WEBVTT NOTE Frank Chodorov, Educator 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.700 The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with 2 00:00:09.700 --> 00:00:12.900 Jeff Rigenbach. 3 00:00:12.900 --> 00:00:19.620 As I noted last week, Frank Chaturov was an early 20th century geo-libertarian who devoted 4 00:00:19.620 --> 00:00:26.860 the last two decades of his life, basically the 1940s and 50s, to advocacy journalism. 5 00:00:26.860 --> 00:00:29.740 He was also a militant non-voter. 6 00:00:29.740 --> 00:00:35.180 A people can vote themselves into slavery, he wrote, though they cannot vote themselves 7 00:00:35.180 --> 00:00:40.100 out of it, for never has the vote been used to abolish privilege. 8 00:00:40.100 --> 00:00:46.820 It has always been used to demand new ones or to effect a change in the beneficiaries. 9 00:00:46.820 --> 00:00:53.380 It was possible, he thought, that social ostracism might convince those politicians whose self-respect 10 00:00:53.380 --> 00:00:58.380 had not dropped to the vanishing point to get out of the business and put themselves 11 00:00:58.380 --> 00:01:12.780 and such ostracism might be imposed on politicians, he supposed, by boycotting elections, by refusing 12 00:01:12.780 --> 00:01:14.020 to vote. 13 00:01:14.020 --> 00:01:18.660 On the other hand, Chudorov considered it doubtful that concerned individuals could 14 00:01:18.660 --> 00:01:25.420 accomplish much by withholding their votes, beyond perhaps bolstering their own self-respect. 15 00:01:25.420 --> 00:01:30.900 For as soon as any very substantial number of people began boycotting the polls, the 16 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:35.340 politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution. 17 00:01:35.340 --> 00:01:41.220 Measures to enforce voting would be instituted, fines would be imposed for violations and 18 00:01:41.220 --> 00:01:44.600 prison sentences would be meted out to repeaters. 19 00:01:44.600 --> 00:01:50.700 It is a necessity for political power, no matter how gained, to have the moral support 20 00:01:50.700 --> 00:01:56.260 of Public Approval, and suffrage is the most efficient scheme for registering it. 21 00:01:56.260 --> 00:02:01.700 Notice how Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin insisted on having ballots cast. 22 00:02:01.700 --> 00:02:07.340 In any republican government, even ours, only a fraction of the populace votes for 23 00:02:07.340 --> 00:02:12.860 the successful candidate, but that fraction is quantitatively impressive. 24 00:02:12.860 --> 00:02:18.500 It is this appearance of overwhelming sanction which supports him in the exercise of political 25 00:02:18.500 --> 00:02:30.500 There would also be propaganda in response to such passive resistance to statism as mass non-voting would represent. 26 00:02:30.500 --> 00:02:34.500 Not only that put out by the politicians of all parties. 27 00:02:34.500 --> 00:02:38.500 The coalition would be as complete as it would be spontaneous. 28 00:02:38.500 --> 00:02:44.500 But also the more effective kind emanating from seemingly disinterested sources. 29 00:02:44.500 --> 00:02:50.940 All the monopolists, all the coupon-clipping foundations, all the tax-exempt alimazenary 30 00:02:50.940 --> 00:02:57.300 institutions, in short, all the respectables, would join in a howling defense of the status 31 00:02:57.300 --> 00:02:59.260 quo. 32 00:02:59.260 --> 00:03:04.580 Against this combination of political power and the organized propaganda of the officially 33 00:03:04.580 --> 00:03:10.420 respectable elements in society, how could the non-voters expect to prevail? 34 00:03:10.420 --> 00:03:15.580 But if voting is pointless, and non-voting is a strategy that will never lead to any 35 00:03:15.580 --> 00:03:21.420 sort of victory over the forces of statism, what is left for a concerned individualist 36 00:03:21.420 --> 00:03:27.220 bent on improving society and steering it away from what Friedrich Hayek called the 37 00:03:27.220 --> 00:03:28.900 road to serfdom? 38 00:03:28.900 --> 00:03:32.660 If voting can't improve the situation, what can? 39 00:03:32.660 --> 00:03:39.260 Chudorov's reply was simple and direct, don't vote, educate instead. 40 00:03:39.260 --> 00:03:45.140 But before you begin, rid your mind of some commonly held illusions about the need for 41 00:03:45.140 --> 00:03:48.220 individualist or libertarian education. 