians, 163 00:17:11.520 --> 00:17:17.920 namely that the government budget be reduced by 10% each year for 10 years, after which 164 00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:20.840 the government will have disappeared. 165 00:17:20.840 --> 00:17:27.060 Such a proposal might have heuristic or strategic value, provided that the proposers always 166 00:17:27.060 --> 00:17:32.820 make crystal clear that these are minimal demands, and that indeed there would be nothing 167 00:17:32.820 --> 00:17:38.220 Being wrong, in fact, it would be all to the good to step up the pace by cutting the budget 168 00:17:38.220 --> 00:17:47.440 by 25% a year for four years, or, most desirably, by cutting it by 100% immediately. 169 00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:54.580 The danger arises in implying directly or indirectly that any faster pace than 10% would 170 00:17:54.580 --> 00:17:57.500 be wrong or undesirable. 171 00:17:57.500 --> 00:18:03.080 An even greater danger of a similar sort is posed by the idea of many libertarians of 172 00:18:03.080 --> 00:18:09.560 setting forth a comprehensive and planned program of transition to total liberty. 173 00:18:09.560 --> 00:18:16.940 For example, that in year one, law A should be repealed, law B modified, tax C be cut 174 00:18:16.940 --> 00:18:19.800 by 20%, etc. 175 00:18:19.800 --> 00:18:27.420 In year two, law D be repealed, tax C cut by a further 10%, etc. 176 00:18:27.420 --> 00:18:33.380 The comprehensive plan is far more misleading than the simple budget cut, because it strongly 177 00:18:33.380 --> 00:18:40.220 implies that, for example, Law D should not be repealed until the second year of this 178 00:18:40.220 --> 00:18:47.740 planned program. Hence the trap of philosophic gradualism, of gradualism in theory, would 179 00:18:47.740 --> 00:18:54.420 be fallen into on a massive scale. The would-be libertarian planners would be virtually falling 180 00:18:54.420 --> 00:19:01.940 Looking into a position, or seeming to, of opposing a faster pace toward liberty. 181 00:19:01.940 --> 00:19:08.060 There is indeed another grave flaw in the idea of a comprehensive planned program toward 182 00:19:08.060 --> 00:19:09.660 liberty. 183 00:19:09.660 --> 00:19:16.080 For the very care and studied pace, the very all-embracing nature of the program, implies 184 00:19:16.080 --> 00:19:22.540 that the state is not really the enemy of mankind, that it is possible and desirable 185 00:19:22.540 --> 00:19:29.060 to use the state in engineering a planned and measured pace toward liberty. 186 00:19:29.060 --> 00:19:34.580 The insight that the state is the permanent enemy of mankind, on the other hand, leads 187 00:19:34.580 --> 00:19:40.780 to a very different strategic outlook, namely that libertarians push for and accept with 188 00:19:40.780 --> 00:19:47.660 alacrity any reduction of state power or state activity on any front. 189 00:19:47.660 --> 00:19:53.880 Any such reduction at any time is a reduction in crime and aggression, and is a reduction 190 00:19:53.880 --> 00:20:01.900 of the parasitic malignity with which state power rules over and confiscates social power. 191 00:20:01.900 --> 00:20:07.660 For example, libertarians may well push for drastic reduction or repeal of the income 192 00:20:07.660 --> 00:20:14.040 tax, but they should never do so while at the same time advocating its replacement by 193 00:20:14.040 --> 00:20:17.400 a sales or other form of tax. 194 00:20:17.400 --> 00:20:24.080 The reduction, or better, the abolition of a tax is always a non-contradictory reduction 195 00:20:24.080 --> 00:20:30.360 of state power and a step toward liberty. But its replacement by a new or increased 196 00:20:30.360 --> 00:20:36.440 tax elsewhere does just the opposite, for it signifies a new and additional imposition 197 00:20:36.440 --> 00:20:43.360 of the state on some other front. The imposition of a new tax is a means that contradicts the 198 00:20:43.360 --> 00:20:46.360 and the Libertarian Goal itself. 199 00:20:46.360 --> 00:20:52.360 Similarly, in this age of permanent Federal deficits, we are all faced with the problem, 200 00:20:52.360 --> 00:20:58.360 should we agree to a tax cut even though it may well mean an increase in the deficit? 201 00:20:58.360 --> 00:21:04.360 Conservatives, from their particular perspective of holding budget balancing as a higher end, 202 00:21:04.360 --> 00:21:11.360 invariably oppose or vote against a tax cut which is not strictly accompanied by an equivalent 203 00:21:11.360 --> 00:21:26.360 The Time to Oppose Government Expenditures is when the budget is being considered or voted upon, when the libertarian should call for drastic slashes in expenditures as well. 204 00:21:26.360 --> 00:21:31.240 The time to oppose government expenditures is when the budget is being considered or 205 00:21:31.240 --> 00:21:38.760 voted upon, when the libertarian should call for drastic slashes in expenditures as well. 206 00:21:38.760 --> 00:21:44.260 Government activity must be reduced whenever and wherever it can. 207 00:21:44.260 --> 00:21:50.860 Any opposition to a particular tax or expenditure cut is impermissible, for it contradicts 208 00:21:50.860 --> 00:21:55.920 libertarian principles and the libertarian goal. 209 00:21:55.920 --> 00:22:01.280 Does this mean that the libertarian may never set priorities, may not concentrate his energy 210 00:22:01.280 --> 00:22:05.960 on political issues which he deems of the greatest importance? 211 00:22:05.960 --> 00:22:11.920 Clearly not, for since everyone's time and energy is necessarily limited, no one can 212 00:22:11.920 --> 00:22:18.640 devote equal time to every particular aspect of the comprehensive libertarian creed. 