The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with
Jeff Rigenbach.
As I noted last week, Frank Chaturov was an early 20th century geo-libertarian who devoted
the last two decades of his life, basically the 1940s and 50s, to advocacy journalism.
He was also a militant non-voter.
A people can vote themselves into slavery, he wrote, though they cannot vote themselves
out of it, for never has the vote been used to abolish privilege.
It has always been used to demand new ones or to effect a change in the beneficiaries.
It was possible, he thought, that social ostracism might convince those politicians whose self-respect
had not dropped to the vanishing point to get out of the business and put themselves
and such ostracism might be imposed on politicians, he supposed, by boycotting elections, by refusing
to vote.
On the other hand, Chudorov considered it doubtful that concerned individuals could
accomplish much by withholding their votes, beyond perhaps bolstering their own self-respect.
For as soon as any very substantial number of people began boycotting the polls, the
politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution.
Measures to enforce voting would be instituted, fines would be imposed for violations and
prison sentences would be meted out to repeaters.
It is a necessity for political power, no matter how gained, to have the moral support
of Public Approval, and suffrage is the most efficient scheme for registering it.
Notice how Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin insisted on having ballots cast.
In any republican government, even ours, only a fraction of the populace votes for
the successful candidate, but that fraction is quantitatively impressive.
It is this appearance of overwhelming sanction which supports him in the exercise of political
There would also be propaganda in response to such passive resistance to statism as mass non-voting would represent.
Not only that put out by the politicians of all parties.
The coalition would be as complete as it would be spontaneous.
But also the more effective kind emanating from seemingly disinterested sources.
All the monopolists, all the coupon-clipping foundations, all the tax-exempt alimazenary
institutions, in short, all the respectables, would join in a howling defense of the status
quo.
Against this combination of political power and the organized propaganda of the officially
respectable elements in society, how could the non-voters expect to prevail?
But if voting is pointless, and non-voting is a strategy that will never lead to any
sort of victory over the forces of statism, what is left for a concerned individualist
bent on improving society and steering it away from what Friedrich Hayek called the
road to serfdom?
If voting can't improve the situation, what can?
Chudorov's reply was simple and direct, don't vote, educate instead.
But before you begin, rid your mind of some commonly held illusions about the need for
individualist or libertarian education.
First, get it through your head that, and these are Chaturav's words, socialists are
born, not made, and so are individualists.
Far too many people, as Chaturav saw it, believed that socialists were made by socialist teachers.
In fact, Chatarov maintained, education merely supplies the words and ideas that fit in with
the primordial inclination of the socialist.
He will accept at face value all the theories, all the figures and charts supporting his
preconceived notions, and will reject offhand any arguments or data that support the idea
of individual freedom.
You cannot teach anybody anything that he does not in a real sense already know.
A class of freshmen can be subjected to all the litanies of the socialistic creed.
The majority will take in what they are taught for the purpose of getting a passing grade,
but a minority will thrill to the instruction, while a still smaller minority will in their
hearts reject it.
Those who respond favorably to the instruction came intuitively prepared to do so, while
those who find it repulsive were likewise instinctively opposed to it.
On the other hand, give a course in classical economics, or teach a group the meaning of
natural rights, and some, though they have absorbed all the words of freedom, will come
away entirely unconvinced.
Some emotional blocking prevents the ideas from taking root, and this is also true of
all the collectivistic professors.
They read all the books which the individualist holds most dear, but the reading leaves them
cold to the ideas.
They are collectivist because nature inclined them toward collectivism.
Chaturav acknowledged that it is true that by far the majority of our educators are socialists,
But this follows not from the fact that they were educated in the creed, but that most
of those who go into the pedagogical business are by nature inclined toward it.
Teaching is by general acclaim a noble profession, getting that reputation from the fact that
its practitioners generously and without expectation of monetary rewards undertake to inculcate
values in the young.
But it is also a profession that is removed from the disciplines of the market place,
and as such appeals to those who find these disciplines distasteful.
They have no liking for the higgling and haggling of the market place, no inclination to enter
the competitive field.
Since our educational system is largely dominated by government, and is therefore monopolistically
controlled, it attracts those who favor that kind of control.
That is, it has allure for the socialistically-minded.
Chatarov confessed somewhat sorrowfully that he had struggled for many years to understand
why some people are libertarians while others of equal learning and background are socialists.
It isn't a matter of education.
Once I attended the closing session of a course given by the noted laissez-faire economist
Ludwig von Mises and listened to the reactions of his students.
It was a gabfest.
Some gave distinct evidence of rejecting all they had learned from him in 15 previous lectures,
even what they had presumably read in his books.
Others were enthusiastic exponents of his thesis.
Why?
Chaturov rules out of consideration what he calls the bureaucratic socialist, for whom
socialism is a job, not necessarily a conviction, and also the professor whose job depends on
is going along with the head of the department, or whose income is in part derived as a consultant
on government projects.
Chatarov wants to understand why people buy into socialism even when they don't directly
and immediately benefit from doing so, even sometimes when the implementation of socialism
would directly and immediately harm them.
He notes that neither education, background nor income can explain either the socialist
or the libertarian.
Whenever you try any of these criteria, you are faced with cases that refute your premise.
