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Sunday, March 06, 2005
Revisiting Rothbard
A friend of Rothbard's, and a rather odd biographer of Ayn Rand, examines the libertarian philosopher's thoughts. Via the Mises Blog:
Let me start by saying what this article is not. It is not going to be a place to debate Murray Rothbard’s anarchism. Or his stance on foreign policy. Or his various, changing stances on libertarian strategy. (In fact, all of these stances put together constitute a very small fraction of the totality of his thought.) Suffice it to say, I had and have profound differences with Rothbard. But there comes a point at which it is important to express one’s own appreciation: Murray Rothbard was one of my mentors and made a crucial impact on my own intellectual development. And, quite frankly, he was a teacher to many, many libertarian writers—including those who, today, are among his fiercest critics.
Posted by PUBLIUS on March 6, 2005 at 06:38 PM | Permalink
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» Rothbard, Rand, and Revisionism from Notablog
My SOLOHQ essay on Rothbard continues to make the blogosphere rounds. The Gods of the Copybook Headings mentions it, and Le Revue Gauche discusses it as well. In the meanwhile, today, I posted yet another comment on a running Rothbard... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 10, 2005 9:21:32 AM
» Rothbard, Rand, and Revisionism from Notablog
My SOLOHQ essay on Rothbard continues to make the blogosphere rounds. The Gods of the Copybook Headings mentions it, and Le Revue Gauche discusses it as well. In the meanwhile, today, I posted yet another comment on a running Rothbard... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 11, 2005 7:04:17 AM
Comments
Thanks for the tip and check out my reply to you at my blog Le Revue Gauche http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2005/03/libertarian-dialectics.html
Posted by: Eugene Plawiuk | Mar 9, 2005 4:58:53 PM
Sorry Eugene but I have little interest in debating the labour theory of value, dialectic materialism or the inevitablility of class struggle within capitalism. These are very old battles and frankly rather stale ones. As for the empirical evidence of class struggle this is a rather touch and go subject. Yes you do have the Winnipeg General Strike, to cite a Canadian example, and some aspects of trade unionism, the Wobblies being the best if not the only example, but the problem with class struggle from a sociological and historical point of view is that it is general theory that fails to explain all but isolated incidents, and those have other plausible explanations themselves.
You were working class in North America if you thought of yourself as being working class. There were plenty of other ideologies, groups, regional identities, that people attached themselves to. Most of them far more powerful than the socio-economic definition of working class.
These identities overall were extremely fluid in both definition and membership. Huge waves of immigrants passed quite quickly from working without capital to working with their own, pooled or otherwise. During the intermediate period between arrival and working for wages and becoming effectively self-employed and making profits these immigrants had far stronger attachments to race and religion than temporary socio-economic positions.
As a general point, if a working class is a working class than it should behave like one. When, aside from isolated incidents like 1919 has the Canadian working class en masse agitated for reform. Or indeed acted as more than a mere expression. Try answering that question without mentioning trade, craft or industrial unionism. Those are forever cited as expressions of working class solidarity but that was the theory not the practice. Unionism only became a major force in the United States after the Wagner Act shoved the concept of closed shops down the throats of millions of American workers who preffered not to have the "protection" of a union. In Canada the equivalent was the Rand Formula, which was a product of a judicial activism we are still cursed with today.
When technological and regulatory changes happened in the 1970s and 1980s unionism was reduced to back ground noise in political and social debates.
As for the working class itself, where is it today? Who aside from unionized industrial workers, well educated in pseudo-marxist propaganda, think of themselves as working class?
Posted by: Publius | Mar 9, 2005 10:35:47 PM
