Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement5/29/2007 By Brian Doherty |
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Book Review I'm pleased that Brian Doherty's book, which has been many years in the writing, is now finally in print. And I recommend that all those interested in the modern American libertarian movement should read it, not least the ninety-three pages of endnotes, which are well worth perusing for their own sake as well as an annex to the main text. Lest readers think that a 741-page book is a daunting prospect, they should expect that Doherty's detailed account will retain their interest. For one thing, not only is Doherty well informed about the minutae of the American libertarian movement and the ideas that American libertarians embrace, but he tells numerous anecdotes, many of which were new to me. Although the index is by no means complete, its eighteen pages provide a fairly comprehensive guide to its contents and thus reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the book. Radicals for Capitalism has considerable strengths. It is a significant and original contribution to the literature of liberty in the U.S. that deserves a place in the libraries of libertarians and classical liberals everywhere and also of those who are seriously interested in American history since the 1940s. It is not only the first book to tell the story of the modern American libertarian movement but it is sufficiently detailed that it is unlikely to be superseded any time soon. Although there are a significant number of errors, some are perhaps inevitable in a book of this length. What is a pity is that many of them would have been caught if, before it was sent to press, the author had shared his manuscript with just a few of a hundred people who had participated in the movement. The book is more than a simple history of the movement but rather a substantial, if somewhat idiosyncratic, exposition of the ideas of the principal protagonists and other intellectual influences. And, as I have already indicated, the endnotes and index make it much more useful both to the novice inquirer who is intrigued by libertarian ideas and to the veteran libertarian who seeks to extend his knowledge of the movement. All the more frustrating, therefore, not to have running heads printed at the top of each page of endnotes that specify the pages of the main text to which those particular notes refer. This makes it difficult to locate references as one reads the book. For all his faults, actual and perceived, large and small, it was Murray Rothbard above all others who described, elaborated, and defended "a science of liberty," a comprehensive intellectual framework that integrated theoretical and historical insights from the full range of scholarly disciplines. He proposed this system to the friends of liberty, not least because the friends of liberty should necessarily be the friends of reason and the friends of peace, as the unitarian and anarchist F. A. "Baldy" Harper, who founded the Institute for Humane Studies, recognized. Rothbard's love of, and his belief in, the importance of, history conceived as the history of liberty (to use Lord Acton's happy phrase), was a fundamental part of his intellectual make-up. It lay behind his belief in the importance of creating an intellectual cadre that would articulate a principled advocacy of individual liberty and private property against the defenders of state power and collectivist ideologies of every stripe. Although Doherty correctly identifies Rothbard as an anarchist, often as an anarcho-capitalist, he is perhaps better described as a private-property anarchist. This is certainly an important part of his political philosophy. However, it seems to me that another divide among libertarians may sometimes be as useful as the anarchist/minarchist dichotomy in understanding the modern American libertarian movement. This is the division between those who see the state as either unnecessary (the anarchists) or necessary but evil (to be watched with the greatest of skepticism and caution at all times) and those for whom the state is necessary and benign (in the performance of what they regard as its essential functions-the provision of armed forces, the maintenance of police, courts and prisons, etc.). Consider the other four intellectual figures whom Doherty examines at length. Although Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism prescribes inviolate individual rights, laissez-faire and a nightwatchman state or even something smaller, her distinctive ideological contribution is an epistemology that seeks to defend a rational egoism and, secondarily, a classical liberal ideology. Of course, as Doherty explains, although Rand refused to be associated with the libertarian movement, her writings brought many people eventually to an explicit libertarianism. And her perspective on both the relationship between business and the state and U.S. foreign relations, which reflected her own version of American exceptionalism founded on a quite startling ignorance of U.S. and world history, was not shared by many thoughtful libertarians, at least not in the naïve version she articulated. It is worth noting that whereas most libertarians who adopted their beliefs in the 1960s and 1970s would point to either Ayn Rand, Ludwig Mises or Murray Rothbard, or perhaps two or all three, as inspirations and intellectual mentors, far fewer, if any, such people would regard Milton Friedman or F. A. Hayek in the same vein. Although most would recognize the contributions of Friedman and Hayek to classical liberal scholarship and advocacy, few would attribute their own positions to their influence. It is, however, probable that after 1980 many of those who have identified as libertarian do attribute their views to watching and reading Friedman, not least because of the reach of the PBS TV series and the book Free to Choose that were first published in 1980. On the other hand, there are not many libertarians who adopted their position as a result of reading Hayek. Although Doherty provides a detailed account of what people thought and wrote as