By Murray N. Rothbard
Ludwig von Mises Institute
2006


Part V: Toward A Theory of Strategy For Liberty

A systematic theory of liberty has been rare
enough, but exposition of a theory of strategy for liberty has been
virtually nonexistent. Indeed, not only for liberty, strategy toward
reaching any sort of desired social goal has been generally held to
be catch-as-catch-can, a matter of hit-or-miss experimentation, of
trial and error. Yet, if philosophy can set down any theoretical
guidelines for a strategy for liberty it is certainly its
responsibility to search for them. But the reader should be warned
that we are setting out on an uncharted sea.

The responsibility of philosophy to deal with strategy—with the
problem of how to move from the present (any present) mixed state of
affairs to the goal of consistent liberty—is particularly important
for a libertarianism grounded in natural law. For as the libertarian
historian Lord Acton realized, natural law and natural-rights theory
provide an iron benchmark with which to judge—and to find
wanting—any existing brand of statism. In contrast to legal
positivism or to various brands of historicism, natural law provides
a moral and political “higher law” with which to judge the edicts of
the State. As we have seen above,1 natural law, properly
interpreted, is “radical” rather than conservative, an implicit
questing after the reign of ideal principle. As Acton wrote,
“[Classical] Liberalism wishes for what ought to be, irrespective of
what is.” Hence, as Himmelfarb writes of Acton, “the past was
allowed no authority except as it happened to conform to morality.”

Further, Acton proceeded to distinguish between Whiggism and
Liberalism, between, in effect, conservative adherence to the status
quo and radical libertarianism:

The Whig governed by compromise. The Liberal begins the reign of ideas.

How to distinguish the Whigs from the Liberal-One is
practical, gradual, ready for compromise. The other works out a
principle philosophically. One is a policy aiming at a philosophy.
The other is a philosophy seeking a policy.2

Libertarianism, then, is a philosophy seeking a policy. But
what else can a libertarian philosophy say about strategy, about
“policy”? In the first place, surely—again in Acton’s words—it must
say that liberty is the “highest political end,” the overriding goal
of libertarian philosophy Highest political end, of course, does not
mean “highest end” for man in general. Indeed, every individual has
a variety of personal ends and differing hierarchies of importance
for these goals on his personal scale of values. Political
philosophy is that subset of ethical philosophy which deals
specifically with politics, that is, the proper role of violence in
human life (and hence the explication of such concepts as crime and
property). Indeed, a libertarian world would beone in which every
individual would at last be free to seek and pursue his own ends—to
“pursue happiness,” in the felicitous Jeffersonian phrase.

It might be thought that the libertarian, the person committed
to the “natural system of liberty” (in Adam Smith’s phrase), almost
by definition holds the goal of liberty as his highest political
end. But this is often not true; for many libertarians, the desire
for self-expression, or for bearing witness to the truth of the
excellence of liberty, frequently takes precedence over the goal of
the triumph of liberty in the real world. Yet surely, as will be
seen further below, the victory of liberty will never come to pass
unless the goal of victory in the real world takes precedence over
more esthetic and passive considerations.

If liberty should be the highest political end, then what is
the grounding for that goal? It should be clear from this work that,
first and foremost, liberty is a moral principle, grounded in the
nature of man. In particular, it is a principle of justice, of the
abolition of aggressive violence in the affairs of men. Hence, to be
grounded and pursued adequately, the libertarian goal must be sought
in the spirit of an overriding devotion to justice. But to possess
such devotion on what may well be a long and rocky road, the
libertarian must be possessed of a passion for justice, an emotion
derived from and channelled by his rational insight into what
natural justice requires.3 Justice, not the weak reed of mere
utility, must be the motivating force if liberty is to be attained.4

If liberty is to be the highest political end, then this
implies that liberty is to be pursued by the most efficacious means,
i.e., those means which will most speedily and thoroughly arrive at
the goal. This means that the libertarian must be an “abolitionist,” i.e.,
he must wish to achieve the goal of liberty as
rapidly as possible. If he balks at abolitionism, then he is no
longer holding liberty as the highest political end. The
libertarian, then, should be an abolitionist who would, if he could,
abolish instantaneously all invasions of liberty. Following the
classical liberal Leonard Read, who advocated immediate and total
abolition of price-and-wage controls after World War II, we might
refer to this as the “button-pushing” criterion. Thus, Read declared
that “If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which
would release all wage-and-price controls instantaneously I would
put my finger on it and push!” The libertarian, then, should be a
person who would push a button, if it existed, for the instantaneous
abolition of all invasions of liberty—not something, by the way,
that any utilitarian would ever be likely to do.5

Anti-libertarians, and anti-radicals generally,
characteristically make the point that such abolitionism is
“unrealistic”; by making such a charge they hopelessly confuse the
desired goal with a strategic estimate of the probable path toward
that goal. It is essential to make a clear-cut distinction between
the ultimate goal itself, and the strategic estimate of how to reach
that goal; in short, the goal must be formulated before questions of
strategy or “realism” enter the scene. The fact that such a magic
button does not and is not likely to exist has no relevance to the
desirability of abolitionism itself. We might agree, for example, on
the goal of liberty and the desirability of abolitionism in
liberty’s behalf. But this does not mean that we believe that
abolition will in fact be attainable in the near or far future.

