Tibor R. Machan

By most accounts there is little good news about any progress toward a freer society, quite the contrary. Around the globe, of course, there are some regions that are making small moves away from tyranny but even in those few, human freedom doesn’t appear to be a priority. Instead tribal and religious conflicts are the rule, even as the more vicious rulers are losing their grip on their populations. In Syria the tyrant is hanging on by a very thin thread yet elsewhere it’s mob rule that has replaced dictatorships.

In the USA, which at one time had the justified distinction of aspiring toward a fully free society–”leader of the free world”–the system and those who administer it pay hardly any heed to human liberty; the leadership is either wallowing in calls for economic equality (as if George Orwell had never written Animal Farm) or embarking wrangles about social and religious issues. (These Republicans certainly know how to drop the ball and miss opportunities!) Every problem that gains serious attention seems to call forth simply more statism from the elite; the possibility of turning toward more freedom is routinely denounced by prominent commentators. (I cannot get over Paul Krugman’s widely respected yet totally preposterous complaints about “market fundamentalism,” something he keeps alleging has gripped the country even though no evidence of it exists anywhere.)

Despite all this, there is reason to be hopeful. First, there is that proverbial long run to keep in mind; anyone who takes a close look at the sweep of human political history has to grant that there exists at least a “two steps forward, one back” phenomenon when it comes to the progress of freedom. Then there is the recent emergence of substantial respectability for libertarianism, with the likes of Ron Paul and his son Rand championing it openly among mainstream politicians and with Fox TV’s Judge Andrew Napolitano and John Stossle making their libertarian pitch on a very successful cable network, with regular appearances by and interviews with consistent, uncompromising champions of the fully free society. All those Reason Magazine and Reason.com folks certainly are a very welcome presence “on the air,” repeatedly, making their points very cogently. Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is going to give it a shot as the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate, lending his sharp message–one I consider more coherent and on point than those of Ron Paul whose is marred by both certain domestic conservative themes and somewhat over the top ideas on international affairs–to the growing demands for freedom coming from America’s main street (as against the insistent statism we get from too many prominent academics). And there is the growing acknowledgement from many corners that the profligacy of government just cannot be sustained, not without the serious threat of a police state that would be needed to coerce us all into compliance with the resulting grotesque economic policies such as increasing taxes on productive citizens and clamping down on all efforts to resist confiscatory tax policies around the country and abroad. (It bears remembering that John Maynard Keynes considered the Third Reich as a very promising place for his policies of economic meddling by the state–see the Introduction he wrote for the German translation of The General Theory!) Also, the general population seems to be tiring of rich bashing, although there are those, like the Occupy Wall Street bunch, who continue to be ignorantly deluded about the desirability and feasibility of economic leveling.

It is wise also, I think, to keep in mind that massive semi-democratic systems are very unlikely to ever settle into a sensible political regime, given all the conflicting and often bizarre influences that guide public policies and produce truly awful elected officials–think Barney Frank here. Nonetheless over the long haul freedom is making progress. Not in all places, for sure, and with major gaps not just at the national level but in our backyards. When a totally corrupt and counterproductive war on drugs can continue in force, it does appear to be hopeless to expect increasing sanity in the country.

Yet, all in all, the trend, albeit a slow one with many detours and interruptions, does seem to be pointing toward a freer world than before.

Tibor R. Machan

One of my books is a collection of prominent essays by mostly contemporary libertarian political-economic thinkers. Its title, The Libertarian Reader (1982), was so well chosen that years later someone quite prominent, David Boaz of the Cato Institute, also used it for a collection of essays he put together, The Libertarian Reader (1998). (Just in case you didn’t know, in the publishing world it is acceptable to make us of the titles of already published books.)

One of the hopes of authors and editors of books is of course that these will be bought and read, not to mention in huge numbers. But unless one is a famous author or so dedicated to learning of the fate of one’s works, it is rare that one learns whether they have made the rounds. (In the academic world, of course, professors often assign books they have written or edited in their classes, although such self-dealing is widely frowned upon.)

I do know that another book of mine was at least considered for display in a movie or TV program because some years ago I received a form letter asking that I give permission for a producer to do just that with my The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner, originally published by Arlington House of New Rochelle, NY (later reprinted by the University Press of America) and once reviewed very favorably in by Robert W. Proctor and Daniel J. Weeks in The American Journal Of Psychology (Summer 1990). But I never learned if this ever came to pass.