42 00:03:48.220 --> 00:03:54.180 First, get it through your head that, and these are Chaturav's words, socialists are 43 00:03:54.180 --> 00:03:59.020 born, not made, and so are individualists. 44 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:06.340 Far too many people, as Chaturav saw it, believed that socialists were made by socialist teachers. 45 00:04:06.340 --> 00:04:13.300 In fact, Chatarov maintained, education merely supplies the words and ideas that fit in with 46 00:04:13.300 --> 00:04:16.840 the primordial inclination of the socialist. 47 00:04:16.840 --> 00:04:22.420 He will accept at face value all the theories, all the figures and charts supporting his 48 00:04:22.420 --> 00:04:29.220 preconceived notions, and will reject offhand any arguments or data that support the idea 49 00:04:29.220 --> 00:04:31.360 of individual freedom. 50 00:04:31.360 --> 00:04:37.200 You cannot teach anybody anything that he does not in a real sense already know. 51 00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:42.580 A class of freshmen can be subjected to all the litanies of the socialistic creed. 52 00:04:42.580 --> 00:04:47.840 The majority will take in what they are taught for the purpose of getting a passing grade, 53 00:04:47.840 --> 00:04:53.740 but a minority will thrill to the instruction, while a still smaller minority will in their 54 00:04:53.740 --> 00:04:55.800 hearts reject it. 55 00:04:55.800 --> 00:05:02.200 Those who respond favorably to the instruction came intuitively prepared to do so, while 56 00:05:02.200 --> 00:05:07.300 those who find it repulsive were likewise instinctively opposed to it. 57 00:05:07.300 --> 00:05:11.960 On the other hand, give a course in classical economics, or teach a group the meaning of 58 00:05:11.960 --> 00:05:17.560 natural rights, and some, though they have absorbed all the words of freedom, will come 59 00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:20.500 away entirely unconvinced. 60 00:05:20.500 --> 00:05:26.540 Some emotional blocking prevents the ideas from taking root, and this is also true of 61 00:05:26.540 --> 00:05:29.140 all the collectivistic professors. 62 00:05:29.140 --> 00:05:34.380 They read all the books which the individualist holds most dear, but the reading leaves them 63 00:05:34.380 --> 00:05:36.400 cold to the ideas. 64 00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:42.300 They are collectivist because nature inclined them toward collectivism. 65 00:05:42.300 --> 00:05:49.240 Chaturav acknowledged that it is true that by far the majority of our educators are socialists, 66 00:05:49.240 --> 00:05:54.240 But this follows not from the fact that they were educated in the creed, but that most 67 00:05:54.240 --> 00:06:00.600 of those who go into the pedagogical business are by nature inclined toward it. 68 00:06:00.600 --> 00:06:06.520 Teaching is by general acclaim a noble profession, getting that reputation from the fact that 69 00:06:06.520 --> 00:06:13.640 its practitioners generously and without expectation of monetary rewards undertake to inculcate 70 00:06:13.640 --> 00:06:15.720 values in the young. 71 00:06:15.720 --> 00:06:20.840 But it is also a profession that is removed from the disciplines of the market place, 72 00:06:20.840 --> 00:06:25.560 and as such appeals to those who find these disciplines distasteful. 73 00:06:25.560 --> 00:06:31.160 They have no liking for the higgling and haggling of the market place, no inclination to enter 74 00:06:31.160 --> 00:06:33.420 the competitive field. 75 00:06:33.420 --> 00:06:39.120 Since our educational system is largely dominated by government, and is therefore monopolistically 76 00:06:39.120 --> 00:06:44.140 controlled, it attracts those who favor that kind of control. 77 00:06:44.140 --> 00:06:48.620 That is, it has allure for the socialistically-minded. 78 00:06:48.620 --> 00:06:54.420 Chatarov confessed somewhat sorrowfully that he had struggled for many years to understand 79 00:06:54.420 --> 00:07:01.500 why some people are libertarians while others of equal learning and background are socialists. 80 00:07:01.500 --> 00:07:03.780 It isn't a matter of education. 