213 00:22:18.640 --> 00:22:25.200 A speaker or writer on political issues must necessarily set priorities of importance, 214 00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:30.740 Priorities which at least partially depend on the concrete issues and circumstances of the day. 215 00:22:31.860 --> 00:22:36.600 Thus while a libertarian in today's world would certainly advocate the 216 00:22:37.320 --> 00:22:44.520 denationalization of lighthouses, it is highly doubtful that he would place a greater priority on the lighthouse question than on 217 00:22:44.760 --> 00:22:47.240 conscription or the repeal of the income tax. 218 00:22:48.040 --> 00:22:54.540 The libertarian must use his strategic intelligence and knowledge of the issues of the day to set his 219 00:22:54.540 --> 00:22:57.540 and its priorities of political importance. 220 00:22:57.540 --> 00:23:06.540 On the other hand, of course, if one were living on a small, highly fog-bound island, dependent on shipping for transportation, 221 00:23:06.540 --> 00:23:13.540 it could very well be that the lighthouse question would have a high priority on a libertarian political agenda. 222 00:23:13.540 --> 00:23:21.540 And furthermore, if for some reason the opportunity arose for denationalizing lighthouses even in present-day America, 223 00:23:21.540 --> 00:23:26.740 It should certainly not be spurned by the libertarian. 224 00:23:26.740 --> 00:23:31.880 We conclude this part of the strategy question, then, by affirming that the victory of total 225 00:23:31.880 --> 00:23:37.900 liberty is the highest political end, that the proper groundwork for this goal is a moral 226 00:23:37.900 --> 00:23:44.300 passion for justice, that the end should be pursued by the speediest and most efficacious 227 00:23:44.300 --> 00:23:51.240 possible means, that the end must always be kept in sight and sought as rapidly as possible 228 00:23:51.240 --> 00:24:14.240 and that the means taken must never contradict the goal, whether by advocating gradualism, by employing or advocating any aggression against liberty, by advocating planned programs, or by failing to seize any opportunity to reduce state power, or by ever increasing it in any area. 229 00:24:14.240 --> 00:24:29.240 The world, at least in the long run, is governed by ideas, and it seems clear that libertarianism is only likely to triumph if the ideas spread to and are adopted by a significantly large number of people. 230 00:24:29.240 --> 00:24:35.240 And so, education becomes a necessary condition for the victory of liberty. 231 00:24:35.240 --> 00:24:45.240 All sorts of education, from the most abstract systematic theories down to attention-catching devices that will attract the interest of potential converts. 232 00:24:45.240 --> 00:24:52.240 Education indeed is the characteristic strategic theory of classical liberalism. 233 00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:58.240 But it should be stressed that ideas do not float by themselves in a vacuum. 234 00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:04.240 They are influential only insofar as they are adopted and put forward by people. 235 00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:17.240 For the idea of liberty to triumph, then, there must be an active group of dedicated libertarians, people who are knowledgeable in liberty and are willing to spread the message to others. 236 00:25:17.240 --> 00:25:23.240 In short, there must be an active and self-conscious libertarian movement. 237 00:25:23.240 --> 00:25:36.740 This may seem self-evident, but there has been a curious reluctance on the part of many libertarians to think of themselves as part of a conscious and ongoing movement, or to become involved in movement activity. 238 00:25:36.740 --> 00:25:52.740 Yet consider, has any discipline or set of ideas in the past, whether it be Buddhism or modern physics, been able to advance itself and win acceptance without the existence of a dedicated cadre of Buddhists or physicists? 239 00:25:52.740 --> 00:26:06.740 The mention of physicists points up another requirement of a successful movement, the existence of professionals, of persons making their full-time career in the movement or discipline in question. 240 00:26:06.740 --> 00:26:17.740 In the 17th and 18th centuries, as modern physics emerged as a new science, there were indeed scientific societies which mainly included interested amateurs, 241 00:26:17.740 --> 00:26:25.240 Friends of physics, as we might call them, who established an atmosphere of encouragement and support of the new discipline. 242 00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:31.740 But surely physics would not have advanced very far if there had been no professional physicists, 243 00:26:31.740 --> 00:26:41.240 people who made a full-time career of physics and therefore could devote all their energies to engaging in and advancing the discipline. 244 00:26:41.240 --> 00:26:49.240 Physics would surely still be a mere amusement for amateurs if the profession of physics had not developed. 245 00:26:49.240 --> 00:26:56.240 Yet there are few libertarians, despite the spectacular growth of the ideas and of the movement in recent years, 246 00:26:56.240 --> 00:27:09.240 who recognize the enormous need for the development of liberty as a profession as a central core for the advancement of both the theory and the condition of liberty in the real world. 247 00:27:09.240 --> 00:27:21.240 Every new idea and every new discipline necessarily begins with one or a few people, and diffuses outward toward a larger core of converts and adherents. 248 00:27:21.240 --> 00:27:33.240 Even at full tide, given the wide variety of interests and abilities among men, there is bound to be only a minority among the professional core or cadre of libertarians. 