Chapter 61 of 168 · Complete Libertarian Forum (1969-1984) by Murray N. Rothbard

Vol. 4.9, November 1972

A Monthly Newsletter

THE

Libertarian Forum

Joseph R. Peden, Publisher		Murray N. Rothbard, Editor
VOLUME IV, NO. 9	NOVEMBER, 1972	75¢

BEYOND THE SIXTIES

The smashing repudiation of McGovernism (for no one claims to see any great love for Richard Nixon) by the American people is both the symbol and the living embodiment of the death of the 1960’s. More specifically, of the final passing from the scene of the second half of the 1960’s, the era of the New Left. In a heady rush of excitement during those wild few years, the New Left swiftly escalated their tactics and their goals, from pressure to demonstration to campus takeovers to outright violence. The brief frenzy of violence reached its culmination with the “whiff of grape” at Kent State in 1970; that show of firmness was enough to demoralize and destroy the New Left and to end the flurry of violence. The only thing left was to “work within the system,” and the result was the McGovernite movement; now that movement has been smashed to smithereens, and there is nothing now for the Left but to shut up and fade away.

Those were indeed wild and wooly years; but in retrospect we can see far better than at the time that the whole movement was a flash-in-the-pan: a sudden, exuberant, and radical outburst that was destined to disappear as quickly as it arrived. The outburst to be sure, was breathtakingly swift; never before in America had the political, social, and cultural changes — “revolutionary” changes in the broadest sense — been so swift and so seemingly irresistible. It is easy to see now, however, that these changes of attitude and ideology were confined, not simply to youth, but to students and younger faculty in elite Ivy League colleges, people who were well situated by virtue of wealth and articulateness to make far more noise than their numbers or their genuine influence ever deserved. An important recent study by the Hudson Institute only serves to confirm other evidence of how deeply conservative the great bulk of the middle and working classes — including the youth — have continued to be throughout all the hullabaloo. (Frank E. Armbruster, The Forgotten Americans: A Survey of Values, Beliefs, and Concerns of the Majority, New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1972, $9.95, 454 pp.)

The academic year 1969-70 (it is fitting to trace this campus-based “movement” in terms of academic years) was the frenzied culmination before the dissolution of the New Left. That was the year when the SDS was captured by the Weathermen, who proceeded to “go underground” after celebrating the Manson Family’s torture-murder of Sharon Tate. It was the year of the last giant, violent demonstration in Washington; the year when the Berrigans and their allies talked wildly of “kidnapping Kissinger”; the year that ended when the shock of Kent State brought the movement out of their relatively safe but looney revolutionary posturing and into the harsh light of reality. It was the year, too, when some libertarians lost their perspective and got caught up in the frenzy: from street fighting to drug parties to portentous mutterings about the imminent launching of “urban guerrilla warfare.”

In retrospect, too, it is obvious that many of us caught up in the excitement of the moment, far overweighted the libertarian and anti-statist elements of the New Left and underweighted the statism and the dangers of the ongoing “revolution.” Of course, that error in perspective was aided by what used to be called a “cultural lag” — by failing to assess the swift changes that always occur in a revolutionary situation, and which virtually eliminated the libertarian elements in the New Left after a couple of years in the mid-1960’s.

It also seems clear that, while its narrow base of support made the passing of the New Left inevitable, the swiftness of its demise may be credited to the brilliant strategic policies of the Nixon administration and its allies in authority throughout the country. The crucial element here was a policy of firmness, a refusal to give in any further to the seemingly irresistible “revolution”. The firmness was demonstrated in numerous ways. There was the whiff of grape at Kent State, there were the mass arrests at the Washington traffic-tieup demonstration, and, to a lesser extent, the prosecution of such leading figures of the movement as the Berrigans and the Chicago conspiracy trial. A determined policy of not giving in further to Negro demands, e.g. mobilizing the general public hostility to compulsory bussing, not only defused the black “revolution” but has ended all traces of urban Negro rioting for several years now. In its policy of firmness and determination, the Nixon administration must surely have taken its cue from the public reaction to the police clubbing of demonstrators at the Chicago Democratic convention of 1968. This massive reaction, which surprised many of us at the time but really should not have, was an almost universal condemnation and hostility toward the demonstrators for their provocations, rather than against the police who did the clubbing. That reaction surely told the incoming administration that the public would cheer a policy of firm suppression of the “revolution”. And it is certainly instructive to note how little resistance the boastful revolutionaries put up to even the minimal force used by the administration.

Joined together with the firmness of the government was the resistance of the college administrators. Led by S. I. Hayakawa, the administrators found, once again, that a policy of determined resistance to the student rebels was enough to make the rebellion wither away with remarkable rapidity.

In addition to the stick, the carrot. For the Nixon administration again saw, with strategic brilliance, that along with a policy of due firmness and resistance, it must also defuse the major grievances of at least the broad base of followers of the revolution. The major grievances were twofold and interconnected: the draft and the Vietnam War. There was surely no single act that defused the revolution more swiftly than the adoption of the lottery draft. Combined with a steady reduction of draft calls, the lottery quickly ended what had seemed to be, but obviously was not, a principled opposition to the slavery of the draft, and as a consequence the student rebellion itself. Furthermore, the cunning policy of “Vietnamization”, while hardly satisfying the true-blue opponents of the war, was enough to defuse the issue, not only for the bulk of the American people but also for most of the campus rebels. For the crucial point was that American troops in Vietnam, and therefore American casualties were swiftly and steadily reduced by the Administration. And that meant, too, that those few young men who were drafted would at least not be sent to the hell of Vietnam. The fact that countless Vietnamese continued to be slaughtered was to become only a remote and abstract concern even for the erstwhile rebels. The carrot and the stick had done its work with consummate artistry.

There was another important stick, too, that played a large role in eviscerating the New Left and the abortive rebellion. That was the recession of 1969-70, and particularly the academic recession for college graduates that hit the following year. Suddenly, a sellers’ market for college graduates, the era of the 1960’s when every graduate could write his own ticket for jobs, was succeeded by a very tight “buyers’ market”, with heavy unemployment for educated youths. If the Nixon administration had planned it that way, nothing could be better calculated to end the posturing, the “greening”, the phony dropping-out among the youth, than a sharp dose of economic reality in the form of recession and unemployment. It was back to reality, back to studying, to careers, etc. for our former rebels. Suddenly, campus youth wanted, not formless “rapping” and the use of the campus as a base for furthering the “revolution”, but course content to prepare them for jobs and careers. The “educational revolution” proved to be as much a flash in the pan as the rest of the hoopla.