81 00:07:03.780 --> 00:07:08.820 Once I attended the closing session of a course given by the noted laissez-faire economist 82 00:07:08.820 --> 00:07:13.140 Ludwig von Mises and listened to the reactions of his students. 83 00:07:13.140 --> 00:07:15.000 It was a gabfest. 84 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:21.340 Some gave distinct evidence of rejecting all they had learned from him in 15 previous lectures, 85 00:07:21.340 --> 00:07:24.460 even what they had presumably read in his books. 86 00:07:24.460 --> 00:07:28.380 Others were enthusiastic exponents of his thesis. 87 00:07:28.380 --> 00:07:29.380 Why? 88 00:07:29.380 --> 00:07:35.340 Chaturov rules out of consideration what he calls the bureaucratic socialist, for whom 89 00:07:35.340 --> 00:07:42.340 socialism is a job, not necessarily a conviction, and also the professor whose job depends on 90 00:07:42.340 --> 00:07:48.640 is going along with the head of the department, or whose income is in part derived as a consultant 91 00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:50.700 on government projects. 92 00:07:50.700 --> 00:07:57.220 Chatarov wants to understand why people buy into socialism even when they don't directly 93 00:07:57.220 --> 00:08:03.540 and immediately benefit from doing so, even sometimes when the implementation of socialism 94 00:08:03.540 --> 00:08:06.700 would directly and immediately harm them. 95 00:08:06.700 --> 00:08:12.420 He notes that neither education, background nor income can explain either the socialist 96 00:08:12.420 --> 00:08:14.100 or the libertarian. 97 00:08:14.100 --> 00:08:20.220 Whenever you try any of these criteria, you are faced with cases that refute your premise. 98 00:08:20.220 --> 00:08:27.420 You find that both types come from penthouses and slums, that they include PhDs and illiterates. 99 00:08:27.420 --> 00:08:32.580 You are driven to the conclusion that if there is a causative principle, it must be found 100 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:39.100 and somewhere in the make-up of the person, rather than in environmental influences. 101 00:08:39.100 --> 00:08:45.220 Psychology does not help, for it seeks explanations for mental attitudes in conditioning and shies 102 00:08:45.220 --> 00:08:49.980 away from the realm of inherent traits or temperament. 103 00:08:49.980 --> 00:08:55.180 And it is in the realm of inherent traits or temperament that Chatarov thinks the answer 104 00:08:55.180 --> 00:09:02.260 to his questions, why are some people libertarians, why are others of equal learning and background 105 00:09:02.260 --> 00:09:04.980 Socialists is to be found. 106 00:09:04.980 --> 00:09:11.940 The characteristic that invariably identifies socialists, he writes, is an urgency to improve 107 00:09:11.940 --> 00:09:13.260 other people. 108 00:09:13.260 --> 00:09:19.420 It is a passion that blinds them to the fact of immutable individuality and leads to faith 109 00:09:19.420 --> 00:09:21.740 in the therapy of force. 110 00:09:21.740 --> 00:09:28.300 In short, they are so constituted that they cannot let other people alone. 111 00:09:28.300 --> 00:09:35.580 But does this analysis suggest a flaw in Chaturav's proposal that we individualists and libertarians 112 00:09:35.580 --> 00:09:41.620 focus our outreach efforts on education rather than supporting political candidates? 113 00:09:41.620 --> 00:09:44.760 Chaturav faces this question squarely. 114 00:09:44.760 --> 00:09:51.640 If then the socialistic attitude, and by implication that of the libertarian, stems from an ingredient 115 00:09:51.640 --> 00:09:56.660 of personality, he writes, why put so much stress on education? 116 00:09:56.660 --> 00:10:01.780 The Libertarian is particularly concerned over the spread of socialistic doctrine in the 117 00:10:01.780 --> 00:10:08.660 schools and in the public press, and is most anxious to bring his own philosophy into opposition. 118 00:10:08.660 --> 00:10:14.340 On the face of it, this concern seems unwarranted, for an innate tendency toward freedom will 119 00:10:14.340 --> 00:10:18.580 not be changed by words into an acceptance of slavery. 120 00:10:18.580 --> 00:10:26.600 Basically, this is true, but a character trait like a seed germinates best under proper cultivation, 121 00:10:26.600 --> 00:10:31.640 And the inclination toward freedom is strengthened by intellectual conviction. 