249 00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:46.240 There is nothing sinister or undemocratic, then, in postulating a vanguard group of libertarians any more than there is in talking of a vanguard of Buddhists or of physicists. 250 00:27:46.240 --> 00:27:59.240 Hopefully, this vanguard will help to bring about a majority or a large and influential minority of people adhering to, if not centrally devoted to, libertarian ideology. 251 00:27:59.240 --> 00:28:10.240 The existence of a libertarian majority among the American revolutionaries, and in 19th century England, demonstrates that the feat is not impossible. 252 00:28:10.240 --> 00:28:28.240 In the meanwhile, on the path to that goal, we might conceive of the adoption of libertarianism as a ladder or pyramid, with various individuals and groups on different rungs of the ladder, ranging upward from total collectivism or statism to pure liberty. 253 00:28:28.240 --> 00:28:42.240 If the libertarian cannot raise people's consciousness fully to the top rung of pure liberty, then he can achieve the lesser but still important goal of helping them advance a few rungs up the ladder. 254 00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:54.240 For this purpose, the libertarian may well find it fruitful to engage in coalitions with non-libertarians around the advancement of some single ad hoc activity. 255 00:28:54.240 --> 00:29:16.240 Thus the libertarian, depending on his priorities of importance at any given condition of society, may engage in such united front activities with some conservatives to repeal the income tax, or with civil libertarians to repeal conscription, or the outlawry of pornography, or of subversive speech. 256 00:29:16.240 --> 00:29:23.240 By engaging in such united fronts on ad hoc issues, the libertarian can accomplish a twofold purpose. 257 00:29:23.240 --> 00:29:30.440 A. Greatly multiplying his own leverage or influence in working toward a specific libertarian 258 00:29:30.440 --> 00:29:38.360 goal, since many non-libertarians are mobilized to cooperate in such actions, and B. To raise 259 00:29:38.360 --> 00:29:44.160 the consciousness of his coalition colleagues, to show them that libertarianism is a single 260 00:29:44.160 --> 00:29:50.500 interconnected system, and that a full pursuit of their particular goal requires the adoption 261 00:29:50.500 --> 00:29:53.380 of the entire libertarian schema. 262 00:29:53.380 --> 00:29:58.720 Thus, the libertarian can point out to the conservative that property rights or the free 263 00:29:58.720 --> 00:30:06.820 market can only be maximized and truly safeguarded if civil liberties are defended or restored, 264 00:30:06.820 --> 00:30:10.940 and he can show the opposite to the civil libertarian. 265 00:30:10.940 --> 00:30:16.740 Hopefully this demonstration will raise some of these ad hoc allies significantly up the 266 00:30:16.740 --> 00:30:19.500 libertarian ladder. 267 00:30:19.500 --> 00:30:25.460 In the progress of any movement dedicated to radical social change, that is, to transforming 268 00:30:25.460 --> 00:30:32.460 social reality toward an ideal system, there are bound to arise, as the Marxists have discovered, 269 00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:38.700 two contrasting types of deviations from the proper strategic line, what the Marxists have 270 00:30:38.700 --> 00:30:43.660 called Right Opportunism and Left Sectarianism. 271 00:30:43.660 --> 00:30:48.860 So fundamental are these often superficially attractive deviations that we might call it 272 00:30:48.860 --> 00:30:54.920 is a theoretical rule that one or both will arise to plague a movement at various times 273 00:30:54.920 --> 00:30:57.080 in its development. 274 00:30:57.080 --> 00:31:03.000 Which tendency will triumph in a movement cannot, however, be determined by our theory. 275 00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:08.120 The outcome will depend on the subjective strategic understanding of the people constituting 276 00:31:08.120 --> 00:31:09.720 the movement. 277 00:31:09.720 --> 00:31:15.220 The outcome, then, is a matter of free will and persuasion. 278 00:31:15.220 --> 00:31:20.460 State opportunism, in its pursuit of instant gains, is willing to abandon the ultimate 279 00:31:20.460 --> 00:31:27.660 social goal and to immerse itself in minor and short-run gains, sometimes in actual contradiction 280 00:31:27.660 --> 00:31:30.500 to the ultimate goal itself. 281 00:31:30.500 --> 00:31:35.440 In the libertarian movement, the opportunist is willing to join the state establishment 282 00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:40.760 rather than to struggle against it, and is willing to deny the ultimate goal on behalf 283 00:31:40.760 --> 00:31:48.000 of short-run gains, for example, to declaim that while everyone knows we must have taxation, 284 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:53.040 the state of the economy requires a 2% tax cut. 285 00:31:53.040 --> 00:31:59.200 The left sectarian, on the other hand, sense immorality and betrayal of principle in every 286 00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:05.920 use of strategic intelligence to pursue transitional demands on the path to liberty, even ones 287 00:32:05.920 --> 00:32:10.660 that uphold the ultimate goal and do not contradict it. 288 00:32:10.660 --> 00:32:16.340 The sectarian discovers moral principle and libertarian principle everywhere, even in 289 00:32:16.340 --> 00:32:20.780 purely strategic, tactical or organizational concerns. 