The libertarian goals—including immediate abolition of
invasions of liberty—are “realistic” in the sense that they could be
achieved if enough people agreed on them, and that, if achieved, the
resulting libertarian system would be viable. The goal of immediate
liberty is not unrealistic or “Utopian” because—in contrast to such
goals as the “elimination of poverty”—its achievement is entirely
dependent on man’s will. If, for example, everyone suddenly and
immediately agreed on the overriding desirability of liberty, then
total liberty would be immediately achieved.6 The strategic estimate
of how the path toward liberty is likely to be achieved is, of
course, an entirely separate question.7

Thus, the libertarian abolitionist of slavery, William Lloyd
Garrison, was not being “unrealistic” when, in the 1830s, he raised
the standard of the goal of immediate emandpation of the slaves. His
goal was the proper moral and libertarian one, and was unrelated to
the “realism,” or probability of its achievement. Indeed, Garrison’s
strategic realism was expressed by the fact that he did not expect
the end of slavery to arrive immediately or at a single blow. As
Garrison carefully distinguished: “Urge immediate abolition as
earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end.
We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single
blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend.”8 Otherwise, as
Garrison trenchantly warned, “Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.”

Gradualism in theory, in fact, totally undercuts the overriding
goal of liberty itself; its import, therefore, is not simply
strategic but an opposition to the end itself and hence
impermissible as any part of a strategy toward liberty. The reason
is that once immediate abolitionism is abandoned, then the goal is
conceded to take second or third place to other, anti-libertarian
considerations, for these considerations are now placed higher than
liberty. Thus, suppose that the abolitionist of slavery had said: “I
advocate an end to slavery—but only after five years’ time.” But
this would imply that abolition in four or three years’ time, or a
fortiori immediately, would be wrong, and that therefore it is
better for slavery to be continued a while longer. But this would
mean that considerations of justice have been abandoned, and that
the goal itself is no longer highest on the abolitionist’s (or
libertarian’s) political value-scale. In fact, it would mean that
the libertarian advocated the prolongation of crime and injustice.

Hence, a strategy for liberty must not include any means which
undercut or contradict the end itself—as gradualism-in-theory
clearly does. Are we then saying that “the end justifies the means”?
This is a common, but totally fallacious, charge often directed
toward any group that advocates fundamental or radical social
change. For what else but an end could possibly justify any means?
The very concept of “means” implies that this action is merely an
instrument toward arriving at an end. If someone is hungry, and eats
a sandwich to alleviate his hunger, the act of eating a sandwich is
merely a means to an end; its sole justification arises from its use
as an end by the consumer. Why else eat the sandwich, or, further
down the line, purchase it or its ingredients? Far from being a
sinister doctrine, that the end justifies the means is a simple
philosophic truth, implicit in the very relationship of “means” and
“ends.”

What then, do the critics of the “end justifies the means”
truly mean when they say that “bad means” can or will lead to “bad
ends”? What they are really saying is that the means in question
will violate other ends which the critics deem to be more important
or more valuable than the goal of the group being criticized. Thus,
suppose that Communists hold that murder is justified if it leads to
a dictatorship by the vanguard party of the proletariat. The critics
of such murder (or of such advocacy of murder) are really asserting,
not that the “ends do not justify the means,” but rather that murder
violates a more valuable end (to say the least), namely, the end of
“not committing murder,” or nonaggression against persons. And, of
course, from the libertarian point of view, the critics would be
correct.

Hence, the libertarian goal, the victory of liberty, justifies
the speediest possible means towards reaching the goal, but those
means cannot be such as to contradict, and thereby undercut, the
goal itself. We have already seen that gradualism-in-theory is such
a contradictory means. Another contradictory means would be to
commit aggression (e.g., murder or theft) against persons or just
property in order to reach the libertarian goal of nonaggression.
But this too would be a self-defeating and impermissible means to
pursue. For the employment of such aggression would directly violate
the goal of nonaggression itself.