What then remains of the New Left, of the heady years of the late sixties? Not very much. There seem to be only three things, none of which can give any comfort to rational libertarians: women’s lib, hallucinogenic drugs, and rock. Rock, I am informed, has receded considerably from the noisy cacophony of the “acid rock” of a few years ago; and not only has rock visibly softened, but there has now arisen a welcome “nostalgia craze” for the Old Culture of the 1950’s. And the old “rock-and-roll” of the fifties, while hardly any great shakes as music, was, in its happy innocence, far more the tailend of the great Old Culture popular music of the 1920-1950 era than it was the prefigurement of the irrational “hard rock” of the sixties.

In the monstrously irrational culture of hallucinogenic drugs, marijuana unfortunately remains, but at least there has been a visible recession in the use of LSD and the other powerful “hard drugs”, presumably reflecting a drawing back from their ugly Social Darwinist consequences.

Women’s lib is still with us, but it is unclear at this point what lasting impact it will have. Beyond a welcome drive for abortion-freedom and beyond a drop in population growth, it seems likely now that the most that will happen will be a greater stimulus for women to fulfill themselves in careers. The man-hating crazies who make up the core and the vanguard of women’s lib seem destined to disappear as simply a media shuck; after all, how many more times can the public bear to watch the Robin Morgans and the Kate Millets, or even the Gloria Steinems, cavort on television?

Overall, the rational libertarian can take good cheer from Herman Kahn’s shrewd prediction of the cultural trends of the 1970’s:“Remember 67 per cent of America is quite square and getting squarer. I call this the counter-reformation, the counter-counterculture. It’s the biggest thing going in America today and it will either dominate or heavily influence the next decade or two.” (Herman Kahn, “The Squaring of America,” Intellectual Digest, Sept. 1972, p. 18.)

Surely, the massive repudiation of the McGovernite movement is a firm indication that Kahn’s prognosis is correct. For one of the elements in that repudiation was Middle America’s accurate perception of the McGovernite movement — as exhibited, for example, at the Democratic convention — as the embodiment of the “counter-culture.” In smashing McGovernism, Middle America eagerly seized the opportunity to deal a gut blow to the counter-culture it detests: to upper-class kids flaunting drugs, hippies, dirt, rock, open sexual perversion and promiscuity, rejection of the work ethic, and living parasitically off welfare or parental subsidy. Add to this an upper-class embracing poverty as a virtue, and sneering at Middle America’s concern about crime in the streets from safe vantage-points in the suburbs.

If, indeed, the seventies loom as a return to the “squaring of America”, then what does this imply as the proper strategy for the new and growing libertarian movement? Clearly, it implies that strategy and rational principle meet: that we cast off the trappings of the counter-culture which all too many libertarians adopted in the heady days of the sixties. That we return home, home to our “bourgeois” rational roots, home to the old values which Middle America has miraculously preserved throughout the years when the upper classes and the intellectuals betrayed them. Home to becoming the vanguard of the vast bulk of Middle America, a people whose instincts are sound but who lack the consistent articulation of that philosophy — rational libertarianism — which provides the solution for their irritations and resentments as well as the correct path for achieving their goals of peace and freedom and secure prosperity.

Concretely, what do I mean by a Middle American orientation? What sort of specific work can be done? The sort of thing I mean can be seen by briefly examining four estimable organizations, two scholarly and two activist. In the world of scholarship, the Institute for Humane Studies of Menlo Park, California has done yeoman work over the years in gathering Fellows, in publishing books and pamphlets, and in sponsoring conferences at home and abroad on such vital matters as property rights and human differentiation. There is also the Center for Independent Education of Wichita, Kansas, which has published pamphlets in support of private and full-cost education as contrasted to public schools, and has sponsored a conference on compulsory education, critically examining its legal, historical, economic, and philosophical aspects. On the activist front, there are two admirable organizations, each headed by young libertarians. One is the National Taxpayers Union, where Jim Davidson has done yeoman work, almost singlehanded, in Washington lobbying against taxation and government spending, tipping the balance against the SST and helping to defeat the disastrous Family Assistance Plan. Davidson was also partially responsible for inducing the Republican platform committee to call for the legalization of gold. Earnest Fitzgerald, former high Pentagon official, head of the NTU, and chief exposer of the Lockheed scandal, has recently published a book (The High Priests of Waste, Norton), which expands his revelations of waste in government spending.

The other activist organization is the National Committee to Legalize Gold, headed by two youthful New Orleans libertarians, James U. Blanchard III and Evan R. Soulé, Jr. With high professionalism and enthusiastic organization, the NCLG distributes a regular bulletin on gold, and has held a series of press conferences throughout the country calling for legalization of gold, and defying the Treasury Department by holding aloft an illegal bar of gold. And while concentrating on gold legalization as the first step, the NCLG happily makes clear that its ultimate objective is abolition of the Federal Reserve System and the substitution of the gold standard for government fiat paper.

Both the NTU and the NCLG are admirable models of what an activist libertarian organization, oriented to the concerns of Middle America, can accomplish.

Meanwhile, it’s a comfort to know that we’ll still have Dick Nixon to kick around — for Four More Years.

From The Old Curmudgeon

Watergate, Schmatergate.

Frankly, I’ve gotten awfully tired of the endless griping about Watergate. Even National Review has expressed its deep concern about the goings-on. All around me I hear left-liberals complaining about the “moral apathy” of the American public on this issue. It is an “apathy” which I confess I share. The public reaction is: “well, that’s politics”; politics always consists of dirty tricks by one party on the other. Yes, of course it has. Only pseudo-moralists with little sense of history can claim otherwise. Have we all forgotten the previous elections in which the Democrat prankster Dick Tuck played numerous practical jokes and dirty tricks on the Republicans? Where were the left-liberal moralists then? I’ll tell you where they were: right in there enjoying the spectacle of good old Dick Tuck making fools of the Republicans. You don’t like the shoe on the other foot, do you fellas? With all the real problems in the world, can we really get so upset about the fumbling capers of the USC clique?

