Libertarian ascendancy research, and (often) war, libertarians de- Chris Berg reviews viate sharply from the conservative move- Radicals for Capitalism: ment. Ayn Rand, in her typically venom- ous, Randian manner, held conservatives A Freewheeling History ranging from National Review’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. Libertarianism 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 Karl Hess. 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, Ludwig von Mises, Fried- tuted the American libertarian move- libertarian anti-war coalition, telling the ment in the 1960s and 1970s. He was rich Hayek, Murray Rothbard & 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 Newsweek 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-communism, 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 New Left 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 Leonard Read’s Foundation for Barry Goldwater, 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 free trade on many issues, particularly free market 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 United States 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 949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead Constitution; there has scarcely been a Libertarians emerged from the Rand’s objectivism—the movement spent stronger declaration of the rights of the war even further from the intellectual the post-war decades building up the in- individual. 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- ideology. 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 New Deal. 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 Vietnam War 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- Ralph Raico and others: ic programme—Ludwig von Mises and tual outreach. ‘Full-service’ think-tanks, One of their favourite stunts in- Friedrich Hayek 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 Cato Institute—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 politics. 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).