If, then, the libertarian must call for immediate abolition of
the State as an organized engine of aggression, and if gradualism in
theory is contradictory to the overriding end (and therefore
impermissible), what further strategic stance should a libertarian
take in a world in which States continue all too starkly to exist?
Must the libertarian necessarily confine himself to advocating
immediate abolition? Are transitional demands, steps toward liberty
in practice, therefore illegitimate? Surely not, since realistically
there would then be no hope of achieving the final goal. It is
therefore incumbent upon the libertarian, eager to achieve his goal
as rapidly as possible, to push the polity ever further in the
direction of that goal. Clearly, such a course is difficult, for the
danger always exists of losing sight of, or even undercutting, the
ultimate goal of liberty. But such a course, given the state of the
world in the past, present, and foreseeable future, is vital if the
victory of liberty is ever to be achieved. The transitional demands,
then, must be framed while (a) always holding up the ultimate goal
of liberty as the desired end of the transitional process; and (b)
never taking steps, or using means, which explicitly or implicitly
contradict that goal.

Let us consider, for example, a transition demand set forth by
various libertarians: namely, that the government budget be reduced
by 10 percent each year for ten years, after which the government
will have disappeared. Such a proposal might have heuristic or
strategic value, provided that the proposers always make crystal
clear that these are minimal demands, and that indeed there would be
nothing wrong—in fact, it would be all to the good—to step up the
pace to cutting the budget by 25 percent a year for four years, or,
most desirably, by cutting it by 100 percent immediately. The danger
arises in implying, directly or indirectly that any faster pace than
10 percent would be wrong or undesirable.

An even greater danger of a similar sort is posed by the idea
of many libertarians of setting forth a comprehensive and planned
program of transition to total liberty, e.g., that in Year 1law A
should be repealed, law B modified, tax C be cut by 20 percent,
etc.; in Year 2 law D be repealed, tax C cut by a further 10
percent, etc. The comprehensive plan is far more misleading than the
simple budget cut, because it strongly implies that, for example,
law D should not be repealed until the second year of this planned
program. Hence, the trap of philosophic gradualism, of
gradualism-in-theory, would be fallen into on a massive scale. The
would-be libertarian planners would be virtually falling into a
position, or seeming to, of opposing a faster pace toward liberty.

There is, indeed, another grave flaw in the idea of a
comprehensive planned program toward liberty. For the very care and
studied pace, the very all-embracing nature of the program, implies
that the State is not really the enemy of mankind, that it is
possible and desirable to use the State in engineering a planned and
measured pace toward liberty. The insight that the State is the
permanent enemy of mankind, on the other hand, leads to a very
different strategic outlook: namely that libertarians push for and
accept with alacrity any reduction of State power or State activity
on any front; any such reduction at any time is a reduction in crime
and aggression, and is a reduction of the parasitic malignity with
which State power rules over and confiscates social power.

For example, libertarians may well push for drastic reduction,
or repeal, of the income tax; but they should never do so while at
the same time advocating its replacement by a sales or other form of
tax. The reduction or, better, the abolition of a tax is always a
noncontradictory reduction of State power and a step toward liberty;
but its replacement by a new or increased tax elsewhere does just
the opposite, for it signifies a new and additional imposition of
the State on some other front. The imposition of a new tax is a
means that contradicts the libertarian goal itself.

Similarly, in this age of permanent federal deficits, we are
all faced with the problem: should we agree to a tax cut, even
though it may well mean an increase in the deficit? Conservatives,
from their particular perspective of holding budget-balancing as a
higher end, invariably oppose, or vote against, a tax cut which is
not strictly accompanied by an equivalent or greater cut in
government expenditures. But since taxation is an evil act of
aggression, any failure to welcome a tax cut with alacrity undercuts
and contradicts the libertarian goal. The time to oppose government
expenditures is when the budget is being considered or voted upon,
when the libertarian should call for drastic slashes in expenditures
as well. Government activity must be reduced whenever and wherever
it can; any opposition to a particular tax—or expenditure—cut is
impermissible for it contradicts libertarian principles and the
libertarian goal.

Does this mean that the libertarian may never set priorities,
may not concentrate his energy on political issues which he deems of
the greatest importance? Clearly not, for since everyone’s time and
energy is necessarily limited, no one can devote equal time to every
particular aspect of the comprehensive libertarian creed. A speaker
or writer on political issues must necessarily set priorities of
importance, priorities which at least partially depend on the
concrete issues and circumstances of the day. Thus, while a
libertarian in today’s world would certainly advocate the
denationalization of lighthouses, it is highly doubtful that he
would place a greater priority on the lighthouse question than on
conscription or the repeal of the income tax. The libertarian must
use his strategic intelligence and knowledge of the issues of the
day to set his priorities of political importance. On the other
hand, of course, if one were living on a small, highly fog-bound
island, dependent on shipping for transportation, it could very well
be that the lighthouse question would have a high priority on a
libertarian political agenda. And, furthermore, if for some reason
the opportunity arose for denationalizing lighthouses even in
present-day America, it should certainly not be spurned by the
libertarian.

We conclude this part of the strategy question, then, by
affirming that the victory of total liberty is the highest political
end; that the proper groundwork for this goal is a moral passion for
justice; that the end should be pursued by the speediest and most
efficacious possible means; that the end must always be kept in
sight and sought as rapidly as possible; and that the means taken
must never contradict the goal—whether by advocating gradualism, by
employing or advocating any aggression against liberty, by
advocating planned programs, or by failing to seize any opportunity
to reduce State power or by ever increasing it in any area.

