Abuse Your Illusions
by Thomas Fleming
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Walter Block is a libertarian without guile, a theorist who refuses to confine his classical-liberal analysis to strictly economic questions. Liberty is liberty, he would argue, and value is value, whether we are deciding a question of zoning or a case of censorship. Honest man that he is, he opposes both zoning and censorship as acts of government infringement upon our liberties and as the forced substitution of other people’s values for our own. In a recent online editorial, Professor Block offers us a rigorously libertarian (to be accurate, we should say “liberal”) answer to the moral questions raised by stem-cell research.
Block is well known for defending the indefensible, and he takes the novel position that recycling fetal parts for research and medicine is morally acceptable, so long as the “parents” (i.e., those who supplied the genetic material) are unwilling to rear the child and there are no other takers for the fetus.
As a good libertarian, Block takes it as a given that we have no “positive obligations” to other people except not to harm them deliberately. Unborn babies, even from the point of fertilization, represent human life, but they are in the position of a wild cow that no one has “homesteaded”—i.e., domesticated and claimed ownership of. Therefore, if the parents choose not to rear the child and offer it up for adoption but find no one willing to assume the burden, they have the right to kill it—just as they would have the right to kill a born child.
Block’s morally revolting conclusion is not the problem. Many libertarian arguments lead to repugnant conclusions about marriage, drug use, pornography, and common civility, and their conclusions do not always remain in the realm of speculative theory. It is what Block (and perhaps most libertarians) take for granted—the underlying assumptions—that are really horrifying. Let us begin with the obvious: the ease with which human beings are equated with animals, not to mention the unproved assumption that human relations can be reduced to “homesteading.” In fact, the entire concept of homesteading requires us to regard human social life as consisting of unrelated individuals who find themselves on a frontier where there are no kinfolk, no laws, no customs—in other words, in a Lockean state of nature that has never existed.
Notice, too, the blithe indifference to facts of law in the treatment of his bovine metaphor. An animal coming out of nowhere is an uncommon experience, and children—whether the identity of mother and father is known—have two parents. In fact, the proper point of comparison is with calves that belong to the people who own the cow and the bull. Such calves are not at all open to homesteading, which would amount to rus-tling. In Ireland, the broad application of such a principle started a war, when St. Columcille refused to surrender a copy he had made of a biblical manuscript. The high king declared the calf went with the cow, but neither the saint nor his powerful clan agreed, and when the carnage ended, the horrified Columcille went off to Iona to found a monastery and save civilization.
But the principles of law and the facts of history are of only the slightest interest to libertarian theoreticians such as Walter Block and Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who are both to be applauded for their candor and for the rigor with which they have applied libertarian principles beyond the point of common sense. Timid ideologues grow fainthearted as they approach the abyss, but purists keep on marching until they have revealed what lies at the end of the road. Just as the 19th-century classical liberals, in pursuing the principle of radical individualism, led Europe and America straight to socialism, they are now leading us down the road to Soylent Green.
Libertarian theory, as Ludwig von Mises insisted, was a morally neutral science. Certain courses of action might well be regarded as suicidal, but “praxeology and economics do not tell a man whether he should preserve or abandon life.” If some libertarians find the conclusions offensive, they might begin to reconsider the premises.
Most American conservatives (and many self-described libertarians) would say something like this: “I agree with the libertarian analysis of money and banking and economic liberty, but on social, cultural, and moral questions, I defend ‘traditional moral values.’” This was, more or less, what was meant by “fusionism” in those distant ages so long ago when there was a conservative movement whose chief “theoretician” was Frank Meyer at National Review. Quite apart from the obvious problem that fusionism simply did not work (there are scarcely any fusionists under 60 years old), it is—or rather was—based on a false distinction. As Walter Block and other true liberals are fully aware, libertarian economics is only an application of libertarian social and moral theory. Mises makes the point emphatically in the introduction to Human Action, a work which is widely regarded as the libertarian “bible.” Economics, says Mises, is the application to markets of “praxeology,” a science of human behavior, based on the subjective theory of value “which converted the theory of market prices into a general theory of human choice.”
If the general theory is false and evil, the economic version of it must be—however much we might want to believe otherwise—equally false and equally evil. Suppose we reached that conclusion—what then? Would we all become socialists or national mercantilists or Green agrarians? That is, apparently, what libertarians want us to believe: Either sign on to their ideology or be declared an enemy of human freedom. Such a fate, however, is reserved only for people who cling to the slender reed of classical liberalism as the sole support of a free society. People loved liberty, even economic liberty, long before Adam Smith (much less Ludwig von Mises) ever propounded his fallacies. Our search is for truth, not for a comforting ideology, and the things we love that are real and true—our wives and children, the freedom to buy, sell, and compete in the marketplace—cannot be defended with illusions.
Unfortunately, much of the liberals’ credo is summed up in the Guns ’n’ Roses album title, Use Your Illusion. Rather than taking up actual transactions between real human beings, liberals take their stand on abstract concepts like the Market, Freedom, and Value. “Freedom to do what?” we ask. “Freedom to choose,” answers Professor Friedman. “Choose what?” we persist, like rude children. “Whatever you like,” they answer (provided you do not harm anyone, though—as we see in Professor Block’s case—they have a rather narrow construction of harm that can exclude the death of innocent people.) It comes down to a question of value, which (at least for adherents of the Austrian school) is entirely subjective. You like Greek vases; I like baseball cards. I would not give a nickel for your black-figure pot signed by Euphorion, and you would give less than that for an original Joe DiMaggio, unless it still had the bubble gum.
This theory of subjective valuation is, perhaps, the linchpin of the Austrian/libertarian approach, though not all liberals (particularly left-liberals such as John Rawls) have achieved the terrible simplicity of Ludwig von Mises, whose entire “science” of economics and praxeology is based on it. “Ultimate ends are ultimately given,” says Mises, “they are purely subjective.” Now, Mises might simply be uttering a fatuous tautology of the type, “I want what I want what I want . . . ,” but since he is at pains to defend his position as a breakthrough in the history of thought, we have to assume that he thinks he is saying something important, not just about economics but about human nature.
The breakthrough seems to boil down to this: In assessing human behavior, we are not entitled to go beyond the fact of human actions, which are assumed always to be carried out rationally in the pursuit of what the individual wants. Some of what he wants and pursues might be self-destructive, but “the notions of abnormality and perversity . . . have no place in economics.” At first glance, this seems to be the typical sophomore’s reductionism that insists that man has no free will because there is a material cause for everything, to which the junior’s usual response is to ask why materialist ideology is not subject to the same analysis. In the case of subjective valuation, the juniors might ask Mises why the theory of subjective valuation should not be viewed as merely a means for accomplishing Mises’ own desire for money or prestige.