Australopithecus, Where Art Thou?

Australopithecus has been highly touted by the evolutionists as the “missing link”, as our ancestor who wandered the earth approximately 2.5 million years ago. But now all this has been knocked into a cocked hat by the finding of a skull by Richard Leakey, about 2.6 million years old, that is closer to modern man than Australopithecus. So now what? It’s back to the drawing board, evolutionists!

“The object of the state is always the same: to limit the individual, to tame him, to subordinate him, to subjugate him.” — Max Stirner

The Senate Rated

One of the pleasant pastimes of ideological groups is rating Senators from their own point of view. Not to be outdone, the Lib. Forum has taken the rated votes compiled by the New Republic, American Conservative Union (published in Human Events), and the National Taxpayers Union (published in Dollars and Sense), and combined them to rate Senators on libertarian vs. statist votes on various key issues. The numerical ratings after the names of the Senators are the plus-libertarian votes, followed by the statist votes (e.g. 20-22 means 20 libertarian votes and 22 statist votes.) We have also grouped the members of the outgoing Senate into six categories: Very Good, Good, Moderate, Bad, Very Bad, and Excruciatingly Bad. (No Senator rated an Excellent.) We realize that the quantitative vote fails to weigh qualitative matters on the issues, but we feel that enough votes have been recorded to give a pretty good idea of the Senator’s ideological drift.

Very Good:

H. Byrd (Ind., Va.) 33-12

Roth (Rep., Del.) 32-13

Good:

Ervin (D., N. C.) 25-18

Proxmire (D., Wise.) 27-18

Fannin (R., Ariz.) 26-19

Dominick (R., Col.) 24-17

Curtis (R., Neb.) 26-19

Buckley (R., N.Y.) 28-16

Brock (R., Tenn.) 23-15

Hansen (R., Wyo.) 22-16

Jordan (R., Id.) 24-19

Moderate:

Allen (D., Ala.) 23-21

Fullbright (D., Ark.) 20-20

Chiles (D., Fla.) 22-19

Talmadge (D., Ga.) 20-23

Church (D., Id.) 18-22

Stennis (D., Miss.) 21-24

Pastore (D., R. I.) 20-24

Spong (D., Va.) 24-20

Goldwater (R., Ariz.) 20-16

Weicker (R., Conn.) 19-23

Gurney (R., Fla.) 19-25

Griffin (R„ Mich.) 21-21

Hruska (R., Neb.) 21-24

Cotton (R., N. H.) 22-23

Hatfield (R., Ore.) 21-17

Bennett (R., Ut.) 21-17

Thurmond (R., S.C.) 20-23

Bad:

Jordan (D., N. C.) 14-22

Bentsen (D., Tex.) 17-26

Stevenson (D., Ill.) 18-27

R. Byrd (D., W. Va.) 17-26

Hartke (D., Ind.) 15-23

Eastland (D., Miss.) 15-22

Symington (D., Mo.) 18-27

Burdick (D., N. D.) 19-26

Pell (D., R. I.) 17-23

McGovern (D., S. D.) 13-21

Dole (R., Kan.) 18-26

Cook (R., Ky.) 19-25

Young (R., N. D.) 18-27

Saxbe (R., Oh.) 16-23

Taft (R., Oh.) 17-26

Bellmon (R., Okla.) 16-23

Tower (R., Tex.) 18-25

Very Bad:

McGee (D., Wyo.) 8-28

Sparkman (D., Ala.) 11-31

Gravel (D., Alaska) 11-27

McClellan (D., Ark.) 11-22

Cranston (D., Calif.) 13-31

Tunney (D., Calif.) 13-31

Ribicoff (D., Conn.) 10-32

Bayh (D., Ind.) 13-30

Hughes (D., Io.) 15-28

Long (D., La.) 13-31

Muskie (D., Me.) 15-27

Kennedy (D., Mass.) 16-28

Hart (D., Mich.) 11-33

Humphrey (D., Minn.) 7-26

Randolph (D., W. Va.) 14-29

Nelson (D., Wise.) 18-29

Anderson (D., N. M.) 11-27

Hollings (D., S.C.) 15-29

Montoya (D., N. M.) 14-29

Moss (D., Ut.) 10-31

Harris (D., Okla.) 15-25

Magnuson (D., Wash.) 13-32

Bible (D., Nev.) 13-31

Cannon (D., Nev.) 12-31

Mondale (D., Minn.) 15-28

Eagleton (D., Mo.) 14-29

Mansfield (D., Mont.) 12-27

Metcalf (D., Mont.) 7-27

Allott (R., Col.) 14-26

Boggs (R., Del.) 14-31

Fong (R., Haw.) 12-29

Percy (R., Ill.) 15-27

Miller (R., Io.) 14-29

Pearson (R., Kan.) 12-32

Cooper (R., Ky.) 16-29

Smith (R., Me.) 16-29

Beall (R., Md.) 14-30

Mathias (R., Md.) 12-30

Brooke (R., Mass.) 10-33

Case (R., N. J.) 12-32

Javits (R., N.Y.) 16-29

Packwood (R., Ore.) 16-27

Schweiker (R., Pa.) 16-29

Scott (R., Pa.) 11-33

Baker (R., Tenn.) 13-29

Aiken (R., Vt.) 17-27

Excruciatingly Bad:

Inouye (D., Haw.) 7-34

McIntyre (D., N. H.) 7-33

Williams (D., N. J.) 9-34

Jackson (D„ Wash.) 6-36

Stevens (R., Alaska) 9-34

Stafford (R., Vt.) 6-33

Grouped by parties, we have Republicans: Very Good — 1, Good — 7, Moderate — 9, Bad — 7, Very Bad — 18, Excruciatingly Bad — 2. If we lump the Goods and Bads together, we get: Republicans: Goodish — 8; Moderate — 9; Baddish — 27.

The Democrats fare considerably worse by libertarian standards, though obviously neither party deserves hosannahs. Very Good — 1, Good – 2, Moderate – 9, Bad — 10, Very Bad – 28, Excruciatingly Bad – 4. Lumping together: Goodish — 3; Moderate — 9; Baddish — 42.

