Vol. 5.3, March 1973

A Monthly Newsletter

THE

Libertarian Forum

Joseph R. Peden, Publisher		Murray N. Rothbard, Editor
VOLUME V, NO. 3	MARCH, 1973	75¢

THE MAYORAL CIRCUS

Ever since the open primary was instituted in New York a few years ago, politicians have deeply regretted this extension of democratic choice. And well they might, for the power of the party bosses has been superseded by the fun and games where every man-and-his-brother can, and do, leap in to battle for political office. If they can do so, the politicos will soon wrap up the open primary, but in the meanwhile we can all enjoy the circus spectacle.

The circus has come to full bloom this year, as approximately a dozen “serious” candidates vie for the top prize of the Mayoralty. We hereby present a “reader’s guide” to the present status of the New York mayoral race.

The central, overriding fact of the contest is the withdrawal of New York’s universally (within the city) despised and reviled incumbent, Big Jawn Lindsay. Lindsay had managed, in a perverse way, to unify the city: for in recent years it has been extremely difficult to find anyone, regardless of race, creed, color, income class, ideology, or national origin, who does not go into a conniption fit at the very mention of the hated Lindsay name. The essential nature of the common hatred of Lindsay is the clue to current New York politics. For Lindsay, in his person and in his policies, embodies the essential program of what has been deliciously dubbed as the “limousine liberals”. Limousine Liberalism is the political alliance of arrogant, upper-class, Park Avenue WASPS (richly embodied in Lindsay’s person) with the militants of the black and Puerto Rican “ghettoes.” Lindsay Liberalism is the aggrandizement of the central municipal bureaucracy and the government, levying ever-higher taxes on the middle and the working classes, for the benefit of the aforesaid bureaucracy, favored big business interests, and the ghetto militants. Lindsay Liberalism is the government sternly telling the middle and working classes of the city: “Let’s you and him integrate the schools”; “Let’s you and him integrate housing and the neighborhoods”; “Let’s you pay more for welfare clients and the housing of drug addicts”; “Let’s you sit by while street crime and mugging runs rampant, and let’s you ‘solve’ the crime problem by providing more anti-poverty money and more playgrounds.” And while Lindsay and his upper-class colleagues keep issuing such stern injunctions to the average citizen of New York, they themselves are busy sending their own kids to exclusive private schools, and living in Park Avenue apartment houses tightly ringed with security measures to keep out the unwanted.

For the average New Yorker, the nub of the entire problem is crime. He could have continued to put up uncomplainingly with high taxes, galloping welfare, traffic congestion, pollution, and the rest of the urban ills of our society if only crime had been kept under control. And by that he means street crime: the sudden mugging and assault for purpose of robbery, “kicks”, or a combination of the two. The New Yorker is no longer impressed with crime statistics that show other cities with a higher rate of crime in forgery, auto theft, embezzlement, or bank robbery. He is of course opposed to these categories of crime, too, but the kind of crime that hits him in the gut, literally and metaphorically, is street mugging, and it is here that New York has come to “excel” — to the extent that New York has become a nationwide sick joke for television comedians. The New Yorker has lost patience with the age-old liberal “explanations” for crime: economic, historical, and sociological. He wants street crime cracked down on, hard and right now.

Lindsay’s first term was difficult enough, but while he quickly lost the support of the Irish, Italian, and Polish middle and working classes — known in New York as “the ethnics” — he still retained the support of the mass of New York Jews, a group which had long been synonymous with the word “liberalism.” With Jewish, Negro, and Puerto Rican support, and with his opponents split, Lindsay managed to squeak through to reelection in 1969. But in his second term, the mass of New York Jewry has defected as well; and, indeed, the story of New York politics has been the massive shift “rightward” of the middle and lower-income Jews of Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. (There are very few lower-income WASPS in New York City, scarcely enough to constitute a voting bloc.) This rightward shift has been propelled by the hammer-blows of street mugging; as they themselves, their friends and relatives and neighbors, have come under the gun or knife, preservation from street crime has taken first rank in the concerns of New York’s Jews as well as the other ethnic groups. The crime question has thus become the central, overriding fact of New York politics, and most of the passion expended on such issues as welfare, public schools, and housing is related to crime at the central core.

The one exception to this loss of Jewish support for Lindsay Liberalism is the West Side of Manhattan, a district rife with middle and upper-class Jewish intellectuals, who continue to cling to their old liberalism, even though even here fissures have begun to surface. The result is that in recent years, New York City politics has seen a dramatic split between Manhattan and the other boroughs: with the other boroughs “conservative” (especially on issues of crime and “law-and-order”), and Manhattan — consisting largely of Negroes, Puerto Ricans, upper-class WASPS, and the aforesaid West Side Jews — remaining stubbornly left-liberal. It is no accident that Manhattan was the only borough, that gave McGovern a clear-cut majority in 1972.

After surveying his chances, and despite his evident desire to continue in office, John Lindsay wisely took himself out of the mayoral race. The last straw was when Lindsay’s major political supporter, shrewd old Alex Rose, the absolute boss of the Liberal Party of New York, refused to endorse the Mayor’s re-election bid. But Lindsay remains as arrogant as ever, and he threatens to run for governor next year, on the theory that he can still command support outside the city. But if he runs, he will undoubtedly be slaughtered at the polls once more.

The field is now wide open for the mayoralty. The June Democratic primary now has about a dozen entries. Let us go down the list, reading approximately from Left to Right.

On the extreme left, there is Assemblyman Jesse Gray, of Harlem. A blend of nine parts crafty street brawler and one part Marxist-Leninist, Jesse is one of the least attractive candidates to come down the pike in many a year. He is, no doubt, the only black candidate in the field, but even his black support is dubious, for two major reasons: (1) Blacks (and Puerto Ricans) don’t vote very heavily in any election in New York — one of the least well-kept secrets of New York politics; and (2) Jesse is not even supported by New York’s Black Caucus, headed by Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton and Brooklyn’s Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm; his only major black supporter is Brooklyn’s State Senator Waddaba Stewart, who was recently on the losing end of a power struggle in the black Bedford-Stuyvesant area with Shirley Chisholm. Jesse’s chances may be set as somewhere close to zero.

