Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 23:24:40 -0400
To: marxism-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
From: dhenwood-AT-panix.com (Doug Henwood)
Subject: Re: Any thoughts about libertarianism?


At 7:48 PM 4/28/96, Chris M. Sciabarra wrote:

>On Sun, 28 Apr 1996, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> You are right that they invent an ideal capitalism that has never existed
>> and never could, and always trace any faults in K'ism to state
>> interference. They ignore - and are often completely ignorant of - the
>> history of state coercion and support necessary to the creation of
>> capitalism, from the appropriations of primitive accumulation, to the
>> adventures of imperialism, to the kinds of subsidies and bailouts I
>> mentioned above.
>        Well, not all of us <libertarians> are necessarily of the above
>opinion, and libertarianism is extremely diverse, and has been identified
>with wildly different intellectual approaches, from the Ayn
>Rand-influenced to the Hayekian, from the Rothbardian anarchist to the
>monetarist.  And these are not necessarily compatible with one another;
>in fact, in some respects, they are completely antithetical to one
>another.

As I said in my original post, libertarianism is a many-splendored thing,
which conceded diversity as I was about to generalize wildly. I was
referring mainly to vulgar libertarianism of the sort one runs into on the
net and in The American Spectator. You, Chris S., are of course many miles
above that nonsense.

One of the stranger intra-lib doctrinal disputes is the Hayek-von Mises
split. I suppose if I devoted some serious time to figuring it out, I
could, but maybe you could provide me with the Readers' Digest version.


>        I don't think that all libertarians are atomists; some of the
>best are good precisely because they are NOT atomists, and fully
>understand the social and cultural context within which individuals grow
>and flourish, or decline and die... and as for the Frankfurt school --
>you'll find a lot more agreement between the Frankfurters and Hayek on
>such issues as "constructivist" or "instrumentalist" rationalism, than
>between Hayek and some rationalistic libertarian types.

No, certainly not all, but most free marketeers see a world in which
individuals communicate to each other only through price signals - and not
only that, view that sort of world as ideal, and want to make reality
conform to the ideal. Any attempts, a la Polanyi, to soften the harsh
disciplines of the market are regarded as distortions, a sign of either
wimpiness or even the defense of privilege.

Doug

--

Doug Henwood
Left Business Observer
250 W 85 St
New York NY 10024-3217
USA
+1-212-874-4020 voice
+1-212-874-3137 fax
email: <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
web: <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/LBO_home.html>




     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---