Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays

354 Pages·2000·1.74 MB·English

by  Murray N. Rothbard

E
GALITARIANISM AS A
R A N
EVOLT GAINST ATURE
O E
AND THER SSAYS
SECOND EDITION
MURRAY N. ROTHBARD

E
GALITARIANISM AS A
R A N
EVOLT GAINST ATURE
O E
AND THER SSAYS
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
C
ONTENTS
Introduction to the SecondEdition......................................................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

I
NTRODUCTION TO
S E
THE ECOND DITION
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature displays remark-
able organic unity: the book is much more than the sum
of 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.”2Not 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.