DemocracyThe God That Failed

by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  (1) [The New Left's] increasingly thoroughgoing opposition to the Vietnam War, U.S. imperialism, and the draft—the major political issues of that period, in contrast to conservative support for these policies. And (2) its forswearing of the old-fashioned statism and Social Democracy of the Old Left led the New Left to semi-anarchistic positions, to what seemed to be thoroughgoing opposition to the existing Welfare-Warfare postNew Deal corporate state, and to the State-ridden bureaucratic university system.

  Writing nearly a decade later, Rothbard acknowledged a two-fold strategic error in his erstwhile attempt to forge an alliance between libertarians and the New Left:

  (a) gravely overestimating the emotional stability, and the knowledge of economics, of these fledgling libertarians; and, as a corollary, (b) gravely underestimating the significance of the fact that these [libertarian] cadre were weak and isolated, that there was no libertarian movement to speak of, and therefore that hurling these youngsters into an alliance with a far more numerous and powerful group was bound to lead to a high incidence of defection... into real leftism of the left-wing-anarchist-Maoistsyndicalist variety. (Toward a Strategy of Libertarian Social Change [unpublished manuscript, 1977], pp. 159,160-61)

  22Murray N. Rothbard has given the following portrait of the "modal libertarian" (ML):

  ML is indeed a he;... The ML was in his twenties twenty years ago, and is now in his forties. That is neither as banal, or as benign as it sounds, because it means that the movement has not really grown in twenty years;... The ML is fairly bright, and fairly well steeped in libertarian theory. But he knows nothing and cares less about history, culture, the context of reality or world affairs. His only reading or cultural knowledge is science fiction,... The ML does not, unfortunately hate the State because he sees it as the unique social instrument of organized aggression against person and property. Instead, the ML is an adolescent rebel against everyone around him: first, against his parents, second against his family, third against his neighbors, and finally against society itself. He is especially opposed to institutions of social and cultural authority: in particular against the bourgeoisie from whom he stemmed, against bourgeois norms and conventions, and against such institutions of social authority as churches. To the ML, then, the State is not a unique problem; it is only the most visible and odious of many hated bourgeois institutions: hence the zest with which the ML sports the button, "Question Authority." ... And hence, too, the fanatical hostility of the ML toward Christianity. I used to think that this militant atheism was merely a function of the Randianism out of which most modern libertarians emerged two decades ago. But atheism is not the key, for let someone in a libertarian gathering announce that he or she is a witch or a worshiper of crystal-power or some other New Age hokum, and that person will be treated with great tolerance and respect. It is only Christians that are subject to abuse, and clearly the reason for the difference in treatment has nothing to do with atheism. But it has everything to do with rejecting and spurning bourgeois American culture; and any kind of kooky cultural cause will be encouraged in order to tweak the noses of the hated bourgeoisie. ... In point of fact, the original attraction of the ML to Randianism was part and parcel of his adolescent rebellion: what better way to rationalize and systematize rejection of one's parents, family, and neighbors than to join a cult which denounces religion and which trumpets the absolute superiority of yourself and your cult leaders, as contrasted to the robotic "second-handers" who supposedly people the bourgeois world? A cult, furthermore, which calls upon you to spum your parents, family, and bourgeois associates, and to cultivate the alleged greatness of your own individual ego (suitably guided, of course, by Randian leadership) the ML, if he has a real world occupation, such as an accountant or lawyer, is generally a lawyer without a practice, and accountant without a job. The ML's modal occupation is computer programmer;... Computers appeal indeed to the ML's scientific and theoretical bent; but they also appeal to his aggravated nomadism, to his need not to have a regular payroll or regular abode The ML also has the thousand-mile stare of the fanatic. He is apt to buttonhole you at the first opportunity and go on at great length about his own particular "great discovery" about his mighty manuscript which is crying out for publication if only it

  This intellectual combination could hardly end happily. Private property capitalism and egalitarian multiculturalism are as unlikely a combination as socialism and cultural conservatism. And in trying to combine what cannot be combined, much of the modern libertarian movement actually contributed to the further erosion of private property rights (just as much of contemporary conservatism contributed to the erosion of families and traditional morals). What the countercultural libertarians failed to recognize, and what true libertarians cannot emphasize enough, is that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social "discrimination" and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multicultural-egalitarian life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarians. In other words, libertarians must be radical and uncompromising conservatives.