Mises might answer by arguing (as he does in Human Action) that human rationality, the mental mechanisms by which we achieve our desires, has evolved through natural selection to conform to the nature of reality—and that is the best answer a materialist can give. However, if Mises were really interested in human nature, as he says he is, it is strange that he gives no evidence of having studied history, biology, or anthropology. Even his psychology is of the crudest type—he quotes Locke as an authority.
The problem is that there are two Ludwig von Miseses: the Mises who claims to be offering a scientific account of human action (particularly in economic terms), and the Mises who fervently believes in the principles of 19th-century liberalism—minimal government, human individualism, the elimination of such obstacles to individual fulfillment as the Church, aristocracy, traditions, etc., the “right” to do as one chooses, even if society or other people regard it as “perverse.” Amazingly, it turns out that Misesian methods of analysis—which are purely rational, objective, and scientific—confirm the liberals’ value-free vision of society down to the last detail. His “philosophy,” in other words, is actually propaganda in the service of ideology.
Mises’ liberal bias is very clear whenever the subject of morals or religion comes up. “Ethical doctrines . . . intent upon establishing scales of value . . . claim for themselves the vocation of telling right from wrong.” People who believe in right and wrong are obviously fools. So are Christians whose economic ideals, he advises us, are similar to Marx’s. As indifferent to moral theology as he is to history, Mises conflates the teachings of Pope Pius XI, a reactionary as hostile to socialism as he was to liberalism, with those of Archbishop William Temple, a modernist as well as a liberal-socialist Anglican.
What really mattered was Mises’ singleminded commitment to eliminate all objective judgments of value. This is the opposite of what all Christians and traditional conservatives believe, and it is by no means unfair to Mises to point out that his principles are entirely inconsistent with Christianity. When Russell Kirk complained that the Mt. Pèlerin Society, whose central figure was Mises’ student Friedrich Hayek, taught dogmatic liberalism and opposed Christianity, the best that its defenders (George Stigler among them) could do was to cite the presence of several Christians in the group. This is a little like defending the Nazis from the charge of antisemitism on the grounds that there were a few Jews in the party.
Like Marxists and Freudians, liberals have created a closed system in which every question is answered before it is asked. If all moral, social, aesthetic, and political questions can be reduced to what an individual happens to prefer, then there is no objective basis for truth, beauty, and right. I think we all know where this gets us, because we are living in the amoral world that liberals created. Rejecting the really valuable contributions made by liberal economists and political analysts, we have completely accepted their childish and dangerous philosophy. Far from representing an innovative principle subversive of the regime, Mises’ theory of subjective valuation is the highly respectable platitude on the lips of guidance counselors, therapists, and pornographers. It is the “Playboy philosophy” for college graduates.
It is not that there is no subjective aspect to value, but, if we step outside the hermetically sealed system, most of us acknowledge that much of what we value—food, shelter, clothing, weapons, tools, good health and good looks—are essential to survival and reproduction. Individuals who do not “value” food simply die and eliminate themselves from the discussion, and societies that fail to value weapons (or sex) quickly disappear. In crude terms—I am scarcely a better philosopher than Mises—value has what Darwinists would describe as an adaptive element.
Mises concedes this point only to trivialize it, but a student of human nature might construct a theory of value—and of money—out of sociobiological research. What is money, after all, but a measure of value, and if there is an adaptive significance to value, why could money not be treated as marking increments of adaptive success? X amount of gold might be the equivalent of so many children (or percentages of children) begotten or, more precisely, the units of caloric energy expended on the mating process. In lower species (such as hummingbirds), there is research that shows a male bird has to invest so much caloric energy into acquiring the food it needs to survive. The “surplus” value (i.e., the excess of energy) can be converted to mating and territorial behavior. Although human beings are almost infinitely more complicated than birds, a similar calculus might be developed that would firmly set material human values in a biological framework that would fulfill the liberal dream of reducing human life to the dimensions of the mathematical sciences. It would also, unfortunately, explode all the human fantasies based on illusions like “economic man” and expose the hollow pretensions of such libertarian slogans as “free markets/free minds.”
A moderate liberal might retort: Very well, then, but even in the matter of food, clothing, and shelter, different people want different things. Of course they do, but how much of what they want is really based on individual preference? Hans drinks beer, and Pierre prefers wine: Is it an accident that the German is a beer-drinker, while the oenophile is French? Ah, says our moderate, but some Germans do drink wine. Yes, and many of them come from regions that historically produce good whites. If we take the case to the extreme, we shall have to concede that the tastes of the average American, for example, are nearly always determined by the general culture of America and by the regional or ethnic or religious subcultures to which he belongs. Only a few trivial points—a fondness for pink shirts or skinny neckties—can be attributed to his individual eccentricities or peculiar experiences. For the most part, then, what Mises regards as judgments of subjective valuation are really an expression of either natural necessity or broader social values. The individual’s subjective contribution would seem to be negligible. The necessary conclusion to this line of reasoning would be to recover, in all our social, political, and economic thinking, a healthy balance between the autonomy of individuals and the stability of the society that actually creates those individuals. The libertarian project of setting individuals free from the constraints of families and communities could then be seen for what it is—as subversive of individual liberty itself as of society.
Liberals are fond of ridiculing the utopian projects of Marxists, who thought they could build a world without social classes, and of traditionalist conservatives, who are accused of yearning for the simplicity and community of a medieval social order. What they conveniently choose to ignore is the fact that the liberals had their chance. In the second half of the 19th century, liberalism was the dominant ideology of the West. Britain, the United States, Austria-Hungary (and, at times, even France and Germany) pursued the liberal agenda. They lowered tariffs, whittled away the privileges of the Church and the nobility, and gradually bled social institutions and moral traditions of their vitality. Britain undoubtedly prospered as a whole; the bourgeoisie became rich, and, for the most part, wages and working conditions for the lower classes improved.
