Misc. on the politics of the sixties...interview w Anne Heller about books on libertariansim

[Michael Bailey]

the anarchosyndicalists used it first, I think...
at least, anarchosyndicalist journal was originally the libertarian labor review

http://syndicalist.org/archives/welcome.shtml

since their idea of liberty meant organizing structures against not
just statist abuses, but also against capitalist abuses - while the
Ron Paulists seem to be most interested in dismantling the parts of
the state that hold unfettered power of capitalists in check and
discrediting anything or anyone who lacks complete faith in the
invisible hand...

those libertarians of the mises/rockwell/rothbard school, for their
part, claim title to the "original" meaning of the word "liberal" and
use the "libertarian" formation to distinguish themselves from what
liberalism has come to mean...since they are blind to the way
accumulated economic power so very very often implies coercive
relations both in its genesis and its tendencies...

 Mark Kohut wrote:
> I’m interested that libertarianism is an openly right-wing phenomenon. The word
> doesn’t sound like that.

in all honesty, Rockwell http://lewrockwell.com/ carries a diverse
bunch of messages and was highly critical of Bush and his
warmongering.  I used to read and enjoy a lot of those articles, when
they were excoriating state power in the hands of those whose vision
sickened me...
here's a great one on a guy who didn't want to keep his deceased
father's army uniform as a memento:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/young-r2.html


The visions of his contributors vary, but they are much more
acceptable to the right, now that the right is protesting the use of
state power in the hands of those (the Big O and his cohort) whose
vision is a lot less sickening (imho), and in fact the groundswells
from rockwell et al now are sulphurous and evil-smelling...
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html

>
> There have been attempts, especially in the 1960s, because libertarians are
> anti-war, to get together with the New Left, but it didn’t work very well
> because that was pretty much all they shared. The libertarians just don’t think
> government should take care of people.
>

notably, Rothbard spent some time with the New Left, and predictably,
given his bow-tie button-down nature, he found they were "wilfully
anti-intellectual" and abandoned the attempt at common ground

> Like anarchy?

there is a similar atavism to be found if you like to notice things like that -
Rothbard (on the right, if viewed by an outsider he definitely falls
in that part of the curve, although he took care to point out how he
didn't really...) took tiny-statism to its limit and eventually
realized a vision in his writings where a state wasn't necessary,

and recently a (left) anarchist named Zerzan beat a retreat toward
complete primitivism, I think glorifying hunting-gathering and
rejecting, well, all of technology (far beyond Luddism) although I'm
pretty sure he uses a computer to write his books

>
> Well, that is no government at all. These people want a little tiny government
> that will defend us against our enemies and police crime in the nation and they
> want courts that will adjudicate contracts. They think everything should be done
> by contract.
>

government CAN be involved in anything, or nothing, it really isn't a
valuable distinction...
it's still people doing things, and they will take whatever tools or
titles they need to do what they think needs to be done, and do it as
best they can...

call it a contract where a person can sell a birthright for a mess of
pottage, write it up, notarize it, enforce it with a private army or
call on the police -- it's still unjust. Somebody whether they are
hairy or smooth should get decent treatment, better stuff than a mess
of pottage should be on offer or the bargain should be written off as
odious debt, and hey, birthrights should be pretty interchangeable in
the first place, I think that is in the Constitution...or common law,
or something...

-  the potential for revolution really lies in defining goals and
developing methods that don't suck.


Robert Anton Wilson wrote "What you are looking for is an organization
of the imagination"
he and his co-author Robert Sloan (both RIP) did wonderful things in
the appendices to the _Illuminatus_ trilogy with the right and left
forms of libertarianism:
including something like, a right libertarian sees the natural mode of
dealing with people as competition,
while the left libertarians see the natural mode as co-operation...
but plenty more insights too



-- 
Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
- Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")