A Libertarian's Basic Repertoire

...Free Life Editions, which has reprinted the two books under review here, scheduled a reprint of The State for summer, 1974...

...Even The Communist Manifesto grants that "the bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together," hardly the mark of a purely parasitic class...

...For many, perhaps most, people, it is virtually interchangeable with the fascist style—the leader-cult, the paramilitary groups, balcony speeches to hysterical crowds, and so on—or even simply with German racism...

...There is an interesting preface to Flynn's book by New Leftist Ronald Radosh and a perceptive introduction and highly useful bibliography to Nock's by libertarian economist Walter Grinder...

...It is somewhat painful to sense that Flynn might have to be identified for a right-wing American readership in 1974, while those whose contributions to the movement for individual freedom have consisted mostly in seconding the Athenian jury's sentence on Socrates, or in endlessly elaborating a few cliches from Edmund Burke, are familiar names...

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...Voltaire had already defined the State as "a device for taking money out of one set of pockets and putting it into another...

...Flynn examines the history of Italy and Germany in the decades preceding the fascist take-overs: he concludes (with Mises and Hayek) that many principles of the fascist order were already widely accepted and implemented to an extent in those countries before 1922 and 1933 respectively...

...and while it lacks the depth and—it must be admitted—learning of such works as Mises' Omnipotent Government or Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (written along similar lines), the thesis and general outlook presented are arresting and very worthy of consideration...

...My only point is that for us, in a period of stunning budgets for "education" and "defense"—among many other programs—a more detailed probing of the nature of the bureaucrat—or pure—State would be called for...

...Nock, who wrote a fine little biography of Jefferson, has nothing but praise for the vision of Jefferson and Tom Paine, but in his, Nock's, view the American Revolution simply did not realize that vision...

...One is the production and exchange of wealth...

...In Nock's opinion, however, the philosophy of natural rights and popular sovereignty which the modern State from time to time adopted (for instance, during the Glorious Revolution in England and the American Revolution), was simply a way of tapping the currents of the great individualist movement of the modern age...

...The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others...

...he mentions it some twenty years before Djilas as characteristic of the Soviet regime in Russia and as crucial for an understanding of the decline of Rome from the third century on...

...Mencken, bitter opponent of Hoover's and Roosevelt's New Deals, mentor of Frank Chodorov, and confirmed isolationist, was a pillar of the Old Right in the United States...

...His opinions too often reflect the questionable views of Henry George, and he leans somewhat too heavily on Charles Beard's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution...

...more generally we can affirm that the attempt to use State power for private economic ends is the secret history of the modem "capitalist" world...

...in Marxist terms, we might say that Nock sees the end result of the Revolution, the Constitution, as the coming to power of the national bourgeoisie, replacing the bourgeoisie of the imperialist England...

...Rather, it is thelogical conclusion of policies accepted and promoted by many people who give every sign of being well-meaning...

...The production is professional...

...Most thought-provoking from the point of view of conservatives would be Flynn's interpretation of America's "world-role" as a response, not to any objective threats to our "national security" in any reasonable sense of the term, but rather as an outgrowth of domestic needs...

...Free Life Editions, a new, labor-oflove publishing house in New York City...

...Nock concurs, and adds: "Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators, and beneficiaries from those of a professional criminal class...

...In 1787 certain financial, mercantile, and industrial interests, fearful of the power which their opponents exercised through control of the state legislatures, staged a coup d'etat and succeeded in establishing a strong central government, which would assure those interests access to the political means...

...civilian and military...

...Following Oppenheimer, for example, Nock writes: "There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied...

...In As We Go Marching, first published in 1944, Flynn essays an analysis of the nature of fascism and particularly of its growth in the United States...

...At any rate, in Flynn's analysis, fascism represents no sudden "eruption of the demonic into history" nor any startling discontinuity with the politico-economic traditions of the nations that embrace it...

...For their )arts, both socialism and liberalism knew 'etter...

...Well, from the period of the late New Deal to the early 1950s, Flynn was the premier political commentator of the American Right...

...Marx said that the land question was the secret history of the Roman Republic...

...Rather, the analysis offered sporadically, and more often taken for granted, by classical liberalism—and occasionally by others, such as Saint-Simon and Proudhon—is much more faithful to socio-economic reality: exploitation and parasitism exist when a certain group, usually from among the rich, gains control of the State apparatus and uses it to circumvent the market, bagging special privileges for itself at the expense of taxpayers and consumers...

...the State, although to my mind, that is going too far...

...The United States may now be approaching the state reached by "capitalist" countries such as Italy (where the State bureaucracy is slowly but surely smothering society to death), or many countries of the Third World...

...this is the economic means...

...Here, rather than in one after another alleged attempts at "world-conquest" by a succession of Kaisers and foreign dictators, is to be found, in Flynn's view, the explanation of militarism and imperialism in recent American history...

...Yes, the point at issue in politics is primarily the division of wealth and power among various concrete competing groups, and not so much "community," the code of chivalry, or whether a given nation is to be dedicated up to Our Lady...

...parliamentary government became derisory and contemptible because of the vast involvement of government in the economy, the impossibility of maintaining parliamentary supervision effectively, and the consequent reversion of power more and more to the executive...

...As We Go Marching by John T. Flynn Preface by Ronald Radosh Free Life Editions, 1973, $3.45 (paper...