Working men, nonetheless, were un-impressed. Torn up from their rural and regional roots, stripped of their allegiance to nobility and the Church, indoctrinated with the grim teachings of utilitarian and liberal philosophies that told them to look out for number one, the lower classes began turning to socialism before the end of the 19th century. Liberalism was dead in England before World War I and in America before 1932, and its doctrines were only to be revived, briefly and in adulterated form, in the years of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who have both been followed by socialists and state capitalists. Nothing could be more utopian and more naive than to believe that the failed liberal experiments of the past will be tried again in the near future. If Mrs. Thatcher, who regarded Hayek as a prophet, could not make it work, no one can.
Neither Thatcher nor Reagan were liberal dogmatists; both had their conservative sides, and both were willing to maintain a high level of socialism in their countries. Mises apart, it is hard to find a pure liberal. The greatest critics of liberal dogma in the glory years of the Victorian Age were themselves disgruntled liberals like Sir Henry Maine and Fitzjames Stephen, and even such radical individualists as John Stuart Mill, Albert Jay Nock, and the great Murray Rothbard were intellectual or social elitists who had to compartmentalize their beliefs: here, a radical commitment to individual liberty; there, a set of convictions about good manners, classical education, and moral responsibility. The really thoroughgoing liberals—such as William Godwin or Ayn Rand—were disgusting and unreliable people.
Economic liberty and political liberty are part of the good life to which many of us aspire, but they are not universal givens or precious jewels picked up by the first men living in a state of nature. They are the hard-won cultural achievements of the Greek and Roman, English and American political thinkers who discovered and expounded them and of the soldier-farmers who defended them. In other societies, freedom is as little prized as the principles of logic, and in abandoning the West’s moral, social, and cultural traditions, liberals make it im possible either to defend the liberties we have left or to recover those we have lost, and so long as “conservatives” attempt to base their defense of liberty on liberal grounds, they will continue to fail as miserably as they have failed over the past 50 years.
Mises’ most famous student came to understand part of the problem. Although he professed high moral standards, Friedrich Hayek had little problem, apparently, in dumping his wife of 23 years and abandoning his children. His Arkansas one-sided divorce (which was really an act of repudiation) drove Lionel Robbins, one of his closest friends and colleagues, to resign from the Mt. Pèlerin Society. In the years that followed his divorce, however, Hayek increasingly came to realize that economic liberty itself had to be rooted in some principle that lay beyond subjective value, and at the end of his life—and against the wishes of some of his libertarian friends (so one of them told me)—he published The Fatal Conceit, a book that permanently gives the lie to liberal amoralism. But even Hayek’s search for the moral and cultural preconditions for economic liberty put the cart before the horse. The free market is not an end in itself but a part—albeit an important part—of the good life. Trapped in the constrictive mind of Enlightenment rationalism, Hayek could not solve the problem he set for himself, but his thought represents a major step away from the nihilism of 19th-century liberalism and toward the sane grasp of reality held out by those who seek a truth that lies beyond the whims of fashion and the promptings of our glands.
This article first appeared in the January 2002 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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1 Comment by Edward on 22 February 2010:
I am unsure why this piece has been posted now, but, if anyone has seen anything coming out of CPAC this weekend, you can easily see how libertarianism as an ideology is just as poisonous to conservatism as liberalism is.
Now economic liberty is the summum bonum of man, and many of these so called conservatives are blatantly disregarding even the rhetoric of a conservatism that is concerned with anything more than cutting taxes. Not that I had much faith in these people anyway, but this year it is particularly sickening.
2 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 22 February 2010:
Several people have asked me to comment further on what I once called the “Austrian Heresy.” Rather than keep repeating myself, it seemed a good idea to put this piece from 2002 on the website.
3 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 22 February 2010:
I missed this when it first came out.
Dr Fleming I have to agree in part, especially on Walter Block. He perhaps more than any other theorist renders a pro-human liberty ideology down to the point where it effectively becomes anti-human. I agreed with a few points in Defending the Undefendable, but he subscribes to what might be called a ‘Leninist’ outlook – that worse is better and further destruction of the state apparatus will usher in the new libertarin order.
But even though he gets but a single mention, I must come to Hoppe’s defense. His Democracy: The God that Failed was a masterpiece and controversial among the leftist and ever-rebelling modals. It effectively reinforces a point that some Traditionalist Catholics make – that the furthering of ‘democracy’ has led from a decentralized, Catholic order into the modern totalitarian social democratic state of today. Which leaves us to left to ask ourselves which is better?
4 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 22 February 2010:
Pardon me, Dr. Fleming – am I right, or at least partially right, in stating that your arguments against Austrian Economics are of a “fruit of the poisoned tree” nature, then? Because libertarianism (which always struck me as more naive than immoral) has at its foundation heretical, un-Christian, literally amoral ideas (subjective valuation, materialism etc), libertarianism itself is therefore heretical and amoral? Christianity and libertarianism cannot peacefully co-exist for long because the underlying theory of libertarianism *denies* Christianity itself?
5 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 22 February 2010:
I agree entirely about HHH, whose book I reviewed favorably, despite its weakness in historical discussion. Hoppe is the true exception that proves the rule: He is too intelligent to be a Misesian libertarian, and he really is not. He is a liberal monarchist very much in the vein of my late friend Erik v. Kuhneldt-Leddihn. This piece comes from eight years ago, when I was still annoyed with HHH for his unfair attack on Sam Francis. I should not have let this irritation temporarily overcome my admiration for Hoppe’s often brilliant analysis.
6 Comment by robert on 22 February 2010:
“Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.” Wendell Berry
Dr. Fleming has focused on the essence of our current duopoly and its false dichotomy. Cultures are usually born by some divine manifestation, revelation,or descent from heaven,founded by aristocrats, defended by timocrats,eventually exploited by oligarchs who understand that politics is really about “the economy stupid,” and finally by tyrants who are prefered to utter chaos and the approaching night. Usually youth who remember and respect the ancients and their old institutions such as love and marriage, friendships and the inspired Word, cultivators and creators, will inherit what remains. Certainly this preoccupation with death and destruction is not new to our old world but what is novel is its disrespect and contempt for the most innocent of living things — the very young, helpless, and those with potential for a better
future.
7 Comment by S.L. Toddard on 22 February 2010:
Also, Dr. Fleming, have you read Jerry Salyer’s FPR piece, in which you are mentioned?
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/02/constitutional-kookiness/
8 Comment by KDZ on 22 February 2010:
A thoughtful critique of libertarianism, and very needful. I might add that John Gray on Hayek is very good (he was once a Hayekian), and his critique can be applied to Mises as well. To say this is not to deny that libertarians have one thing right–centralized government is a threat to freedom. That, as philosophers used to say, is trivially true. It doesn’t vindicate libertarianism.