The two best Senators are Roth of Delaware, who is nobly following in the footsteps of his predecessor, John J. Williams; and Harry Byrd of Virginia, following in the footsteps of his economy-minded father. The absolutely worst Senator in a bad lot is none other than the man the Lib. Forum has already called “Mr. State”, Scoop Jackson of Washington.

We can now analyze the fortunes of the incumbent Senators on the bases of our classifications. Of the “Good” Senators, 2 (Curtis, Hansen) were re-elected, and 1 (Jordon, Id.) died, and was succeeded by a similarly-inclined conservative, McClure. Make it 3 victories and 0 defeats for the Goods.

Of the Moderates, 3 won (Griffin, Thurmond, Hatfield), and 1 lost (Spong). Of the Bad Guys, 3 won (Eastland, Pell Tower) and none lost. Of 16 Very Bad Guys running for re-election, 10 won (Pearson, Baker, Case, Brooke, Mondale, Metcalf, Percy, Sparkman, McClellan, Randolph), but no fewer than 6 bit the dust (Miller, Smith, Boogs, Allott, Harris — whose conqueror in turn lost to the Republican Bartlett, and Anderson, whose surrogate lost to the Republican, Domenici.) On the other hand, 2 Excruciatingly Bad Guys won (Stevens, McIntyre) and none lost. If we lump the Goods and the Moderates together, we get a record of 5 won and 1 lost; if we lump all the Baddies together, we get 15 won and 6 lost. Dare we then say that in this election, when everything below the Presidential level was ideologically mixed, that the American public was partially hitting out at the worst enemies of liberty?!

The Strip Miner As Hero

By Walter Block

There are basically two methods of mining coal: strip mining and deep mining. In deep mining, which is used to mine coal from a great depth, an intricate set of tunnels, shafts, braces must be set deep in the earth at great cost. Apart from this, deep mining has the disadvantage of causing black lung disease, the dread miner’s disease caused by breathing in coal particles in deep and enclosed places. Deep mining must also bear the onus of numerous mine entrapments that occur with deathly regularity where hundreds of miners at a time can be trapped far below the surface of the earth due to a cave-in, escaping gas, an explosion, or water seepage.

In strip mining, as the name implies, the earth is stripped, layer by layer, until the coal stream is unearthed. Strip mining is thus very easily utilized for streams of coal which lie close to the earth’s surface, and in cases where the surrounding earth is not strong enough to support the braces necessary for deep mining. Although especially well suited for mining coal that lies close to the surface, strip mining has proven feasible at up to moderate depths, competitive therefore with deep mining at some depths. Strip mining is free of the dangers of cave-ins, of black lung disease, and is very much cheaper than deep mining. This makes available to the poor a source of cheap energy, which in many cases may well mean the difference between life and death! In spite of these advantages, strip mining has been roundly condemned by practically all sources of “informed, liberal, and progressive” opinion.

The supposed explanation for this otherwise inexplicable state of affairs centers around two criticisms of strip mining: it causes pollution, and it is a despoiler of the natural beauty of the landscape. But as can be seen from even a cursory examination of the case, these two criticisms of strip mining will hardly suffice as an explanation of the extreme antipathy shown to the strip miners. The vilification and abuse heaped upon the strip miners by the liberals cannot be reconciled with their humanistic principles, which hold human life to be of great value. And life is on the side of strip mining. For there is no black lung disease on the surface of the earth where strip mining takes place; there is no danger of cave-ins and entrapment many miles beneath the surface of the earth for the strip miner. So even on the assumption that the two arguments of despoiling beauty and causing pollution held against the strip miner are correct, it is hard to see how supposedly humanistic people can favor deep mining over strip mining.

It is even more puzzling when we reflect on the fact that the two criticisms are by no means correct. First consider pollution. Although it is indubitably true that pollution results from the activity of strip miners, this is hardly a necessary concomitant of strip mining. Rather, it is the result of a failure of the courts of this land to apply the laws of trespass to the strip miners. If the law against trespass were vigorously enforced, there would be no connection between strip mining and pollution at all.

What is presently done during the mining of coal in the stripping method is to take the large amounts of earth that must be peeled away in order to expose the coal, and to pile it up into huge mounds. Now, these mounds are usually piled up near streams of water and substantial amounts of earth are borne away by the stream, contaminating the stream, and the many lakes and other waterways the stream feeds into. Also, the de-nuded land serves as a source of mud slides, with no grass to hold the water. But there is no reason for this! If the strip miners were made to bear the full costs of their activity, and if the people whose downstream property was damaged had the right to obtain preventive injunctions to stop this practice if they were unwilling to be compensated for the damages by the strip miners, then the practice would cease. Strip mining would no longer be linked with pollution.

It is most important to see that the present link between pollution and strip mining is not inherent, but is rather due entirely to the failure to apply the common law of trespass against the strip miners. Imagine if you will, any other industry that was allowed to violate the law in this manner, such as the oil tanker industry. Now, there is no necessary connection between the oil tanker industry and pollution, but if oil spills were allowed, there soon would be a connection between the tanker industry and pollution, at least in the minds of the public. And so it is with the coal mining industry, and with strip mining in particular. There is nothing about the strip mining method of coal mining that is inherently pollutant causing. It is only because the laws of trespass have not been rigidly applied to to the strip miners that the link between stripping and pollution exists. Let these laws be fully adhered to, and this whole argument against strip mining would disappear.

What of the other argument against the strip miner: that stripping spoils the natural beauty of the landscape? The first thing to realize is that when it comes to beauty, there can be no objective standards which ought to be forced upon other people. What is beauty to one person can be ugliness to another; what is ugliness to one person can be beauty to another. It is true that what strip mining does is to remove the vegetation, grass and trees from the landscape. It can turn a lush, fertile landscape into a veritable desert. But some people like the desolation and emptiness of the desert! The painted desert in Arizona, the salt flats of Utah and the Grand Canyon of Colorado are considered by many people to be places whose beauty is without equal.

While hardly an expert on the esthetics of scenery, it seems to me at least that one of the concomitants of natural beauty is contrast. The mountains right next to the ocean along the California coast, the skyscrapersringing thesouthern part of Central Park in New York City, as well as the small bits of desolation provided by strip miners among the lush greenery of the Appalachians all benefit from stark contrast and are immeasurably beautified thereby. So, on the grounds of destroying the beauty of the landscape, it does not seem that we can unambiguousely and objectively fault the strip miner. If anything, according to at least some tastes, the strip miner beautifies the landscape.

