Left, Right, & the Prospects for Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard

Author:Murray N. Rothbard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781933550787
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 2010-08-17T07:00:00+00:00

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Originally appeared in Left and Right (Spring 1965): 4–22.

1 Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lord Acton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 204–05.

2 Ibid., p. 209.

3 Cf. Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), chap. VI.

4 The information about Comte and Dunoyer, as well indeed as the entire analysis of the ideological spectrum, I owe to Mr. Leonard P. Liggio. For an emphasis on the positive and dynamic aspect of the Utopian drive, much traduced in our time, see Alan Milchman, “The Social and Political Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Utopia and Ideology,” The November Review (November, 1964): 3–10. Also cf., Jurgen Ruhle, “The Philosopher of Hope: Ernst Bloch,” in Leopold Labedz, ed., Revisionism (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 166–78.

5 Joseph A. Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York: Meridian Books, 1955), p. 175. Schumpeter, incidentally, realized that, far from being an inherent stage of capitalism, modern imperialism was a throwback to the pre-capitalist imperialism of earlier ages, but with a minority of privileged capitalists now joined to the feudal and military castes in promoting imperialist aggression.

6 Bernard Semmel, Imperialism and Social Reform: English Social-Imperial Thought, 1895–1914 (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1960).

7 Leopold S. Amery, My Political Life (London, 1953), quoted in Semmel, pp. 74–75.

8 The point, of course, is not that these men were products of some “Fabian conspiracy”; but, on the contrary, that Fabianism, by the turn of the century, was Socialism so conservatized as to be closely aligned with the other dominant neo-Conservative trends in British political life.

9 Thus, see Horace B. Davis. “Nations, Colonies, and Social Classes: The Position of Marx and Engels,” Science and Society (Winter 1965): 26–43.

10 The schismatic wing of the Trotskyist movement embodied in the International Committee for the Fourth International is now the only sect within Marxism-Leninism that continues to stress exclusively the industrial working-class.

11 See the penetrating article by Alexander J. Groth, “The ‘Isms’ in Totalitarianism,” American Political Science Review (December, 1964): 888–901. Groth writes:

The Communists … have generally undertaken measures directly and indirectly uprooting existing socio-economic élites: the landed nobility, business, large sections of the middle class and the peasantry, as well as the bureaucratic élites, the military, the civil service, the judiciary and the diplomatic corps. … Second, in every instance of Communist seizure of power there has been a significant ideological-propagandistic commitment toward a proletarian or workers’ state … (which) has been accompanied by opportunities for upward social mobility for the economically lowest classes, in terms of education and employment, which invariably have considerably exceeded the opportunities available under previous regimes. Finally, in every case the Communists have attempted to change basically the character of the economic systems which fell under their sway, typically from an agrarian to an industrial economy. … Fascism (both in the German and Italian versions) … was socio-economically a counter-revolutionary movement. … It certainly did not dispossess or annihilate existent socio-economic élites. … Quite the contrary. Fascism did not arrest the trend toward monopolistic private concentrations in business but instead augmented

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