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Labor History Revisionism: a Libertarian Analysis of the Pullman Strike

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Labor History Revisionism: a Libertarian Analysis of the Pullman Strike LABOR HISTORY REVISIONISM: A LIBERTARIAN ANALYSIS OF THE PULLMAN STRIKE Dr Chris Matthew Sciabarra e c n Chris Sciabarra a i l Dr Chris Matthew Sciabarra is the author of the “ Dialectics and Liberty Trilogy” that began l with Marx, Hayek, and Utopia, continued with Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, and culminates with Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism. He is also the co-editor with Mimi Reisel Gladstein of Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand. His essays have appeared in such books and journals as Encyclopedia of New York State, Encyclopedia of Ethics, American Writers: A Collection of A Literary Biographies, Philosophical Books, Critical Review, Reason Papers, Historian, The Free Radical, Liberty, The Ludwig von Mises Institute On-Line Magazine, Full Context, Film Score Monthly, New York Daily News, Jazz Times, Billboard, and The Daily Objectivist. He is also a founding co-editor of The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies and 2003 named an Assistant Editor for The Free Radical. He n has been a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Politics at New York University since January 1989. Check out Sciabarra on the Web: www.nyu.edu/projects/sciabarra. a i Historical Notes No. 46 ISBN 1 85637 586 2 r ISSN 0267-7105 © 2003: Libertarian Alliance & Chris Sciabarra a For Life, Liberty, and Property t The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and not necessarily those of the r Libertarian Alliance, its Committee, its Advisory Suite 35 Council, or its subscribers. 2 Lansdowne Row e Mayfair London Director: Dr Chris R. Tame W1J 6HL b Deputy Director: Brian Micklethwait i Director of Communications: Dr Sean Gabb Telephone: 0870 242 1712 Public Affairs Director: Dr Tim Evans Email: [email protected] L Editorial & Membership Director: Nigel Meek Website: www.libertarian.co.uk Page 1 LIBERTARIAN ALLIANCE LABOR HISTORY REVISIONISM: A LIBERTARIAN ANALYSIS OF THE PULLMAN STRIKE Chris Matthew Sciabarra Preface (2003) by Chris Matthew Sciabarra program. What I didn’t know, however, was that I would face resistance from one The following work, originally entitled “ The Implications of of the three academics who sat on my Interventionism: An Analysis of the Pullman Strike,” was oral defense committee. He was the submitted as my undergraduate senior honors thesis to my Chairman of the Department of History, advisor, Professor Daniel Walkowitz of the New York Uni- Albert Romasco. When Romasco started versity Department of History, on 20 April 1981. I tell the questioning me about my “ ideological” story of how this thesis was successfully defended in my approach to history— that’s a real buzz- essay, “ How I Became a Libertarian” <http://www. word— he became almost hostile toward lewrockwell.com/orig3/sciabarra1.html>, which is part of my reliance on Rothbard’s work. Ro- Professor Walter Block’s ongoing autobiography archival masco was so disenchanted with my the- project <http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/ sis that he told me: “ Maybe you ought to autobiographies.html>. Recalling my initial interactions go into political theory instead of his- with the great libertarian theorist, Murray N. Rothbard, I tory!” I guess I took him seriously. In write: any event, when I related the story of my oral defense to Murray, explaining how While an undergraduate, I met Murray hostile Romasco was, Murray started to Rothbard. When I went into the un- laugh. It seems that in the Summer 1966 dergraduate history honors program, issue of Studies on the Left, Murray pub- Murray gave me indispensable guidance. I lished a scathing review of Romasco’s chose to examine the Pullman strike and I book, The Poverty of Abundance: Hoover, the used his theory of structural crisis as a Nation, the Depression. In it, Murray attacks means of understanding labor strife. Romasco’s welfare-liberal ideology, his Murray gave me some very interesting “ failures” and “ misconceptions,” his bib- pointers about how to carve an intellec- liographic “ skimpiness” and “ ad hoc, un- tual niche for oneself. He told me if I in- supported and inevitably fallacious causal vested lots of time investigating the Pull- theories.” Murray figured I became the man strike and other labor topics, I’d whipping boy for Romasco; here was Ro- have a virtual monopoly among libertari- masco’s chance to strike back at Murray ans in the analysis of labor history. You Rothbard, by extension. Well, it was my end up thinking and writing more about a first lesson in the politics of scholarship, single subject than anyone else, and your even if it provided Murray with a hearty work becomes indispensable to future laugh. I sure wasn’t laughing in front of research on