But a few days ago I was watching the coverage of the Republican presidential primaries and as I looked at the bookshelf behind Representative Ron Paul as he was being interviewed, I noticed that The Libertarian Reader was among the books on his shelves. Well, that was gratifying, so much so that I paused my TV and took a picture of it all with my cell phone camera. (It didn’t come out well but still, there it is, in living, albeit blurry, color.)

Of course, Ron Paul is known as a libertarian–he once was nominated for president by the national libertarian party. I think I even met him once when he visited Auburn, Alabama, where the Ludwig von Mises Institute has its headquarters–Paul is close to the folks at that think tank. So it would be easy to indulge in some fantasies about how he may actually have read and been influenced by some of the works collected in my book, although that would be a bit over the top. It is much more likely that he has read into another work I edited, namely, The Libertarian Alternative, published by Nelson Hall Co. of Chicago back in 1973. That was my very first book and came about because Nelson Hall just started out and sent out a notice to academics around the country, soliciting submissions of book ideas. I jumped at the chance and lo and behold got the idea accepted and the volume published. (As the later collection, this one also contains some really fine essays on libertarian political philosophy and jurisprudence.)

So although my books, now numbering in the several dozens–with around 50 featured at Amazon.com–aren’t so popular and prominent as those by Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or even Richard Epstein, at least one managed to surface in a prominent enough place, suggesting that some others might have done likewise. Not that I wrote or edited them for fame and fortune–though I wouldn’t shy from these were some to have helped to achieve them–it is still quite gratifying to see at least one make it center stage in a popular forum.

Like with happiness, so with fame and fortune, they better be the side effects of one’s dedication and passion. That way even if one fails to make it big with one’s writings, one will at least have had the satisfaction of having contributed to a good cause, namely, the exploration of the subject matter of the works one has produced.

Tibor R. Machan

Seeing that it looks like Mitt Romney may well win the Republican nomination–though it’s too early to be sure about that–It has been a concern of freedom loving Americans whether the nod given to human individual liberty by the Tea Party back in 2010 will have staying power. When the Republicans began their primaries it looked like one or another of the champions of serious liberty, such as former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson or Texas representative Ron Paul, could either make it or at least have an influence on who will. This last is still a possibility but not very likely now. With Gingrich injecting the influence of the Beltway Republican insiders into the race and with Mitt Romney derailing any progress toward a consistent political philosophy of liberty among Republicans, prospects for repeating, let alone enhancing, the central trends represented by the Tea Party–which itself has never been fully focused on true liberty–are waning. And that is very disturbing because it looks more and more like Barack Obama has no interest whatever in individual rights, in a bona fide free society and market, or even in civil liberties. What he is after is a populist reformation of the American polity, one that will usher in democratic socialism, with its confusing “market” socialism added.

This is the politics of soft Marxism; which is to say it aims to establish a legal order that’s basically collectivist, communitarian to the core. The idea is that all Americans should be treated as one huge team lead by Obama or some similar minded politician and his or her cronies, with all property (including human labor) treated as public or social, with the serious implementation of the major step Marx and Engels identified on the road to socialism, namely, the abolition of the right to private property. The modern explication of this idea was laid out by NYU professors Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, in their book The Myth of Ownership (Oxford 2002). It is an unabashed attack on the principles of free market economics and individualism (i.e., on a system of law based on Lockean individual rights).

OK, is there any chance to nipping all this in the bud? I can only think of one way to do it, namely, to conduct a political campaign that is relentlessly focused on the threat of the loss of American liberty not just in American but around the globe. This liberty is the true hope of humanity, no the egalitarian nonsense that Obama & Co. preach. What it needed is to run an articulate, self-confident, and unapologetic campaign that emphasises the minimalist thesis of liberty as against the totalitarian thesis that all of us must be herded into a collective mass (of which the best current manifestation is North Korea).

If the Republican candidate for the presidency, or per chance someone else with sufficient support, keeps to this theme and forthrightly refuses to get entangled with side issues like illegal immigration, funding Planned Parenthood, etc., etc.–details that can easily be made to serve to distract Americans from what really is politically important–there is a chance of unseating Obama and his team in time to continue the momentum of the American revolution. The candidate to do this may not yet be in evidence but whoever it will be needs to focus clearly and be superbly articulate and intellectually competent in the effort to advance the cause of liberty.