Apart from that, however, this seems to be the wrong way to deal with the objection. For the real question is not whether or not strip mining adds to or detracts from beauty but rather, which people shall be allowed to make the choices on the disposal of land which can affect its beauty? If we take the view of those who criticize the strip miner for despoiling natural beauty, and would forbid him if they had the power, we become enmeshed in unsolvable paradoxes. If the lovers of nature can prevent the strip miner from changing it (perhaps improving it, in his own mind) of then a Pandora’s box will be opened. For on the same logical basis, we can prevent all farmers from clearing virgin soil and planting upon it; we can prevent the builder from erecting buildings or bridges, factories, hospitals, etc. And by extending this principle of forbidding everything we decide is ugly, various groups in the population are sure to begin to forbid long hair, dungarees, rock music, beads, pot smoking, or, alternatively crew cuts, tuxedoes, symphonic music, brassiers and whiskey.

Some people argue that striping is unnatural. These liberals would be the first to object if homosexuality or miscegenation were objected to on these grounds. They would point to all the discoveries in medicine which are certainly “unnatural”, namely man-made. But when it comes to strip mining, all logic flies out the window. To say that a thing either is or is not a result of nature alone or of man alone cannot determine its intrinsic worth. To argue that the desolation caused by strip mining is ugly because it is unnatural or because it perverts nature is to completely ignore the “artificial” contributions to beauty made by such men as Rembrandt or Mozart.

The Elections

Apart from the smashing repudiation of McGovernism, anticipated by all observers including the Lib. Forum, and welcomed by most, the ideological complexion of the rest of the elections was a mixed bag. There are certain results, however, that we can hail with particular and unambiguous joy.

One was the massive roadblock that Governor Arch Moore (Rep., W. Va.) put in the way of the rising young charismatic Rockefeller, John D. (Jay) Rockefeller, IV, for the Governorship of West Virginia. Sweeping in with 55% of the vote, Governor Moore postponed for many years, and perhaps ended indefinitely, the spectre of yet another Rockefeller buying himself a state and vaulting into a national political career. Isn’t Nelson enough? One particularly charming aspect of the Moore victory was his use of sophisticated “economic determinist” muckraking to stop young Rocky. Moore asked this pungent question: why has young Rockefeller emigrated from New York, come to West Virginia, and there tried to put an end to the strip coal mining industry in the name of the “environment”? Why if not to confer a monopoly privilege on coal’s great competitor, oil, in which the Rockefeller family has a consuming interest? Arch Moore, welcome to the ranks of Revisionism!

Another serendipity was the victory for the Senate in North Carolina of ultra-conservative Jesse Helms over liberal Nick Galifianakis. Helms, a TV commentator, is an advocate of the magnificently libertarian Liberty Amendment, which would abolish the personal income tax and sell all government assets competitive with private enterprise. We expect to hear many great things from Senator Helms.

A third goodie was the victory for the governorship of New Hampshire of Meldrin Thomson, Jr. (Rep.) Thomson; a book publisher, previously ran for the governorship on the American Party ticket, and his major plank was a pledge to keep New Hampshire In its superb role as the only state in the union with neither a sales nor an income tax. Tax rebellion was also responsible for the defeat of high-tax Delaware Governor Russell Peterson (Rep.) by conservative Democrat Sherman Tribbitt, as well as the defeat of high-tax Richard Ogilvie (Rep., Ill.) for the governorship by the charismatic, wealthy young Dan Walker. Ogilvie was heartily punished by the voters of Illinois for daring to put in a state income tax after he had campaigned against the proposal. On the other hand, we must record the defeats of the anti-tax campaigns for the governorship of Ed Smith (Rep., Montana) and Al Rosellini (Dem., Washington.) (Dem., Washington.)

There are a couple of particularly amusing notes in the election. One is the total neglect lavished by the women’s libbers on the female candidacies of conservative Republican Louise Leonard for Senator from West Virginia, and of Mary Breeden (who asserted that “taxation is theft”) on the American Party ticket for Senator from Kentucky. Another is the total ineptitude of the writing team of conservative Noel Parmentel and liberal George Gilder, who went down to Louisiana to aid the Senatorial campaign of Ben Toledano (Rep.), who was slaughtered with a mere 19% of the votes.

Finally, the election saw the emergence of the Libertarian Party. We still do not know how many votes were recorded for the Hospers-Nathan ticket on the ballots of Colorado and Washington. We have already hailed the New York campaigns of Greenberg and Block in these pages; another Congressional write-in candidacy for the LP was in the 30th Cong. District of California, where the distinguished young libertarian lawyer Manuel Klausner ran on the LP ticket. Klausner, an editor of Reason, followed Greenberg and Block in giving an imaginative individual twist to his campaign literature. He came out, for example, for rational pricing of congested streets and roads, and for a return to the spoils system and an end to the oligarchic tyranny of the civil service system.

Last but not least, we have what seems to be an authentic libertarian in Congress! This is young Steven D. Symms, from the 1st Congressional District of western Idaho. While winning on the Republican ticket, Symms, an apple grower, is also reputed to be a member of the Libertarian Party, the Society for Individual Liberty, and the National Taxpayers Union. Has one of our own actually made it to Congress? Let us scrutinize young Symms’ voting record with care, and try to get him to include libertarian literature into the Congressional Record.

Whither the Democracy?

Where do the Democrats go from here? If they wish to remain a viable national party, with a good shot at the Presidency, their primary task faces them clearly and squarely: the purging from the party of the McGovernite debris. The McGovernites must be blasted loose from their controlling positions in the party structure, and the Democrats must insure against a repeat of the disastrous 1972 convention by getting rid of the McGovernite “reform” rules which imposed the quota system on the delegates. The fight will not be an easy one, since the McGovernites, as ideological fanatics, are determined to hold on at any cost. Already, they are trying to cover themselves by jettisoning the person of McGovern, and claiming that the land slide defeat was merely a problem of his personal “image”.