Next we come to the major Left candidate, Congressman Herman Badillo of the Bronx. As the only Puerto Rican candidate, Badillo hopes to snag the black and Puerto Rican votes in the June primary. Badillo, however, lost in a ruthless, slam-bang, war-to-the-knife battle at the March convention of the New Democratic Coalition, the umbrella outfit for all the “reform” Democrat clubs in the city. Despite early support, the NDC, consisting largely of left-liberal Jews on the West Side and elsewhere, finally gave its endorsement instead to Albert Blumenthal (see below). The NDC endorsement was coveted largely because it provides the clue to campaign funds from wealthy liberal Jewish contributors. The angry Badillo bitterly charged the NDC with “racism”, and the fat is in the fire. Badillo’s reliance on black and Puerto Rican votes is probably hopeless because (1) blacks and Puerto Ricans don’t vote in large numbers, and (2) the arrogant, grim Badillo is distrusted by many Puerto Ricans in New York. The distrust is personal, religious and ethnic, embodied in: Badillo’s cool and arrogant personality, his marriage to a Jewess and his previous courting of NDC and Jewish-liberal support, and to the fact that he is an Evangelical Protestant while the mass of Puerto Ricans are Catholics. Badillo’s chances are surely not as negligible as Gray’s, but they are now slim indeed.

This brings us to the official NDC candidate, Albert Blumenthal. Blumenthal, the Assemblyman from the West Side, is a cool, tough customer who is proud of his “pragmatic” record in the State Assembly. Now that he has the NDC endorsement, he can be expected to move swiftly to appeal to the crime-fearing masses of New York’s outer boroughs. While Blumenthal may well carry Manhattan, the chances of his succeeding in gulling the rest of New York into accepting his more moderate “image” are not very bright.

If Blumenthal is the official candidate of Left-Center Liberalism, there are other dark horse candidates in the same zone who might, but probably will not, catch on. City Councilman-at-Large Robert Postel from Manhattan, has been running on the strength of his fearless exposes of corruption by the young hot-shots in the Lindsay administration. But Postel has garnered little support, political or financial, and can be expected to drop out of the race. Slightly to the right of Blumenthal is former West Side Reform Assemblyman Jerome Kretchmer. While ideologically similar, Kretchmer has a rough-and-ready style that appeals far more to Bronx and Brooklyn ethnics than does the austere Blumenthal. But Kretchmer’s credibility is indelibly marred by his having just resigned as Lindsay’s garbage commissioner (now called Environmental Protection Administrator), after which he suddenly discovered the corruption of the Lindsay administration. A darker, and more powerful, horse suddenly emerging from the wings is none other than former Mayor Robert Wagner. Wagner was scarcely beloved in his day, and his bid for a comeback was snuffed out four years ago; but eight years of John Lindsay has made Wagner’s reign seem like the Golden Age, and the Liberal Party’s Alex Rose has been making noises in Wagner’s direction. It is possible that Wagner may stay out of the tangled Democrat primary and run only on the Liberal line, where Rose can dictate the candidate.

Moving to the Center, we have Congressman Ed Koch, from the East Side of Manhattan. While one of the original left-liberal Jewish reformers, Koch has moved sharply rightward in recent years, taking up the cudgels against crime and against the Lindsay attempts to place low-income, racially integrated public housing in Forest Hills, Queens (Jewish) and school busing in Brooklyn’s Canarsie (Italian and Jewish.) In an increasingly polarized New York, however, Koch has lost the support of the Left, while still not trusted by the conservative masses. Koch’s chances, too, are minimal.

On the surface, one might think that Centrist Sanford Garelik has all the qualifications for success. A “tough cop” most of his life, Garelik has law-and-order appeal; now President of the City Council, Garelik has been conspicuously anti-Lindsay over the last four years. Furthermore, he was supported for his present post by the Liberal Party, and, as a Jew, might be expected to appeal to the now conservative Jewish masses of Brooklyn and the Bronx. Yet Garelik has picked up scant support for the mayoral race. One reason is that Garelik appears to be extraordinarily dumb, even by ordinary political standards. Jokes have been spreading throughout the city about Garelik’s supposed inability to find his own office in the morning. The Liberal Party shows no signs of supporting him, and Garelik has been tainted with the corruption issue with a recent disclosure about his accepting Christmas presents while high in the police force. Furthermore, his “tough cop” image among conservatives is greatly dwarfed by that of Mario Biaggi (see below).

One dark horse picking up support, and somewhere in Center or Left-Center, is the Italian lawyer Mario Cuomo. It was Cuomo who engineered the compromise that saved at least some of the homes of a group of beleaguered low-income Italians of Corona, Queens from the Lindsay bulldozer. Cuomo’s intelligence and ability has deeply impressed some of the Jewish reformers, and he shows signs of being endorsed by the shrewd, tough leader of the Queens Democracy, Matthew Troy. Troy established himself as leader of the “left-wing” of the Democrat regulars by being the only enthusiast among the regular leadership in the city for the candidacy and the Presidential race of George McGovern. Despite his gloss of liberalism, Troy has connections with his conservative constituency, stemming from his own early conservatism as well as from the far more principled conservatism of his father (Matthew Troy, Sr.) who had long established himself as the loudest advocate of the Catholic cause in Ireland. Cuomo’s chances depend, first, on where Troy will go, and much of Troy’s actions will be determined by his active personal feud with the Democratic boss of Brooklyn, Meade Esposito.

Moving to the Right of Center, we have the important candidacy of the present Controller of the City of New York, Abraham Beame. As something of a fiscal conservative and well-known budget-cutter, Beame has considerable appeal to the Brooklyn-Bronx mass base, an appeal reinforced by his being Jewish and a long-time member of the Brooklyn Democrat machine. As such he will undoubtedly be backed to the hilt by Brooklyn boss Esposito, and probably by Bronx Democratic leader Patrick Cunningham. Beame is also strongly backed by New York’s real estate interests, who probably fell that Beame will not push to re-impose New York’s previous and disastrous system of rent control. Beame’s support is being spearheaded by the powerful Shubert Theatre chain, headed by one Irving Goldman, and by forces close to the powerful Tammany (Manhattan regular) Surrogate judge, S. Samuel DiFalco. Beame’s major drawback is his advanced age; he admits to 67, but the scuttlebutt claims that he is approximately 73. Also, he is a candidate distinctly lacking in charisma, as was revealed in the campaign in which he lost to Robert Wagner. Beame has shrewdly tried to turn the age issue to his advantage, however, by promising to be strictly a one-term mayor, a promise that is a heady one to many New Yorkers surfeited with eight years of Lindsay.

