Vol. 1.16, November 15, 1969

A Semi-Monthly Newsletter

THE

Libertarian Forum

Joseph R. Peden, Publisher	Washington Editor, Karl Hess	Murray N. Rothbard, Editor
VOL. I, NO. XVI	November 15, 1969	35¢

ULTRA-LEFTISM

The Marxians, who have thought longer and harder about revolutionary change than anyone else, have very perceptively discovered two major contrasting errors, two major deviations from the proper revolutionary “line”: “right-wing opportunism” or “liquidationism”, and “ultra-left adventurism”. Right-wing opportunism is above all a moral failure, a willingness to abandon principle for the sake of a “practical” working within the system, a course which invariably leads to becoming a part of the system itself and to opposing the very cause to which the rightist is supposedly devoted. “Ultra-left adventurism” is by no means a moral failure; in fact, the ultra-leftist acts in the world to attempt to achieve the common goal as rapidly as he can. The problem is the ultra-leftist’s total lack of strategic sense; in rushing at the Enemy blindly, emotionally, and with insufficient preparation for allies, he not only inevitably gets clobbered, but he also sinks his own cause at the same time. While the ultra-leftist is morally lovable, his emotional lashing-out at the system can be equally as disastrous to the cause he espouses as the cynical opportunism of the right-liquidationist. Both deviations from the main revolutionary line of rational, protracted struggle must be combatted.

In recent months, ultra-leftism has emerged as a serious problem both in the New Left and in the libertarian movement. On the New Left, ultra-leftism has been chiefly responsible for the galloping disintegration of SDS. The ouster of the Progressive Labor wing of SDS provided an opportunity and a challenge to the remainder of this leading New Left group to return to the libertarian, non-Stalinist, revolutionary path which had marked SDS for a year or two after its 1966 convention. Within the non-PL wing of SDS, the triumph of the “Weatherman” faction over RYM-II was also a hopeful sign, since RYM-II’s Marxism, Stalinism, and worship of the “working class” was almost as aggravated as that of PL. But now the Weathermen are wrecking SDS through their total immersion in ultra-left adventurism.

The Weatherman strategy consists largely of kamikaze charges against the police. Calling for a massive “invasion” of Chicago (“pig city”) on October 8-11, only a couple of hundred frenzied Weathermen and Weatherwomen showed up, to charge the police and get clobbered and arrested for their pains. The latest issue of the Weathermen’s New Left Notes, which used to be the most important theoretical and strategic journal for the New Left, consists solely of pictures of Weathermen and cops slugging it out, interspersed with a few incoherent paragraphs cursing at American society. The curses are understandable; but this whole hysteria has about as much in common with genuine revolution as a barroom brawl has with truly mass action.

The hysteria, and the pitiful failure, of the Weathermen stem not so much from personal psychosis as from incorrect strategic theory. The Weathermen are superb in realizing who the enemy is; the enemy is the State, the State’s goon-squad police, and the public school system, which the Weathermen correctly identify as a vast prison-house for the nation’s youth. (In contrast, PL and RYM-II oppose the Weathermen’s goal of destroying the public school system, because the “working class” likes the schools.) Further-more, in contrast to all other Marxian sects, the Weathermen have come to realize that they cannot rely on the industrial “working class” as their potential reservoir of allies. Everyone recognizes that the working class is precisely the most reactionary, the most social-fascist, the most racist element of American society, and the Weathermen realize that American Marxists have boxed themselves into a complete dead end in pinning their hopes on the workers.

But if not the working class, who? Who is to be the “agency of social change”, the main reservoir of recruits for the revolution? The most sensible answer would be the “middle class” (or as former SDS theorist Greg Calvert called them, the “new working class”), which is after all the vast bulk of the population. But the Weathermen are blocked from trying to appeal to the middle class, (a) because this would end the chronic Marxian-New Left emphasis on the most evidently downtrodden groups, for even though the middle-classes are exploited by the ruling class, it is hard for ultra-left romantics to get stirred up over injustice to those who are not super-poverty-stricken; and (b) because the New Left is so filled with hatred of the middle-class “bourgeois” life-style that it refuses to consider the middle-class as anything but part of the Enemy. If not the working class, or the middle-class, then who? In desperation, the Weathermen reached toward another group: working-class youth-motorcycle hoods, outlaws, high-school dropouts, etc. They fail to realize that even if they could organize the young hoods, they couldn’t accomplish “anything, because the hoods have even less social leverage, less potential to mobilize masses of people (almost all of whom hate the hoods, and with good reason) than the students of SDS.

Having disastrously decided to concentrate on organizing the youth-lumpen, the Weathermen had to decide how to go about it. How to reach the lumpen? It was obvious that campus groups were not the way, and neither could the young lumpen be reached by journals or theoretical discussions. The only, way seemed to be to “gain the respect” of the machismo—instincts of the young hoods by engaging in street-combat with the cops. These street fights were supposed to serve as “exemplary actions” (a current in-phrase) which would mobilize and inspire the young hoods and lead them toward the Weathermen. Well, of course, this nonsensical tactic has not worked and will not work. The only “example”, the only lesson, that any sensible young hood can draw from Weathermanship is that here are a bunch of loonies who go charging the cops and only get clobbered and busted for their pains. What even remotely national young hood would be other than repulsed by the Weatherman “example”?