The first step in the required purge is to depose La Westwood from the chairmanship of the National Committee, or to get rid of the person whom the Republican newsletter Monday has pungently referred to as “the Democrat National Committee chairthing.” The ouster of La Westwood is Consideration No. 1 in the taking back of the Democrat Party from its usurpers. A second task, which will prove more difficult, is to keep the chairmanship out of the hands of someone like the Kennedy stalking-horse Larry O’Brien, whose pro-McGovern rulings at the convention irretrievably compromised his supposedly neutral position in the party.

In the longer run, it is clear to everyone that there is only one man who can unite all factions of the Democrats under his own charismatic, left-liberal banner: obviously Teddy Kennedy. The problem for all sane and sober Americans is: How can we keep from getting Camelot again? How can we nip the Kennedy Dynasty in the bud? How can we keep the choice in ’76 from narrowing down to Teddy vs. Agnew? Or Teddy vs Percy? Isn’t it about time for a full-scale investigation of the unclarified anomalies of the Chappaquiddick affair? If Teddy resumes the eternal bellyaching about Watergate, how about a counter-ploy on Chappaquiddick?

Revisionism from the Centre

A REVIEW ESSAY

By Chris R. Tame

Exponents of “New Left” historical revisionism will often find their analysis attacked on grounds other than those concerning its objective truth. The obvious political motivations and importance of the work of historians such as William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, and James Weinstein provides for historians of the “liberal” consensus a convenient excuse for ignoring or denigrating their work. Of course, the even more blatant political motivation and biases in the work of orthodox liberals is rendered culturally invisible (to the majority) by its very dominance. Therefore, the arrival at revisionist conclusions by historians of the “centre”, without any strong political motivations (at least, strong radical ones), is doubly welcome — both for its inherent validity and for its utility as “unbiased” verification of radical revisionism. Although we are not, of course, exactly being deluged by such non-radical sources of revisionism, it is nevertheless true that we are increasingly observing the appearance of scattered articles and books which manifest insights and analysis in support of the “New Left” and Libertarian historical case.

Thus, in his essay “The Wisconsin Idea and Business Progressivism” (Journal of American Studies, July 1970), Stuart Morris makes his conception of the Progressive Era perfectly clear from the start: “The ‘progressive era’, 1900-16, can best be interpreted . . . in terms of the ‘rationalization’ of corporate industrial capitalism . . .” The focus of his essay, however, is on the 1920’s a period which for the liberal orthodoxy (e.g. Hofstadter’s Age of Reform, Schlesinger’s Crisis of the Old Order) is essentially one of the decline of Progressivism, a “return to normalcy” and the supremacy of optimistic, self-satisfied business forces — in all, “an unfortunate inter-regnum” (H. F. May). Morris demolishes the liberal interpretation. In a close examination of many Progressive (and especially Wisconsin Progressive) intellectuals, he identifies the nature of their thought as essentially elitist and conservative — anti-laissez faire, of course, but anti business most definitely not. For individuals like Charles Van Hise, Herbert Croly, Charles Evans Hughes, F. C. Howe, F. J. Turner, and Richard T. Ely, the core of their approach was the concepts of “efficiency” and “control” — a managerial, elitist ethos. In the words of John R. Commons, “The outstanding fact (is) the importance of Management. Instead of capitalism moving on like a blind force of nature, as Marx thought, here we see it moving on by the will of management.” Thus, Morris argues, the movement for business efficiency and rationalization which was manifest in various forms in the 1920’s (including, for example, the establishment of university schools of business) was simply a continuation of the same ideological motivation as that of the earlier Progressives. “Business education . . . was not simply a function of economic rationalization”, writes Morris, “. . . it was also a product of progressive aims and assumptions”. If outright political activism declined in the 1920’s, this was as much to the nature of Progressivism itself as to other factors. Progressivism had simply shifted its focus to other measures to attain the same ends as before. Thus, F. C. Howe (in Wisconsin: An Experiment in Democracy, 1912) saw “scientific efficiency” as “one of Wisconsin’s contributions to democracy”. Herbert Croly declared that expert administration was the “instrument which society must gradually forge and improve for using social knowledge in the interest of valid social purposes” (Progressive Democracy, 1914), and Louis Brandeis became the prophet of Business, A Profession, (1914). In Morris’ words, “Like the Fabians in England, the progressive intellectuals heralded the arrival of the reformer as expert . . . This emphasis on information and practicality served to minimize any distinction between the expert and the reformer and to enlist both in the service of the state”.

However, the most substantial contributions to the revisionist case to derive from non-radical sources have come from two other, more prominent, historians: Robert H. Wiebe and Samuel P. Hays.

Robert Wiebe’s Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1968; originally published, 1962) obviously bears immediate comparison to Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism, but it is only right to say that the latter work is far superior. Both in the arrangement of his material and the depth of his research Wiebe falls far short of Kolko’s achievement. He also reveals, in a number of comments, far more elements of a liberal historiographical “hangover”. However, this is by no means to denigrate Wiebe’s work. Businessmen and Reform is marked by a striking realism in its approach to the issues of government regulation, constantly focusing on the hard actuality of economics ignored by the “liberals”. In contrast to the liberal mythology of a monolithic and peculiarly malevolent business community, dogmatically opposed to “government regulation for the public good”, Wiebe analyzes the vitally important clash of interests within the ranks of business, making it clear that this economic conflict lay at the root of the demand for government control. Although Kolko’s discussion of most of the major areas of conflict (the railroads, antitrust, banking, etc.) is more detailed and comprehensive, Wiebe’s account is far from being worthless or unilluminating. His discussion of anti-trust and the tariff, or his discussion of the triangular conflict between the ambitious city bankers and the small county bankers in the Mid-West and the large established Eastern banking houses, should especially be read in conjunction with Kolko. Overall, then, Wiebe clearly establishes the validity of his fundamental conclusions; “. . .both the idea and impetus for reform,” he states, “came from prospering businessmen on the make, men like Edward Bacon, Herbert Miles, and George Perkins . . . the business community was the most important single factor or set of factors — in the development of economic regulation”.