Now Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney do not sound bad in debate and on the campaign trail but their ideas are muddled and so their leadership is seriously wanting when it comes to opposing Obama’s populist appeal. That appeal rests on phony hopes and aspirations, on false promises and on magical economics. But packaged in the cool style and rhetoric of Obama and absent competent challenge, it can continue to take the country toward a major setback on the road to realizing its destiny, the fulfillment of the ideas of the Declaration of Independence and, less exactly, the Bill of Rights. It is this mission that must be the candidate’s central purpose, put in the clearest and most informed terms that American citizens can appreciate and support. I am convinced it has a chance in November.

Tibor R. Machan

Since the Fall of 1966 (if memory serves me right) I have been a columnist at what was then The Santa Ana but is now the Orange County Register. I cannot count how many columns I produced, nearly all of them concerned with demonstrating the superiority of the free society as understood in libertarianism. (Two books I edited contain some of the columns, Liberty and Culture, Essays on the Idea of a Free Society [Prometheus Books, 1983] and Neither Left nor Right, Selected Columns [Hoover Institution Press, 2004].)

None of the columns I wrote for the paper has ever been rejected or significantly altered by the editors. I am quite amazed by this but couldn’t complain, that’s for certain. It has been an amazing run and I am very grateful I was given the opportunity to be a part of the company’s efforts to promote individual liberty. Unfortunately, however, the current management has decided that they no longer wish to publish my columns. Given that Freedom Communications, Inc., that owns The Register and a slew of other papers around the country, has been abandoning it’s libertarian bearings over the last couple of years–the Hoiles family lost all control over the company–this is no great surprise.

I would have welcomed knowing exactly what brought about the decision but as someone who holds firmly that those who hire one are fully within their rights to let you go (unless some contract specifies otherwise, which in my case doesn’t apply)–just as are you to leave them–I have no complaints apart from finding it uncool to provide no reason after having been with the company for such a long time and having never been told of any dissatisfaction with my work by anyone there. But it’s a free country–up to a point–and people in any line of work, including journalism, are or should be at liberty to peacefully misbehave. I would be first in line to defend their right to do so even when I regard what they do objectionable. (And whoever welcomes being fired, especially summarily, never mind that by this time they paid me only a nominal fee for my work?)

The only reason this is worth a bit of public discussion is that The Register and other Freedom Communications, Inc., newspapers have been a rare libertarian voice in an admittedly shrinking newspaper-land. Indeed, Freedom Newspapers has been a rarity, founded by R. C. Hoiles back in the 1920s, consistently and unrelentingly championing individual liberty.

In 1997 I was hired with the title “Advisor on Libertarian Issues” to work for the company, over and above the writing of my columns, and this came to an end in 2010 when the company pretty much fell apart as the distinct entity it had been, championing liberty more than any other media outfit had done.

It is not easy to gauge the impact of Freedom’s hundreds of editorials and columns discussing various aspects of the free society but it’s probably fair to say that at least it has given a strong and lively voice to a fully libertarian viewpoint more than any other prominent media organization in the land. It has also made room on its pages to columnists like me, some far more prominent in their fields of specialization, such Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, James Doti, et al.

Just when the company abandoned its consistent editorial stance in favor of liberty some other major media organizations did, fortunately, begin to give voice to the freedom philosophy (as we liked to refer to the R. C Hoiles brand of libertarianism). Fox TV News has welcomed quite a few libertarians, such as Judge Andrew Napolitano and John Stossel, and their slate of libertarian scholars and other guest commentators. The editors of Reason Magazine, which I helped built up in 1970 and which in time has become a formidable libertarian publication, appear on Fox TV regularly; so it seems that there will continue to be voices championing liberty even without Freedom Communications, Inc., committed to doing so as intensely as it had been since its founding.

Anyway, so long and good bye Orange County Register. You have been a sharp and diligent champion of liberty even when that was hardly welcome in the USA, even in conservative (but not quite libertarian) Orange County. I am grateful for having been part of your team for quite a few years.

Tibor R. Machan

Economic fairness is impossible: an oxymoron. Since economic activities are inherently varied and often competitive and since one size doesn’t fit all and not everyone can win in a competition, no such thing as fairness is possible unless it simply means no one may be prevented from taking part. Certainly, however, the outcome will most likely be very different for different participants.

The sort of fairness and equality President Obama and his supporters are after maybe achieved around a family or fraternity dinner table or in a last will and testament where goods are being distributed among family members who each expect the fulfillment of an implied promise from elders to receive a “fair share” of the wealth left to them. “Fair” here makes sense since the idea is that no one is going to get much less or more than another. But no such expectation makes any sense throughout a country! The government owns nothing and can thus leave nothing to the citizenry without engaging in massive redistribution of wealth it doesn’t have any authority to distribute or redistribute.