122 00:10:31.640 --> 00:10:37.480 There are many who are instinctively repelled by government intervention, but who crave intellectual 123 00:10:37.480 --> 00:10:40.040 support for their inclination. 124 00:10:40.040 --> 00:10:45.080 It is to them that the proponent of libertarianism must address himself. 125 00:10:45.080 --> 00:10:47.520 The socialist is beyond redemption. 126 00:10:47.520 --> 00:10:54.400 That is to say, the libertarian teaches not to make libertarians, but to find them. 127 00:10:54.400 --> 00:10:58.400 Likewise, the socialist teacher does not make converts. 128 00:10:58.400 --> 00:11:03.400 He merely confirms the socialistic inclination of his willing students. 129 00:11:03.400 --> 00:11:08.400 And there the intellectual battle between the two schools of thought might rest. 130 00:11:08.400 --> 00:11:12.400 But socialism is not an intellectual pursuit. 131 00:11:12.400 --> 00:11:15.400 It is primarily a drive for political power. 132 00:11:15.400 --> 00:11:19.400 And if its proponents succeed in enthroning themselves, 133 00:11:19.400 --> 00:11:23.400 the case for libertarian thought will be most difficult. 134 00:11:23.400 --> 00:11:29.960 Hence the reason for seeking out the natural libertarians through education is to prevent, 135 00:11:29.960 --> 00:11:35.680 by constant and intelligent reiteration of its tenets, the suppression of the philosophy 136 00:11:35.680 --> 00:11:40.900 of freedom, and the driving of its advocates underground. 137 00:11:40.900 --> 00:11:47.020 It is worth noting, if only in passing, that Chatarov uses the term libertarian to describe 138 00:11:47.020 --> 00:11:50.520 what he also calls the philosophy of freedom. 139 00:11:50.520 --> 00:11:56.280 He wrote in his last book, Out of Step, the Autobiography of an Individualist, that the 140 00:11:56.280 --> 00:12:01.620 bottle is now labeled libertarianism, but its content is nothing new. 141 00:12:01.620 --> 00:12:06.780 It is what in the 19th century, and up to the time of Franklin Roosevelt, was called 142 00:12:06.780 --> 00:12:12.320 liberalism, the advocacy of limited government and a free economy. 143 00:12:12.320 --> 00:12:17.420 If you think of it, you will see that there is a redundancy in this formula, for a government 144 00:12:17.420 --> 00:12:43.420 The liberals were robbed of their time-honored name by the unprincipled socialists and near-socialists, whose avidity for prestige words knows no bounds, so, forced to look for another and distinctive label for their philosophy, they came up with libertarianism, good enough, but somewhat difficult for the tongue. 145 00:12:43.420 --> 00:12:54.420 There was at least one term, however, that Chotarov did not regard as good enough when it came to describing the philosophy of freedom, conservatism. 146 00:12:54.420 --> 00:13:03.420 In a 1956 letter to the editor, published in William F. Buckley Jr.'s then recently established National Review, he wrote, 147 00:13:03.420 --> 00:13:09.420 I will punch anyone who calls me a conservative in the nose. I am a radical. 148 00:13:09.420 --> 00:13:17.420 So he was. And so dedicated was he to education as the proper strategy for libertarians. 149 00:13:17.420 --> 00:13:25.420 Education to seek out the natural libertarians among us and provide them with some much needed intellectual support, 150 00:13:25.420 --> 00:13:32.420 some proper cultivation to strengthen their inclination toward freedom, that you might say, he died in the classroom. 151 00:13:32.420 --> 00:13:46.420 He was just beginning a lecture in a class at Robert Lefebvre's Freedom School in rural Colorado in the summer of 1961 when he suffered a massive stroke and was left unable to continue his remarks. 152 00:13:46.420 --> 00:13:55.420 Lefebvre, in his autobiography, recalls having to pry his fingers loose from the lectern where Chotorov had been standing at the front of the classroom 153 00:13:55.420 --> 00:14:22.420 Frank Chaturav always cautioned those who expressed an interest in his education strategy that it would be pointless to expect wide public acceptance of such educational efforts. 