Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays
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EGALITARIANISM AS A REVOLT AGAINST NATURE AND OTHER ESSAYS SECOND EDITION MURRAY N. ROTHBARD EGALITARIANISM AS A REVOLT AGAINST NATURE AND OTHER ESSAYS SECOND EDITION MURRAY N. ROTHBARD LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE AUBURN, ALABAMA Second Edition Copyright © 2000 by The Ludwig von Mises Institute. Index prepared by Richard Perry. First Edition Copyright © 1974 (Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, R.A. Childs, Jr., ed., Washington: Libertarian Review Press). Cover illustration by Deanne Hollinger. Copyright © Same Day Poster Service. All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the pub- lisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quota- tions in critical reviews or articles. Published by The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528, www.mises.org. ISBN: 0-945466-23-4 CONTENTS Introduction to the Second Edition......................................................v Introduction to the First Edition........................................................xv Foreword to the 1974 Edition (R.A. Childs, Jr.)................................xxi Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature...........................................1 Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty.........................................21 The Anatomy of the State...................................................................55 Justice and Property Rights................................................................89 War, Peace, and the State..................................................................115 The Fallacy of the Public Sector.......................................................133 Kid Lib..............................................................................................145 The Great Women’s Liberation Issue: Setting it Straight........................................................................157 Conservation in the Free Market.....................................................175 The Meaning of Revolution.............................................................191 National Liberation..........................................................................195 Anarcho-Communism......................................................................199 The Spooner–Tucker Doctrine: An Economist’s View....................205 Ludwig von Mises and the Paradigm for Our Age...........................219 Why Be Libertarian?........................................................................239 Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor.........................................................................247 Index..................................................................................................305 INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION galitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature displays remark- able organic unity: the book is much more than the sum Eof its parts. Points made in the various essays included in the book mesh together to form a consistent worldview. The system of thought set forward in these essays, moreover, illu- minates both history and the contemporary world. In the book’s initial essay, whose title has been adopted for the whole book, Murray Rothbard raises a basic challenge to schools of economics and politics that dominate the current opinion.1 Almost everyone assumes that equality is a “good thing”: even proponents of the free market like Milton Friedman join this consensus. The dispute between conser- vatives and radicals centers on the terms of trade between equality and efficiency. Rothbard utterly rejects the assumption on which this argument turns. Why assume that equality is desirable? It is not enough, he contends, to advocate it as a mere aesthetic preference. Quite the contrary, equalitarians, like everyone else, need rationally to justify their ethical mandates. But this at once raises a deeper issue. How can ethical premises be justified? How do we get beyond bare appeals to 1The essay first appeared in Modern Age, Fall 1973, pp. 348–57. v vi Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays moral intuition? Our author answers that correct ethics must be in accord with human nature. When egalitarianism is measured by this commonsense criterion, the results are devastating. Everywhere in nature we find inequality. Attempts to remake human beings so that everyone fits the same mold lead inevitably to tyranny. “The great fact of individual difference and variability (that is, inequality) is evident from the long record of human experi- ence; hence the general recognition of the antihuman nature of a world of coerced uniformity” (p. 9). Rothbard broadens and extends his criticism of equality in “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor.”2 Not only do biology and history make human beings inherently different from one another, but civilization depends on the existence of these differences. A developed economic system has as its linchpin the division of labor; and this, in turn, springs from the fact that human beings vary in their abilities. Marx spoke of an end to “alienation” caused by the divi- sion of labor; but were his fantasies put into effect, civilized life would collapse. Why, then, do many intellectuals claim that the division of labor dehumanizes? In large part, Rothbard argues, these intellectuals have fallen victim to a myth popular in the Romantic Era. The Romantics conjured up primitive men who, untouched by the division of labor, lived in harmony with nature. Rothbard will have none of this. In a few well-chosen words, he exco- riates Karl Polanyi, an influential panegyrist of the primitive: “This worship of the primitive permeates Polanyi’s book, which at one point seriously applies the term ‘noble savage’ to the Kaffirs of South Africa” (p. 323). 2First published in Modern Age, Summer, 1971, pp. 226–45. Introduction to the Second Edition vii In an “Introduction” dated February 1991, to a reprint of “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor,” Rothbard refines his critique even further. He notes, following M.H. Abrams, that the Romantic myth of primi- tivism rests upon a yet deeper layer of myth. According to the “emanationist” view, which has influenced both neo-Platonism and gnosticism, creation is fundamentally evil. Human beings must be reabsorbed into the primitive oneness of all things. Rothbard sees this strange doctrine as “constituting a heretical and mystical underground in Western thought” (p. 297). It is clear that Rothbard views Romanticism in decidedly negative terms, at least so far as its impact on politics is con- cerned. He makes clear the nefarious consequences of Romanticism in “Left and Right: The Prospects for Lib- erty.”3 The exaltation of the primitive, which characterizes the Romantics, by no means is confined to the Left. Quite the contrary, it underlies apologies for what Rothbard terms the “Old Order” of feudalism and militarism. Both European conservatism and socialism reject the free market. Accord- ingly, Rothbard argues, a task of lovers of liberty is to oppose both these ideologies. In doing so, he maintains, libertarianism must adopt a rev- olutionary strategy. Not for Rothbard is the path of compro- mise: all statist ideologies must be combatted root-and- branch. He notes that Lord Acton, long before Leon Trot- sky, advocated “permanent revolution” (p. 29). Rothbard reiterates his support for revolution in the short essay, “The Meaning of Revolution.”4 3This essay originally appeared in Left and Right, Spring, 1965, pp. 4–22. 4The essay was first published in The Libertarian Forum, vol. 1, no. 7, July 1, 1969. viii Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays Society, Rothbard has argued, rests on the division of labor. Given the manifest advantages of peaceful cooperation that uses human differences in abilities to the greatest extent possible, what blocks human progress? Why has not history been an uninterrupted march of progress? Rothbard locates the chief obstacle to human betterment in his essay, “The Anatomy of the State.” Unlike voluntary exchange, which by its nature benefits those who freely choose to engage in it, the state rests on predation. Following Franz Oppenheimer and Albert J. Nock, Rothbard contends that the state cannot create wealth: it can only take from some and give to others. But does not this account raise a new problem? Given the manifestly predatory essence of the state, how has it sur- vived? Why have not popular rebellions put an end to the triumphant beast? Our author blames “court intellectuals.” Throughout history, a group of the literate elite has always been ready with a facile justification for the depredations of the powers-that-be. As always in Rothbard, the parts of his thought fit together; and we now return to a theme posed at the begin- ning of this Introduction. Rothbard attacks egalitarians because they do not have a reasoned defense of their ethical judgments. But is Rothbard himself in a better position? How does he defend his libertarian brand of ethics? Sup- porters of freedom, he argues, in “Justice and Property Rights,” should not rely principally on utilitarian argu- ments.5 If they do so, Rothbard avers, they will quickly come to grief. Utilitarians may say that the free market wins out over less efficient rival systems; but a vital part of the case for 5The essay originally appeared in Samuel Blumenfeld, ed., Property in a Humane Economy, Open Court Publishing, 1974, pp. 101–22. Introduction to the Second Edition