9 Comment by Andrew Cain on 22 February 2010:
Mr. Fleming,
I don’t think you have actually fully absorbed the writings of Mises to allow yourself to create a fully worked out critique of his theories. Mises never stated that ‘libertarianism is a morally neutral science.’ Mises himself wasn’t a libertarian, he was a classical liberal. He did think that economics is morally neutral because it only seeks to explain the actions of individuals in terms of exchange and trade. Just like a doctor who can’t tell you whether or not your life is worth living, an economist cannot tell you whether or not your goals are worth pursuing. An economist is merely suppose to elucidate the means of achieving your ends thus the point of praxeology.
I will recommend some basic material to help you with your dilemma:
Introduction to Economic Reasoning by David Gordon
http://mises.org/books/EconReasoning.pdf
“Economics and Its Ethical Assumptions” by Roderick Long
http://mises.org/media/2146
10 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 22 February 2010:
Very good piece, Dr. Fleming.
I would add, if I may, that the core of Block’s ideology is the idea of “self-ownership,” as I have noted in other threads flowing from Mr. Storck’s excellent articles.
“Self-ownership” is the cornerstone of all libertarian and liberal thinking, from Mises’ ideas to those of the radical abortion supporters.
11 Comment by Dan on 22 February 2010:
Thanks. The article caused me to take a closer look at Human Action. In Ch. VIII Mises says: “It is of minor importance whether one calls this supreme being God, Weltgeist, Destiny, History, Wotan, or Material Productive Forces and what title one assigns to its apostles, the dictators.” A rather shocking, revealing statement I should have paid attention to.
Earlier he says that the science of human action is neutral with regard to ultimate ends and deals with the ways and means for attaining them, so I ignored his anti-religious swipes as irrelevant to his larger argument in favor of free markets. If I am reading the text correctly, subjectivism is meant merely to recognize the impossibility of knowing a person’s ultimate ends, although his view on truth is strictly relativistic and pragmatic except when it comes to his own.
My belief is that economics is a moral science, and the free markets Mises would like are as amenable to evil as good, and therefore likely to ensure the enslavement of the many for the benefit of the few without the constraints of the God he mocks.
12 Comment by Allen Wilson on 22 February 2010:
I agree with Dan @10. I remember being enthralled with anarcho-libertarianism in my youth, but it always gave me an uneasy feeling inside, something just wasn’t right about it.
A year or two ago, I listened to a recording of a speech Block gave about his idea on saving human life from abortion by means of considering the womb as much like a rental apartment, and the child as an unwanted tenant which the mother had every right to evict, with the same solution as described by Dr Fleming in this article. This solution seemed so ridiculous that I began to wonder if he wasn’t a lunatic, but he certainly is an ideologue.
He made his case partly on something which I believe he called the ‘Libertarian Code of Law’, which is supposedly universally applicable throughout all space and time. The fact that it has never been in force as the law anywhere at any time never seemed to phase him.
13 Comment by Andrew C. on 23 February 2010:
Just subscribed to Chronicles and am waiting for my first issue (yay!).
Dr. Fleming,
I found the article very informative and refreshing, especially as I am hard pressed to find substantial Catholic criticisms of classical liberal/libertarian ideology.
I have recently–today, actually–encountered the works of Erik v. Kuhneldt-Leddihn (in a public library, of all places). I have had him recommended to me before, but his books are rather expensive–$61 on amazon! Specifically, I now have a copy of “Leftism Revisited.” Would you recommend this and/or his other works and, if so, can you offer any insights that might prove useful in my reading of him? Perhaps some broad statement of what place his political philosophy occupies amongst the other great catholic thinkers such as Chesterton?
14 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 23 February 2010:
To Mr. Cain I freely admit that I am no expert on Mises and do not wish to be. But he is quite wrong about the supposed neutrality of Mises and his philosophical economics. Far from being physicians who analyze diseases and predict the consequences of misbehavior, Mises and his followers never tire of prescribing a regimen of life both for persons and for states. Part of his prescription is the destruction of Christianity. My critique here, made 10 years ago, deals little with the religious aspects of Misesian theory but simply exposes the absurdity of its shallow philosophy. Libertariansm is simply a tumor projected by the cancer of classical liberalism. The basic problem with classical liberalism is not that it is anti-Christian and subversive of social order–which it is–but that it is wrong and easily refuted by an objective examination of human nature and human history. Even if Christianity were a bogus religion invented by pranksters, it would make no difference. The Liberals mistook their social ideals for reality and then devised a number of absurd theories to support their ideal–the state of nature, the social contract, human equality, utilitarianism, the non-aggression principle, etc. etc. Any of them can be refuted by a wiseguy in the street with a pistol.
My friend David Gordon, whom you cite, is a far better philosopher than Mises, but even he cannot entirely rescue a thinker whom he does not actually respect as a philosopher. The economist Mises is quite a different thing, and I am perfectly happy to acknowledge his excellence in a field that has never interested me enough to go beyond fairly elementary study–an undergraduate course and a year long informal seminar in a postdoc program with a disciple of Armen Alchian.
Kuhneldt-Leddihn is best as a critic of modern ideologies. He was also an amazing polymath, better read in more areas than any two people I have ever known. He is always worth reading but with caution. Like all polymaths, he spread himself rather too thin, but he was a giant whose like we shall not see again.
15 Comment by Old Rebel on 23 February 2010:
Great piece. Dr. Fleming correctly identifies the underlying blindness of all ideologues to the inherent order of Creation, which, in human terms, is what we call tradition, or culture. Now, the busy-bodies of the world KNOW they can concoct much better rules for social, political, and economic interaction, and can implement them successfully just as soon as they have a few more billions and a little more machinery of enforcement.
And if the whole thing comes crashing down, well, we just didn’t try hard enough.
Click on any neo-Communist web site, and you will see what I mean.
16 Comment by Tom Piatak on 23 February 2010:
An excellent piece.
17 Comment by Andrew Cain on 24 February 2010:
Mr. Fleming,
‘To Mr. Cain I freely admit that I am no expert on Mises and do not wish to be.’
If that is how you feel then why did you write a piece of criticism against him? Surely you are not the type of individual who criticizes without understanding.
‘Far from being physicians who analyze diseases and predict the consequences of misbehavior, Mises and his followers never tire of prescribing a regimen of life both for persons and for states.’