290 00:32:20.780 --> 00:32:27.160 Indeed, the sectarian is likely to attack as an abandonment of principle any attempt 291 00:32:27.160 --> 00:32:33.500 to go beyond mere reiteration of the ideal social goal, and to select and analyze more 292 00:32:33.500 --> 00:32:38.500 specifically political issues of the most urgent priority. 293 00:32:38.500 --> 00:32:43.820 In the Marxist movement, the Socialist Labor Party, which meets every political issue with 294 00:32:43.820 --> 00:32:50.580 only a reiteration of the view that socialism and only socialism will solve the problem, 295 00:32:50.580 --> 00:32:55.740 is a classical example of ultra-sectarianism at work. 296 00:32:55.740 --> 00:33:01.900 Thus the sectarian libertarian might decry a television speaker or a political candidate, 297 00:33:01.900 --> 00:33:08.460 who in the necessity to choose priority issues, stresses repeal of the income tax or abolition 298 00:33:08.460 --> 00:33:14.940 of the Draft, while neglecting the goal of denationalizing White Houses. 299 00:33:14.940 --> 00:33:20.900 It should be clear that both right opportunism and left sectarianism are equally destructive 300 00:33:20.900 --> 00:33:24.800 of the task of achieving the ultimate social goal. 301 00:33:24.800 --> 00:33:30.440 For the right opportunist abandons the goal while achieving short-run gains, and thereby 302 00:33:30.440 --> 00:33:36.300 renders those gains ineffectual, while the left sectarian, in wrapping himself in the 303 00:33:36.300 --> 00:33:42.440 The mantle of purity defeats his own ultimate goal by denouncing any necessary strategic 304 00:33:42.440 --> 00:33:46.260 steps in its behalf. 305 00:33:46.260 --> 00:33:52.100 Sometimes curiously enough, the same individual will undergo alternations from one deviation 306 00:33:52.100 --> 00:33:57.580 to the other, in each case scorning the correct plumb line path. 307 00:33:57.580 --> 00:34:04.500 Thus, despairing after years of futile reiteration of his purity while making no advances in 308 00:34:04.500 --> 00:34:10.660 In the real world, the left sectarian may leap into the heady thickets of right opportunism, 309 00:34:10.660 --> 00:34:16.700 in the quest for some short-run advance, even at the cost of the ultimate goal. 310 00:34:16.700 --> 00:34:21.780 Or the right opportunist, growing disgusted at his own or his colleague's compromise 311 00:34:21.780 --> 00:34:27.980 of their intellectual integrity and their ultimate goals, may leap into left sectarianism 312 00:34:27.980 --> 00:34:33.680 and decry any setting of strategic priorities toward those goals. 313 00:34:33.680 --> 00:34:40.280 In this way the two opposing deviations feed on and reinforce each other and are both destructive 314 00:34:40.280 --> 00:34:45.060 of the major task of effectively reaching the libertarian goal. 315 00:34:45.060 --> 00:34:49.900 The Marxists have correctly perceived that two sets of conditions are necessary for the 316 00:34:49.900 --> 00:34:57.000 victory of any program of radical social change, what they call the objective and the subjective 317 00:34:57.000 --> 00:34:59.060 conditions. 318 00:34:59.060 --> 00:35:04.180 The subjective conditions are the existence of a self-conscious movement dedicated to 319 00:35:04.180 --> 00:35:10.460 the triumph of the particular social ideal, conditions which we have been discussing above. 320 00:35:10.460 --> 00:35:16.620 The objective conditions are the objective fact of a crisis situation in the existing 321 00:35:16.620 --> 00:35:23.120 system, a crisis stark enough to be generally perceived and to be perceived as the fault 322 00:35:23.120 --> 00:35:25.700 of the system itself. 323 00:35:25.700 --> 00:35:30.440 For people are so constituted that they are not interested in exploring the defects of 324 00:35:30.440 --> 00:35:35.740 an existing system, so long as it seems to be working tolerably well. 325 00:35:35.740 --> 00:35:40.440 And even if a few become interested, they will tend to regard the entire problem as 326 00:35:40.440 --> 00:35:46.620 an abstract one, irrelevant to their daily lives, and therefore not an imperative for 327 00:35:46.620 --> 00:35:51.020 action, until the perceived crisis breakdown. 328 00:35:51.020 --> 00:35:56.720 It is such a breakdown that stimulates a sudden search for new social alternatives, and it 329 00:35:56.720 --> 00:36:02.440 is then that the cadres of the alternative movement, the subjective conditions, must 330 00:36:02.440 --> 00:36:08.420 be available to supply that alternative, to relate the crisis to the inherent defects 331 00:36:08.420 --> 00:36:14.200 of the system itself, and to point out how the alternative system would solve the existing 332 00:36:14.200 --> 00:36:18.980 crisis and prevent similar breakdowns in the future. 333 00:36:18.980 --> 00:36:23.740 Hopefully the alternative cadre would have provided a track record of predicting and 334 00:36:23.740 --> 00:36:27.140 warning against the existing crisis. 335 00:36:27.140 --> 00:36:32.900 Indeed, if we examine the revolutions in the modern world, we will find that every single 336 00:36:32.900 --> 00:36:39.820 one of them, A, was utilized by an existing cadre of seemingly prophetic ideologists of 337 00:36:39.820 --> 00:36:47.700 the alternative system, and B, was precipitated by a breakdown of the system itself. 338 00:36:47.700 --> 00:36:53.780 In the American Revolution, a broad cadre and mass of dedicated libertarians were prepared 339 00:36:53.780 --> 00:36:59.560 to resist the encroachments of Great Britain in its attempt to end the system of salutary 340 00:36:59.560 --> 00:37:05.780 neglect of the colonies and to re-impose the chains of the British Empire. 341 00:37:05.780 --> 00:37:11.660 In the French Revolution, libertarian philosophes had prepared the ideology with which to meet 342 00:37:11.660 --> 00:37:18.860 A sharp increase of absolutist burdens on the country caused by the government's fiscal crisis. 