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Some libertarians, then as now, did not think of the State as a criminal band, however. These “minarchists,” or “limited government libertarians,” believed with Ayn Rand that “[t]he proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories […]: the police, to protect men from criminals – the armed services, to protect men from foreign invaders – the law courts, to settle disputes among men […]. [240] Clearly, then, they would have been no more likely than the anarchists to support the Progressives’ calls for old age pensions or workplace safety regulations or “improved” schools and parks. Nor would they have been likely to accept the New Left’s commitment to forced integration of privately owned businesses. So far as Rand and the other minarchists were concerned, the only true “crimes” were murder, rape, other types of assault, theft, and fraud. Refusing to associate with someone, even for a stupid or reprehensible reason, should not, in their eyes, be regarded as a criminal offense.
Still, despite their differences, there is an important common denominator linking these three political ideologies – progressivism, new leftism, and libertarianism. They are all on the Left.
This claim will seem surprising to many. Most people today, if they know about libertarianism at all, tend to think of it, along with conservatism, as part of the Right. In the September 2005 issue of Harper’s, for example, editor Lewis Lapham referred to “the several armies of the imperial right – conservative and neoconservative, libertarian and evangelical.” [241] Libertarians themselves tend to see the matter in this way. Yet a brief look at the history of the relevant political terms – Left and Right, liberal and conservative – will persuade us that libertarianism has absolutely nothing in common with anything on the Right. For it is as the anarchist Murray Bookchin said back in 1978: “People who resist authority, who defend the rights of the individual, who try in a period of increasing totalitarianism and centralization to reclaim these rights – this is the true left in the United States. Whether they are anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, or libertarians who believe in free enterprise, I regard theirs as the real legacy of the left […].” And what about the socialists, the Maoists and Trotskyites, and the liberals of the Democratic party? Bookchin was asked. What about the people most Americans regarded as “the Left”? Those people, Bookchin replied, were “going toward authoritarianism, toward totalitarianism.” They were “becoming the real right in the United States.” [242]
Bookchin was referring here to a conception of Western political history in which, as Karl Hess had put it a few years earlier, on “the far right […] we find monarchy, absolute dictatorships, and other forms of absolutely authoritarian rule,” while the Left “opposes the concentration of power and wealth and, instead, advocates and works toward the distribution of power into the maximum number of hands.” Just as the farthest Right you can go is absolute dictatorship, Hess argued, so “[t]he farthest left you can go, historically at any rate, is anarchism – the total opposition to any institutionalized power, a state of completely voluntary social organization […].”
And for anyone who may conclude that the above is some aberation, or some new discovery of history, even a wild speculation, here is a quote from someone who figured this stuff out before the Civil War:
Again, Socialism assumes every shade and variety of opinion respecting the modes of realizing its own aspirations, and, indeed, upon every other point, except one, which, when investigated, will be found to be the paramount rights of the Individual over social institutions, and the consequent demand that all existing social institutions shall be so modified that the Individual shall be in no manner subjected to them. This, then, is the identical principle of Protestantism and Democracy carried into its application in another sphere. The celebrated formula of Fourier that “destinies are proportioned to attractions,” means, when translated into less technical phraseology, that society must be so reorganized that every Individual shall be empowered to choose and vary his own destiny or condition and pursuits in life, untrammeled by social restrictions; in other words, so that every man may be a law unto himself, paramount to all other human laws, and the sole judge for himself of the divine law and of the requisitions of his own individual nature and organization. This is equally the fundamental principle of all the social theories, except in the case of the Shakers, the Rappites, etc., which are based upon religious whims, demanding submission, as a matter of duty, to a despotic rule, and which embody, in another form, the readoption of the popish or conservative principle. They, therefore, while they live in a form of society similar in some respects to those which have been proposed by the various schools of Socialists, are, in fact, neither Protestants nor Democrats, and, consequently, not Socialists in the sense in which I am now defining Socialism. The forms of society proposed by Socialism are the mere shell of the doctrine,--means to the end,--a platform upon which to place the Individual, in order that he may be enabled freely to exercise his own Individuality, which is the end and aim of all. We have seen that the shell is one which may be inhabited by despotism. Possibly it is unfit for the habitation of any thing else than despotism, which the Socialist hopes, by ensconcing himself therein, to escape. It is possible, even, that Socialism may have mistaken its measures altogether, and that the whole system of Association and combined interests and combined responsibilities proposed by it may be essentially antagonistic to the very ends proposed. All this, however, if it be so, is merely incidental. It belongs to the shell, and not to the substance,--to the means, and not to the end. The whole programme of Socialism may yet be abandoned or reversed, and yet Socialism remain in substance the same thing. What Socialism demands is the emancipation of the Individual from social bondage, by whatsoever means will effect that design, in the same manner as Protestantism demands the emancipation of the Individual from ecclesiastical bondage, and Democracy from political. Whosoever makes that demand, or labours to that end, is a Socialist. Any particular views he may entertain, distinguishing him from other Socialists, regarding practical measures, or the ultimate forms of society, are the mere specific differences, like those which divide the Protestant sects of Christendom.
This definition of Socialism may surprise some into the discovery of the fact that they have been Socialists all along, unawares. Some, on the other hand, who have called themselves Socialists may not at once be inclined to accept the definition. They may not perceive clearly that it is the emancipation of the Individual for which they are laboring, and affirm that it is, on the other hand, the freedom and happiness of the race. They will not, however, deny that it is both; and a very little reflection will show that the freedom and happiness of each individual will be the freedom and happiness of the race, and that the freedom and happiness of the race cannot exist so long as there is any individual of the race who is not happy and free. So the Protestant and the Democrat may not always have a clear intellectual perception of the distinctive principle of their creeds. He may be attached to it from an instinctive sentiment, which he has never thoroughly analyzed, or even from the mere accidents of education and birth.
Read the rest here:
http://anarchism.net/scienceofsociety.htm
Or here:
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/2006/04/science-of-society-no_10.html
Last edited on Fri May 8th, 2009 08:34 am by Joe Kelley