No individual is JUST an economist. Mises had values that he ‘believed’ didn’t imply a moral philosophy. Now I am a Rothbardian myself so I believe that moral values are important to establishing a society based on liberty. That was actually Murray Rothbard’s main criticism of Mises. He was an ethical subjectivist, which perhaps is a flaw but not something to trash him over.
‘Part of his prescription is the destruction of Christianity’
In what part? Could you perhaps cite your source?
‘Libertariansm is simply a tumor projected by the cancer of classical liberalism. The basic problem with classical liberalism is not that it is anti-Christian and subversive of social order–which it is–but that it is wrong and easily refuted by an objective examination of human nature and human history’
That is quite a claim since many scholastics during the Middle Ages were integral parts of the development of lassiez-faire thought. And what do you mean to highlight by the ‘examination of human nature’? That we are violent? corrupt? benevolent? It is an ambiguous claim that needs clarification.
‘Even if Christianity were a bogus religion invented by pranksters, it would make no difference.’
Sure it would matter, if you valued truth over the noble lie. People retain their religion because they really think that it is a positive force in their live and hope to achieve something by remaining in it. It is usually a life in paradise. If people were suddenly imbued with the knowledge that everything they have done for that sake is all for not then of course it will change the mentality. People don’t grow through the motions of Christianity out of boredom or ambivalence.
‘The Liberals mistook their social ideals for reality and then devised a number of absurd theories to support their ideal–the state of nature, the social contract, human equality, utilitarianism, the non-aggression principle, etc. etc. Any of them can be refuted by a wiseguy in the street with a pistol. ‘
Well the social contract is a famous tenet of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who wasn’t a liberal by any means. And why do you mean by ‘human equality’? Equality before law yes, equality in everything else no that is more inline with socialist theory not liberal theory. Also just because you are a victim to crime doesn’t infer that you A.) have no rights, B.) shows that any justice system is a ridiculous human construction. For if you are really believing what you are saying then by what right do you seek justice? If the non-aggression principle is bubkes then what under what crime do you bring the criminal to court?
‘My friend David Gordon, whom you cite, is a far better philosopher than Mises, but even he cannot entirely rescue a thinker whom he does not actually respect as a philosopher.’
Can you cite where David Gordon thinks Mises is a terrible philosopher? Gordon is a more of a Rothbardian in thought but I have never heard him criticism Mises beyond ethical theory and that is just over the claim of his ethical subjectivism. However, he doesn’t trash the man and say he was horrible. No theorist is capable of completely consistency in thought and complete correctness.
I await your retorts,
Andrew Cain
18 Comment by Tjf on 24 February 2010:
I have read enough Mises to understand him better than many of his disciples. He is not a deep enough thinker to waste more time than I have done already. As a student of moral and political philosophy I am in a sound position for making judgments on thinkers like Sade or Mises whom I find repellant and dangerous. I was a friend of Rothbard who unlike Mises had a good heart. Mr Cain, alas, knws too little to engage in this discussion. I cannot devote the rest of my life to his education. If he wishes to continue, he must abandon irrelevant generalizations and personal declarations of faitth and get down to the business of measuring liberal thought by what we know of reality. Anything else is a complete waste of time. If you are unaware of Mises’ hatred of Christanity, then you have obviously not read his work thoroughly. Read before you think and think before you speak.
19 Comment by Andrew Cain on 25 February 2010:
TJF,
Oh how droll. You pass yourself off as an expert of Mises while claiming I am making broad generalization and what is the the next argument you make? Something along the lines of ‘well if you don’t know what I am talking about then you haven’t read thoroughly enough.’ If you are so inclined to call yourself an expert then by all means show where he tries to ‘destroy Christianity’. Don’t present these trite claims with an attitude of puffery.
20 Comment by JD Salyer on 25 February 2010:
Mr. Cain,
If you have Liberty Fund’s 1981 edition of Mises’ *Socialism*, p. 379:
“Jesus’s words are full of resentment against the rich, and the Apostles are no meeker in this respect. The Rich Man is condemned because he is rich, the Beggar praised because he is poor. The only reason why Jesus does not preach revenge against the rich and declare war on them is that God has said, ‘Revenge is mine.’
In God’s Kingdom the poor shall be rich, but the rich shall be made to suffer. Later revisers have tried to soften the words of Christ against the rich … but there is quite enough left to support those who incite the world to hatred of the rich, revenge, murder and arson…. This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches…
…it is the resistance which the Church has offered to the spread of liberal [I.E., CLASSICAL LIBERAL] ideas which has prepared the soil for the destructive resentment of modern socialist thought.
Not only has the Church done nothing to extinguish the fire, it has even blown upon the embers…true, the official Church tried at first to resist these [SOCIALIST] movements, but it had to submit in the end, just because it was defenceless against the words of the Scriptures.”
p. 375:
“[Jesus'] zeal in destroying social ties knows no limits… the clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism.”
p. 386-387
“A living Christianity cannot, it seems, exist side-by-side with Capitalism.”
Mises does suggest that the Church might survive, but adds that, in adapting to survive, the Church would
“find itself inevitably committed to Liberalism. No other doctrine would serve… [the Church] must be thoroughly transformed.”
Etc., etc., etc.
A Christian cannot, by definition, accept the prospect of the Gospel being “thoroughly transformed” per the directives of either a libertarian economist anymore than per those of a Marxist liberation theologian.
21 Comment by Andrew Cain on 25 February 2010:
JD,
Thank you for actually presenting evidence into which we can sink our teeth. This is how discourse actual works and I applaud your efforts in an earnest way. On the topic of the quote from 379. If you would go to 378, the opening paragraph of this chapter Mises says:
‘Since the third century Christianity has always served simultaneously whose who support the social order and those who wish to overthrow it. Both parties have taken the same false step of appealing to the Gospels and have found Biblical passages to support them. It is the same today: Christianity fights both for and against Socialism.’
The comments you posted about Jesus’ ideas towards the rich are an interpretation over the ambiguity over Christ’s political positions. On the one hand, Christianity has been used to justify socialism, an hatred of the rich and a overzealous love of the poor. A destructive alliance between the state and themselves. The throne and the alter. Yet in another fashion, Christianity has been used to justify classical liberalism. Lord Acton wrote that Jesus’ famous comment ‘Render on Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render onto God that which is God’s.’ is a defining moment in the development of classical liberal thought because it establishes a realm which the state which is separate from the government.
Mises also states on that page [ 379 ] ‘This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed’ in which he meant that Christ’s words were used for these condemnations of the rich by socialists.
