Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 09:45:16 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: More on Mullen


I really do appreciate John Mullen's anxiety with regard to ideological
covers for state capitalist mischief.  But to blame all libertarian
ideology for the actions of U.S. and Western imperialism and neofascism
would be no different than blaming ALL socialist types, including the ones
on this list, for the Gulag.  We need to get past the blame, and start
talking to one another.

You are right that "long live the free market" is NOT about leaving the
market alone today.  It is about state bailouts, the permanent war economy
(even without the Soviet Union as nemesis), regulating peoples' personal
mores, state-sponsored regulations, subsidies, and the like designed to
squelch competition, and boost the presence of multi-national
corporations.  

You are also right that we cannot separate the economic structures of
society from their concrete political results... but hard-core
libertarians and Marxists agree on more than you think.  The main
difference between us, from MY perspective, is that in the internality of
economic and political preconditions and results, Marxists give emphasis
to what they view as the economic causal agents; libertarians put far more
emphasis on the role of the state in shaping those agents, perpetuating
predation, and becoming the prime agency of coercion and exploitation
(though our notions of what constitutes exploitation differ).  Since the
economic and political can't be separated, it therefore means that we
understand the interpenetration of state and capital, and the
concentration of capital in general, not as results of some pure free
market, but as a necessary consequence of the predatory state.  That's how
most libertarians see it -- hence, it is why many of them are anarchists.

	Hope we can dispense with the ideological wars here; and really
chat about some of the important issues raised.
						- Chris
=================================================Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Ph.D
Visiting Scholar, NYU Department of Politics
INTERNET:  sciabrrc-AT-is2.nyu.edu
http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc
=================================================


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