  Contrary to the left libertarians assembled around such institutions as the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice, for instance, who seek the assistance of the central government in the enforcement of various policies of nondiscrimination and call for a nondiscriminatory or "free" immigration policy,23 true libertarians must embrace discrimination, be it internal (domestic) or external (foreign). Indeed, private property means discrimination. I, not you, own such and such. I am entitled to exclude you from my property. I may attach conditions to your using my property, and I may expel you from my property. Moreover, You and I, private property owners, may enter and put our property into a restrictive (or protective) covenant. We and others may, if we both deem it beneficial, impose limitations on the future use that each of us is permitted to make with our property.

  hadn't been suppressed by the Powers That Be But above all, the ML is a moocher, a bunco artist, and often an outright crook. His basic attitude toward other libertarians is "Your house is my house." ... in short, whether they articulate this "philosophy" or not, [MLs] are libertarian-communists: anyone with property is automatically expected to "share" it with the other members of his extended libertarian "family." ("Why Paleo?" Rothbard-Rockwell Report 1, no. 2 [May 1990]: 4-5; also idem, "Diversity, Death, and Reason," Rothbard-Rockwell Report 2, no. 5 [May 1991])

  Also see Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., The Case for Paleolibertarianism and Realignment on the Right (Burlingame, Calif.: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1990).

  More specifically, left-libertarians (LLs) employ and promote the employment of the federal government and its courts to squash discriminatory and presumably antilibertarian state and /or local laws and regulations; they thus contribute, regardless of their intention, to the antilibertarian end of strengthening the central state. Correspondingly, LLs typically look favorably upon Lincoln and the Union government because the Union victory over the secessionist Confederacy resulted in the abolition of slavery, but they fail to recognize that this way of achieving the libertarian goal of abolishing slavery must lead to a drastic increase in the power of the central (federal) government, and that the Union victory in the Southern War of Independence indeed marks one of the great leaps forward in the growth of the modern federal Leviathan and hence represents a profoundly antilibertarian episode in American history. Further, while us criticize the current practice of "affirmative action" as a quota system, they do not reject the so-called civil-rights legislation from which the present practice developed as entirely and fundamentally incompatible with the cornerstone of libertarian political philosophy, i.e., private property rights. To the contrary, LLs are very much concerned about "civil rights," most prominently the "right" of gays and other alternative life-stylers not to be discriminated against in employment and housing. Accordingly, they look favorably on the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education to outlaw segregati
on and the proto-socialist "civil rights" leader Martin Luther King. To be sure, as typically recognize the categorical difference between private and socalled public property, and at least in theory they admit that private property owners ought to have the right to discriminate regarding their own property as they please. But the LLs distinctly egalitarian concern for the lofty yet elusive idea of the "progressive extension of dignity" (instead of property rights) to "women, to people of different religions and different races" [David Boaz, p. 16, reference below; my emphasis], misleads them to accept the very principle of "nondiscrimination," even if it is only applied and restricted to public property and the public sector of the economy. (Hence the LLs advocacy of a nondiscriminatory or "free" immigration policy.) Theoretically, LLs thereby commit the error of regarding public property as if it were either unowned "land" open to unrestricted universal homesteading (while in fact all public property has been financed by domestic taxpayers), or as if it were "communal" property open to every domestic citizen on an equal basis (while in fact some citizens have paid more taxes than others, and some, i.e., those whose salaries or subsidies were paid out of taxes, have paid no taxes at all). Worse, in accepting the principle of non-discrimination for the realm of public property, LLs in fact contribute to the further aggrandizement of state power and the diminution of private property rights, for in today's state-ridden world, the dividing line between private and public has become increasingly fuzzy. All private property borders on and is surrounded by public streets; virtually every business sells some of its products to some government agency or across state borders; and countless private firms and organizations (such as private universities, for instance) regularly receive government funding. Hence, as seen from the perspective of the agents of the state, there is practically nothing left that is genuinely "private" and thus does not fall under government purview. Based on this all-pervasive entanglement of the state and public property with private business and private property, and given the government's unique—coercive—bargaining power, it can be safely predicted that the policy of "nondiscrimination" will not remain a principle merely of public policy for long, but will instead increasingly become a general and ultimately universal principle, extending to and encompassing everyone and everything, public and private. (Characteristically, LLs are typically also proponents of Milton Friedman's school voucher proposal and are thus, it would seem, totally unaware that the implementation of the voucher plan would invariably lead to the expansion of government control from public schools to one including private schools and the destruction of whatever autonomous decisionmaking rights the latter schools presently still possess.)

  For representative examples of left-libertarian thought see, for instance, Clint Bolick, Grassroots Tyranny: The Limits of Federalism (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1993); idem, The Affirmative Action Fraud: Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision? (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1996); and David Boaz, Libertarianism: A Primer (New York: Free Press, 1997); for a rebuttal of the left-libertarian views of Bolick and Boaz from the right or "paleo-libertarian" perspective see Murray N. Rothbard, "The Big Government Libertarians: The Anti-Left-Libertarian Manifesto," Rothbard-Rockwell Report 4, no. 12 (December 1993); idem, "Big Government Libertarians," Rothbard-Rockwell Report 5, no. 11 (November 1994); and Jeffrey A. Tucker's review of Boaz' book in the Journal of Libertarian Studies 13, no. 1 (1997).

