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Home , Antony Fisher, Karl Hess, Leonard Read, Radicals for Capitalism, Ralph Raico

Libertarian ascendancy

research, and (often) war, libertarians de- Chris Berg reviews viate sharply from the conservative move- : ment. , in her typically venom- ous, Randian manner, held conservatives A Freewheeling History ranging from ’s William of the Modern American F. Buckley to Ronald Reagan in utter con- tempt, dismissing them as wallowing in Libertarian Movement the ‘God-family-country swamp’. by Brian Doherty And that swamp is repelled by lib- (PublicAffairs, ertarians’ radical views on emotionally charged issues, some of which can border 2007, 768 pages) almost on satire. often re- joices in how off-putting its beliefs are, rel- f one relationship illustrates the un- ishing its outsider status. Doherty quotes a founder of the New York State Libertarian comfortable and slightly paradoxical By the early 1970s, Hess’s position as relationship between modern, big- Party who says that ‘hard-core libertarian- I a libertarian anti-war protester had been ism has no mass constituency … there is tent conservatism and the radical libertar- the subject of numerous profiles in the ian movement, it is the one between Barry no mass constituency for seven-year-old mainstream press. His relationship with heroin dealers to be able to buy tanks with Goldwater and . Goldwater was, however, just as strong. Hess was first and foremost an ac- their profits from prostitution’. Hess maintained that Goldwater, despite Doherty structures Radicals for Capi- tivist, standing in contrast to the more his position as the proto-typical American numerous academic types who consti- talism around five major figures: four conservative, was still a perfect fit for his economists, , Fried- tuted the American libertarian move- libertarian anti-war coalition, telling the ment in the 1960s and 1970s. He was rich Hayek, & Milton Washington Post that ‘I don’t know any- Friedman, and a novelist, Ayn Rand. The firmly counterculture. He sported a body who would make a better Weather- Castro beard, and dressed in that same title of Doherty’s book itself is in part a man’—the anti-war terror cell of the radi- compromise for Rand, who hated the South American revolutionary style. cal left. In an almost beautiful vignette While Hess’s right-of-centre credentials term ‘libertarian’ in the same manner that of improbable friendship, Goldwater, she hated everything else. were firmly entrenched—as a journalist bumping into Hess on opposite sides of for he had expressed what was But around these well-knowns, a rally outside the capital in 1969, pulled Doherty brings in their intellectual ances- seen as an unbecoming enthusiasm for him aside to asked him to ‘give me a call McCarthy-era anti-, and his tors and heirs, and many other peripheral as soon as you’re free’. figures largely ignored by modern liber- own writing was strongly libertarian, as Libertarianism, as Bryan Doherty’s well as staunchly anti-war—he conspicu- tarians. For instance, Doherty profiles the Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling ously allied himself with the in group Spiritual Mobilization, Christian History of the Modern American Libertar- the latter half of the 1960s. libertarian pamphleteers who splintered ian Movement reveals starkly, has always out of ’s Foundation for , whose ideological existed uncomfortably alongside its fair- footprint was stamped with his ghost- Economic Education (FEE). (Libertar- weather partner, conservatism. Libertar- ian mythology, for some reason, tends written Conscience of a Conservative, was ians, as Doherty points out, often have the 1964 Republican nominee for Presi- to downplay the importance of explicitly close personal and institutional connec- Christian free marketeers—the Spiritual dent. Goldwater’s foils were the Soviets tions with the traditional right—they and liberals, in equal weight. And Karl Mobilization group have suffered from share the same think-tanks, libertarians the same selective memory-loss that the Hess, the future counterculture icon, was are often members of the dominant right his unlikely speechwriter. Free Bible Movement has suffered from party, and the two make common cause in the popular mythology of the on many issues, particularly Anti-Corn Law movement.) economics. Modern libertarian thought has co- Chris Berg is the Editor of the But in the areas of sex, drugs, some alesced around the and, as IPA Review. science issues such as cloning and stem-cell Doherty points out, rightly so. Read your

JULY 2007 47 R E V I E W Gary Cooper in the 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand’sThe Fountainhead