Concerning your comment on pg 375. You are missing the context in which he is present Jesus. It is as a millennialist who perceives the kingdom of God as soon to arrive and therefore current laws and social ethics are irrelevant because when God arrives, everything will change. I don’t see how you can call his a ‘destruction’ of Christianity, a different interpretation of Christian eschatology but not destructive.
Concerning your 387 comment. I feel required to quote the whole statement and the answer will unveil itself.
‘By refinement of political art it has succeeded in maintaining the principle of Catholicism through all the turmoil of national wars, but it must realize more clearly every day that is continuance is incompatible with nationalist ideas. Unless it is prepared to succumb, and make way for national churches, it must drive out nationalism by an ideology which makes it possible for nations to live and work in peace. But in so doing the Church would find itself inevitably committed to Liberalism. No other doctrine would serve.’
So the church can no longer play on nationalist tendencies in order to continue its presence in the world. In order to maintain an international presence and not be fracture into separate churches, it must take up the principles of classical liberalism which propounds international peace and trade. Nothing concerning the desired destruction of Christianity.
‘A Christian cannot, by definition, accept the prospect of the Gospel being “thoroughly transformed” per the directives of either a libertarian economist anymore than per those of a Marxist liberation theologian.’
The problem is that the bible is so ambiguous in certain areas. That is why we have such fragmentation in Christianity, even over whether the bible is actually the word of God. You can have socialists have an interpretation, Hegelians, Libertarians, classical liberals. A whole series of theories.
A very good exchange though, I hope you retort.
-Andrew Cain
22 Comment by Tjf on 25 February 2010:
Mr Salyer has saved me a good deal of trouble. I have no great desire to go back over Mises to prove what a Misesian should know. Neither Mises nor Acton were serious students of Christian theology and Acton admitted that as a liberal he was a bad Catholic. Why get upset or try to argue about facts that cannot be in dispute ong people who wish to study them. My advice to Mr Cain is either to do his homework or accept guidance from those who have done theirs. Liberalism is the creation of certain men writing over a period of several centuries. It is not revealed religion nor is it capable of scientific demonstration. Thus we must examine it’s central tenets in the light of what we actually know about human behavior. The result of such an examination would cast grave doubts on any theory of rational individualism or of universal human rights.
23 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 25 February 2010:
I should say that I am sorry if I seem rather curt in my short responses, but I hate using my Iphone, as useful as it is, which leads to a brevity that can sound acerbic. I have absolutely no desire to debate Mises or Rand or Walter Block. Let their followers discuss their supposed virtues. My critique is designed to show the fundamental principles and therefore failings of the liberal tradition, from its godfather Montagaigne to its ugly stepchildren the libertarians. I am not going to go into what various Misesian friends of mine have conceded about Mises privately, because I have already done enough harm by even hinting at it. Let us just be content with the statement that Mises was not a philosopher but someone who took over a body of liberal thought uncritically and turned it into a more extreme direction. He may be the greatest economist who ever lived but his philosophy is little better than a reductio ad absurdum of Mill et al. It is like the Straussians who write books on ancient literature and philosophy–not worth the time it takes to discuss.
Ordinary people should not be discussing the problems in Scripture but accepting the tradition through which we read the Scriptures. We have the central teachings of Christ as a means of interpreting the OT Scriptures and we have the epistles to clarify those teachings and the early apostolic fathers who show how they were received and taught authoritatively. This leaves a rather small area for controversy. Marx, Hegel, Locke, Mises, et al are entirely irrelevant to any serious discussion of Christian thought. One has to choose. Either follow Locke, Mises, and/or Marx or Christ, Paul, and the Fathers.
24 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
Mr. Salyer beat me to the punch. My copy of Socialism was on my bookshelf here at work. Suffice it to say that the quotations Mr. Salyer has cited are only the tip of the iceberg.
Mr. Cain’s response is inadequate, because it misses the central question in this discussion: Would a Church “thoroughly transformed” by liberalism still be the Church? Mr. Cain is reduced to saying that “The problem is that the bible [sic] is so ambiguous in certain areas.” But that response is inadequate, even by Mises’ analysis. Mises is not arguing against the Bible; he is arguing against the Church—that is, both Scripture and Tradition—and he more than once makes it clear that, by “the Church,” he means the Catholic Church.
Thus the Church “thoroughly transformed” by liberalism would the Catholic Church that Mises well knew had condemned liberalism repeatedly in the century before he wrote Socialism.
In his earlier comment, Mr. Cain tried to save Mises by invoking Murray Rothbard. Unlike Dr. Fleming, I did not know Rothbard; I met him, and heard him speak, precisely once, within a year of his death. I did, however, respect and admire him, and both enjoyed and profited greatly from the articles he wrote in the final years of his life.
But just because Rothbard said something does not make it so, and just because Rothbard was more sympathetic to Christianity than his mentor Mises does not mean that he was right about Christianity or that Christianity is compatible with the classical liberal aspects of Rothbard’s thought.
To take one example: In 2004, in the midst of the first round of debate with Tom Woods over his (then forthcoming) book on economics and Catholic social teaching, Lew Rockwell played what he must have thought to be a trump card. He posted on LewRockwell.com a memo that Rothbard drafted for the Volker Fund in May 1960. Originally entitled “Readings on Ethics and Capitalism, Part I: Catholicism,” Lew renamed it “Catholicism and Capitalism.”
Until a few weeks ago, you could have clicked on this link and read Rothbard’s memo. Now, when you click on it, you get a “404 Not Found.” Why? Because like so many other things that he later found embarrassing (e.g., his defense of the L.A. cops in the Rodney King beating), Lew sent the piece down the memory hole. It was no accident; the piece was the 59th piece by Murray published on LewRockwell.com; pieces 58 and 60 are still up.
Why did Lew purge the piece? Because, at the traditionalist Catholic newspaper The Remnant, Chris Ferrara used it strike an unanswerable blow against Tom Woods. Here’s the relevant portion of Ferrara’s essay:
Luckily, Google has a longer memory than Lew thinks the rest of us have: You can read the full text of Rothbard’s memo in this cached version.
Rothbard’s language there (despite the bit about fascism) is much more pleasant than Mises’ language, but his purpose is the same. He wants to enlist the weight of the Church (since he could not enlist the Church Herself) in support of capitalism. Thus he attacks and/or downplays aspects of Catholic social teaching that he sees (quite rightly) as inimical to classical liberalism and sows confusion by claiming that “There is, first of all, no official and specific ‘Catholic position’ on capitalism.”