The Right-wing candidate, and the probable favorite at this writing, is Bronx Mario Biaggi. A tough Italian cop for many years, Biaggi is the leading “law and order” candidate, and is thus highly attractive to the now conservative Jewish masses as well as to his own Italian constituency. Biaggi has built an impregnable political base in his home area of conservative, home-owning, middle-class Italian East Bronx, where he was almost unanimously re-elected as Congressman in 1972 with Democrat, Republican, and Conservative support. A moderate on national issues, Biaggi has recently tried a flanker move to the left by calling for the reimposition of rent controls. The political joke in New York is that Biaggi is the “Mafia candidate”, but this charge is very often met with the shrug: “Maybe New York needs a Mafioso mayor.” In fact, Biaggi’s appeal is enhanced by indications that he would be ultra-tough on street crime while at the same time looking the other way on such far less threatening and more entrepreneurial forms of “crime” as gambling. Furthermore, while Biaggi might be strong on the police, he has also shown himself to be anti-militarist, leading the drive to expose and reform brutality in Army camps. As such, Biaggi has been following a long-time tradition among American Italians. Furthermore, Biaggi’s appeal is strengthened by indications that he would gain Conservative Party endorsement, and perhaps even the Republican nomination, since Governor Rockefeller has been looking for a conservative “fusion” candidate that he could back for Mayor. Of course, now that Rockefeller’s hated enemy Lindsay is out of the race, the governor’s enthusiasm for fusion may well have cooled.

The picture in the other primaries is even cloudier at this writing, though not for the same reasons as the multi-candidate Democracy. Among the Republicans, the previous candidate, the powerful State Senator John Marchi, from highly conservative and quasi-rural Staten Island, is anxious to run again. But Marchi’s candidacy has many barriers to overcome. One is Rockefeller’s desire for fusion, since the chances are nil for Democratic endorsement of the Staten Island Republican. Furthermore, Marchi has lost much of his old Conservative Party support, since he has in recent years endorsed liberal plans for massive low-income housing developments in Staten Island, plans that are bitterly opposed by the conservative masses of that borough. To stop Marchi, Rockefeller might well endorse a patsy candidate, State Senator Roy Goodman, who, as a liberal Jewish Republican from the East Side of Manhattan, has almost no support among liberals, Jews, or Republicans, and therefore could be well calculated to be slaughtered by a Democrat-Conservative Biaggi in November.

And so the New York political stew muddies and thickens. Among the minor parties, the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party will undoubtedly run a candidate, and the Trotskyite splinter group, the Labor Committee movement, headed by the fanatically pro-“working class” theoretician L. Marcus, has already nominated one Tony Chaitkin for the Mayoralty. The Free Libertarian Party of New York is preparing to run a mayoral slate, and will nominate someone at its convention at the end of March. Right now there appear to be two candidates for the FLP nomination. Paul Streitz and Fran Youngstein, but at this writing we have not been able to determine the ideological differences between the two slates. More on FLP doings at a later date.

The Blackmailer As Villain

By Gary Greenberg

I would like to register a dissent from Water Block’s continuing series of articles in which degenerate scum and social vermin are the subject of articles entitled “— As Hero.” His article on the blackmailer as hero will serve as an example.

First, no heroic qualities are displayed by the characters depicted, as in the case of the blackmailer article. A hero is someone you admire, respect and would like to emulate due to the excellence of some desirable trait exhibited by the “hero.” The blackmailer is certainly not someone who exhibits any admirable traits. The stock and trade of the blackmailer is to withhold information, the release of which is calculated to bring a devastating blow to the existence of a human being. It is the fear of destruction of reputation, life, or freedom that is affected.

Let us concede for the moment (and I don’t in fact) that the blackmailer is engaged in legal activity. That certainly doesn’t justify him as a hero. Just because a person engages in acts that are rightfully considered vile, although legal by most humane people, doesn’t mean we have to admire the scoundrel. The one virtue alleged for the Blackmailer is that the truth shall make us free or some other such cliche. This ignores the fact that a frequent tactic of a blackmailer is to threaten to expose, false, fraudulent, framed or phony information, calculated to result in harm to an individual if released.

One of the problems of the Block series is to slide in his description of the alleged hero from the general conception of the actor to the specific aspects which Block wants to examine. The Blackmailer is not simply thought of as someone who just withholds information for a fee.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at some definitions of Blackmail.

Black’s Law Dictionary defines Blackmail as “The extortion of money by threats or overtures toward criminal prosecution or the destruction of a man’s reputation or social standing.” Webster’s New World Dictionary (paperback) defines blackmail as “payment extorted to prevent disclosure of information that could bring disgrace.” Notice both definitions use the term “extort” which implies the threat of violence or harm for failure to comply.

While some activities of a Blackmailer may be legitimate, much of his usual practice is not. A frequent target of blackmailers is the person who is guilty of victimless crimes. Our “Hero” then threatens to go to the police with the information. This I think is criminal. It is as wrong as taking money at the threat of shooting. The victim of the blackmailer would be justified in killing the blackmailer to prevent the “Hero” from making such disclosures.

One of the legitimate activities of a blackmailer is to withhold information about a person’s criminal activities (robbery, murder, stealing) in return for a fee. While there is no obligation to come forward with information of a crime, I certainly hope that no society of civilized people would knowingly extend friendship and society to such an individual. As to the hero, if the crook chooses to off him, or hurt him, I have little sympathy for him and few tears. The Hero knew with whom he was dealing and what kind of person he was. He choose to accept the risk. I choose not to aid him in seeking justice.