the subject. It was good ad- that committee! vice especially when one is compelled to defend one’s thesis: you’ve spent more Whatever the trials and tribulations of my oral defense, the time on the subject and know more about thesis was accepted, and it contributed to my receipt of two it than most others. You’ve written the university awards in June 1981, when I graduated magna book, so who better than you to defend cum laude, with a triple major in history (with honors), poli- it?! tics, and economics. The History Department awarded me the Helen M. Jones Prize, for best record in the history Well, I didn’t continue my research in honors course, and the Joel Hershmann Prize, for excel- labor history, but I sure did focus on one lence in American history. subject— dialectical libertarianism— in the years that followed. Of course, I seemed Upon further reflection, however, I think Romasco was to have picked a topic with which few onto something. The central point of the thesis was less would even want to associate themselves, historical exegesis than the development of a “ revisionist” so there doesn’t seem to be any danger of theoretical schema with which to interpret known historical losing my intellectual niche any time facts. Given the recent thrashing of the very term soon! “ revisionism” by U.S. President George W. Bush, I think a bit of reclamation is needed. No writer understood that I should point out that Murray’s influence need more than Roy A. Childs, Jr. In his essay, “ Big Busi- on my honors thesis was significant. And ness and the Rise of American Statism,” Childs (1994) ex- I pretty much sailed through the honors plains: LIBERTARIAN ALLIANCE Page 2 The term revisionism originally came into awareness of the contents of anyone’s use referring to historiography after consciousness but our own, we must rely World War I. A group of young histori- on inference from what a person says, ans, eager to uncover the realities behind and what he does. Considered from a the blanket of myths surrounding the ori- different perspective, history deals with gins of this crucial conflict, discovered as the ends that men have held in the past, a result of their investigations that Ger- and the means that they have adopted to many and Austria were not, contrary to attain these ends. Since no two individu- popular mythology, solely responsible for als are specifically alike in every particular the outbreak of that crisis. Since then, characteristic, it is impossible to recreate revisionism has been applied to virtually the past in the form of a laboratory ex- any renegade school in historiography periment and to observe the effects of that took issue with the “ official govern- single causal factors on human action. ment line” on important events in history. Thus, all that one can do is to collect evi- As it is used today, revisionism is a gen- dence concerning the context of individ- eral concept subsuming a wide diversity ual men, their ideas and their actions, us- of schools, or integrating conceptions of ing a theory or model of the nature of man’s past. (15–16) causality in human action that interprets or selectively reconstructs events in the Synthesizing insights from Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, past, omitting what one judges to be un- F. A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and others, Childs offers up important, and offering an explanation a libertarian brand of revisionism that has shaped my own for what one does consider to be impor- approach to history. Though I cite Childs briefly at the be- tant, in light of the evidence available. ginning of my Pullman study, I am delighted to have the Utopian “ completeness” is neither possi- opportunity to provide the larger passage from which that ble nor necessary in knowledge— in his- citation was gleaned. It is the essence of what I call tory or anywhere else. All knowledge is “ dialectical thinking,” in that it places great emphasis on the contextual, but this does not in any way “ art of context-keeping” in historical investigation hinder knowledge from being valid. (18– (Sciabarra 2000). Taking a cue from Rand’s definition of art 20) as a “ selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysi- cal value-judgments” (Rand 1975, 19), Childs (1994) answers In retrospect, I don’t think the Pullman study truly succeeds the question, “ What is history?” : as theory or history, because I see many gaps that need to be filled. This evaluation is partially the result of a more devel- History is a selective recreation of the oped context of knowledge: I have learned a lot since 1981, events of the past, according to a histo- and have deepened my understanding of several thinkers rian’s premises regarding what is impor- and topics— from Mises, Marx, praxeology, and methodo- tant and his judgment concerning the na- logical “ dualism,” to the quasi-collectivist paternalism of the ture of causality in human action.
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