Christopher Chase Rachels - White, Right, and Libertarian

White, Right, and Libertarian

Chase Rachels

Copyright 2018 Christopher Chase Rachels
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1979796521
ISBN-10: 1979796521

FOREWORD

T he social theory sailing nowadays under the label Austro-Libertarianism has a long and prominent history going back many centuries, culminating during the second half of the 20th century in the work of Murray N. Rothbard, and continued today by his various intellectual disciples and students (including myself). The theory provides a simple, argumentatively irrefutable (without running into contradictions) answer to one of the most important questions in the entire field of the social sciences: How can human beings, real persons, having to act in a real world characterized by the scarcity of all sorts of physical things, interact with each other, conceivably from the beginning of mankind until the end of human history, peacefully, i.e., without physically clashing with one another in a contest or fight concerning the control of one and the same given thing?

Put briefly, the answer is this: Absent a perfect harmony of all interests, clashes regarding scarce resources can only be avoided if all scarce resources are assigned as private, exclusive property to some specified individual or group of individuals. Only then can I act independently, with my own things, from you, with your own things, without you and I ever clashing.

And who owns what scarce resource as his private property and who does not? First: Each person owns his physical body that only he and no one else controls directly. And second, as for scarce resources that can be controlled only indirectly (that must be appropriated with our own nature-given, i.e., un-appropriated, body): The right to exclusive control (property) is acquired by and assigned to that person who appropriated the resource in question first or who acquired it through voluntary (conflict-free) exchange from its previous owner. For only the first appropriator of a resource (and all later owners connected to him through a chain of voluntary exchanges) can possibly acquire and gain control over it without conflict, i.e., peacefully. Otherwise, if the right to exclusive control is assigned instead to latecomers, conflict is not avoided but, contrary to the very purpose of norms, made unavoidable and permanent.

Formulated as a principle: You shall not aggress against another person and his justly acquired property and you may use physical violence exclusively in defense of persons and property against an aggressor.

In his previous book, A Spontaneous Order: The Capitalist Case For A Stateless Society, Chase Rachels has given a brilliant exposition of the Austro-libertarian social theory and carefully explained the inner workings of an anarcho-capitalist social order.

While the importance of this Austro-libertarian insight can hardly be overrated, it is just as important to recognize what questions this theory does not answer.

When we look at the real world we cannot but notice that it is distinctly different from a libertarian social order. And yet the libertarian theory in itself does not entail an answer as to why this is soexcept to conclude that people apparently are not intelligent or willing enough to recognize and embrace its truthand consequently, how to actually achieve the ultimate libertarian end of a Stateless society from some distinctly un-libertarian starting point. Nor does the theory imply much if anything concerning the question of how to maintain a libertarian social order once achieved and make it sustainable. To answer these questions pure theory is insufficient and must be complemented by empirical study. One must turn from pure theory to human history, psychology and sociology.

Unfortunately, all-too-many self-proclaimed libertarians have neglected or refused to do so and naively embraced the currently reigningand only politically correctview that all people and in particular all groups of people are essentially equal as regards their mental and motivational make-up, and that any observable inequalities are either the result of mere accident and circumstance or past injustice and as such can and should be made good by some corrective, equalizing measures.

The acceptance of this belief in the empirical equality and hence, the interchangeability, substitutability and replace-ability of all people and all groups of people, has led many libertariansthe now so-called left-libertariansto endorse and promote the very same agenda pursued presently, more or less vigorously, by the ruling elites all across the Western World (are they all secretly libertarians?): of multi-culturalism, unrestricted free immigration, non-discrimination, affirmative action and openness to diversity and alternative lifestyles.

Given this curious programmatic alliance between left-libertarians and the ruling elites, it is not entirely surprising that, notwithstanding the dearth of any outstanding left-libertarian intellectual talent, the elite main-stream media (MSM) has attentively followed and reported on their every position-paper or pronouncement and thereby helped create the impression in the public mind that left-libertarianism is libertarianism.

At the same time, to the same effect and equally unsurprising, the very same MSM systematically ignored the contrary factor else deliberately misconstrued and misrepresented itthat left-libertarianism, already at its first public appearance, had come under heavy attack from Murray Rothbard, the very founder and fountainhead of modern libertarianism, as only fake-libertarianism. Owing to their patently false, unrealistic assumptions concerning the nature of man, he had pointed out,1 the very means and measures advocated by left-libertarians for the attainment of libertarian ends were false as well. In fact, given the libertarian end, they were counter-productive and would lead to more conflict and infringements of private property rights.

Real libertariansin contrast to left-libertarian fakesmust study and take account of real people and real human history in order to design a libertarian strategy of social change, and even the most cursory study in this regardindeed, little more than common senseyields results completely opposite from those proposed by libertarian fakes.

While members of the same species, men (including women) are strikingly different and unequal from one another. Not just individually, one man from another, but also collectively, one group of men connected more or less closely by a commonality of language, religion, culture and custom from another group of men with another language, religion, culture and custom. (Hardly surprising, if one considers the fact that all present people are typically the descendants of people that have lived far apart from each other going back hundreds or even thousands of years and thus formed separate and distinctly different gene pools!)

More to the point and just as obvious: Men, not only individuals considered in isolation, but also groups of individuals considered as communities or cooperatives, with their various languages, religions, cultures and customs, display significant differences and inequalities as regards the degree of conformity of their conduct with libertarian principles.

While no society can do without some degree of conformity to the libertarian non-aggression principle (NAP) at least insofar as its internal relations are concernedthat is: there can be no society that allows for a free-for-all of murder, homicide, battery or the taking of other persons things -, the degree of conformity displayed by different societies or communities is strikingly different. Some appear like permanent war-zones or lawless hell-holes filled with brutality and cruelty, whereas others, at the other (positive) end, approach the libertarian ideal quite closely (say, Liechtenstein).