The blackmailer may be Walter Block’s type of hero, but he is certainly no hero for the Libertarian. I see little value in Libertarian publications holding him out as one.

The Blackmailer As Hero: A Reply

By Walter Block

Were it not for Mr. Greenberg’s justly earned and widely known reputation as a careful scholar, meticulous researcher, and courteous gentleman, I would be forced to conclude that he had not read my article at all, and was instead replying merely to its title. Let us review the evidence.

1. “No admirable traits?” In the article, I point out several. Blackmailers help reduce the rewards of crime by forcing the criminals to share with them; by tipping off the police about the criminals; and by reducing the scope of crime on the part of the criminals out of fear of possible blackmail by a member of the larger criminal group. Blackmailers help groups such as homosexuals by bringing this deviation out into the open.

2. “False, phony and fraudulent information?” I cover this case in “The slanderer and libeler as hero”. The blackmailer, qua blackmailer, deals only in the truth; if he lies or misrepresents, he is no longer a blackmailer, but a slanderer or libeler.

3. “Extortion? The threat of violence?” Greenberg avoids my definition of blackmail as a threat to do something completely legal and legitimate, such as to exercise one’s rights of free speech, or, in the case of the boycott (another form of blackmail) as a threat not to buy from someone. In the paper, I take special pains to point out that what is being threatened is not violence, but free speech.

4. “Harm?” It is my view that harming someone should not be proscribed by a libertarian law code since honest competition can harm the loser and this must be allowed. But in the paper I state that if the opponents of blackmail are worried about harm, they should oppose the gossip or blabbermouth even more forcefully, for the blackmailer can at least be bought off, while these others cannot be.

I do not mind that Mr. Greenberg and I do not see eye to eye on this matter; healthy dispute, after all, is good for the libertarian movement, and will hopefully bring us closer and closer to the truth. What I do object to, however, is that Mr. Greenberg chose to avoid practically all of my arguments in support of the blackmailer. Nothing worthwhile can come of a debate where one’s arguments are ignored. It is for this reason, as well as out of pique that Mr. Greenberg has stated that he sees “little value” in my article even being published in a libertarian magazine, that I state: I see little value in the publication of a very poorly written critique which does not even consider the reasons given in the original article.

But I hasten to reply to the substantive points raised by Mr. Greenberg, lest I be accused of violating my own strictures.

1. “Degenerate scum and social vermin” is merely name calling and does not deserve a reply.

2. There is nothing illegitimate about “bringing a devastating blow to the existence of a human being” provided that you do not violate his rights! The man who is jilted may be dealt a devastating blow, but since his rights are in no way violated, there is nothing vile going on. After all, the woman, being a free agent, has a perfect right to pick another suitor or none at all. In like manner, there can be nothing illegitimate or vile about the exercise of one’s rights of free speech, no matter what harm results.

3. “The stool pigeon.” A person who cooperates with the police in their illicit efforts to stamp out victimless crimes such as homosexuality is certainly acting illegitimately himself. But there is something very illogical indeed, in trying to link up this sort of behavior with honest blackmail.

In posing the dilemma for the advocate of the legitimacy of blackmail, Mr. Greenberg is likening the police who try to stamp out victimless crimes to a bunch of hoodlums. He then tries to link the illegitimacy of these hoodlum police to the blackmailer. I would be the first to admit that blackmail in this case is certainly illegitimate, but I must protest that this argument proves entirely too much. It proves that any legitimate activity is illegitimate, provided only that it can be used to aid those involved in aggression, like our police who suppress rights.

For example, the activities of typing, serving food, washing uniforms, cleaning guns, repairing cars, etc., can only be considered legitimate, and non-aggressive. But they are all utilized by coercive police. Are we then to conclude, as the logic of Greenberg’s argument would have us conclude for the case of the blackmailer, that all these activities are intrinsically evil? Hardly. We must rather conclude, I think, that otherwise legitimate activities (like typing, cleaning, etc., as well as blackmail) can be undertaken in the service of evil, and thereby become evil themselves, but only in these cases, not in all cases.

4. What are we to make of the contradictory sentiments expressed in the next to last paragraph where Greenberg first encourages the blackmailer not to withhold information about real crimes, and then praises the crook for “offering him” for doing that very thing? Either one favors blackmailers exposing real criminals, and then opposes the retaliation, or one opposes the exposed, and favors the retaliation, if one desires to be consistent. It is illogical to favor X, and then to turn around and favor punishing someone for doing X.

Mr. Greenberg calls them “degenerate scum and social vermin”, but I think that the accompanying list of scapegoats are rather unsung heroes of the economy, for they insist upon working at their chosen professions under the most adverse conditions. Bad publicity, abuse, name calling, and even physical violence at the hands of the police and “outraged” citizens” are the lot of these economic actors. Yet we have seen that their only function is to benefit their fellow man!

Although seemingly far fetched, one cannot help be reminded of Prometheus, the Greek god who took pity on the misery of mankind and stole fire from heaven for their benefit, and who was then punished for his heroic deed by being chained to a mountain where a vulture devoured his liver each day. Prometheus was reviled by the gods; the economic heroes are reviled by mankind. But both bring inestimable benefits to mankind.

It must be allowed that but for negative public opinion and the opposition of the law, there would be nothing heroic about any of these tasks. They only become heroic when performed under the most trying circumstances. But the same holds true for Prometheus! Surely there is nothing heroic about bringing fire; people strike matches every day, after all. What makes this deed heroic are the great odds which were overcome in the bringing of the fire. It is, then, in accordance with the odds which are overcome in each of the tasks performed by the economic actors, that we can consider them heroic.

It is tempting to say that if there are any “degenerate scum and social vermin” involved in this question,’ they are the people who cast aspersions on the economic heroes. Tempting, but incorrect. For we must remember that people who maliciously cast false aspersions on others (libelers and slanderers) are heroes themselves, who are merely expressing their rights of free speech.

Heroes And Scapegoats

By Walter Block

Editor’s Note: The following is the projected introduction of a book that Professor Block is writing on “Economic Scapegoats”, some of the chapters of which have appeared in the pages of the Lib. Forum. In it, Professor Block explains the general purpose of his “hero” series; appended is a comprehensive list of these much-reviled scapegoats, some of whom will receive extended treatment in Professor Block’s final manuscript.