Samuel P. Hays is probably known to a segment of Libertarians for his work, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1929 (Harvard University Press, 1959), in which a number of anti-market myths are dispelled. Specifically, he shows that the range wars of the 1880’s were due to the fact that property rights could not be acquired, and that the lumber corporations were not universally engaged in short sighted resource exploitation. However, the importance of the book does not lie merely in these two limited points. For, in fact, in an analysis of this particular aspect of Progressive reform Hays attacks the core of liberal mythology. “The conservation movement”, he writes, “did not involve a reaction against large-scale corporate business, but, in fact, shared its view in a mutual revulsion against unrestrained competition and undirected economic development. Both groups (i.e., corporate leaders and Progressive reformers) placed a premium on large-scale capital organization, technology, and industry-wide co-operation and planning to abolish the uncertainties and waste of competitive resource use”. This point Hays drives home throughout the book: the demand for conservation regulation came from the large corporations themselves, united with Progressivism in general by a shared elitist and technocratic social ethos. The precise implications of his research, however, are outlined in the essay “The Mythology Of Conservation” (in H. Jarrett, ed., Perspectives on Conservation, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1958): “Few can resist the temptation,” Hays declares, “to use history to formulate an ideology which will support their own aspirations, rather than look squarely at the hard facts of the past”. And the liberal historians, he makes clear, are the most guilty of succumbing to this temptation. Their devotion to the concept of “publiccontrol” is the summum bonum of political life has blinded them to the nature of such control in practice. As Hays makes quite clear in the context of his research on Conservation, “Public control is not an end in itself; it is only a means to an end. Conservation means much more than simply public action; and we should be more concerned with the history of its objectives rather than of its techniques. In fact, by dwelling on the struggle for public action historians have obscured the much more basic problem of the fate of conservation objectives”. The identification of state intervention as inherently in the “public interest”, to be no more questioned than Motherhood or Democracy, distorts historical reality. Holding such concepts the measure of all virtue, it is clear why no examination of the real motives of their proponents — or even of who those proponents actually were — could emerge from liberal historiography. In Hays’ own words: “The widespread use of the concept of the public interest often obscures the importance of political struggle, and substitutes rhetoric for reality. It permits bitter political contests to be far beneath the calm surface of agreed-on language and technical jargon . . . The great danger of the ‘public interest’ is that it can lull one into complacency by persuading him to accept a mythological instead of a substantive analysis of both historical and contemporary conservation issues”.

Professor Hays, moreover, has not merely restricted himself to demolishing this one sphere of liberal mythology. In his essay “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era” (Pacific Northwest Quarterly, October 1964; and reprinted in A. B. Callow Jr., ed., American Urban History Oxford University Press, N.Y., 1969), Hays has performed an analysis as astute and important as Weinstein’s work in this field. Once more he demolishes the facade of liberal historiography: “Because the goals of reform were good its causes were obvious; rather than being the product of particular people and particular ideas in particular situations, they were deeply imbedded in the universal impulses and truths of ‘progress’. Consequently, historians have rarely tried to determine precisely who the municipal reformers were or what they did, but instead have relied on reform ideology as an accurate description of reform practice”. Liberal historians have thus seen the urban political struggle of the Progressive Era as a conflict between public impulses for “good government” against the corrupt alliance of machine politics and the “special interests” of business. In the modified versions of Mowry, Chandler, and Hofstadter, the role of the middle-class is stressed, but although this interpretation apparently rests upon a slightly more scientific approach, it is equally deficient, in fact, in logic, and depth of research, and is still subject to the same ideological self-delusion. For his definitive analysis of the topic Hays draws from a wide range of research — from the results of his own efforts, from work that has appeared recently, and from work that has been available for decades (such as the case studies of the city-manager governments undertaken in the 1930’s under Leonard White’s direction.) The source of Progressive municipal reform, Hays conclusively demonstrates, lay in the upper-classes. The financing of New York’s Bureau of Municipal Research, for example, came largely from Carnegie and Rockefeller, and this pattern of corporate financial support for reform organizations is the same in every case. Urban Progressivism derived essentially from the new upper class of corporate leaders and the younger and more advanced members of the professions, individuals who sought to apply “expertise” and “managerial control” to public affairs. A clear examination of Progressive aims reveals that their principal objection to the existing system of local government was to the fact that it gave representation and effective control to the lower and middle classes, rather than to the more suitable elements — themselves!

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The essence of Progressive municipal reform lay not in such measures as direct primaries, the initiative, referendum and recall, so often emphasized by liberal historians, for these were in fact often irrelevant and ineffective in practice and utilized more for tactical and propagandistic ends. Rather, it constituted the centralization of the system of representation, the shift from ward to city-wide election of councils and school boards and the establishment of the commission and city-manager forms of government. Such centralization destroyed the existing balance of representation and allowed the upper-classes to dominate government. It is no wonder then, that, as the studies carried out under Leonard White’s direction revealed, the lower and middle classes overwhelmingly opposed the Progressive reforms. The conclusion of Hays’ devastatingly incisive essay is uncompromisingly clear: “The movement for reform in municipal government, therefore, constituted an attempt by upper-class advanced professional, and large business groups to take formal political power from the previously dominant lower-and middle-class elements so that they might advance their own conceptions of desirable public policy”.

Hays has thus performed a brilliant analysis of two major aspects of Progressivism and has enunciated clearly the reasons that most liberal historians have been unable either to discover historical actuality or even recognize such actuality when it faces them in the available documentation. Yet he has also attempted to go further, to integrate revisionist perspectives into a general theory of historical causation. His essay “The Social Analysis of American Political History, 1880-1920”, (Political Science Quarterly, September, 1965) is thus valuable as a description of this theory as well as for the wealth of bibliographic information it contains (information of which no Libertarian student of history should fail to be aware and to utilize). In fact, the essay is one of the most complete and devastating attacks ever made on liberal historiography. Hays surveys an extensive range of (principally) recent research on a plethora of socio-political topics, all of which, he demonstrates, fail to conform to liberal mythology, and whose significance and importance will go unrecognized as long as this mythology predominates. Thus, in Hays’ summary: “The liberal framework, more concerned with the formal and the episodic, has become increasingly restrictive rather than conducive to further social analysis. It has prevented historians giving full attention to the political role of working people, the influence of ethnocultural factors in politics, the changing characteristics of elites, the role of the business community in reform, the treatment of urban life as a system of social organization, the source of anti-reform impulses, the conflict between local and cosmopolitan cultures, the growth of bureaucracy and administration, the growth of education as a process of cultural transmission and social mobility, the development of ideology and its relationship to practice, and the examination of inter-regional economic relationships. Most important, it has obscured significant shifts in the location and techniques of decision making in a more highly systematized society . . .” And this slashing indictment, it should be emphasized, is thoroughly documented on every point raised. Also of note in this essay, in relation to Stuart Morris’ study of the Progressive ethos cited earlier, is Hays’ own account of the ideological factors that made possible the cooperation of the new industrial elite, the professional classes, and the intelligentsia: “This new (i.e., corporate) elite”, he writes, “was highly attractive to patricians and intellectuals. While many in both groups had rejected the materialism and brashness of the new industrial elite, they found in the tendencies toward rationality and systematization an acceptable outlet for their talents, and thereby became reconciled to the very business community which earlier they had abhorred.”