When fairness is demanded, it implies that the government does have the authority to assign winners and losers in the economic sphere. As if we still lived in a monarchy awaiting the decision of the king as to who will be the beneficiary of his largess. All the subjects can hope they will receive a fair share of the wealth of the country.

But in a free country, with the principle of private property rights as the law of the land, the king or government has no business engaging in wealth distribution so the issue of fairness is entirely moot. It’s a dream and where attempted, it leads to a police state. All that Mr. Obama needs to do to appreciate this is to read George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a wonderful parable about what happens when equality is demanded and government tries to produce it. He might also check out the late Robert Nozick’s famous Wilt Chamberlain example, from this book Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1973) where he shows that when goodies are fairly distributed among people they will turn right around a rearrange it all so the “fair” distribution is completely upset.

Or if he wants real life cases from which to take lessons, Obama & Co. might remember the Soviet Union and investigate how things are panning out in that heavenly egalitarian country, North Korea. They could perhaps consider that in Cuba the rulers are finally realizing the futility of the socialist-egalitarian ideal and are making changes to turn the place into more and more of a free market system.

Still, there will always be those who want to level the economy. The main reason is the misguided conviction that we are, after all, in the same boat, just as are the children in a family. But the government isn’t like our parents who have made a promise to care for all their children. We aren’t the children of Mr. Obama and his administration! To try to serve us all with all the benefits that parents owe to their offspring would be futile and invites totalitarianism.

Parents, after all, own their resources and owe some of it to their children; this is not the case with governments and the citizenry. They don’t own anything at all without confiscating it. At most they may do this up to what is needed for administering the laws of the land–providing the citizenry with national defense and a sound legal system and its maintenance. Even some of this can be achieved without much government management. After all, who is the government but other citizens who have been hired to do a rather limited job in the country. It is up to the citizenry to secure for themselves economic growth, solvency, innovation, investment, etc. To attempt anything more would involve the government in tasks that free citizens aren’t entitled to.

Sadly Obama & Co. see the country as it if were some club or team where everyone is part of it and needs the same treatment as everyone else. But a country is not a club or a team–those are the results of free men and women coming together voluntarily for a great variety of purposes. The government of such free men and women must not get involved with what the clubs are embarking upon, be it business, athletics, education, entertainment or whatever else peaceful such folks will embark upon. Like the proverbial cop on the beat, the government isn’t there to pick the goals and tasks of those whom they serve in a limited capacity of securing their rights. It’s there to keep the peace, that is all!

Tibor R. Machan

Why does the TSA annoy so many of us? Not having the resources to do a survey, I resort here to what might be called educated speculation. I suspect it is because free men and women consider it invasive for government agents to order them around–pat them down, make them endure electronic surveillance, being ordered around by TSA agents, etc.–unless they give their permission.

Just because someone embarks upon air travel it doesn’t follow that such permission can be inferred, especially if the search is conducted by government agents. If a private carrier states up front that utilizing it will require submitting to various intrusions, there is a difference. People may require of visitors to their homes or business establishments to submit to certain reasonable precautionary measures, say, for hygienic or security purposes. That’s because their home belongs to them and they may impose conditions for accessing it to others even if these others do not quite understand the rationale behind the measures to which they are subjected. They can go elsewhere. But when government imposes such requirements, given the overwhelming force it wields and its monopolistic powers, certain due process provisions must be met. One cannot escape the government since it runs air traffic. Thus, not unless there is solid reason to suspect someone of misconduct or ill will may they be interfered with by the government. Otherwise the policy is arbitrary.

Interestingly, when Senator Rand Paul was subjected to the TSA’s measures on January 23, another issue, apart from due process, arose: the US Constitution disallows interference with the travel by a member of Congress. There is a bit of ambiguity about it, though. Among other things, if such an individual “breaches the peace,” the interference is warranted. Yet, what constitutes breaching of the peace? Simply embarking upon air travel surely does not. So the TSA hasn’t even the legal ability and thus the authority to detain someone like Senator Rand Paul. And arguably it should not have such authority when it comes to citizens who aren’t suspected of any crimes.

