Contemporary Anarchism by Terry M. Perlin

Author:Terry M. Perlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

10.

Why Be Libertarian?

Murray N. Rothbard

Why be libertarian, anyway? By this we mean: what’s the point of the whole thing? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment for the principle and goal of individual liberty? For such a commitment, in our largely unfree world, means inevitably a radical disagreement with, and alienation from, the status quo, an alienation which equally inevitably imposes many sacrifices in money and prestige. When life is short and the moment of victory far in the future, why go through all this?

Incredibly, we have found among the increasing number of libertarians in this country many people who come to a libertarian commitment from one or another extremely narrow and personal point of view. Many are irresistibly attracted to liberty as an intellectual system or as an aesthetic goal, but liberty remains for them a purely intellectual and parlor game, totally divorced from what they consider the “real” activities of their daily lives. Others are motivated to remain libertarians solely from their anticipation of their own personal financial profit. Realizing that a free market would provide greater opportunities for able, independent men to reap entrepreneurial profits, they become and remain libertarians solely to find larger opportunities for business profit. While it is true that opportunities for profit will be far greater and more widespread in a free market and a free society, placing one’s primary emphasis on this motivation for being a libertarian can only be considered grotesque. For in the often tortuous, difficult and gruelling path that must be trod before liberty can be achieved, the libertarian’s opportunity for personal profit will far more often be negative than abundant.

The consequence of the narrow and myopic vision of both the gamester and the would-be profitmaker is that neither group has the slightest interest in the work of building a libertarian movement. And yet it is only through building such a movement that liberty can be achieved. Ideas, especially radical ideas, do not advance in the world in and by themselves, as it were in a vacuum; they can only be advanced by people, and therefore the advancement and development of such people—and therefore of a “movement”—becomes a prime task for the libertarian who is really serious about advancing his goals.

Turning from these men of narrow vision, we must also see that utilitarianism, the common ground of free-market economists, is unsatisfactory for developing a flourishing libertarian movement. While it is true and valuable to know that a free market would bring far greater abundance and a healthier economy to everyone, rich and poor alike, a critical problem is whether this knowledge is enough to bring many people to lifelong dedication to liberty. In short, how many people will man the barricades and endure the many sacrifices that a consistent dedication to liberty entails, merely so that umpteen percent more people will have better bathtubs? Will they not rather settle for an easy life and forget the bathtubs? Ultimately, then, utilitarian economics, while indispensable in the developed structure of

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