It is in light of this memo and the method Rothbard uses therein that we need to evaluate any of his “sympathetic” discussions of Catholicism, including his work on the Salamanca School. Rothbard wasn’t attempting to show that the roots of capitalism could be found in a group of Spanish theologians in order to inform capitalism by the teachings of the Catholic Church; he was attempting to enlist the weight of the Church (since he could not enlist the Church Herself) in support of capitalism.
None of this is denigrate Rothbard’s very good work in other areas. Even the best scholar, when he strays outside his area of expertise, is likely to fall into special pleading. Like his mentor, Rothbard would have liked to see a Catholic Church transformed by embracing classical liberalism. That such a transformation would have destroyed the Church did not both Rothbard one bit, because it was not his concern.
25 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 25 February 2010:
@ 24
Actually, ‘Catholicism and Capitalism’ is still up, and linked on the Rothbard archive. The difference it is now ‘..rothbard59.html’ as opposed to just ‘..rothbard59.htm’
Although I must admit that Lew Rockwell has deleted quite a few essays that used to be on the site; I recall there was a piece by a guest author that mocked Kwanzaa as the marxist travesty that it is, but its now gone along with some early pieces by Bill Anderson that defended Bob Jones University, among others.
26 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 25 February 2010:
As for Ferrara’s piece in the remnant, after reading it I will no longer read their magazine. He brings up over and over again that Woods is a ‘recent convert’ like that is supposed to mean he’s more suspect as a Catholic. His condemnation of Wood’s dissent is laughable coming from a magazine that dissents on a regular basis.
Not to mention that snippet is hardly ‘an unaswerable blow’ because Rothbard does not call Pius XI a fascist, but that at the time the Catholic Church viewed fascism and other ‘third way’ movements in a much more favorable light than it did communism.
27 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
Mr. Maxwell is correct. It appears that all of the files on LewRockwell.com are now using the .html suffix rather than the .htm one.
Serves me right for muddying the waters by trying to include Lew in this. Despite my regrettable error, the analysis of the Volker Fund memo and its implications still stands—as does my remark about Lew’s tendency to send material down the memory hole.
28 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
I’m afraid Mr. Maxwell is splitting hairs. How can Rothbard call Quadragesimo anno “pro-fascist” without believing that the author of the encyclical is pro-fascist himself?
29 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
I count two mentions of Woods’ status—hardly “over and over again.” The second seems gratuitous—”you have a duty before God as a confirmed member of the Church (albeit a rather new member)”—but the first is rather relevant: “Have you no appreciation of the sheer audacity of a recent convert purporting to lecture cradle Catholics on the ‘errors’ of Church teachings affirmed by Pope after Pope for centuries?”
30 Comment by Daniel Maxwell on 25 February 2010:
Ok, ok Mr Richert two mentions, but it still struck me as a kind of insulting to insinuate that hes less of a Catholic for that reason. And then to bring up “..In fact, before you joined the Institute you taught history at a community college.” Presumably, being a history teacher would lead him to understand economics a little bit better than the attorney whos condemning him. As for the community college remark, I believe that at the time Woods was only about 30 years old. We all have to start somewhere.
As for @28, I dont believe I am splitting hairs. Do you deny that the Catholic Church, at least in the past, viewed fascism (not Nazism, mind you) more favorably? True, Mussollini wasnt a religious man and only had himself baptized for political reasons, but the Church viewed the similar (at least economically) states of Franco and Salazar with favor. But as statements of both Pius XI and XII show, the Church (and themselves personally) always had some misgivings about fascism, and Im fairly certain Rothbard was aware of this – being somewhat well-educated on Church history.
31 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
Presumably, being a history teacher would lead him to understand economics a little bit better than the attorney whos condemning him.
Would it lead him to understand Catholic social teaching, as it concerns economics, better than the pontiffs he is criticizing?
32 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
If, by “more favorably,” you mean that it was the lesser of evils, then certainly—as you note, the Church “always had some misgivings about fascism.” It doesn’t matter what you’re “fairly certain Rothbard was aware of”; what matters is what he wrote, and his purpose in writing it.
33 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 25 February 2010:
Dr. Fleming’s skewering of liberalism and its spawn libertarianism presents why conservatism must offer something very different. What sane person would want to live in their world?
34 Comment by jack bailey on 25 February 2010:
Kuhneldt-Leddihn no doubt has the superior grasp of history than Austrians, but I am not sure what this trashing of Austrians is really all about. If the implication is supposed to be that Democrat and Republicans are really the same and that therefore we should not take sides, then I am not signing up for it. I don’t see why we should fault Reagan or Thacher for trying to roll back the socialist agenda or fault them for using the Austrians as an inspiration. At that time this was quite a novel idea. It is one thing for us to talk to each other and sort out among those that we like and dislike. But out in the real world we should praise those who are trying to stand up against great odds to the Obama juggernaut with the langauage of liberty even if it is imperfect as the case is being made here about Ludwig Von Mises. One should be grateful to those that are able to make use of it and to this extent I would agree with Mr. Cain. There is a lot more to the Austrian school than the case is being made here and the influence has to be judged as overwhelmingly positive. As of right now, it is the most effective system against statism in existence. If someone comes with a better program I will be happy to embrace it.
35 Comment by Tjf on 25 February 2010:
What is Jb’s point here if not to deflect the discussion away from a reasoned critique of liberalism–what he wants to refer to as trashing Austrians–into an entirely trivial partisan discussion. Small wonder the so called conservatives never accomplish anything when they refuse to follow a coherent argument. There are two propositions before us. The first is that liberalism is untrue, that is it conflicts with the facts of human nature, and the second that it is incompatible with Christianity.
36 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
Mr. Cain:
It doesn’t matter what you “think”; the question at hand is what Mises said, and what his purpose was in saying it. That is quite clear from the text of Socialism.
The Church cannot “retain its once liberal tradition,” because the Church never had a “liberal tradition.” Indeed, again, you’re arguing against Mises as much as you’re arguing against me—Mises believed that the Church needed to be “transformed” into a liberal institution, rather than to recover something She once had in the past.
“Some of the first communist societies in the west”
This would be relevant if it was what Mises was discussing. It wasn’t; as I noted above, he is discussing the Church, and he more than once makes it clear that the Church in question is the Catholic Church.
“So you theorize that Rothbard first hated the Church”
Please do not put words in my mouth. I have said no such thing.