I was traveling recently and boarded a flight at Newark Airport in New Jersey and was subjected to the pat down, etc., procedure. I was informed that my right palm tested positive for a substance that had been instrumental in causing the Oklahoma City blast of several years ago. I wasn’t actually shown this, even though I asked, but I didn’t insist since I needed to catch my flight and there wasn’t much time left to do so. I didn’t carry with me any materials of the kind detected on my right palm–I was not checking bags and everything I had was put through the machinery at the security check. Despite this, I was physically patted down by some bloke, something I didn’t welcome but because of their power over me I couldn’t escape. Either I underwent the procedure or I was barred from boarding my flight.

What exactly counts as grounds for suspicion? No clue but maybe by setting off some instrument that’s calibrated some way to detect hazardous substances establishes sufficient grounds. Of course, different people can become suspicious for different reasons, based on their own experiences, knowledge, worries, etc. Risk assessment is certainly not an exact science. Much of it is based on input from experts who have different ways of weighing risks. Here, too, competition is needed to figure out what policy is best.

It is wisest not to forget that levels of fear and concern vary and that here, too, one size does not fit all. So what the TSA selects as decisive in how to measure risk may well be largely subjective. At most the best results will be an inter-subjective assessment. No wonder people feel very uneasy when they are subject to such a wishywashy system.

In this area, too, a competitive market is necessary so as to come up with results that are reasonable. Unfortunately when government manages airport security, this isn’t possible. Too many factors influence the managers and there is little hope for an objective determination or even of one that is at least plausible. Which means that policies will be debated forever and will result in policies that are arbitrary. That is the result of the tragedy of the commons in his area of concern. The king’s intuitions rule but no one can figure out whether they make sense!

Tibor R. Machan

On the BBC website an interview was featured recently with the famous orthodox Marxist, Eric Hobsbawm, who promptly denounced capitalism as if he had established definitively its inferiority as a political economic system. Is the BBC such an irresponsible news organization that it will feature Mr. Hobsbawm’s characterization of capitalism with no one who champions that system featured responding to him? (If you search, no such balanced presentation can be found on the BBC website.) Or is this happening because, after all, BBC is a state broadcast endeavor and has a big stake in discrediting a system that relies on private initiative?

From a Marxist perspective especially this conclusion is quite reasonable, since we are all supposed to be driven by economic motives and here is an instance that might just fit this idea perfectly. The BBC would be one of the casualties of capitalist inspired privatization! As a creature of the state it relies on confiscated resources for its operations and capitalism goes against that policy big time.

The question that was put to Mr. Hobsbawm by the BBC’s interviewer, had to do with capitalism and responsibility. That is, whether agents in a free market would be motivated to act responsibly and the answer Mr. Hobsbawm gave is “No.” Yet if people act irresponsibly in genuine free markets, this will soon be known and they would lose trust from fellow market agents. Only when governments protect market agents from the consequences of their behavior will they be able to persist in acting irresponsibly.

Moreover, if those who would regulate our economic conduct are, as they must be, human beings, why would they be virtuous while the we would not be? Why would they not use their monopolistic legal power to secure advantages for themselves, just as public choice theory (as per James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock) postulates?

What free market capitalism cannot offer, because it doesn’t control people, is compliance with all tenets of ethics. But neither can anyone else make such a promise and when they pretend they can, this invites the most insidious lack of ethics, namely, tyranny.

The bottom line here is that if you are interested in the nature of capitalism, don’t ask a Marxist but a champion of that system of political economy, such as Professor Richard Epstein (NYU) or Randy Barnett (Georgetown U.) or, yes, me! Then go and find some critics and contrast their different answers and let the audience assess which approach is more reasonable.

The BBC doesn’t appear to honor this approach, the only balanced one, when dealing with the nature of capitalism. Too bad. Failing to let a competent defense of that system be aired on BBC may even promote some major economic malpractice, including the appointment of all kinds of petty tyrants who presume to know how to run our economic affairs.

“As an economic system capitalism has nothing to do with responsibility,” says the Marxist sage, yet this is perverse, uninformed, given that trust and being responsible to fulfill one’s promises is essential to free market capitalism. Indeed, one reason that that system works pretty well when uncorrupted by state interference is that those who fail to be responsible do not flourish in it unless favored with privileges they haven’t earned.

As many have pointed out, the famous association between capitalism and the pursuit of self-interest is widely misunderstood. “Self-interest” in how capitalism operates means nothing more than that people are doing what they want (since they are free to do so). But what they want to do may be for their own or for someone else’s benefit; nothing in capitalist theory spells that out. Indeed, it is a strong feature–not without some problems–of capitalist economic theory that saying that people pursue their self-interest says nearly nothing about what they are likely to do. This is because in that theory self-interest is understood subjectively. Whatever one believes is in his or her interest is exactly what is; but this makes it perfectly reasonable that someone who wants to consume heroin or engage in innumerable other self-destructive activities (by common sense standards) is actually pursuing his or her self-interest.