In this book you will learn three things about the appended list of economic scapegoats: 1) They are guilty of no wrongdoing whatsoever; 2) in virtually all cases, they are responsible for benefiting the rest of society; 3) that if we prohibit their activities, we do so at our own loss.

As the impetus for this book is firmly based on Libertarianism, it may well help to consider this philosophy in some detail.

The basic premise of libertarianism is that it is illegitimate to engage in aggression against non-aggressors. What is meant here by aggression is not argumentativeness, nor competitiveness, nor adventurousness, dynamism, quarrelsomeness, nor antagonism. What is meant by aggression is the use of violence such as that which takes place in murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, etc. What the libertarian philosophy prohibits is the initiation of such violence upon innocent people or their property; not necessarily pacifists, libertarianism does not forbid the use of violence in defense or in retaliation against the initiation of violence.

Now there is nothing untoward about such a view, nor even anything controversial about it. Most people would give it their whole-hearted support. Indeed, this sentiment is part and parcel of our Western civilization, enshrined in the law, in our Constitution, and in the natural law. There is nothing, then, about this basic premise of libertarianism that stands out in any way.

What is different about libertarianism is the way in which this basic premise is understood. The uniqueness of libertarianism consists of the rigorously consistent, not to say maniacally rigid manner in which this principle is developed. For example, most people do not see a contradiction between this principle (which they presumably support, or at least pay lip service to) and our system of taxation. Libertarians do.

Taxation is contrary to the basic principle and hence anathema to libertarianism because it involves aggression against non-aggressive citizens who refuse to pay (if you don’t believe it, try not paying your taxes, and see what happens). It makes not the slightest difference that the government offers goods and services in return for the tax money. What is all important and crucial is that the so called trade (of tax money for government services) is coerced. It is not a voluntary trade. The individual is not just as free to accept the offer of the trade as he is to reject it. Nor does it make one whit of difference that a majority of the citizens might be mustered out in support of this coercive taxation. Initiation of aggression is initiation of aggression no matter what are the views of the majority. For the libertarian, no tyranny which violates the basic premise can be acceptable, even if a majority supports it. Righteousness can only be found in consistency with the libertarian premise; it cannot be based on a poll.

Another difference between libertarians and the rest of the society is the obverse of the view that initiatory violence is evil. It is the view that anything not involving the initiation of violence cannot be evil! It is this difference that explains the first point mentioned above: that the economic scapegoats are guilty of no wrongdoing whatsoever. They are completely guiltless because they do not initiate violence against non-aggressors, and for the libertarian, such actions are the only criminal or evil acts possible.

It is interesting in this connection to consider the types of people who are not included in this seeming greatest all-time list of villains. Made prominent by their absence in such a list of “bad guys” the murderer, the rapist, the arsonist, the thief, the trespasser, and all other criminals who aggress against innocent people and their property. These worthies are left off the list of economic scapegoats because they are pre-eminently not guilty of no wrongdoing whatsoever. On the contrary, they are guilty of the only wrongdoing possible (according to the libertarian basic postulate): the use of initiatory aggression.

Notice, also, that the fraudulent is not included on the list of people who are innocent of any wrongdoing, although the blackmailer, the slanderer, libeler, briber, and the liar are. The reason that the fraudulent is not considered innocent (and hence a scapegoat) is that fraud is identically equivalent to theft. In theft, the victim is relieved of his possessions without receiving anything he values as much in return. But the same thing happens in fraud! If a man buys a bag of what is misrepresented as potatoes, but which is actually filled with rocks, he is also relieved of his possessions (the money spent for the “potatoes”) without receiving anything he values as much.

Once it is realized that no one in this seeming rogues’ gallery is guilty of any wrongdoing, it is not so difficult to appreciate the possibility of the second point made above: that they are virtually all responsible for benefiting the rest of society. They must benefit the rest of society; for not using aggression, the only other alternative is trade. And voluntary trade must benefit the rest of society, since if it did not, the rest of society would simply refuse to trade with these scapegoats. Both parties must always feel they gain from a voluntary transaction. Given that they are free not to enter into the trade, the fact that they do decide to trade must prove to be a mutual benefit.

The third premise follows ineluctably from the second: given that trade (the only avenue open to those, such as our scapegoats, who have eschewed violence), must always benefit all parties, then it follows that the prohibition of these trades must harm all parties. In actual point of fact, a prohibition of the activities of the scapegoats is even more grave. In addition to harming all potential parties to a trade involving scapegoats, the prohibition can most seriously harm third parties. One blatant example is the prohibition of the activities of the heroin seller. In addition to harming the seller himself, as well as the customer-drug addict, prohibition of the sale of heroin is responsible for a high proportion of the crime committed in our society, for the police graft, and for the general break down of law and order so prevalent in our big city urban jungles.

But the chief point to bear in mind while dealing with these unsung heroes of the economy is the moral difference between the initiation of aggression, on the one hand, and all other displeasing acts, which do not involve such aggression, on the other. It is only the act of aggressive violence of a murderer, rapist, thief, kidnapper, etc., that violates man’s rights; since there is no economic scapegoat whose function it is to so violate the laws of morality, these unsung heroes, although much reviled by the media, cannot be considered illegitimate by libertarians.

Economic Scapegoats

Contents

I. Labor and Education

scab

rate buster

employer of child labor

truant

child seducer

sweatshop employer

monopsonist (in the labor
market)

low wage employer*

II. Free Speech
blackmailer*
slanderer, libeler*
heckler

denier of academic freedom*

pirate radio station

pornographer

person who yells “fire!”

