[Peace-discuss] Libertarian/Anarchist

[John W.]

Perfect.  Couldn't have said it better myself...and I've tried.


On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 1:06 AM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:

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)
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