...3ditor's Note: The following inaugu•ates a new department, "A Libertarian's 3asic Repertoire," appearing every other ssue in The Alternative and presenting •eviews by Ralph Raico of libertarian :lassics...

...This emerging acceptance leads to a universally-recognized trait of fascism, militarism, and—when the opportunity arises, i.e., when the fascist country is powerful enough—to imperialism, as a justification for militarism and for military spending...

...Government used deficit-financing to buy the votes of privileged segments of the population and to "stimulate" the economy, and borrowing to cover the deficits...

...Nock's approach to the nature of politics is heavily influenced by the very important work of the German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, The State...

...John T. Flynn's As We Go Marching makes an excellent companion piece to Nock's book...

...As illuminating as Nock's analysis is, there are grounds for criticism...

...small wonder, ince that ideology functioned as the pologist for the centuries-old exploiting )owers, spiritual and temporal...

...and very important, the institutionalization of great outlays for military spending emerged as the policy most acceptable to the conservative elements in society...

...For them it explained the system of mercantilism, most of the imperialism of the European nations, and many more specific political phenomena (such as the "bourgeois" July Monarchy in France...

...This is very significant for any understanding of the inner meaning of the New Deal, about which an enormous amount of mythology exists in the popular mind...

...The socialist analysis, in its Marxst form especially, has become rather amous...

...CHAT POLITICS HAS something to do with :lass interests and with attempts to estabish, maintain, or abolish systems of ecoiomic exploitation could come as a sur)rise only to conservatives...

...Available from Free Life Editions, Inc., H Union Square West, New York, N.Y...

...The aim is to familiarize the -ender with the rich libertarian heritage n political and social philosophy...

...It is difficult to think of a word in the contemporary political vocabulary as emotionally-charged and as confusedly-applied as fascism...

...this is the political means . . . The State, then, whether primitive, feudal, or merchant, is the organization of the political means...

...The Marxist analysis, however, is wrong-headed: the parasites of society are not the bourgeoisie—entrepreneurs and capitalists who simply make their living through buying and selling on the market...

...the head of the British Society of Individualists once classed it with Milton's Areopagitica, Mill's On Liberty, and Herbert Spencer's Man vs...

...In the third and last section of this book, Flynn analyzes the American situation and identifies important parallels to the developments in the two European nations (the NRA, for example, was nothing if not fascist...

...More important, in emphasizing the State as an instrument wielded by certain outside interests, Nock does not make enough of the independent influence of the State bureaucracy...

...Our Enemy, the State has been a libertarian classic for four decades now...

...It should be clear by now that Nock is going far beyond most of classical liberalism, which continued by and large (real State-haters like Herbert Spencer were the exception) to see the State fundamentally in Lockean terms and to view its multifarious criminal activities as "abuses" and not as intrinsic to its nature...

...but it is not often appreciated hat classical liberalism also offers the mg of realism in interpreting society and politics that so frequently excites the neo'byte who is just beginning to see the hr orld around him through Marxist cateories...

...So the naive reader who comes uponsuch a book as Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State would be mistaken in concluding that he has come upon a "leftist" author...

...Nock, the editor of the first version of The Freeman, friend of H.L...

...Nock was quite aware of this subspecies of State...

...Here the direct economic exploitation by the State itself has come to loom larger than the use of State power by "private" interests...

...substantial government planning, with the collaboration of key private groups (a debased form of the syndicalist idea), controlled the economic system...

...deserves praise for making these books available in comparatively inexpensive editions...

...Government in America was erected on "the merchant-State's fundamental doctrine that the primary function of government is not to maintain freedom and security, but to 'help business.' " Political parties in the United States have functioned ever since as coalitions, of shorter or longer duration, of various economic interests anxious to have the political means at their disposal...

...This continues to be the case to the present day, with the exception of the anti-State, but miniscule, Libertarian Party...

...Tariffs, land-arrogation, "public" works, national banks, land-grants to railroads, contracts, and subsidies and privileges of all kinds to whoever could exert sufficient influence on the political center, were prizes of the new system...

...he was a .leader of America First, the author of the brilliant de-mystification of FDR, The Roosevelt Myth, virtually the first writer to cast doubt publicly on the official line concerning the Pearl Harbor attack, and a spirited partisan of the Taft wing of the Republican Party and of old Joe McCarthy...

...in this connection we could paraphrase Schumpeter on the dynamics of imperialist societies: Created by the economic exigencies that required it, the machine now created the wars it required...

...These are hooks which propose drastic revisions in the way most people, including conservatives (perhaps especially conservatives), see political reality, and since, in addition, they are written by intelligent men who placed a high value on individual liberty, they are important books...

...This is what writers such as Adam Smith, the Philosophical Radicals, and the Manchesterites referred to as "monopoly" and "sinister interests...

...But a good case can be made for the thesis that fascism, rightly understood and freed from a historically-conditioned association with the post-World War I scene and with Aryanism, is actually one of the most prevalent State-forms in the world today—that regimes such as those in South Korea, Egypt, Algeria, much of sub-Saharan Africa, much of Latin America, and elsewhere, are to be understood mainly in terms of the fascist model...

...It was nineeenth century European conservatism hat tried at all costs to avoid the analysis if political reality in terms of a structure if economic exploitation...

...But it is nonetheless a lucid, pleasingly written presentation of a profound insight into what moves politics, and a fine sociological and historical elaboration of that insight...

...liberal talk was a screen behind which the State changed its guise from feudal-State to merchant-State, the underlying reality, of course, remaining the same...