You find that both types come from penthouses and slums, that they include PhDs and illiterates.
You are driven to the conclusion that if there is a causative principle, it must be found
and somewhere in the make-up of the person, rather than in environmental influences.
Psychology does not help, for it seeks explanations for mental attitudes in conditioning and shies
away from the realm of inherent traits or temperament.
And it is in the realm of inherent traits or temperament that Chatarov thinks the answer
to his questions, why are some people libertarians, why are others of equal learning and background
Socialists is to be found.
The characteristic that invariably identifies socialists, he writes, is an urgency to improve
other people.
It is a passion that blinds them to the fact of immutable individuality and leads to faith
in the therapy of force.
In short, they are so constituted that they cannot let other people alone.
But does this analysis suggest a flaw in Chaturav's proposal that we individualists and libertarians
focus our outreach efforts on education rather than supporting political candidates?
Chaturav faces this question squarely.
If then the socialistic attitude, and by implication that of the libertarian, stems from an ingredient
of personality, he writes, why put so much stress on education?
The Libertarian is particularly concerned over the spread of socialistic doctrine in the
schools and in the public press, and is most anxious to bring his own philosophy into opposition.
On the face of it, this concern seems unwarranted, for an innate tendency toward freedom will
not be changed by words into an acceptance of slavery.
Basically, this is true, but a character trait like a seed germinates best under proper cultivation,
And the inclination toward freedom is strengthened by intellectual conviction.
There are many who are instinctively repelled by government intervention, but who crave intellectual
support for their inclination.
It is to them that the proponent of libertarianism must address himself.
The socialist is beyond redemption.
That is to say, the libertarian teaches not to make libertarians, but to find them.
Likewise, the socialist teacher does not make converts.
He merely confirms the socialistic inclination of his willing students.
And there the intellectual battle between the two schools of thought might rest.
But socialism is not an intellectual pursuit.
It is primarily a drive for political power.
And if its proponents succeed in enthroning themselves,
the case for libertarian thought will be most difficult.
Hence the reason for seeking out the natural libertarians through education is to prevent,
by constant and intelligent reiteration of its tenets, the suppression of the philosophy
of freedom, and the driving of its advocates underground.
It is worth noting, if only in passing, that Chatarov uses the term libertarian to describe
what he also calls the philosophy of freedom.
He wrote in his last book, Out of Step, the Autobiography of an Individualist, that the
bottle is now labeled libertarianism, but its content is nothing new.
It is what in the 19th century, and up to the time of Franklin Roosevelt, was called
liberalism, the advocacy of limited government and a free economy.
If you think of it, you will see that there is a redundancy in this formula, for a government
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.
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.
In a 1956 letter to the editor, published in William F. Buckley Jr.'s then recently established National Review, he wrote,
I will punch anyone who calls me a conservative in the nose. I am a radical.
So he was. And so dedicated was he to education as the proper strategy for libertarians.
Education to seek out the natural libertarians among us and provide them with some much needed intellectual support,
some proper cultivation to strengthen their inclination toward freedom, that you might say, he died in the classroom.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Chatarov was convinced that when people want freedom, they will get it.
When the desire of the businessman for free enterprise is so strong that he will risk
bankruptcy for it, he cannot be denied.
When youth prefers prison to the barracks, when a job in the bureaucracy is considered
leprous, when the tax collector is stamped a legalized thief, when handouts from the
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.
Looking around him and looking back from the perspective of seven decades of living, learning
and teaching, Chatarov concluded that most people are unprepared for freedom and incapable
of understanding what it is.
For in spite of the aphorism that all men are born equal, nature very specifically abhors
uniformity.
It is obvious that there are some men who, regardless of their backgrounds and environments,
are more plentifully endowed with intellectual curiosity than others.
And that the proportion of this unexplainable intellectual elite to the number who are content
to grub along is small.
So what hope is there for a stateless society?
If by an accident of nature this remnant does run up as a proportion of the population,
it may make its influence felt.
be a complete collapse of our civilization, brought about by the crushing weight of statism,
will throw the intellectual elite into the ascendancy as a last resort, and some good
will come of it.
In the meantime, the only thing anyone can do is to go to work on the one unit he can
improve, the only one he has a right to tackle, himself.
Chudorov was well aware that his educational strategy for the libertarian movement was a long-term project.
He knew that anyone inclined to try to carry it out would first have to seek minds capable of absorbing the libertarian message,
and then, for some years, console himself with the quality of his few recruits,
until, in time, he finally had a roster respectable enough to make its influence felt.
And to anyone who balked at this prospect, Chaturav had this to say,
What's your hurry? You have only a few years to live and cannot hope to remake society in so short a time.
Nobody now living will see a free society in America. But in fighting for it, one can have a lot of fun.
Consider the effort as a legacy to your great-grandchildren. What else can you bequeath them?
Freedom.
You know that confiscatory taxation will increase, not diminish.
You will leave your children part of what you have accumulated.
Have you any doubt that your grandchildren will get a smaller part, or that their children
will get nothing?
In the circumstances, what better heritage could you bestow than some understanding of
the principles of freedom, and, perhaps, a will for freedom?
This is Jeff Rigginbach.