In any case, the main point here is that the BBC seems not to care to practice responsible journalism even while asking Mr. Hobsbawm to comment on the relationship between responsibility and capitalism. How ironic.

Tibor R. Machan

As I flew home across the country from NYC on January 16th, the holiday this year in honor of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I had the opportunity to watch several programs on television devoted to his legacy. I was especially struck by the fact that commentators — for example Amy Goodman, the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!,” a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program” — keep imputing to him a welfare statism that seems not to have been part of his thinking. (I have no idea what Democracy Now! is independent of since all the programs on it evidence a distinct perspective, no less so that those on Fox TV.)

During the flight I managed, also, to listen again to the entire speech Dr. King gave in Alabama, on the day before he was assassinated, and what it was mostly about is freedom, not at all about welfare statism.

There are, admittedly, several senses of the term “freedom” in use. In particular there is negative and positive freedom. The former is strongly associated with the American political tradition — spelled out, for example, in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights — the latter with the ideas of FDR’s New Deal. The first means being free from the intrusions of other people, including government, however well intentioned; the second means being provided with support by others, including the government through its power of taking what belongs to one so as to hand to another. So one is free to do what one chooses to do if one is free in the first sense, while one is free from having to cover one’s various expenses in the second sense.

The free society as understood by classical liberals stresses the protection of the freedom of the citizenry with a suitably framed legal system, while the society fashioned by modern liberals stresses government’s providing to people what they are said to need by way of confiscatory taxation for this purpose.

It seems to me that Dr. King was talking about the former kind of freedom, freedom from the oppressive acts of most whites toward most blacks, for example. Many of those who today wish to invoke his stature and ideas for their political purposes, however, are talking about the second kind of “freedom or liberty.” That is the freedom, so called, that the welfare state is supposed to protect for people, at the expense of those whose resources are confiscated so as to achieve this goal. Yet there are many who insist that Dr. King had in mind the second type of freedom — or perhaps that he believed in both. As one commentator put it, “On that day, Dr. King spoke of two types of freedom — one from ‘the chains of discrimination’ and one from living on ‘a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.’ Somehow his first message has been taken to heart while his second has been forgotten.” (This is what John Fullerton, founder of Capital Institute, declared in his recent essay on Huff Post.)

The problem with attributing to MLK this two-pronged idea of freedom is that if it is correct, it makes his ideas incoherent. The first type of freedom just cannot co-exists with the second. If A can be coerced to provide support for those who are “living in a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of materials prosperity,” then A would have his right to freedom violated. If anytime that someone achieves material prosperity that individual becomes a target of the adjusters who would not accept his or her freedom to make use of it, then such an individual is not free in the first sense. To steal from Peter so as to provide for Paul does not support freedom but servitude.

It is much more sensible to attribute to Dr. King the more coherent view that if the freedom of individuals to do as they choose is properly respected and protected, they will be enjoying the first kind of freedom — freedom from others’ intrusions — and become capable of achieving freedom from poverty. Free men and women have generally been quite able to provide for themselves, perhaps with occasional voluntary help from their friends and neighbors. That is one of the lessons of history! It is entirely inappropriate to suggest that one person’s poverty authorizes others to take from those who have managed to achieve prosperity. I doubt that Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t grasp something so elementary — it is an insult to his memory to believe that.

Instead what seems to be happening is that people who are aspiring to rule others are invoking his good name for their coercive purposes. It would be a shame if this were tolerated by all those who admire Dr. King for his championing of human liberty.

By Tibor R. Machan*

No one should attempt to treat Ayn Rand and Murray N. Rothbard as uncomplicated and rather similar defenders of the free society although they have more in common than many believe. As just one example, neither was a hawk when it comes to deploying military power abroad. There is evidence, too, that both considered it imprudent for the US government to be entangled in international affairs, such as fighting dictators who were no threat to America. Even their lack of enthusiasm for entering WW II could be seen as quite similar.