“you have obviously taken the discussion away from its original premise which is that Mises wanted to destroy Christianity because now you are invoking Rothbard’s writings, not Mises’.”
Yes, because you invoked Rothbard. Please try to keep up with the line of your own arguments; that will help you understand my replies to them.
“Second, Rothbard wasn’t a theologian.”
Finally, we agree completely on something.
“He was very fond of individuals who progressed individual liberty and disliked those who retarded or tried to extinguish it. The Church played home to both these mentalities at different times and sometimes at the same time.”
But then you had to go and blow it. The Church is concerned with the only liberty that matters—the freedom of the will that, in cooperation with God’s grace, allows us freely to choose to accept the salvation offered by Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.
“The Church is not a single entity with a singular position or idea on a matter.”
Precisely wrong, if you’re speaking of the Catholic Church, which, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, Mises clearly is, and if you’re speaking of matters of faith and morals.
Rothbard’s favorite was St. Aquinas who was second only to Aristotle.
I avoided saying this bluntly earlier, but I’m afraid I cannot avoid it now. As much as I admire some of Rothbard’s writings, especially from his later years, when I say that he is guilty of special pleading, I mean that he used history as a weapon. Like Tom Paine, who cited historical examples in The Rights of Man, Rothbard did not approach the history of Christianity with an historical sense. Rather, he cherry-picked to find examples that could be used to advance his argument, and discarded the rest.
In that sense, he was less outwardly antagonistic toward Christianity than Mises, but Mises was more honest about what his liberalism entailed. Mises’ belief that the Church needed to “transform” Herself into a liberal institution was not an “incorrect comment”; it was what he sincerely believed. And being not just a non-Christian but a nonbeliever, it did not bother him in the least to believe it.
For those of us who believe, however, that single statement should be enough to make us question whether the rest of Mises’ thought could possibly be compatible with the faith of our fathers.
37 Comment by Scott P. Richert on 25 February 2010:
I apologize if my comment @36 seems to come out of nowhere. In the 15 minutes that I spent replying to Mr. Cain, it appears that one of my colleagues deleted his comment.
38 Comment by Tjf on 26 February 2010:
I have deleted mr Cain’s last two comments and my response. From the beginning he displayed the typical signs of a libertarian ideologue, including the rather bad manners that come fr too much thinking about oneself. Most of us–even if we have not been lead astray by Mises or Rand–have suffered from this malady. I don’t wish to hurt his feelings but neither do I wish to encouragecsuch behaviour, especially when it distracts from a more serious discussion. If we could attract a learned and intelligent liberal–Hoppe or Gordon–we might get a real debate going, but these religious neophytes only wish to pound their bibles and defend their faith. Later today I shall post a brief piece on marriage to show the three ways it has been treated– as a natural institution by pagans, a spiritual bond in the Church and as a contract between rational individuals by liberalism. In this way we can bypass some of the abstractions and look at a real world issue. Mr Cain if he wishes to stick to the point is welcome to rejoin the discussion though I fear it is not one he will find congenial to his taste.
39 Comment by MAP on 26 February 2010:
Thanks again Dr. Fleming. I have found this a very interesting and rewarding discussion.
40 Comment by Bruce on 26 February 2010:
If you’re correct, then the pagan concept of marriage is preferable to the liberal one.
41 Comment by Barbara Samuel on 26 February 2010:
Dr. T. Fleming: The comments to your article has been informing.
In reading and study (not of any degree) I had not read Mises,
Block or Rothbard. Some of my reading went into S. Freud and Carl
G. Jung – psychologist/psychiatrist. Some of Jung’s theories it
would seem did much for advancement of liberalism in churches.
Have you any comment regarding him?
42 Comment by jack bailey on 26 February 2010:
#34. I have no intention to deflect or trivialize. The two points made about liberalism are important and open for discussion. I have no use for Walter Block or his repulsive thought experiments but I also do not connect him with Austrians on the basis that he is somehow the absurd final product of their beliefs be it libertarian or classic liberal. As far as the Austrians, fine, they are not the most model citizens, Christians and I do accept whatever else they are faulted for here in philosophy and anthropology. Some of their beliefs lead to fallacies or are downright ridiculous, but most of them are not Walter Brock. Overall Austrian construct of the economics on the technical level is as solid as anybodys and they should be appreciated as the most effective counterweight right now in practice to the socialist/statist/Keynesian/neo-whatever fallacies and for the language of freedom that enables the anti-Obama activists to fight back. Most of those that are fighting the Obama juggernaut are not nuanced Phds, therefore they are using the language that is most understandable or effective for them and that is the language provided or inspired by Austrians. For example someone who draws a great deal of strength from the Austrians, someone like Ron Paul is effective in drawing out the symptoms of what is ailing us using their methods whe he comes up with slogans like “End the fed”.
43 Comment by Thomas Fleming on 26 February 2010:
I have transferred this discussion to a new post on three views of marriage. I fear Mr. Bailey still is making several errors, first in thinking this discussion has anything to do with the “science” of economics, and second that one can begin with false ideas and, without divine help, end up anywhere except worse off than before. Ron Paul is a very nice man, but he is not exactly a clear thinker. Like most decent Americans, he dislikes big government and would like to scale it back. So do we all. This aversion does not constitute, however, a place on which to take a principled and coherent stand. If you wish to take to the streets, buy a box of Lipton teabags. If you wish to find out the truth, you must learn to think clearly and stick to the point.
Most “Austrians” I know, including Walter Block–whom I have always found to be quite a nice and sincere man–are confused about who decides what. Like most libertarians, they uphold such human rights as the right to read or view pornography or have whatever consensual sex they like with whomever they are drawn to–though most would probably set an age limit. But what happens when a local sheriff cracks down on porn parlors or gay bars? They want to sue in Federal court. That’s right, by following their patently untrue theory, they end up actually increasing the power of the central state. I used to argue this–actually discuss would be a better word–with Rothbard, who quickly came to agree with me, and he and I once debated a Big Government libertarian team that included Justin R, who broke down in the debate and joined our side. That is what happens when rational minds debate: errors are corrected and minds are clarified. If I influenced Murray a bit, I am also quite proud to say that he influenced me much more, not philosophically of course, but in his acute analysis of political issues from a principled point of view. His mind was razor-sharp and it cut through a lot of pseudo-pragmatic junk that tends to short-circuit honest thought. He also had guts and did not care if he lost money or support by telling what he thought was the truth.