The world, at least in the long run, is governed by ideas; and
it seems clear that libertarianism is only likely to triumph if the
ideas spread to and are adopted by a significantly large number of
people. And so “education” becomes a necessary condition for the
victory of liberty—all sorts of education, from the most abstract
systematic theories down to attention-catching devices that will
attract the interest of potential converts. Education, indeed, is
the characteristic strategic theory of classical liberalism.

But it should be stressed that ideas do not float by themselves
in a vacuum; they are influential only insofar as they are adopted
and put forward by people. For the idea of liberty to triumph, then,
there must be an active group of dedicated libertarians, people who
are knowledgeable in liberty and are willing to spread the message
to others. In short, there must be an active and self-conscious
libertarian movement. This may seem self-evident, but there has been
a curious reluctance on the part of many libertarians to think of
themselves as part of a conscious and ongoing movement, or to become
involved in movement activity. Yet consider: has any discipline, or
set of ideas in the past, whether it be Buddhism or modern physics,
been able to advance itself and win acceptance without the existence
of a dedicated “cadre” of Buddhists or physicists?

The mention of physicists points up another requirement of a
successful movement: the existence of professionals, of persons
making their full-time career in the movement or discipline in
question. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as modern
physics emerged as a new science, there were indeed scientific
societies which mainly included interested amateurs, “Friends of
Physics” as we might call them, who established an atmosphere of
encouragement and support of the new discipline. But surely physics
would not have advanced very far if there had been no professional
physicists, people who made a full-time career of physics, and
therefore could devote all their energies to engaging in and
advancing the discipline. Physics would surely still be a mere
amusement for amateurs if the profession of physics had not
developed. Yet there are few libertarians, despite the spectacular
growth of the ideas and of the movement in recent years, who
recognize the enormous need for the development of liberty as a
profession, as a central core for the advancement of both the theory
and the condition of liberty in the real world.

Every new idea and every new discipline necessarily begins with
one or a few people, and diffuses outward toward a larger core of
converts and adherents. Even at full tide, given the wide variety of
interests and abilities among men, there is bound to be only a
minority among the professional core or cadre of libertarians. There
is nothing sinister or “undemocratic,” then, in postulating a
“vanguard” group of libertarians any more than there is in talking
of a vanguard of Buddhists or of physicists. Hopefully this vanguard
will help to bring about a majority or a large and influential
minority of people adhering to (if not centrally devoted to)
libertarian ideology. The existence of a libertarian majority among
the American Revolutionaries and in nineteenth-century England
demonstrates that the feat is not impossible.

In the meanwhile, on the path to that goal, we might conceive
of the adoption of libertarianism as a ladder or pyramid, with
various individuals and groups on different rungs of the ladder,
ranging upward from total collectivism or statism to pure liberty.
If the libertarian cannot “raise people’s consciousness” fully to
the top rung of pure liberty, then he can achieve the lesser but
still important goal of helping them advance a few rungs up the
ladder.

For this purpose, the libertarian may well find it fruitful to
engage in coalitions with non-libertarians around the advancement of
some single, ad hoc activity. Thus, the libertarian, depending on
his priorities of importance at any given condition of society, may
engage in such “united front” activities with some conservatives to
repeal the income tax or with civil libertarians to repeal
conscription or the outlawry of pornography or of “subversive”
speech. By engaging in such united fronts on ad hoc issues, the
libertarian can accomplish a twofold purpose: (a) greatly
multiplying his own leverage or influence in working toward a
specific libertarian goal—since many non-libertarians are mobilized
to cooperate in such actions; and (b)to “raise the consciousness” of
his coalition colleagues, to show them that libertarianism is a
single interconnected system, and that a full pursuit of their
particular goal requires the adoption of the entire libertarian
schema. Thus, the libertarian can point out to the conservative that
property rights or the free market can only be maximized and truly
safeguarded if civil liberties are defended or restored; and he can
show the opposite to the civil libertarian. Hopefully this
demonstration will raise some of these ad hoc allies significantly
up the libertarian ladder.

In the progress of any movement dedicated to radical social
change, i.e., to transforming social reality toward an ideal system,
there are bound to arise, as the Marxists have discovered, two
contrasting types of “deviations” from the proper strategic line:
what the Marxists have called “right opportunism” and “left
sectarianism.” So fundamental are these often superficially
attractive deviations that we might call it a theoretical rule that
one or both will arise to plague a movement at various times in its
development. Which tendency will triumph in a movement cannot,
however, be determined by our theory; the outcome will depend on the
subjective strategic understanding of the people constituting the
movement. The outcome, then, is a matter of free will and persuasion.