And so far as their underlying philosophical positions are concerned, they both can be regarded as Aristotelians. In matters of economics they were unwavering supporters of the fully free market capitalist system, although while Rand didn’t find corporations per se objectionable, arguably Rothbard had some problems with corporate commerce, especially as it manifest itself in the 20th century. One sphere in which they took very different positions, at least at first glance, is whether government is a bona fide feature of a genuinely free country. Rand thought it is, Rothbard thought it wasn’t. Yet the reason Rothbard opposed government was that it depended on taxation, something Rand also opposed, so even here where the difference between them appears to be quite stark, they were closer than one might think.

When intellectuals such as Rand and Rothbard have roughly the same political-economic position, it isn’t that surprising that they and their followers would stress the difference between them instead of the similarities. Moreover, in this case both had a similar explosive personality, with powerful likes and dislikes not just in fundamentals but also in what may legitimately be considered incidentals–music, poetry, novels, movies and so forth.

Yet what for Rothbard might be something tangential, even incidental, to his political economic thought, for Rand could be considered more germane since Rand thought of herself–and many think of her–as a philosopher (roughly of the rank of a Herbert Spencer or Auguste Comte). Rothbard wrote little in the sphere of metaphysics and epistemology, although he was well informed in these branches of philosophy, while Rand chimed in, quite directly, on several philosophical issues, having written what amounts to a rather nuanced long philosophical essay on epistemology and advanced ideas in metaphysics, such as on free will, causality, and the nature of universals. Her followers, such as Nathaniel Bradnen, Leonard Peikoff, Tara Smith, Alan Gotthelf, James Lennox, and David Kelley, among others, have all made contributions to serious discussions in various branches of philosophy.

The central dispute, however, between Rothbard and his followers and Rand and hers focuses, as I have already noted, on whether a free country would have a government. The debate is moved forward in the volume edited by Roderick Long and me, Anarchism versus Minarchism; Is Government Part of a Free County (Ashgate, 2006).

Even apart from their disagreement about the justifiability of government in a bona fide free country, there is the difference between them about the subjectivity of (some) values. Rothbard holds, for example, that “’distribution’ is simply the result of the free exchange process, and since this process benefits all participants on the market and increases social utility, it follows directly that the ‘distributional’ results of the free market also increase social utility.” The part here that shows the difference between Rothbard and Rand is where Rothbard says that the “free exchange process … benefits all participants on the market.” Maybe most of them benefit in such exchanges do but some do not. Suppose someone exchanges five ounces of crack cocaine for an ounce of heroin. Arguably, at least as Ayn Rand would very likely maintain, neither of these traders gains a benefit in this exchange, assuming that both commodities being trade are objectively harmful to the traders’ health. Both are, then, harmed, objectively speaking, even if they believed they would benefit.

This may be a minor matter but it isn’t, not at least if Rothbard’s idea is generalized to apply to all market exchanges. True, from a purely economic viewpoint both parties in free exchanges tend to take it or believe that they are benefited by these. But this belief could well be false.

Now of course Rand would agree with Rothbard that just because people engage in trade that’s harmful to them, it doesn’t follow that anyone, least of all the government, is authorized to ban such trade or otherwise interfere with it. Such matters as what may or may not harm free market traders from the trades they choose to engage in are supposed to be dealt with in the private sector. Family, friends, doctors, nurses, et al., or other agents devoted to advising people what they should and should not do are the only ones who may launch peaceful educational or advisory measures to remedy the private misjudgments and misconduct of peaceful market participants. Such an approach sees public policies such as the war on drugs as entirely unjustified even if consuming many drugs is objectively damaging to those doing so.

In any case, the Randian view doesn’t assume that all free trade benefits those embarking on them. Let me, however, return to the major bone of contention between Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand, namely, whether government is (or could be) part of a free country. Given that Rothbard believes government cannot exists without deploying the rights-violating policy of taxation, his view is understandable but the underlying assumption that gives rise to it is questionable. Rand did indeed question it in her discussion of funding government in the chapter “Government Financing in a Free society” in The Virtue of Selfishness, at least by implication, when she argued that government can be financed without taxation. If she is correct, then Rothbard or his followers need to mount a different attack on the idea that the free society can have a government. (And some have indeed made this argument, including me in, for example, my “Anarchism and Minarchism, A Rapprochement,” Journal des Economists et des Estudes Humaines, Vol. 14, No. 4 [December 2002], 569-588.)