Constitution; there has scarcely been a Libertarians emerged from the Rand’s —the movement spent stronger declaration of the rights of the war even further from the intellectual the post-war decades building up the in- . But the history of nineteenth- zeitgeist. stitutional base which it had lacked for century America depicts the demise of No post-war libertarian set the tone most of the country’s history. Having been anti-statism as the dominant American and structure of the movement more than largely expelled from the government-sup- . Radicals for Capitalism—after Leonard E. Read. Read was a refugee from ported educational establishment and its briefly surveying proto-libertarians such a pro-business lobby group which was lucrative tenure tracks, libertarian intel- as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, usually free-market, but had the frustrat- lectuals have had to be both scholars and Yale political scientist William Graham ing habit of providing an outlet for ‘both entrepreneurs to stay afloat. Sumner and political philosopher Herbert sides’ of any given debate. The anti-mar- It wasn’t until the late 1960s and Spencer—begins the twentieth century ket side, Read thought, already dominated 1970s that these efforts really started to with what were, by then, termed the ‘Old public debate—why build them another pay off. A new generation of libertarians Right’—a small, disconnected cadre of platform from which to attack American mixed activism over academia, aping the anti-statist intellectuals repulsed by Frank- capitalism? activities of the left. The Libertarian Par- lin D. Roosevelt’s fascistic . Read left the lobby group in 1946 ty held its first convention in Denver in The intellectual isolation of the Old and founded The Foundation for Eco- 1972. Right in the country that should be most nomic Education (FEE)—the prototypi- Karl Hess—as far from a Read-style receptive to its ideas sets the trajectory of cal free-market think-tank. Read’s and the educator as can possibly be imagined— the Libertarian movement until at least FEE’s approach was, as the name suggests, with other young libertarians strategically the 1970s. Movements cannot thrive a purely intellectual and educative endea- aligned himself with the New Left. It was without an institutional base. Anti-staters vour. FEE’s mission was to provide the not a particularly comfortable fit. before the Second World War were first intellectual stimulant for the remnants of The movement was still dominated and foremost intellectuals, and produced American anti-state thought, and hopeful- by intellectual types—as it is today. But as a large amount of material. But they failed ly to convince others, through argument these intellectuals gained confidence, their to reassert themselves in the intellectual alone, of its merits. proselytising took a more public dimen- landscape of the time, let alone dominate The FEE defined the structure of sion. Doherty relates a particular prank of it. Libertarianism. Until the the Circle Bastiat Boys, a group compris- They were not helped by their theo- era, libertarians almost uniformly focused ing Murray Rothbard, Leonard Liggio, retically incomplete political and econom- their activities on education and intellec- and others: ic programme—Ludwig von Mises and tual outreach. ‘Full-service’ think-tanks, One of their favourite stunts in- were still formulating specialist schools such as the charismatic volved filling the studio of a tele- their comprehensive treatises before the Robert LeFevre’s Freedom School, and vised talk by the governor of New war. The Old Right was an informal coali- outreach organisations focused around va- Jersey, hitting him with questions as tion built around a hatred of Roosevelt. rieties of libertarian thought such as Ayn if their ideological universal was the R E V I E W 48 JULY 2007 Libertarians formed a quite sizable part of the hippy and drug movements, science fiction writers and fans, even early computer enthusiasts.