Thus the Libertarian may be well pleased that there has developed a parallel stream of revisionist historical analysis alongside that from the ‘New Left’, one from, so to speak, the “centre”. Yet this “centrist” revisionism does contain implicit dangers, dangers to be found in Hays’ general theory of “social analysis” that is offered as an alternative to the “liberal framework”. Specifically, this danger lies in economic cum-technological determinism. Thus, the growth of political centralization and the nature of “Progressive” political movements, is seen by Hays as a result of “the systematizing and organizing processes inherent in industrialism . . . the dynamic force in social change in modern life . . . Political movements in modern industrial society can be distinguished in terms of the role which they played in this evolving structure.” (Emphasis mine). Centralization and the “Progressive” reforms are seen as the “techniques which these systems (i.e., modern industrial ones) require”, and the “persistent upward flow of the location of decision-making”, as the natural consequence of the “evolution from smaller to larger and larger systems”. Of course, there are elements of truth in the view that changing economic structures will involve changing social structures. Yet it is also equally clear that the deterministic tendency in Hays’ thought obscures the socio-political alternatives that may have existed. From the point of view of the Libertarian, it is apparent that vital questions of the nature and legitimacy of property rights and of market conditions are overlooked or held of no account. Thus, Hays’ social analysis could equally well serve the same function as that presently done by the liberal framework — as an historical consecration, a justification for the status quo and for that “persistent upward flow of the location of decision making”. This tendency is equally apparent in Wiebe’s Businessmen and Reform, in his statement, ironic now in retrospect, that “With so few signs of domestic upheaval at the beginning of the 1960s (!) any elite would take pride in the record of America’s durable business leadership”. Revisionism from the centre, therefore, can easily become absorbed once more into the “American Celebration”.

Arts And Movies

By Mr. First Nighter

The Ruling Class. dir. by Peter Medak, written by Peter Barnes, with Peter O’Toole.

Here is the umpteenth British film that attacks and satirizes the British upper classes. So what else is new? What is new is the depths of irrationality and absurdity to which the film sinks. Here is the apotheosis of the “non-linear” movie; very little of the film makes any sense at all, either in philosophy, plot, continuity, or camera work. The camera work is mod-absurdist, employing every irritating trick that has unfortunately been learned in the last decade. From the prototype absurdist film that flouts the law of identity, Morgan, comes the tactic of people suddenly becoming, and unbecoming, apes, skeletons, or what have you.

Where The Ruling Class differs from other irrational films is in three ways: its length, its acting, and its “philosophy”. For the film rolls endlessly on; Medak and Barnes are always enchanted with their own supposed brilliance and importance, and every trick of theirs has to be stretched out and beaten over the head. The movie seems like four or five hours long by the end, although I am informed that the excruciating experience lasted for but two hours and a half.

The acting features — and O how does it feature! — Peter O’Toole, who cavorts on the screen for virtually every minute of the picture. Peter O’Toole has been one of the most overrated actors of the last two decades, and given anything like his head, he will twitch, quiver, shake, and generally chew any and all of the available scenery. To save any film what O’Toole needs is a firm directorial boot fastened upon his neck; even in that superb film, Lawrence of Arabia, in which O’Toole made his debut, that twitching and quivering augured badly for the future. But in The Ruling Class, O’Toole is lovingly given his head, and a veritable shambles ensues.

The “philosophy” with which this pretentions film is encumbered, is a highly jejune one. In the first half of the picture, O’Toole plays a psychotic aristocratic who is convinced that he is Jesus and God, and every once in a while he leaps on to a home-made cross to get back to his roots. O’Toole leaps and quivers, shouting that God is Love and everyone must love one another. Then, after a psychiatrist is sent to cure him everyone thinks he is cured, since he no longer thinks he is Jesus; but aha! he is secretly convinced that he is Jack the Ripper, and proceeds to systematically murder any girls (and lots of other people) he can get ahold of. While Jack the Ripper, which Medak and Barnes persist in identifying with the Old Testament God of wrath, O’Toole leaps to political leadership of the House of Lords by preaching capital punishment and death to all criminals. You see, the imbecile point of the picture is this: when O’Toole, as a sweet and lovable nut, goes around preaching Love to All, everybody thinks he is crazy; but when he shifts to preaching fire and brimstone, he is elevated to leadership of the Tory upper class. Profound? Not really; for let’s face it, O’Toole’s first incarnation was just as nutty as the second; first, because indiscriminate Love, Love for everybody is as impossible and unnatural a goal as we might conceive; and, second, because O’Toole was crazy, after all, and deserved, if not commitment, a wide berth by everyone, especially the long-suffering members of the audience. There is no denying that some scenes in the first part are funny, before the picture turns into a grim welter of random killings, but the humor is completely buried by the deadweight of the picture as a whole.

One of the most unforgivable effects of the New Wave in British movies is that it has managed to destroy a film industry that was once the finest in the world. If you want to see a superb, truly witty, and beautifully acted satire on the British upper class, try to find a rerun of a triumphantly Old Culture film of two decades ago, Kind Hearts and Coronets — with Dennis Price and especially Alec Guinness. Back to the Closet, sickies and absurdists, and let us have good movies again!

Complete Libertarian Forum (1969-1984)

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Vol. 4.9, November 1972

A Monthly Newsletter

THE

Libertarian Forum

BEYOND THE SIXTIES

From The Old Curmudgeon

The Senate Rated

The Strip Miner As Hero

The Elections

Whither the Democracy?

Recommended Reading

Revisionism from the Centre

A REVIEW ESSAY

Arts And Movies

Complete Libertarian Forum (1969-1984)