Rand proposed that instead of taxation, which involves the rights-violating policy of confiscation of private property, a government could be funded by way of a contract fee, a lottery, or some other peaceful method. Whether this is so cannot be addressed here but it shows that Rand and Rothbard were not very distant from each other on the issue of the justifiability of government in a free country. Perhaps the term “government” is ill advised when applied to whatever kind of law-enforcement institution would be involved in bona fide free countries. But this is not what’s crucial–a rose by any other name is still a rose and a law-enforcement, judicial or defense agency in a free society is what is at issue here, not what term is used to call it. So, again, Rand and Rothbard seem closer than usually believed.

Yet it’s not just about taxation for many who follow Rothbard. Most also hold that the idea is mistaken that government–or whatever it is called–needs to serve a society occupying a continuous instead instead of Swiss cheese like region. The idea of a disparately located country, without a continuous territory and with the possibility of all parts being accessible by law enforcers without the need of international treaties, makes sense to Rothbardians. Not, however, to Randians, it can be argued, not unless the familiar science fiction transportation option of being “beamed up” from one area to anther (so that law enforcement can reach all those within its jurisdiction) is available. Otherwise enforcement of the law can be easily evaded by criminals.

Again, this isn’t the place to resolve the dispute between Rand & her followers and Rothbard and his. This brief discussion should, however, indicate where their differences lie. It doesn’t at all explain, however, why the different parties to the debate tend often to be quite acrimonious toward each other. What may explain this, though, is a simple point of psychology. Nearly all champions of a fully free, libertarian society are also avid individualists and often tend to insist on what might be called the policy: My way or the highway! Even when their differences don’t warrant it.

Tibor R. Machan

Cuba’s fate over the last half a century has been disastrous, although before that the island wasn’t a Caribbean paradise either. US government policies haven’t made it easier for Cubans to escape their misery since instead of opening up the routes of free trade, the US has mostly chosen to issue penalties against the country, never mind that Cuba has done little against the USA per se to deserve most of it.

The Cold War, of course, brought forth some insane policies from many participants. One of the worst was to harden loyalties to some really insane political economic ideas, if for no other reason than sheer spite. That is to be expected from a petty tyrant like Fidel Castro–whose system was about a far from socialism, let alone communism, as was Gaddafi’s. But that the US kept a policy of relentless exclusion of everything Cuban wherever it had any influence is a great shame. It is one thing to recognize a tyranny for what it is, quite another to adopt its policies tit for tat.

But all this seems to be winding down considerably now. The BBC reported back on December 20th, 2011, that Cuba is now expanding outright free market reforms across the country. Ironically, and tragically for Americans, all this is happening while in America the elites–including political leaders and their cheerleaders in the academy–are pushing for greater and greater statism on nearly all fronts. Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and the country’s current ruler, seems to realize that moving Cuba in the direction of a free market, capitalist economic system is good for Cubans. As the BBC reported, “His government plans to have up to 40% of the workforce employed by the non-state sector by 2016, compared with just 10% at the end of 2010.”

One reason Cuba didn’t immediately join the Soviet bloc countries in abandoning its ubiquitous socialist policies is that as an outpost of Soviet style socialism, it was too wedded to all that central planning and also simply too stubborn to make the right move. Nothing is as irrational as the ego of a dictator since service to the citizenry is not in his job description. But just as in personal relations holding a grudge is usually injurious to those who harbor that attitude, so it is with Cuba’s stubbornness. And it seems that Raul Castro has realized this and persuaded Fidel to give it up finally.

So reportedly “for the first time in decades people are allowed to buy and sell homes and cars and take out private business loans from banks.” (Sadly the term “allowed” is still appropriate as a way to characterize the relationship between government and the citizenry, just as in contemporary China! Maybe in time Cubans will begin to question how it is that their government sees itself as permitting them to do what they choose to do!) It looks like the entire country is following in the footsteps of barber shops and beauty salons which were recently removed from state control and handed to employees. As the BBC put it, they now “work for themselves”! Sadly, though, they are still following the lead of welfare states or mixed economies, wherein governments are regarded as proprietors instead of referees! (That is, by the way, where the modern welfare and, of course, socialist state demonstrates just how reactionary those systems are, following the pattern of monarchies wherein the king was taken to own the country, including the people in it!)

Anyway, I came to praise Cuba today, not to lament that its progress toward the free society is halting and incomplete. After all, there is no country anywhere which has gone completely free!

But the fact that Cuba is emerging from its socialist dark age should be cause for celebration. Maybe, as some have suggested, it will be the former Soviet bloc countries that will take over the leadership toward a genuinely free society, with others like the USA regressing toward more and more statism. Who knows, maybe even North Korea will in time come around.