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From: eyal@wisdom.BITNET
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Re: Libertarian viewpoints
Message-ID: <12232886995.32.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 22-Aug-86 14:15:13 EDT
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Posted: Fri Aug 22 14:15:13 1986
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To: kfl@ai.ai.mit.edu

>Who says there are no absolute
>values?  Slavery, robbery, torture, and murder are evil.  Those are
>absolute values.  One can argue that they aren't, that they are
>sometimes justified.  If one does, I have no argument.  I just want
>no part of the system founded on the notion that slavery, etc, are
>ok.

That's just my point. Libertarians make a basic assumption about
politics - "initiation of force is evil" - and have no argument to
defend it; this is the exact opposite of the proper approach to
political theory. To defend a political principle by reason and
morality - as Ayn Rand did - you have to accept that politics is not a
primary, that it requires a base in metaphysics, epistemology and
ethics; that's what I meant by absolute truth and absolute values, and
that's what libertarians wouldn't accept.

>    The result is that they have no answer to those who say "I don't
>    regard your position as moral".
>
>  I have lots of answers.  Many kilbytes of them so far.  As do 
>several other contributors to this list.

I haven't been reading this list for very long; but the few messages
by you that I saw contained some economic and historical arguments,
and some repetition of the libertarian "axiom" about the evil of
initiating force, but no moral or rational defense of your basic
position.

I know that some genuine advocates of individual rights and
laissez-faire capitalism make the mistake of calling themselves
libertarians. Maybe, if I'd read the list for a longer time, I'd find
that you, or some other contributors, belong to this category; but in
that case you'd better realize that the cause of individual rights has
nothing to gain, and a lot to lose, from association with
libertarianism.

>    you can see that most of the views he holds on concrete issues -
>    such as his praise for the PLO, his sympathetic evaluation of 
>    soviet foreign policy, and his view of the USA as the world's 
>    "main danger to peace and freedom" - are totally incompatible 
>    with genuine advocacy of individual rights, and identical with 
>    the views of most socialists.
>
>  I've never heard of the guy.  These are not my positions, and I
>doubt they are the positions of any other libertarian on this list.

That's probably correct; but the conclusions a view leads to are not
determined by majority vote. Rothbard's views are a logical result of
the essence of libertarianism - of taking "initiation of force is
evil" as an out-of-context basic assumption with no concern for its
justification.

>    her writings (particularly "Atlas Shrugged", "The Virtue of 
>    Selfishness" and "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal") are the only 
>    antidote both to libertarianism and to socialism,
>
>  Huh?  She never uses the word, but it is clear that she IS a
>libertarian.

Her principled rational and moral defense of capitalism, and her
insistence that this is the only proper way to defend it, make it very
clear that she is profoundly opposed to libertarianism. And while she
never uses the word in the three books mentioned above, she does use
it in several other places; for example: "groups or movements
proclaiming some vaguely generalized, undefined (and, usually,
contradictory) political goals (e.g., ... the 'libertarian' hippies,
who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for
capitalism)" ("Philosophy: Who Needs It", paperback edition, pp.
202-203).

Libertarians are guilty of gross dishonesty in their attempt to
associate themselves with Ayn Rand, thus gaining the following and the
intellectual respectability that they could never earn on their own
merits.

I strongly recommend, to anyone interested in defending individual
rights, the pamphlet "Libertarianism: the Perversion of Liberty" by
Peter Schwartz. Peter Schwartz is editor and publisher of the
pro-laissez-faire political newsletter The Intellectual Activist, and
chairman of the board of advisors of the Ayn Rand Institute, an
educational institution devoted to spreading Ayn Rand's philosophy.
This 64-page pamphlet is a thorough, well-documented and devastating
analysis of libertarianism, which conclusively shatters the myth that
libertarianism is an ally in fighting for individual rights. 
[For more information, please contact Eyal directly.  - CWM]

        Eyal Mozes

        BITNET:                         eyal@wisdom
        CSNET and ARPA:                 eyal%wisdom.bitnet@wiscvm.ARPA
        UUCP:                           ...!ihnp4!talcott!WISDOM!eyal

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