Right opportunism, in its pursuit of instant gains, is willing
to abandon the ultimate social goal, and to immerse itself in minor
and short-run gains, sometimes in actual contradiction to the
ultimate goal itself. In the libertarian movement, the opportunist
is willing to join the State establishment rather than to struggle
against it, and is willing to deny the ultimate goal on behalf of
short-run gains: e.g., to declaim that “while everyone knows we must
have taxation, the state of the economy requires a 2 percent tax
cut.” The left sectarian, on the other hand, scents “immorality” and
“betrayal of principle” in every use of strategic intelligence to
pursue transitional demands on the path to liberty, even ones that
uphold the ultimate goal and do not contradict it. The sectarian
discovers “moral principle” and “libertarian principle” everywhere,
even in purely strategic, tactical, or organizational concerns.
Indeed, the sectarian is likely to attack as an abandonment of
principle any attempt to go beyond mere reiteration of the ideal
social goal, and to select and analyze more specifically political
issues of the most urgent priority. In the Marxist movement, the
Socialist Labor Party, which meets every political issue with only a
reiteration of the view that “socialism and only socialism will
solve the problem,” is a classical example of ultra-sectarianism at
work. Thus, the sectarian libertarian might decry a television
speaker or a political candidate who, in the necessity to choose
priority issues, stresses repeal of the income tax or abolition of
the draft, while “neglecting” the goal of denationalizing lighthouses.

In should be clear that both right opportunism and left
sectarianism are equally destructive of the task of achieving the
ultimate social goal: for the right opportunist abandons the goal
while achieving short-run gains, and thereby renders those gains
ineffectual; while the left sectarian, in wrapping himself in the
mantle of “purity,” defeats his own ultimate goal by denouncing any
necessary strategic steps in its behalf.

Sometimes, curiously enough, the same individual will undergo
alternations from one deviation to the other, in each case scorning
the correct, plumb-line path. Thus, despairing after years of futile
reiteration of his purity while making no advances in the real
world, the left sectarian may leap into the heady thickets of right
opportunism, in the quest for some short-run advance, even at the
cost of the ultimate goal. Or, the right opportunist, growing
disgusted at his own or his colleagues’ compromise of their
intellectual integrity and their ultimate goals, may leap into left
sectarianism and decry any setting of strategic priorities toward
those goals. In this way, the two opposing deviations feed on and
reinforce each other, and are both destructive of the major task of
effectively reaching the libertarian goal.

The Marxists have correctly perceived that two sets of
conditions are necessary for the victory of any program of radical
social change; what they call the “objective” and the subjective”
conditions. The subjective conditions are the existence of a
self-conscious movement dedicated to the triumph of the particular
social ideal—conditions which we have been discussing above. The
objective conditions are the objective fact of a “crisis situation”
in the existing system, a crisis stark enough to be generally
perceived, and to be perceived as the fault of the system itself.

For people are so constituted that they are not interested in
exploring the defects of an existing system so long as it seems to
be working tolerably well. And even if a few become interested, they
will tend to regard the entire problem as an abstract one irrelevant
to their daily lives and therefore not an imperative for
action—until the perceived crisis breakdown. It is such a breakdown
that stimulates a sudden search for new social alternatives—and it
is then that the cadres of the alternative movement (the “subjective
conditions”) must be available to supply that alternative, to relate
the crisis to the inherent defects of the system itself, and to
point out how the alternative system would solve the existing crisis
and prevent similar breakdowns in the future. Hopefully, the
alternative cadre would have provided a track record of predicting
and warning against the existing crisis.

Indeed, if we examine the revolutions in the modern world, we
will find that every single one of them (a) was utilized by an
existing cadre of seemingly prophetic ideologists of the alternative
system, and (b) was precipitated by a breakdown of the system
itself. During the American Revolution, a broad cadre and mass of
dedicated libertarians were prepared to resist the encroachments of
Great Britain in its attempt to end the system of “salutary neglect”
of the colonies and to reimpose the chains of the British Empire; in
the French Revolution, libertarian philosophes had prepared the
ideology with which to meet a sharp increase of absolutist burdens
on the country caused by the government’s fiscal crisis; in Russia,
in 1917, a losing war led to the collapse of the Czarist system from
within, which radical ideologists were prepared for; in post-World
War I Italy and Germany, postwar economic crises and wartime defeats
created the conditions for the triumph of the fascist and national
socialist alternatives; in China, in 1949, the combination of a
lengthy and crippling war and economic crisis caused by runaway
inflation and price controls allowed the victory of the Communist rebels.