(in a crowded theatre)*

advertiser*

III. Financial
pawnbroker, usurer,
loanshark*
moneylender*
hoarder, miser*
counterfeiter
inheritor*

person who refuses to
contribute to charity
non-tipper

IV. Sexual
pimp*
prostitute
madame

male chauvanist pig*
peeping tom, voyeur
sadist, sado-masochist
fetishist

public fornicator

V. Ecology
noise polluter*
strip miner*
litterbug* wastemaker*
(planned obsolesence)
billboard builder
cosmetician
grafitti writer
breeder

VI. Business and Trade
speculator* profiteer
middleman

peddler

inventor

undertaker

company town owner

price cutter

honest trillionaire

ghetto merchant

tenement landlord, slumlord,

rent-gouger*

reserve clause owner

old curmudgeon holdout*

cigarette manufacturer

monopolist

professional

exploiter

bargainer

importer

mercenary

VII. Medical

drug (heroin) merchant*
quack

unlicensed practitioner of

medicine

abortionist

dope addict

VIII. Racism
block buster
discriminator
bigot

IX. Outlaw

fence

black marketeer

vigilante

briber

bootlegger

draft evader

gypsy cab driver*

dishonest cop

numbers racketeer

gun runner, unlicensed gun

owner

gold owner

poacher

smuggler

pirate

ticket scalper*

mafia

scofflaw

gambler

tax evader

conspirator

(*already written)

Life vs. Death: The Final Barricade

By Jerome Tuccille

It used to be, when you talked about anti-life forces permeating the countryside, you were speaking in a figurative sense. Surely no one was literally anti-life. Anti-life was a calculated exaggeration for anti-reason or anti-freedom. It was an overstatement designed to make a lesser point. The English were the masters of the whimsical understatement which, when properly timed and delivered, exploded in one’s psyche with a delayed reaction. We Americans, with our customary immaturity and bulldog aggressiveness, believed in hammering a point home with a sledge hammer to make sure that somebody out there “got it.” We have never trusted subtlety.

Now, it seems, we have no choice.

The rapid acceleration of contemporary developments renders all attempts at overstatement a sheer impossibility. Make the claim that Walt Disney will rise from the dead and create Disneyland Utopias throughout the globe and, rest assured, the New York Times will publish a story two weeks later informing the world that Disney’s heirs — if not the old boy himself — already have that very concept on the drawing board. It is getting more and more difficult to be outrageous. H. L. Mencken and Evelyn Waugh would surely be pacing the floor night after night, denying themselves much-needed sleep, merely to keep their most fantastic satires from becoming grim reality. My own latest offering, Here Comes Immortality, seemed unduly fanciful while it was being written. Scarcely the ink is dry, and my most ironic projections of a year ago are assuming a conservative hue.

What we have finally come to is this: the term anti-life must now be taken in its literal sense.

Out there in this wide, variegated country of ours, a new movement is underway. It has not yet been labeled the Anti-Life Crusade or the Death on Roller Skates Regatta, but surely it ought to be if we are not to further bastardize the English language with cloying euphemisms. But euphemize we will, and consequently this movement I am speaking of has been given the fastidious name, Death With Dignity. The moving light (purple beam of sorrow would be more accurate) behind this latest cultural phenomenon to grip the land is a small, thin, tight-lipped lady doctor in the midwest, a European transplant, named Doctor Kubla-Ross. This lady has written a book (the title of which escapes me for the moment — hopefully, longer that that) claiming that all life is but a mere preparation for death. It is her theory, arrived at after many years in the service of melodramatic emotion, that death is a wondrous and beautiful thing which ought to be faced with resignation, even with yearning. Largely due to her inspiration, courses on death and dying are actually being taught in several colleges and high schools across the country, and Doctor Kubla-Ross will not be fully satisfied until her theories have been institutionalized on the early grammar school level.

(In one high school in the midwest, students are invited to lie down in coffins in the classroom to get the feel of death, so to speak. Dr. Kubla-Ross is all in favor of dragging young children off to wakes and cemeteries to familiarize them with decay and deterioration. She is horrified that Americans shield their youngsters from death, refusing to admit them to hospitals and other morbid institutions. She thinks this is an “unhealthy and selfish” attitude, believe it or not. Since one of my own childhood traumas involved being pushed toward a casket and urged to kiss my “sleeping Uncle Rocco” by some foul-smelling hag dressed in black. I beg to differ with the good doctor.)

More insidious, however, than Doctor Kubla-Ross’s attitudes toward death, are her attempts to change the euthanasia laws in the United States. At one time euthanasia had a libertarian basis to it. The idea than an individual should be able to end his own life (or urge someone else like a doctor to end it for him) can be argued from the standpoint of self-ownership. But Doctor K-R is giving us euthanasia with a twist. She wants the doctor or the next-of-kin to decide when to pull the plug, when to decide that a patient has become a vegetable and his or her life is no longer worth preserving. Let it be said loud and clear, Dr. K-R’s brand of euthanasia, no matter how she tries to dress it up with humanistic, moralistic sentimentality, is still murder. The taking of someone else’s life without his express consent, no matter how vegetative that life may be, is morally reprehensible and should never be legalized in any civilized society. Dr. K-R gives morality a complete, 180-degree twist by maintaining that a “vegetable on his death bed”, who insists on being kept alive, is not really in “his right mind” and, therefore, the doctor is better able to make the proper decision for him.

Used to be that anyone who asked to die was not considered to be in his or her “right mind.” Dr. K-R, though she would deny it to the hand-wringing, tear-streaked end, would have made a great medical experimenter in one of Hitler’s laboratories.

As if Dr. K-R were not enough, much more than enough, along comes a disciple of hers, a morbid young science editor named David Hendin, with a book of his own called (choke, gasp, argghh) Death As a Fact of Life. The title gives you a good idea of the “theme” of his book. A week or so prior to this writing, I had the dubious pleasure of debating Hendin, Dr. K-R, and some sleek black-suited undertaker (he would prefer the term mortuary scientist no doubt) on the Kup Show, a TV talk show out of Chicago hosted by columnist, Irv Kupeinet. This was literally a pro-life vs. pro-death lineup, and the forces of life as you see were a 3 to 1 underdog. Gives you some idea of the current cultural climate of this country.

Dr. K-R started off by expounding on her favorite theme: the beauty of death and the dignity of going to one’s final resting place with a smile of resignation plastered on his chalky face. Hendin was next, treating the multitudes to a description of his grandmother’s funeral that was plainly designed to squeeze the final droplets of tears from a statue and to melt a heart of marble. The scientist of mortuary affairs stared grimly ahead, clearly at home on his own turf.