343 00:37:18.860 --> 00:37:26.020 In Russia, in 1917, a losing war led to the collapse of the Tsarist system from within, 344 00:37:26.020 --> 00:37:30.060 which radical ideologists were prepared for. 345 00:37:30.060 --> 00:37:37.060 In post-World War I Italy and Germany, post-war economic crises and wartime defeats created 346 00:37:37.060 --> 00:37:43.120 the conditions for the triumph of the fascist and national socialist alternatives. 347 00:37:43.120 --> 00:37:50.320 In China, in 1949, the combination of a lengthy and crippling war and economic crisis caused 348 00:37:50.320 --> 00:37:57.420 by runaway inflation and price controls allowed the victory of the communist rebels. 349 00:37:57.420 --> 00:38:03.300 Both Marxists and libertarians, in their very different and contrasting ways, believe that 350 00:38:03.300 --> 00:38:09.140 and the inner contradictions of the existing system, in the former case of capitalism, 351 00:38:09.140 --> 00:38:16.460 in the latter of statism and state intervention, will lead inevitably to its long-run collapse. 352 00:38:16.460 --> 00:38:22.000 In contrast to conservatism, which can see nothing but long-run despair attendant upon 353 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:28.760 the steady decline of Western values from some past century, Marxism and libertarianism 354 00:38:28.760 --> 00:38:34.720 are both therefore highly optimistic creeds, at least in the long run. 355 00:38:34.720 --> 00:38:39.620 The problem, of course, for any living beings is how long they will have to wait for the 356 00:38:39.620 --> 00:38:42.180 long run to arrive. 357 00:38:42.180 --> 00:38:47.360 The Marxists, at least in the Western world, have had to face the indefinite postponement 358 00:38:47.360 --> 00:38:51.000 of their hoped-for long run. 359 00:38:51.000 --> 00:38:55.880 Libertarians have had to confront a twentieth century which has shifted from the quasi-libertarian 360 00:38:55.880 --> 00:39:01.960 System of the 19th Century to a far more statist and collectivist one, in many ways 361 00:39:01.960 --> 00:39:07.720 returning to the despotic world as it existed before the classical liberal revolutions of 362 00:39:07.720 --> 00:39:11.180 the 17th and 18th centuries. 363 00:39:11.180 --> 00:39:16.480 There are good and sufficient reasons, however, for libertarians to be optimistic in the short 364 00:39:16.480 --> 00:39:24.760 run as well as the long run, indeed for a belief that victory for liberty might be near. 365 00:39:24.760 --> 00:39:30.960 But in the first place, why should libertarians be optimistic even in the long run? 366 00:39:30.960 --> 00:39:36.860 After all, the annals of recorded history are a chronicle in one civilization after another 367 00:39:36.860 --> 00:39:43.440 of centuries of varying forms of despotism, stagnation and totalitarianism. 368 00:39:43.440 --> 00:39:49.340 May it not be possible that the great post-seventeenth century thrust toward liberty was only a mighty 369 00:39:49.340 --> 00:39:56.780 be flash in the pan, to be replaced by sinking back into a gray and permanent despotism? 370 00:39:56.780 --> 00:40:03.460 But such superficially plausible despair overlooks a crucial point, the new and irreversible 371 00:40:03.460 --> 00:40:10.300 conditions introduced by the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries, a revolution 372 00:40:10.300 --> 00:40:16.100 itself a consequence of the classical liberal political revolutions. 373 00:40:16.100 --> 00:40:22.580 For agricultural countries in a pre-industrial area can indeed peg along indefinitely on 374 00:40:22.580 --> 00:40:24.780 a subsistence level. 375 00:40:24.780 --> 00:40:30.780 Despotic kings, nobles and states can tax the peasantry above subsistence level and 376 00:40:30.780 --> 00:40:36.100 live elegantly off the surplus, while the peasants continue to toil for centuries at 377 00:40:36.100 --> 00:40:38.060 the bare minimum. 378 00:40:38.060 --> 00:40:44.500 Such a system is profoundly immoral and exploitative, but it works in the sense of being able to 379 00:40:44.500 --> 00:40:50.660 to continue indefinitely, provided that the state does not get too greedy and actually 380 00:40:50.660 --> 00:40:54.740 kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. 381 00:40:54.740 --> 00:40:59.980 But fortunately for the cause of liberty, economic science has shown that a modern industrial 382 00:40:59.980 --> 00:41:06.140 economy cannot survive indefinitely under such draconian conditions. 383 00:41:06.140 --> 00:41:12.520 A modern industrial economy requires a vast network of free market exchanges and a division 384 00:41:12.520 --> 00:41:18.080 of Labor, a network that can only flourish under freedom. 385 00:41:18.080 --> 00:41:22.960 Given the commitment of the mass of men to an industrial economy and the modern standard 386 00:41:22.960 --> 00:41:28.780 of living that requires such industry, then the triumph of a free market economy and an 387 00:41:28.780 --> 00:41:33.520 end to statism becomes inevitable in the long run. 388 00:41:33.520 --> 00:41:39.640 The late 19th and especially the 20th centuries have seen many forms of reversion to the statism 389 00:41:39.640 --> 00:41:42.520 of the Pre-Industrial Era. 390 00:41:42.520 --> 00:41:48.400 These forms, notably socialism and the various brands of state capitalism, in contrast to 391 00:41:48.400 --> 00:41:55.120 the frankly anti-industrial and reactionary conservatism of early 19th century Europe, 392 00:41:55.120 --> 00:42:00.760 have tried to preserve and even extend the industrial economy while scuttling the very 393 00:42:00.760 --> 00:42:06.920 political requirements, freedom and the free market, which are, in the long run, necessary 394 00:42:06.920 --> 00:42:09.420 for its survival. 