Both Marxists and libertarians, in their very different and
contrasting ways, believe that the inner contradictions of the
existing system (in the former case of “capitalism,” in the latter
of statism and state intervention) will lead inevitably to its
long-run collapse. In contrast to conservatism, which can see
nothing but long-run despair attendant upon the steady decline of
“Western values” from some past century Marxism and libertarianism
are both therefore highly optimistic creeds, at least in the
long-run. The problem, of course, for any living beings, is how long
they will have to wait for the long-run to arrive. The Marxists, at
least in the Western world, have had to face the indefinite
postponement of their hoped-for long-run. Libertarians have had to
confront a twentieth century which has shifted from the
quasi-libertarian system of the nineteenth century to a far more
statist and collectivist one—in many ways returning to the despotic
world as it existed before the classical liberal revolutions of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

There are good and sufficient reasons, however, for
libertarians to be optimistic in the short-run as well as the long
run, indeed for a belief that victory for liberty might be near.

But, in the first place, why should libertarians be optimistic
even in the long run? After all, the annals of recorded history are
a chronicle, in one civilization after another, of centuries of
varying forms of despotism, stagnation, and totalitarianism. May it
not be possible that the great post-seventeenth century thrust
toward liberty was only a mighty flash in the pan, to be replaced by
sinking back into a gray and permanent despotism? But such
superficially plausible despair overlooks a crucial point: the new
and irreversible conditions introduced by the Industrial Revolution
of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a revolution itself
a consequence of the classical-liberal political revolutions. For
agricultural countries, in a preindustrial era, can indeed peg along
indefinitely on a subsistence level; despotic kings, nobles and
states can tax the peasantry above subsistence level, and live
elegantly off the surplus, while the peasants continue to toil for
centuries at the bare minimum. Such a system is profoundly immoral
and exploitative, but it “works” in the sense of being able to
continue indefinitely (provided that the state does not get too
greedy and actually kill the goose that lays the golden eggs).

But fortunately for the cause of liberty, economic science has
shown that a modern industrial economy cannot survive indefinitely
under such draconian conditions. A modern industrial economy
requires a vast network of free-market exchanges and a division of
labor, a network that can only flourish under freedom. Given the
commitment of the mass of men to an industrial economy and the
modern standard of living that requires such industry, then the
triumph of a free-market economy and an end to statism becomes
inevitable in the long run.

The late-nineteenth and especially the twentieth centuries have
seen many forms of reversion to the statism of the preindustrial
era. These forms (notably socialism and various brands of “state
capitalism”), in contrast to the frankly anti-industrial and
reactionary Conservatism of early nineteenth-century Europe, have
tried to preserve and even extend the industrial economy while
scuttling the very political requirements (freedom and the
free-market) which are in the long-run necessary for its survival.9

State planning, operation, controls, high and crippling taxation,
and paper money inflation must all inevitably lead to the collapse
of the statist economic system.

If then, the world is irreversibly committed to industrialism
and its attendant living standards, and if industrialism requires
freedom, then the libertarian must indeed be a long-run optimist,
for the libertarian triumph must eventually occur. But why short-run
optimism for the present day? Because it fortunately happens to be
true that the various forms of statism imposed on the Western world
during the first half of the twentieth century are now in process of
imminent breakdown. The long-run is now at hand. For half a century,
statist intervention could wreak its depredations and not cause
clear and evident crises and dislocations, because the
quasi-laissez-faire industrialization of the nineteenth century had
created a vast cushion against such depredations. The government
could impose taxes or inflation upon the system and not reap
evidently bad effects. But now statism has advanced so far and been
in power so long that the cushion, or fat, has been exhausted. As
economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the “reserve fund” created
by laissez faire has now been “exhausted,” whatever the government
does now leads to an instantaneous negative feedback that is evident
to the formerly indifferent and even to many of the most ardent
apologists for statism.

In the Communist countries of Eastern Europe, the Communists
themselves have increasingly perceived that socialist central
planning simply does not work, particularly for an industrial
economy. Hence the rapid retreat, in recent years, away from central
planning and toward free markets throughout Eastern Europe,
especially in Yugoslavia. In the Western world, too, state
capitalism is everywhere in a period of crisis, as it becomes
perceived that, in the most profound way, the government has run out
of money: that increasing taxes will cripple industry and incentives
beyond repair, while increased printing of new money (either
directly or through the government-controlled banking system) will
lead to a disastrous runaway inflation. And so we hear more and more
about the “necessity of lowered expectations from government” even
among the State’s once most ardent champions. In West Germany, the
Social Democratic party has long abandoned the call for socialism.
In Great Britain, suffering from a tax-crippled economy and
aggravated inflation, the Tory party, for years in the hands of
dedicated statists, has now been taken over by its free-market
oriented faction, while even the Labor party has begun to draw back
from the planned chaos of galloping statism.

In the United States, conditions are particularly hopeful; for
here, in the last few years, there has coincidentally occurred (a) a
systemic breakdown of statism across the board, in economic,
foreign, social, and moral policies; and (b) a great and growing
rise of a libertarian movement and the diffusion of libertarian
ideas throughout the population, among opinion moulders and average
citizens alike. Let us examine in turn both sets of necessary
conditions for a libertarian triumph.