Then it was time for someone to strike a blow for life, and this I gamely did, citing the fact that aging is merely one more disease we will soon know how to overcome, that already we are developing the technology to halt and eventually reverse the aging process with drugs, biofeedback, hibernation, diet and other techniques. Yes, I dared to make the statement that life is fun and pleasurable and something to be valued, that only a lunatic would look forward to death with anything except outrage. I ended by quoting Nietzsche:

“The only thing wrong with heaven is that all the interesting people are missing,”

and Dylan Thomas’ comments on death:

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light!”

These, in my estimation, are two of the sanest statements ever uttered by man or beast.

When I finished, Dr. K-R was clearly in a snit. How could I be so selfish as to want to hang onto life so tenaciously, and refuse to step aside and make room for future generations? Young Hendin was irked because I apparently didn’t give a fiddler’s fart about his grandmother’s funeral, and our mortician friend glowered at this irreverent character who spoke so slightingly of his own stock in trade.

Irv Kupeinet patted my arm and thanked me for “livening things up a bit.” He wanted to know whether I had any youth pills to give away while “there was still time.” Sanity was not defeated yet.

“You!” wailed Dr. K-R, her dart-like chin leveled in my direction for a direct frontal assault. “Mr. Selfish over there. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful thing to face death with dignity after a full, satisfying life? To resign ourselves to nature and retire from this world with a clear mind?”

“A good thing for you, maybe. I go our furious — kicking and screaming all the way.”

“This American attitude is a very curious thing,” said Dr. K-R, almost to herself. “All this materialism and concentration on pleasure. It’s very unhealthy.

Yes, dear reader, something “unhealthy” is afoot in the land, but it is definitely not American “materialism” and the quest for extended youth and pleasure in life. Finally, after a couple hundred years of Puritanism and self-righteous Christian fundamentalism, the American mainstream is beginning to liberate itself. Lifestyles are changing and growing more fluid and open-ended; a morality based in denial, mortification of the flesh, and self-denial is being smashed to smithereens. Dr. K-R and her disciples, along with the Jesus Freak movement, the Hari Krishna mob, and the mind-destroying drug counterculture are representatives of a last-ditch attempt to preserve a death-centered social and political structure. But, like all aberrations in the human condition, they are destined to failure and final extinction.

Life, reason, sanity and liberty will have their day after centuries of darkness and bleak mysticism. Soon humanity will achieve physical life eternal and the divinity of the ancient gods.

Meanwhile we can all stand up and cry with Dylan Thomas: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light!”

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The Rise Of Roy Ash

By Bill Evers

During November and December, the newspapers were full of news of the personnel shuffle being carried out by Nixon in the executive branch of the U.S. government. While many old names are now associated with different posts, a new name is that of Roy L. Ash. Ash was the president of Litton Industries and now is the newly-appointed head of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Ash’s appointment has a special significance. The post he has obtained and the reins of power which he now has gathered in his hands did not even exist four years ago. The Office of Management and Budget was created during an executive branch reorganization planned and designed by Ash himself at the time of Nixon’s election to his first term. Now Nixon talks about an “expanded role” for the post. To better understand the what Ash’s appointment means, it is necessary to examine the reorganization plans drawn up for Nixon by Ash’s task force and also to examine Ash’s own background as the accounting and financial expert in Litton, a company whose lifeblood is government contract money.

Realignment

A business leader like Ash has concrete reasons for desiring executive branch realignment. The scope and responsibility of the national government (especially its executive branch) have vastly expanded in the past half-century, beginning during Herbert Hoover’s administration. But some feel the structure of government has not kept pace. The existing governmental structure is deemed unsuitable for the activities many influential businessmen and other political decision-makers wish the government would undertake.

In the words of Charles M. Hardin of the Rockefeller Foundation, “Many of the political institutions, organization, and practices as well as much of the political ideology in the United States conspire to elevate local, special, separate, and ‘Pluralistic’ interests — despite the fact that national survival now depends upon the ability to fix political attention steadily upon national problems and interests.” Really, of course, in the name of abolishing special interests, a reorganization plan will allow some special interests to supplant others.

The task force headed by Ash is aimed at diminishing the influence wielded by small, parochial groups and “their” agencies within the governmental structure. Much of the “inefficient” patchwork quilt of boards, agencies, bureaus, etc. found in something like the Department of Agriculture has grown up in response to the desires of localized or functionally narrow interest groups. The present organizational jumble reflects the demands of these petty interests, terests.

Complicated Enterprise

Sen. John McClellan has aptly described the complexity of the government today: “The executive branch is now the largest and most complicated enterprise in the world, with more than 1400 domestic programs distributed among 150 separate departments, agencies, bureaus, and boards.”

Under the reorganization plan proposed by Ash, all domestic affairs would be run by a Domestic Council, parallel to the National Security Council in foreign affairs.

Drastic surgery would be performed on the seven domestic departments that are in operation now — Interior; Agriculture; Labor; Commerce; Treasury; Transportation; Housing and Urban Development; and Health, Education, and Welfare. They would be cut up and sewn together again to form a total of four departments — Natural Resources (to control the nation’s physical assets), Human Resources (to retrain the labor force and run the welfare system), Community Development (to build up the nation’s infrastructure and rebuild the cities), and Economic Affairs (to handle the currency, labor-management relations, and other business and farm matters).

Key Member

The key member of the Domestic Council would be the Office of Management and Budget, which would be the central fiscal planner for the economy. It would synchronize and coordinate all government domestic action.

Ash’s proposed regrouping enables the government in partnership with industry to come to grip with problems in a whole new fashion. If a policy proposal comes up, the budget can be looked at and the program added to it without danger of operating at cross-purposes with another part of the government.

In the Office of Management and Budget will be centralized the measurement of programs’ successes and the decisions on which programs work best as a package.