  The modern welfare state has largely stripped private property owners of the right to exclusion implied in the concept of private property. Discrimination is outlawed. Employers cannot hire whom they want. Landlords cannot rent to whom they want. Sellers cannot sell to whomever they wish; buyers cannot buy from whomever they wish to buy. And groups of private property owners are not permitted to enter in whatever restrictive covenant they believe to be mutually beneficial. The state has thus robbed the people of much of their personal and physical protection. Not to be able to exclude others means not to be able to protect oneself. The result of this erosion of private property rights under the democratic welfare state is forced integration. Forced integration is ubiquitous. Americans must accept immigrants they do not want. Teachers cannot get rid of lousy or ill-behaved students, employers are stuck with poor or destructive employees, landlords are forced to live with bad renters, banks and insurance companies are not allowed to avoid bad risks, restaurants and bars must accommodate unwelcome customers, and private clubs and covenants are compelled to accept members and actions in violation of their very own rules and restrictions. Moreover, on public, i.e., government property in particular, forced integration has taken on a dangerous form: of norm and lawlessness.24

  24"Every property owner," Murray N. Rothbard elaborated,

  should have the absolute right to sell, hire, or lease his money or other property to anyone whom he chooses, which means he has the absolute right to "discriminate" all he damn pleases. If I have a plant and want to hire only six-foot albinos, and I can find willing employees, I should have the right to do so, even though I might well lose my shirt doing so. ... If I own an apartment complex and want to rent only to Swedes without children, I should have the right to do so. Etc. Outlawing such discrimination, and restrictive covenants upholding it, was the original sin from which all other problems followed. Once admit that principle, and everything else follows as the night the day.... For if it is right and proper to outlaw my discriminating against blacks, then it is just as right and proper for the government to figure out if I am discriminating or not, and in that case, it is perfectly legitimate for them to employ quotas to test the proposition.... So what is the remedy for all this? ... What has to be done is to repudiate "civil rights" and antidiscrimination laws totally, and in the meanwhile, on a separate but parallel track, try to privatize as much and as fully as we can. ("Marshall, Civil Rights, and the Court," Rothbard-Rockwell Report 2, no. 8 [August 1991]: 4 and 6)

  To exclude other people from one's own property is the very means by which an owner can avoid "bads" from happening: events that will lower the value of one's property. In not being permitted to freely exclude, the incidence of bads—ill-behaved, lazy, unreliable, rotten students, employees, customers—will increase and property values will fall. In fact, forced integration (the result of all nondiscrimination policies) breeds ill behavior and bad character. In civilized society, the ultimate price for ill behavior is expulsion, and all-around ill-behaved or rotten characters (even if they commit no criminal offense) will find themselves quickly expelled from everywhere and by everyone and become outcasts, physically removed from civilization. This is a stiff price to pay; hence, the frequency of such behavior is reduced. By contrast, if one is prevented from expelling others from one's property whenever their presence is deemed undesirable, ill behavior, misconduct, and outright rotten characters are encouraged (rendered less costly). Rather than being isolated and ultimately entirely removed from society, the "bums"—in every conceivable area of incompetency (bumhood)—are permitted to perpetrate their unpleasantries everywhere, so bum-like behavior and bums will proliferate. The results of forced integration are only too visible. All social relations—whether in private or business life—have become increasingly egalitarian (everyone is on a first name basis with everyone else) and uncivilized.

  In distinct contrast, a society in which the right to exclusion is fully restored to owners of private property would be profoundly unegalitarian, intolerant, and discriminatory. There would be little or no "tolerance" and "open-mindedness" so dear to left-libertarians. Instead, one would be on the right path toward restoring the freedom of association and exclusion implied in the institution of private property, if only towns and villages could and would do what they did as a matter of course until well into the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States. There would be signs regarding entrance requirements to the town, and, once in town, requirements for entering specific pieces of property (for example, no beggars, bums, or homeless, but also no homosexuals, drug users, J
ews, Moslems, Germans, or Zulus), and those who did not meet these entrance requirements would be kicked out as trespassers. Almost instantly, cultural and moral normalcy would reassert itself.

  Left-libertarians and multi- or countercultural lifestyle experimentalists, even if they were not engaged in any crime, would once again have to pay a price for their behavior. If they continued with their behavior or lifestyle, they would be barred from civilized society and live physically separate from it, in ghettos or on the fringes of society, and many positions or professions would be unattainable to them. In contrast, if they wished to live and advance within society, they would have to adjust and assimilate to the moral and cultural norms of the society they wanted to enter. To thus assimilate would not necessarily imply that one would have to give up one's substandard or abnormal behavior or lifestyle altogether. It would imply, however, that one could no longer "come out" and exhibit one's alternative behavior or lifestyle in public. Such behavior would have to stay in the closet, hidden from the public eye, and physically restricted to the total privacy of one's own four walls. Advertising or displaying it in public would lead to expulsion.25