154 00:14:22.420 --> 00:14:32.920 The average person, he wrote, is not the least bit interested in any ideology, being content to get along as best he can under any conditions imposed on him. 155 00:14:32.920 --> 00:14:43.420 The fundamental obstacle to the achievement of a free society, in fact, was the simple truism that very few know what freedom is, and still fewer want it. 156 00:14:43.420 --> 00:14:49.180 Chatarov was convinced that when people want freedom, they will get it. 157 00:14:49.180 --> 00:14:54.260 When the desire of the businessman for free enterprise is so strong that he will risk 158 00:14:54.260 --> 00:14:57.900 bankruptcy for it, he cannot be denied. 159 00:14:57.900 --> 00:15:03.180 When youth prefers prison to the barracks, when a job in the bureaucracy is considered 160 00:15:03.180 --> 00:15:08.660 leprous, when the tax collector is stamped a legalized thief, when handouts from the 161 00:15:08.660 --> 00:15:26.660 When the politicians are contemptuously rejected, when work on a government project is considered degrading, when, in short, the state is recognized to be the enemy of society, then only will freedom come and the citadel of power collapse. 162 00:15:26.660 --> 00:15:32.080 Looking around him and looking back from the perspective of seven decades of living, learning 163 00:15:32.080 --> 00:15:38.020 and teaching, Chatarov concluded that most people are unprepared for freedom and incapable 164 00:15:38.020 --> 00:15:40.340 of understanding what it is. 165 00:15:40.340 --> 00:15:46.620 For in spite of the aphorism that all men are born equal, nature very specifically abhors 166 00:15:46.620 --> 00:15:47.860 uniformity. 167 00:15:47.860 --> 00:15:53.560 It is obvious that there are some men who, regardless of their backgrounds and environments, 168 00:15:53.560 --> 00:15:58.440 are more plentifully endowed with intellectual curiosity than others. 169 00:15:58.440 --> 00:16:04.120 And that the proportion of this unexplainable intellectual elite to the number who are content 170 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:06.860 to grub along is small. 171 00:16:06.860 --> 00:16:10.200 So what hope is there for a stateless society? 172 00:16:10.200 --> 00:16:16.240 If by an accident of nature this remnant does run up as a proportion of the population, 173 00:16:16.240 --> 00:16:18.640 it may make its influence felt. 174 00:16:18.640 --> 00:16:24.480 be a complete collapse of our civilization, brought about by the crushing weight of statism, 175 00:16:24.480 --> 00:16:29.960 will throw the intellectual elite into the ascendancy as a last resort, and some good 176 00:16:29.960 --> 00:16:31.360 will come of it. 177 00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:37.480 In the meantime, the only thing anyone can do is to go to work on the one unit he can 178 00:16:37.480 --> 00:16:43.840 improve, the only one he has a right to tackle, himself. 179 00:16:43.840 --> 00:16:51.340 Chudorov was well aware that his educational strategy for the libertarian movement was a long-term project. 180 00:16:51.340 --> 00:16:59.840 He knew that anyone inclined to try to carry it out would first have to seek minds capable of absorbing the libertarian message, 181 00:16:59.840 --> 00:17:05.840 and then, for some years, console himself with the quality of his few recruits, 182 00:17:05.840 --> 00:17:11.840 until, in time, he finally had a roster respectable enough to make its influence felt. 183 00:17:11.840 --> 00:17:16.840 And to anyone who balked at this prospect, Chaturav had this to say, 184 00:17:16.840 --> 00:17:24.840 What's your hurry? You have only a few years to live and cannot hope to remake society in so short a time. 185 00:17:24.840 --> 00:17:31.840 Nobody now living will see a free society in America. But in fighting for it, one can have a lot of fun. 186 00:17:31.840 --> 00:17:37.840 Consider the effort as a legacy to your great-grandchildren. What else can you bequeath them? 187 00:17:37.840 --> 00:17:38.840 Freedom. 188 00:17:38.840 --> 00:17:43.640 You know that confiscatory taxation will increase, not diminish. 189 00:17:43.640 --> 00:17:47.260 You will leave your children part of what you have accumulated. 190 00:17:47.260 --> 00:17:52.080 Have you any doubt that your grandchildren will get a smaller part, or that their children 191 00:17:52.080 --> 00:17:53.800 will get nothing? 192 00:17:53.800 --> 00:17:59.360 In the circumstances, what better heritage could you bestow than some understanding of 193 00:17:59.360 --> 00:18:05.320 the principles of freedom, and, perhaps, a will for freedom? 194 00:18:05.320 --> 00:18:19.520 This is Jeff Rigginbach.