[Peace-discuss] Libertarian/Anarchist

[C. G. Estabrook]

Man: What's the difference between "libertarian" and "anarchist," exactly?

Chomsky: There's no difference, really. I think they're the same thing. But you 
see, "libertarian" has a special meaning in the United States. The United States 
is off the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what's called 
"libertarianism" here is unbridled capitalism. Now, that's always been opposed 
in the European libertarian tradition, where every anarchist has been a 
socialist—because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all 
kinds of authority: you have extreme authority.

If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent 
themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, 
it's a free contract" -- but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell 
you or starve," that's not a choice -- it's in fact what was commonly referred 
to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries, for example.

The American version of "libertarianism" is an aberration, though nobody really 
takes it seriously. I mean, everybody knows that a society that worked by 
American libertarian principles would self-destruct in three seconds. The only 
reason people pretend to take it seriously is because you can use it as a 
weapon. Like, when somebody comes out in favor of a tax, you can say: "No, I'm a 
libertarian, I'm against that tax" -- but of course, I'm still in favor of the 
government building roads, and having schools, and killing Libyans, and all that 
sort of stuff.

Now, there are consistent libertarians, people like Murray Rothbard -- and if 
you just read the world that they describe, it's a world so full of hate that no 
human being would want to live in it. This is a world where you don't have roads 
because you don't see any reason why you should cooperate in building a road 
that you're not going to use: if you want a road, you get together with a bunch 
of other people who are going to use that road and you build it, then you charge 
people to ride on it. If you don't like the pollution from somebody's 
automobile, you take them to court and you litigate it. Who would want to live 
in a world like that? It's a world built on hatred.

The whole thing's not even worth talking about, though. First of all, it 
couldn't function for a second -- and if it could, all you'd want to do is get 
out, or commit suicide or something. But this is a special American aberration, 
it's not really serious.

(from Understanding Power)