well as what they did, he pretty much takes everything he is told as truth, not least when he discusses Ayn Rand. The book also largely lacks much explanation for why people wrote and behaved as they did. It also lacks serious discussion of the more contentious intellectual issues that have occupied libertarians over the years and continue to exercise them to the present day. These may be broadly subsumed under two headings: justice in property (including abortion, reparations to former slaves and their descendants, contracts that bind free men and women to future servitude, the ownership and rents of unimproved land, property rights in the environment, and intellectual property) and issues arising from the existence of nation-states in general (most notably with applications to immigration, empire, and war) and the United States in particular (the legitimate scope of federal authority in the affairs of its member states). In fairness to Doherty, he does touch on some of these issues but he fails to truly engage with these difficult and contentious topics. Of course, these omissions are perhaps not surprising given the focus implicit in the title of the book-Radicals for Capitalism-which suggests an emphasis on private property and free markets in a modern industrial society. Doherty chose to focus on a narrower set of ideas and a sequence of events that have unfolded over some sixty-five years in the United States, and his choice is accurately reflected in the title and subtitle of his book. It's just that an account of the modern American libertarian movement that included a serious discussion of some of these other issues (most notably questions about war and peace) and at least briefly covered the historical context necessary to understand present-day controversies involving such issues would have been very welcome. As the subtitle clearly states, Doherty has written a book about the modern libertarian movement in America, the country and nation-state where an explicitly libertarian movement has been most active since the Second World War. That said, classical liberal ideas have been vigorously championed in Britain-first and most importantly by the Institute of Economic Affairs, and subsequently by advocacy groups and public policy institutes, but never as a libertarian political party. In fact, it is arguable that in some respects government policy has been changed in a free-market direction more substantially in Britain than in the United States. For example, regulation of public utilities allows more competition from new firms. These ideas have also been advocated on the Continent of Europe and, again, in some respects implemented more in the former communist states than in western Europe or the U.S. For example, income is sometimes taxed at lower rates and subject to less complex rules. Some comparison between the modern American libertarian movement and parallel developments, such as they have been, in Europe, would have been helpful if only to understand better the American phenomenon. Although Doherty devotes the first chapter of his book to placing the modern American libertarian movement in the context of Revolutionary America and the distinctive American individualist tradition that evolved in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he would have done better to situate it more emphatically in the context of a broader transatlantic classical liberal tradition that evolved out of the political ferment of seventeenth-century Europe and the Enlightenment. In other words, somewhat less American exceptionalism, or at least somewhat less of a particular sort of that exceptionalism, would have been in order. Of course, a belief in American exceptionalism is characteristic of modern American libertarians and the author could also have stressed this point to advantage. This may help explain why so many people who identify themselves as libertarian are prepared to tolerate, and even support, conduct by the U.S. government in international affairs that they would likely protest if carried out by any other government. Associated with this is the willingness of American libertarians to identify with their government even when they criticize it, as in "We invaded Iraq and we must exit now." There's another interesting thread that Doherty doesn't really explore: the presence or absence of religious belief among libertarians and among movement leaders in particular. Neither Rand, nor Friedman, nor Mises, nor Hayek, nor Rothbard was religious. I think it's fair to describe them all as either atheist or agnostic verging on atheist. By contrast, the contemporary libertarian movement includes a great many religiously minded people, the vast majority of whom are Christian. It is also worth noting that four out of the five were ethnically Jewish, two being European Jews who immigrated to America (Rand and Mises), and two being the sons of Jews who had previously left Europe for America (Friedman and Rothbard). Only Hayek was a Gentile. And only Hayek was a European throughout his life. He was not born an American like Friedman or Rothbard, and he did not become a naturalized American like Rand or Mises. Although Hayek spent many years in Britain (and acquired British citizenship and much later was appointed a Companion of Honour) and latterly the United States, he was born and brought up in Vienna and spent the last thirty years of his life in Freiburg, Germany (with visits to Britain and America). Some of the more egregious factual errors and the absence of running heads from the endnotes could and should be addressed in a later printing of the book, perhaps in a paperback edition that would introduce this detailed and readable history of the modern American libertarian movement to a wider audience. Brian Doherty spent a huge amount of time and effort researching and writing this book. Although it is necessarily written from a particular perspective within the libertarian movement, there's nothing else like it in print and for that reason alone it should be read by libertarians and anyone else interested in the subject.
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