395 00:42:09.420 --> 00:42:16.100 State planning, operation, controls, high and crippling taxation and paper money inflation 396 00:42:16.100 --> 00:42:22.540 must all inevitably lead to the collapse of the statist economic system. 397 00:42:22.540 --> 00:42:27.540 If then the world is irreversibly committed to industrialism and its attendant living 398 00:42:27.540 --> 00:42:34.500 standards, and if industrialism requires freedom, then the libertarian must indeed be a long 399 00:42:34.500 --> 00:42:40.620 Long-Run Optimist, for the libertarian triumph must eventually occur. 400 00:42:40.620 --> 00:42:45.020 But why short-run optimism for the present day? 401 00:42:45.020 --> 00:42:49.700 Because it fortunately happens to be true that the various forms of statism imposed 402 00:42:49.700 --> 00:42:55.200 on the Western world during the first half of the 20th century are now in process of 403 00:42:55.200 --> 00:42:57.160 imminent breakdown. 404 00:42:57.160 --> 00:43:00.180 The long run is now at hand. 405 00:43:00.180 --> 00:43:05.860 For half a century, statist intervention could wreak its depredations and not cause clear 406 00:43:05.860 --> 00:43:12.860 and evident crises and dislocations, because the quasi laissez-faire industrialization 407 00:43:12.860 --> 00:43:19.100 of the 19th century had created a vast cushion against such depredations. 408 00:43:19.100 --> 00:43:24.980 The government could impose taxes or inflation upon the system and not reap evidently bad 409 00:43:24.980 --> 00:43:26.500 effects. 410 00:43:26.500 --> 00:43:33.340 But now, statism has advanced so far and been in power so long that the cushion or fat has 411 00:43:33.340 --> 00:43:35.300 been exhausted. 412 00:43:35.300 --> 00:43:40.860 As economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the reserve fund created by laissez-faire 413 00:43:40.860 --> 00:43:42.940 has now been exhausted. 414 00:43:42.940 --> 00:43:48.780 Whatever the government does now leads to an instantaneous negative feedback that is 415 00:43:48.780 --> 00:43:54.940 is evident to the formerly indifferent, and even to many of the most ardent apologists, for statism. 416 00:43:56.380 --> 00:44:02.060 In the communist countries of Eastern Europe, the communists themselves have increasingly perceived 417 00:44:02.060 --> 00:44:08.620 that socialist central planning simply does not work, particularly for an industrial economy. 418 00:44:09.500 --> 00:44:15.660 Hence the rapid retreat in recent years away from central planning and toward free markets 419 00:44:15.660 --> 00:44:19.660 throughout Eastern Europe, especially in Yugoslavia. 420 00:44:19.660 --> 00:44:25.100 In the Western world, too, state capitalism is everywhere in a period of crisis, 421 00:44:25.100 --> 00:44:31.420 as it becomes perceived that, in the most profound way, the government has run out of money, 422 00:44:31.420 --> 00:44:36.620 that increasing taxes will cripple industry and incentives beyond repair, 423 00:44:36.620 --> 00:44:42.780 while increased printing of new money, either directly or through the government-controlled banking system, 424 00:44:42.780 --> 00:44:49.460 will lead to a disastrous runaway inflation. And so we hear more and more about the necessity 425 00:44:49.460 --> 00:44:56.620 of lowered expectations from government, even among the state's once most ardent champions. 426 00:44:56.620 --> 00:45:02.500 In West Germany, the Social Democratic Party has long abandoned the call for socialism. 427 00:45:02.500 --> 00:45:08.100 In Great Britain, suffering from a tax-crippled economy and aggravated inflation, the Tory 428 00:45:08.100 --> 00:45:14.340 Party for years in the hands of dedicated statists has now been taken over by its free-market 429 00:45:14.340 --> 00:45:20.860 oriented faction, while even the Labor Party has begun to draw back from the planned chaos 430 00:45:20.860 --> 00:45:23.780 of galloping statism. 431 00:45:23.780 --> 00:45:29.360 In the United States conditions are particularly hopeful, for here in the last few years there 432 00:45:29.360 --> 00:45:37.600 has coincidentally occurred a systemic breakdown of statism across the board in economic, foreign, 433 00:45:37.600 --> 00:45:45.120 and Moral Policies, and a great and growing rise of a libertarian movement and the diffusion 434 00:45:45.120 --> 00:45:50.760 of libertarian ideas throughout the population among opinion molders and average citizens 435 00:45:50.760 --> 00:45:52.560 alike. 436 00:45:52.560 --> 00:46:00.120 Let us examine in turn both sets of necessary conditions for a libertarian triumph. 437 00:46:00.120 --> 00:46:04.760 Surprisingly enough, the systemic breakdown of statism in the United States can be given 438 00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:11.960 a virtually precise date, the years 1973 and 1974. 439 00:46:11.960 --> 00:46:16.460 The breakdown has been particularly glaring in the economic sphere. 440 00:46:16.460 --> 00:46:23.760 From the fall of 1973 through 1975, America experienced an inflationary depression in 441 00:46:23.760 --> 00:46:29.440 which the worst recession of the post-war world coincided with an aggravated inflation 442 00:46:29.440 --> 00:46:31.620 of prices. 443 00:46:31.620 --> 00:46:37.480 After 40 years of Keynesian policies which were supposed to fine-tune the economy so 444 00:46:37.480 --> 00:46:43.880 as to eliminate the boom-bust cycle of inflation and depression, the United States managed 445 00:46:43.880 --> 00:46:50.600 to experience both at the same time, an event that cannot be explained by orthodox economic 446 00:46:50.600 --> 00:46:52.740 theory. 