norm and his some sort of aberra- around free-market focused think-tanks to be written. tion. ‘What, governor? You are for such as the —has arguably Despite its dramatic gains over the public schools? Where did you get been the movement’s greatest political as- past 50 years, libertarianism still remains such strange ideas? Can you recom- set. The employment stability, institution- as marginalia in American . The mend any books on the subject? al base and open forum that think-tanks New York Times’ review of Radicals for The libertarian movement in the 1970s have given to free market writers, thinkers Capitalism demonstrates this neatly. The was a dramatically different one from the and activists contrasts with the unfortu- reviewer, an economics writer named Da- isolated remnants faced by Leonard Read, nate isolation faced by Mises, Hayek, and vid Leonhardt, after quickly dismissing and its expansion was in no small part even Rothbard (although, one suspects, libertarian ideas as a rhetorical aberration, his achievement. Resembling the state of Rothbard’s instability was partly of his dug through Doherty’s book to cherry- the movement in 2007, libertarian ideas own making). pick as many bad things as they could formed the basis of a magnificent vari- These institutions have also provided find— in Pinochet’s ety of sub-culture groups. And not just public credibility for libertarian ideas, even Chile, Rothbard’s youthful flirtation with famous groups such as Randian Objec- if they by necessity have had to couch their the segregationist Presidential candidate tivists or Young for Freedom. message in practical, rather than moral Sturm Thormond, and the anti-Semitic They also formed a quite sizable part of terms. One political philosopher, writ- Merwin Hart (whose name is mentioned the hippy and drug movements, science ing for Cato recently, titled his essay on exactly once, and in an obviously negative fiction writers, and fans, even early com- broadcasting the libertarian message ‘I’m context). Leonhardt complains that ‘the puter enthusiasts. not a utilitarian, but I play one on TV’. book fails to ask why people who claim A proliferation of small independent The who work at think-tanks to love freedom have so often had a soft zines were produced across the country, typically have a wide span of philosophical spot for those who would deny it to oth- views, but the messages they broadcast are ers’. It would be hard to make the case amongst them Efficacy, Rights by Right, more Friedmanite practicality than Rand- that Doherty’s book describes a libertarian Bull$heet, Living Free and Invitu$. The ian moral elitism. movement that didn’t care about human, now-widely circulated Reason Magazine, of which Doherty is a senior editor, was Although Doherty’s book is not an political and economic rights, but in the founded in 1968 as a movement zine, intellectual history, he handles the intel- hands of the establishment left, that is its dedicated to libertarian gossip and libel. lectual issues clearly and honestly. His dis- inevitable conclusion. Libertarianism is a large enough cussion of ’s Our Enemy He ends his review, appropriately, movement to spread out well across the the State, a foundation text of the Old with a discussion of global warming— academic/activist divide. However, by the Right, reveals its uncomfortable ideologi- whatever you think about the left, they 1990s, it is possible to speak of ‘establish- cal fit—its place amongst college-age lib- sure are focused. ment libertarianism’. Libertarian argu- ertarians is earned almost entirely by the Leonhardt’s ignorance of libertarian ments are, certainly, a constituent part of quality of its title. beliefs and principles is, to be charitable, liberal economic theory. How much the For an Australian reader, Radicals for a reflection of the publishing and writing ‘radicals’ of Doherty’s book propelled the Capitalism suffers a little from its scope. industry’s reluctance to produce books general policy drift towards free markets Little sense—at least once the Austrians about the ideological foundations of the around the end of the century is an open Hayek and Mises move to America—is free market or the conservative sides of question. We know that Milton Fried- given of the international environment politics. Sprawling and comprehensive, man and Friedrich Hayek had a signifi- of the American libertarians. Doherty Radicals for Capitalism replaces Jerome cant impact by the concrete policies and notes the role of Antony Fisher, a founder Tuccille’s now 30-years-old It Usually Be- politicians directly inspired by the two of the UK’s Institute of Economic Af- gins with Ayn Rand as the ‘official’ move- academics. But individualists such as An- fairs, at franchising his think-tank model ment history. Doherty contextualises lib- drew Joseph Galambos, who argued that across the United States, but, with those ertarian figures like Friedman and Rand his ideas were so firmly his private prop- few exceptions, American libertarianism amongst their peers in the wider move- erty that you had no right even to describe is a closed shop. This is perhaps an unfair ment and produces, as a result, a broad them to others, perhaps not so much. criticism—Doherty’s book is unambigu- picture of an ideology in its ascendancy. ously a history of the modern American The Adam Smith Tie establish- I P A ment—a network of libertarian-lean- libertarian movement—so a synthesis of ing academics and policy-wonks centred world-wide radical pro-capitalists remains

JULY 2007 49 R E V I E W