Surprisingly enough, the systemic breakdown of statism in the
United States can be given a virtually precise date: the years
1973–74. The breakdown has been particularly glaring in the economic
sphere. From the fall of 1973 through 1975, America experienced an
inflationary depression, in which the worst recession of the postwar
world coincided with an aggravated inflation of prices. After forty
years of Keynesian policies which were supposed to “fine tune” the
economy so as to eliminate the boom-bust cycle of inflation and
depression, the United States managed to experience both at the same
time—an event that cannot be explained by orthodox economic theory.

Orthodox economics has been thrown into disarray, and economists and
laymen alike are increasingly ready to turn to the “Austrian,”
free-market alternative, both in the realms of theoretical paradigms
and of political policy. The award of the Nobel prize in economics
during 1974 to F.A. Hayek for his long-forgotten Austrian
business-cycle theory is but one indication of the new currents
coming to the surface after decades of neglect. And even though the
economy recovered from the depression, the economic crisis is not
ended, since inflation only accelerated still further, while
unemployment remained high. Only a free-market program of abandoning
monetary inflation and slashing government expenditures will solve
the crisis.

The partial financial default of the New York City government
during 1975 and the victory of Proposition 13 in California in 1978
have highlighted for the entire country the fact that local and
state reserve funds have been exhausted, and that government must at
last begin a drastic cutback in its operations and expenditures. For
higher taxes will drive businesses and middle-class citizens out of
any given area, and therefore the only way to avoid default will be
radical cuts in expenditure. (If default arrives, the result will be
the same and more drastically, since access to bond markets in the
future by state and local governments will prove impossible.)

It is also becoming increasingly clear that the combination of
decades of high and crippling taxes on income, savings, and
investment, combined with inflationary distortions of business
calculation, has led to an increasing scarcity of capital, and to an
imminent danger of consuming America’s vital stock of capital
equipment. Hence, lower taxes are rapidly perceived to be an
economic necessity. Lower government expenditures are also evidently
necessary to avoid the “crowding out” of private loans and
investments from the capital markets by wasteful federal government deficits.

There is a particularly hopeful reason for expecting the public
and the opinion-moulders to grasp at the proper libertarian solution
to this grave and continuing economic crisis: the fact that everyone
knows that the State has controlled and manipulated the economy for
the last forty years. When government credit and interventionary
policies brought about the Great Depression of the 1930s, the myth
that the 1920s had been an era of laissez faire was prevalent, and
so it seemed plausible to assert that “capitalism had failed,” and
that economic prosperity and progress required a giant leap toward
statism and state control. But the current crisis comes after many
decades of statism, and its nature is such that the public can now
correctly perceive Big Government to be at fault.

Furthermore, all the various forms of statism have now been
tried, and have failed. At the turn of the twentieth century,
businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals throughout the Western
world began to turn to a “new” system of mixed economy of State
rule, to replace the relative laissez faire of the previous century.
Such new and seemingly exciting panaceas as socialism, the corporate
state, the Welfare-Warfare State, etc., have all been tried and have
manifestly failed. The call for socialism or state planning is now a
call for an old, tired, and failed system. What is there left to try
but freedom?

On the social front, a similar crisis has occurred in recent
years. The public school system, once a sacrosanct part of the
American heritage, is now under severe and accelerated criticism
from people across the ideological spectrum. It is now becoming
clear (a) that public schools do not properly educate their charges;
(b) that they are costly, wasteful, and require high taxes; and (c)
that the uniformity of the public school system creates deep and
unresolvable social conflicts over vital educational issues—over
such matters as integration vs. segregation, progressive vs.
traditional methods, religion or secularism, sex education, and the
ideological content of learning. Whatever decision the public school
makes in any of these areas, either a majority or a substantial
minority of parents and children are irreparably injured.
Furthermore, compulsory attendance laws are being increasingly
perceived as dragooning unhappy or uninterested children into a
prison not of their or their parents’ making.

In the field of moral policies, there is a growing realization
that the rampant Prohibitionism of government policy—not simply in
the field of alcohol, but also in such matters as pornography
prostitution, sexual practices between “consenting adults,” drugs,
and abortion—are both an immoral and unjustified invasion of the
right of each individual to make his or her own moral choices, and
also cannot practically be enforced. Attempts at enforcement only
bring about hardship and a virtual police state. The time is
approaching when prohibitionism in these areas of personal morality
will be recognized to be fully as unjust and ineffective as in the
case of alcohol.

In the wake of Watergate, there is also an increased awareness
of the dangers to individual liberty and privacy, to the freedom to
dissent from government, in habitual actions and activities of
government. Here, too, we may expect public pressure to keep
government from fulfilling its age-old desire to invade privacy and
repress dissent.