447 00:46:52.740 --> 00:46:58.500 Orthodox economics has been thrown into disarray, and economists and laymen alike are increasingly 448 00:46:58.500 --> 00:47:04.340 be ready to turn to the Austrian free-market alternative, both in the realms of theoretical 449 00:47:04.340 --> 00:47:12.100 paradigms and of political policy. The award of the Nobel Prize in Economics during 1974 450 00:47:12.100 --> 00:47:18.380 to F. A. Hayek for his long-forgotten Austrian business cycle theory is but one indication 451 00:47:18.380 --> 00:47:23.940 of the new currents coming to the surface after decades of neglect. And even though 452 00:47:23.940 --> 00:47:30.180 Although the economy recovered from the Depression, the economic crisis is not ended, since inflation 453 00:47:30.180 --> 00:47:36.420 only accelerated still further, while unemployment remained high. 454 00:47:36.420 --> 00:47:42.600 Only a free market program of abandoning monetary inflation and slashing government expenditures 455 00:47:42.600 --> 00:47:45.500 will solve the crisis. 456 00:47:45.500 --> 00:47:51.140 The partial financial default of the New York City government during 1975 and the victory 457 00:47:51.140 --> 00:47:57.980 of Proposition 13 in California in 1978 have highlighted for the entire country the fact 458 00:47:57.980 --> 00:48:03.620 that local and state reserve funds have been exhausted and that government must at last 459 00:48:03.620 --> 00:48:08.900 begin a drastic cutback in its operations and expenditures. 460 00:48:08.900 --> 00:48:14.780 For higher taxes will drive businesses and middle class citizens out of any given area 461 00:48:14.780 --> 00:48:20.780 and therefore the only way to avoid default will be radical cuts in expenditure. 462 00:48:20.780 --> 00:48:25.780 If default arrives, the result will be the same and more drastically, 463 00:48:25.780 --> 00:48:31.780 since access to bond markets in the future by state and local governments will prove impossible. 464 00:48:31.780 --> 00:48:41.780 It is also becoming increasingly clear that the combination of decades of high and crippling taxes on income, savings and investment, 465 00:48:41.780 --> 00:48:54.780 combined with inflationary distortions of business calculation has led to an increasing scarcity of capital and to an imminent danger of consuming America's vital stock of capital equipment. 466 00:48:54.780 --> 00:49:00.780 Hence, lower taxes are rapidly perceived to be an economic necessity. 467 00:49:00.780 --> 00:49:12.780 Lower government expenditures are also evidently necessary to avoid the crowding out of private loans and investments from the capital markets by wasteful federal government deficits. 468 00:49:12.780 --> 00:49:24.780 There is a particularly hopeful reason for expecting the public and the opinion molders to grasp at the proper libertarian solution to this grave and continuing economic crisis. 469 00:49:24.780 --> 00:49:32.780 The fact that everyone knows that the state has controlled and manipulated the economy for the last 40 years. 470 00:49:32.780 --> 00:49:39.780 When government credit and interventionary policies brought about the Great Depression of the 1930s, 471 00:49:39.780 --> 00:49:44.780 the myth that the 1920s had been an era of laissez-faire was prevalent, 472 00:49:44.780 --> 00:49:49.780 and so it seemed plausible to assert that capitalism had failed, 473 00:49:49.780 --> 00:49:55.460 and that economic prosperity and progress required a giant leap towards statism and 474 00:49:55.460 --> 00:49:57.880 state control. 475 00:49:57.880 --> 00:50:03.340 But the current crisis comes after many decades of statism, and its nature is such that the 476 00:50:03.340 --> 00:50:08.700 public can now correctly perceive big government to be at fault. 477 00:50:08.700 --> 00:50:15.180 Furthermore, all the various forms of statism have now been tried and have failed. 478 00:50:15.180 --> 00:50:19.900 At the turn of the 20th century, businessmen, politicians and intellectuals throughout the 479 00:50:19.900 --> 00:50:26.920 western world began to turn to a new system of mixed economy, of state rule, to replace 480 00:50:26.920 --> 00:50:33.700 the relative laissez-faire of the previous century. Such new and seemingly exciting panaceas 481 00:50:33.700 --> 00:50:40.840 as socialism, the corporate state, the welfare-warfare state, etc., have all been tried and have 482 00:50:40.840 --> 00:50:43.160 have manifestly failed. 483 00:50:43.160 --> 00:50:50.200 The call for socialism or state planning is now a call for an old, tired and failed system. 484 00:50:50.200 --> 00:50:54.140 What is there left to try but freedom? 485 00:50:54.140 --> 00:50:58.280 On the social front, a similar crisis has occurred in recent years. 486 00:50:58.280 --> 00:51:03.500 The public school system, once a sacrosanct part of the American heritage, is now under 487 00:51:03.500 --> 00:51:09.320 severe and accelerated criticism from people across the ideological spectrum. 488 00:51:09.320 --> 00:51:16.440 It is now becoming clear, A, that public schools do not properly educate their charges, B, 489 00:51:16.440 --> 00:51:22.760 that they are costly, wasteful and require high taxes, and C, that the uniformity of 490 00:51:22.760 --> 00:51:29.160 the public school system creates deep and unresolvable social conflicts over vital educational 491 00:51:29.160 --> 00:51:36.040 issues, over such matters as integration versus segregation, progressive versus traditional 492 00:51:36.040 --> 00:51:43.960 Studies, Religion or Secularism, Sex Education and the Ideological Content of Learning. 493 00:51:43.960 --> 00:51:48.960 Whatever decision the public school makes in any of these areas, either a majority or 494 00:51:48.960 --> 00:51:54.200 a substantial minority of parents and children are irreparably injured. 