Program Budgeting

The Office of Management and Budget, with the help of the Brookings Institution, has increasingly since its inception been turning to a budgeting procedure known as program budgeting. When budgets are constructed on a program basis, decision-making is centralized and made by visible high-level officials rather than by the invisible subcommittees and lower echelon bureaucrats who tend to formulate budget requests under the item-by-item way of budgeting. Significantly, the lower levels of departments are more likely to reflect petty interests rather than nationally powerful ones like Ash’s own Litton Industries.

In fact, the whole idea of program budgeting lends itself to the contracting of government programs to firms (like Litton) outside the government. Program budgeting presents budget requests in terms of the final products, in terms of program packages, rather than in the traditional line-item form which emphasized categories like personnel, overhead, supplies, etc.

Under program budgeting, there is a special plausibility to contracting with a company like Litton to build a large integrated “weapons system” like the McNamara proposal for a worldwide fleet of floating military bases or to operate the War on Poverty’s Job Corps Center in Pleasanton, California. In fact, these were actual Litton contracts.

As Karl Hess wrote in the Jan. 15, 1969 issue of Politics newsletter, at the time of the initial publicity for Ash’s reorganization proposals, “Litton is an industrial conglomerate, one of the new breed of ‘capitalist’ cats which is created, head to foot, from government contacts and contracts. Lately (Litton) has branched out into what might be called the subcontracting of the business of government.”

Litton’s contract to run the Job Corps center was hailed by the late Lyle Spencer of IBM as a primary example of the growth and development of what Spencer called the “social-industrial complex,” an arrangement parallel to the military-industrial complex, but paying companies tax funds to work the welfare state side of the American system.

Ash’s former boss Charles B. Thornton, chairman of the board of Litton, has himself been an advocate of the social-industrial complex approach. Thornton headed an advisory panel to the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders. His panel, in its recommendations, used the analogy of the space program and defense spending in suggesting that the government’s strategy for urban areas be one of granting credits against taxes to business firms.

But Litton has by no means neglected the warfare state side of the American system. In fact, Ash once said about Litton that because “almost all new products have their first application in military uses, we always want at least 25 percent of our business in defense and space.”

Ash’s statement about the military sector prompted an incisive analysis from David Horowitz and Reese Erlich in Ramparts. They wrote, “In the old days, private corporations would develop technological innovations at their own expense, risking the outlay with a view to being rewarded by future returns from the competitive marketplace. This was the very essence of entrepreneurship . . . (But now the corporations) have become accustomed to getting the government to pick up the tab before they move. These corporations have grown economically lazy, in part because they really can live better on the largess of the so-called welfare state.”

The Ramparts writers added that “if the corporation is spending the government’s money, the government is spending the taxpayer’s. If he had a very clear idea of it, the taxpayer might frown on this happy arrangement and spoil all the fun . . .”

Now Litton threatens to become a further burden to the taxpayers. According to Sen. William Proxmire, Litton threatens “to become the Navy’s Lockheed,” Litton has maintained that the Navy should pay it $380 million for cancellation costs and design changes encountered in its building of five landing helicopter assault ships.

Last June, Proxmire wrote: “I now have reason to believe that because of cash shortages, Litton is confronted with a financial crisis of major proportions. I am informed that in order to extricate itself from its financial problems, the company is attempting to persuade the Navy to pay millions of dollars of worthless and inflated claims. Or, alternatively, to restructure the LHA (landing helicopter assault ship) contract or take other steps to solve Litton’s shipbuilding problems, including a Navy takeover of the Litton shipyards at Pascagoula.”

The appointment of Ash as head of the Office of Management and Budget indicates the continued importance both of the military-industrial complex and of the rising social-industrial complex and marks a heightened concern of these interests in the fiscal processes of taxation and government expenditure.

Furthermore, those people who do not like governmental aggrandizement, whether by way of subsidization or by way of repression, can only view negatively the rise of an efficiency expert like Ash. In the name of efficiency power is being transferred from some hands to others. And anyway, what’s so wonderful about bad things being done more efficiently?

Denial Of Protection

By Tibor R. Machan

My mail, like that of most of us, is cluttered with literature from all sources — well, perhaps “literature” isn’t the right term for it all. Most recently, for instance, I got one of those newsletters in the mail where one of the lesser heroes of the “movement” offered comments about the perennial problem of libertarian political theory — although maybe the problem isn’t really with us, after all, only the author hasn’t quite gotten away from it yet.

Those interested in the character of a free society often dispute about the means by which people might best reduce injustice, the violation of human rights, etc., and protect against such violations in the best possible way. That, after all, is the meat of political theory.

The author of the piece I read, however, does not wish to participate in this dispute or discussion or inquiry. Our contributor to mailboxes throughout this land offers, instead, as his version of the solution to this problem that there is no problem at all. Actually, he says, we needn’t concern ourselves with the issue since it is evident that whatever one wishes to protect, he alone is entitled to protect it. So, our author concludes, that to suggest that some people might volunteer to take on the job of protecting others (who would like to specialize in other aspects of our lives) is out of line and tantamount to entertain “superstitious beliefs”. Now there is something odd going on when one who values freedom finds it distasteful that others should choose to operate according to the principle of the division of labor — a rather familiar concomitant of the economic scene which explains the workings of markets in a free society.

To choose to delegate your authority of self-protection is no different from choosing to delegate your authority to tinker with your car, your stomach, your money — delegate it to automechanics, doctors and banks, for instance.

This frequent mailbox visitor maintains that the “Gordian knot” of which means will best serve the purpose of self-defense, or protection of one’s goods and investments, has been solved by “libertarian analysis” — his of course (since “libertarian analysis” solves nothing, people do, by offering it at its best). What kind of solution is it when one offers none? Well, no problem here.

I have worked on this matter myself and know that it ain’t a simple one to work out. After all, politics deals with one of man’s most complex, intricate, delicate and abstract tasks: figuring out what kind of human community suits us best. And none of the suggestions come close to being so weak: for it wipes out the very foundation of man’s political goal, namely the attainment of freedom to its maximum within the community of others, so as to enjoy the prospect of achieving their own goals in peaceful cooperation. For by denying the right to seek help in protection, this view denies the right to seek help in any other goal one might have, such as eating well. And that is called “libertarian” analysis? Oh, man we’re in trouble.