Perhaps the best sign of all, the most favorable indication of
the breakdown of the mystique of the State, was the Watergate
exposures of 1973–74. For Watergate instigated a radical shift in
the attitude of everyone—regardless of their explicit
ideology—toward government itself. Watergate indeed awakened the
public to the invasions of personal liberty by government. More
important, by bringing about the impeachment of the President, it
permanently desanctified an office that had almost been considered
sovereign by the American public. But most importantly government
itself has been to a large extent desanctified. No one trusts any
politician or government official anymore; all government is viewed
with abiding hostility and distrust, thus returning to that healthy
distrust of government that marked the American public and the
American revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. In the wake of
Watergate, no one would dare today to intone that “we are the
government,” and therefore that anything elected officials may do is
legitimate and proper. For the success of liberty, the most vital
condition is the desanctification, the delegitimation of government
in the eyes of the public; and that Watergate has managed to accomplish.

Thus, the objective conditions for the triumph of liberty have
now, in the past few years, begun to appear, at least in the United
States. Furthermore, the nature of this systemic crisis is such that
government is now perceived as the culprit; it cannot be relieved
except through a sharp turn toward liberty. What is basically needed
now, therefore, is the growth of the “subjective conditions,” of
libertarian ideas and particularly of a dedicated libertarian
movement to advance those ideas in the public forum. Surely it is no
coincidence that it is precisely in these years—since 1971 and
particularly since 1973, that these subjective conditions have made
their greatest strides in this century. For the breakdown of statism
has undoubtedly spurred many more people into becoming partial or
full libertarians, and hence the objective conditions help to
generate the subjective. Furthermore, in the United States at least,
the splendid heritage of freedom and of libertarian ideas, going
back beyond revolutionary times, has never been fully lost.
Present-day libertarians, therefore, have solid historical ground on
which to build.

The rapid growth in these last years of libertarian ideas and
movements has pervaded many fields of scholarship, especially among
younger scholars, and in the areas of journalism, the media,
business, and politics. Because of the continuing objective
conditions, it seems clear that this eruption of libertarianism in
many new and unexpected places is not a mere media-concocted fad,
but an inevitably growing response to the perceived conditions of
objective reality. Given free will, no one can predict with
certainty that the growing libertarian mood in America will solidify
in a brief period of time, and press forward without faltering to
the success of the entire libertarian program. But certainly, both
theory and analysis of current historical conditions lead to the
conclusion that the current prospects of liberty, even in the
short-run, are highly encouraging.

1See Chapter 3 "Natural Law versus Positive Law" above.
2Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1962), pp. 204, 205, 209.
3In an illuminating essay the natural-law philosopher John Wild
points out that our subjective feeling of obligation, of an
oughtness which raises subjective emotional desire to a higher,
binding plane, stems from our rational apprehension of what our
human nature requires. John Wild, “Natural Law and Modern Ethical
Theory,” Ethics (October 1952): 5–10.
4On libertarianism being grounded on a passion for justice, see
Murray N. Rothbard, “Why Be Libertarian?” in idem, Egalitarianism as
a Revolt Against Nature, and Other Essays (Washington, D.C.:
Libertarian Review Press, 1974), pp. 147–48.
5Leonard E. Read, I’d Push the Button (New York: Joseph D. McGuire,
1946), p. 3.
6Elsewhere I have written:
Other traditional radical goals—such as the “abolition of
poverty”—are, in contrast to this one [liberty], truly utopian;
for man, simply by exerting his will, cannot abolish poverty.
Poverty can only be abolished through the operation of certain
economic factors . . . which can only operate by transforming
nature over a long period of time. . . . But injustices are deeds
that are inflicted by one set of men on another, they are
precisely the actions of men, and, hence, they and their
elimination are subject to man’s instantaneous will. . . . The
fact that, of course, such decisions do not take place
instantaneously is not the point; the point is that the very
failure is an injustice that has been decided upon and imposed by
the perpetrators of injustice. . . . In the field of justice,
man’s will is all; men can move mountains, if only men so decide.
A passion for instantaneous justice—in short, a radical passion—is
therefore not utopian, as would be a desire for the instant
elimination of poverty or the instant transformation of everyone
into a concert pianist. For instant justice could be achieved if
enough people so willed.
Rothbard, Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, pp. 148-49.
7At the conclusion of a brilliant philosophical critique of the
charge of “unrealism” and its confusion of the good and the
currently probable, Clarence Philbrook declares, “Only one type of
serious defense of a policy is open to an economist or anyone else;
he must maintain that the policy is good. True ‘realism’ is the same
thing men have always meant by wisdom: to decide the immediate in
the light of the ultimate.” Clarence Philbrook, “Realism in Policy
Espousal,” American Economic Review (December 1953): 859.
8Quoted in William H. and Jane H. Pease, eds., The Antislavey
Argument (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. xxxv.
9For a more extended historical analysis of this problem, see Murray
N. Rothbard, Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty (San
Francisco: Cato Institute, 1979).