495 00:51:54.200 --> 00:51:59.960 Furthermore, compulsory attendance laws are being increasingly perceived as dragooning 496 00:51:59.960 --> 00:52:29.960 In the field of moral policies, there is a growing realization that the rampant prohibitionism of government policy, not simply in the field of alcohol, but also in such matters as pornography, prostitution, sexual practices between consenting adults, drugs and abortion, are both an immoral and unjustified invasion of the right of each individual 497 00:52:29.960 --> 00:52:36.560 to make his or her own moral choices, and also cannot practically be enforced. 498 00:52:36.560 --> 00:52:42.060 Attempts at enforcement only bring about hardship and a virtual police state. 499 00:52:42.060 --> 00:52:53.560 The time is approaching when prohibitionism in these areas of personal morality will be recognized to be fully as unjust and ineffective as in the case of alcohol. 500 00:52:53.560 --> 00:53:07.560 In the wake of Watergate, there is also an increased awareness of the dangers to individual liberty and privacy, to the freedom to dissent from government, in habitual actions and activities of government. 501 00:53:07.560 --> 00:53:17.560 Here, too, we may expect public pressure to keep government from fulfilling its age-old desire to invade privacy and repress dissent. 502 00:53:17.560 --> 00:53:40.560 Perhaps the best sign of all, the most favorable indication of the breakdown of the mystique of the state, was the Watergate exposures of 1973 and 1974, for Watergate instigated a radical shift in the attitude of everyone, regardless of their explicit ideology, toward government itself. 503 00:53:40.560 --> 00:53:46.560 Watergate indeed awakened the public to the invasions of personal liberty by government. 504 00:53:46.560 --> 00:53:57.560 More important, by bringing about the impeachment of the President, it permanently desanctified an office that had almost been considered sovereign by the American public. 505 00:53:57.560 --> 00:54:04.560 But most importantly, government itself has been to a large extent desanctified. 506 00:54:04.560 --> 00:54:09.560 No one trusts any politician or government official anymore. 507 00:54:09.560 --> 00:54:23.560 All government is viewed with abiding hostility and distrust, thus returning to that healthy distrust of government that marked the American public and the American revolutionaries of the 18th century. 508 00:54:23.560 --> 00:54:35.560 In the wake of Watergate, no one would dare today to intone that we are the government, and therefore that anything elected officials may do is legitimate and proper. 509 00:54:35.560 --> 00:54:42.380 For the success of liberty, the most vital condition is the desanctification, the delegitimation 510 00:54:42.380 --> 00:54:49.480 of government in the eyes of the public, and that Watergate has managed to accomplish. 511 00:54:49.480 --> 00:54:55.160 Thus the objective conditions for the triumph of liberty have now, in the past few years, 512 00:54:55.160 --> 00:54:58.600 begun to appear, at least in the United States. 513 00:54:58.600 --> 00:55:04.800 Furthermore, the nature of this systemic crisis is such that government is now perceived as 514 00:55:04.800 --> 00:55:11.500 of the Culprit, it cannot be relieved except through a sharp turn toward liberty. 515 00:55:11.500 --> 00:55:16.920 What is basically needed now, therefore, is the growth of the subjective conditions of 516 00:55:16.920 --> 00:55:23.640 libertarian ideas and particularly of a dedicated libertarian movement to advance those ideas 517 00:55:23.640 --> 00:55:26.360 in the public forum. 518 00:55:26.360 --> 00:55:33.040 Surely it is no coincidence that it is precisely in these years, since 1971 and particularly 519 00:55:33.040 --> 00:55:40.880 since 1973 that these subjective conditions have made their greatest strides in this century. 520 00:55:40.880 --> 00:55:46.600 For the breakdown of statism has undoubtedly spurred many more people into becoming partial 521 00:55:46.600 --> 00:55:53.520 or full libertarians, and hence the objective conditions helped to generate the subjective. 522 00:55:53.520 --> 00:55:59.220 Furthermore, in the United States at least, the splendid heritage of freedom and of libertarian 523 00:55:59.220 --> 00:56:05.940 and Ideas, going back beyond revolutionary times, has never been fully lost. 524 00:56:05.940 --> 00:56:12.420 Present-day libertarians, therefore, have solid historical ground on which to build. 525 00:56:12.420 --> 00:56:18.500 The rapid growth in these last years of libertarian ideas and movements has pervaded many fields 526 00:56:18.500 --> 00:56:25.140 of scholarship, especially among younger scholars, and in the areas of journalism, the media, 527 00:56:25.140 --> 00:56:27.380 business and politics. 528 00:56:27.380 --> 00:56:33.260 Because of the continuing objective conditions, it seems clear that this eruption of libertarianism 529 00:56:33.260 --> 00:56:40.220 in many new and unexpected places is not a mere media-concocted fad, but an inevitably 530 00:56:40.220 --> 00:56:46.140 growing response to the perceived conditions of objective reality. 531 00:56:46.140 --> 00:56:52.180 Given free will, no one can predict with certainty that the growing libertarian mood in America 532 00:56:52.180 --> 00:56:58.380 will solidify in a brief period of time and press forward without faltering to the success 533 00:56:58.380 --> 00:57:01.700 of the entire libertarian program. 534 00:57:01.700 --> 00:57:07.140 But certainly, both theory and analysis of current historical conditions lead to the 535 00:57:07.140 --> 00:57:13.420 conclusion that the current prospects of liberty, even in the short run, are highly encouraging.