As far as the Weathermen go, the interesting problem for speculation is what they will do in a year or so, when it will have become obvious, even to them, that they have failed and that they have not raised the standard to which the hoods and dropouts have repaired. If any of the Weathermen are alive and out of jail by that time, perhaps they will then come to their senses, and rethink their strategy and tactics.

Contrast to the futile desperation of the Weathermen the brilliantly successful strategy and tactics of the Vietnam Moratorium. Returning to the successful grass-roots tactics of the Vietnam 1965 teach-ins, the Moratorium of October 15 mobilized literally millions of the “silent majority”, the middle-class, in every village and community in the country, in dramatic opposition to the endless war in Vietnam. While all the factions of SDS stood aloof, scornful of the insufficient radicalism of the Moratorium people, millions of Americans poured out in the largest demonstration in America’s history, and in support of a demand that was phenomenally radical for a middle-class movement: immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Vietnam. If we realize that only a year ago, the middle-class would not support any demand more radical than “please, Mr. President, stop the bombing”, the achievement of the Moratorium is seen to be dazzling indeed. For the future, the idea of escalating the pressure one day per month of the war, is another superb tactical method for mobilizing millions for a continuing increase of pressure on the U.S. government. (But let us hope that the anti-war movement will not be diverted, as it was in 1965, away from local grass-roots actions to spectacular but scarcely productive mass demonstrations confined to Washington.)

The success of the Moratorium stems from its focusing on winning the support of and radicalizing the middle-class—the great bulk of the American population. And here, in particular, lies a crucial lesson for the libertarian movement. The prime center of our movement, as well as the New Left, is now and will continue to be the college campus. Here is the recruitment ground for our cadre and the immediate theatre of our activity. But insofar as we wish to move out into the adult community—and we can never hope to win unless we ultimately do so—we libertarians have a particularly ripe potential in the vast middle class. Here is where we have our “comparative advantage” as compared to the Marxian New Left, and so here is where we should move from our campus focos.

Let me put it this way: at our Libertarian Conference on the Columbus Day weekend, it became evident that both our right-wing and our ultra-leftists were focusing on the wrong problem. The right-wing began the error by charging that, comes the revolution, we libertarians would inevitably lose out to the Marxists, and another State would replace the current monstrosity. In response to this charge, our ultra-lefts proclaimed that what we must do is march out on the barricades with the New Left, earn their respect, and then use this respect to convert the New Left from Marxism to libertarianism. This, I submit, misconceives the problem and the nature of the revolutionary process. The revolutionary process is a huge, complex pattern of activity, with each person and each group concentrating on what it does best—the division of labor is just as important and as valid in revolution in any other sphere of activity. Our objective should not be to convert the Weathermen or the Panthers—probably a hopeless task, and less than crucial in any case. Our objective should be to act where we have a comparative advantage—with the middle class. Put it this way: suppose that it came to a revolutionary crunch, and somehow the mass of the middle-class found themselves forced to choose between us and the Marxists, us and the Weathermen. Which of us would they choose? I don’t think there is any question about the answer. They would choose us, because we stand for freedom and for the rights of private property.

So we don’t have to have an inferiority complex relative to the Marxian New Left. In the long run, our attraction for the middle-class masses is infinitely greater than theirs. So let us pursue the division of labor within the revolutionary process. Let the Weathermen or the Panthers charge the police or try to storm the Department of Justice building. Let us cheer them on as they do battle with the U.S. State Leviathan. But let us not confuse cheering for them with our own strategic and tactical needs. Let us do what we can do best, which is to spread the message and the actions of freedom, and of radical defense of property rights, to the middle-class masses who are potentially our allies and supporters. If we do so, then we won’t have to worry about who will win out in the final result.

For years I have advocated an alliance between libertarians and SDS, but many people have misinterpreted the meaning of such an alliance. I meant, first of all, that when SDS battles the State, it is morally incumbent upon us to support and cheer SDS on, but this does not mean that we should be participating in these actions. Again—the division of labor. (In the same way, we should cheer on the Biafrans as they battle for their freedom against the massed might of the Nigerian State—but that doesn’t mean that it somehow our duty to rush out there and participate in the war.) Secondly, SDS was, in those days, the only revolutionary movement going, it was itself instinctively libertarian, and the only way that our tiny handful of pure libertarians could act to change the world was to orient ourselves to SDS. But now all that is changed: SDS, in the past year, has become largely Stalinoid and is rapidly disintegrating, and the pure libertarian movement has been growing by great leaps and bounds. In this situation, our best strategy is not to join SDS but to develop our own libertarian organizations, on campus and in the adult world, to recruit new pure cadre and to attract the scores of thousands of radical and instinctively libertarian kids who are properly disgusted with the disintegrating SDS and are looking for a place to go. We can provide that ideological and activist home. This is our historic opportunity, and we would be derelict in not taking advantage of this ripe potential for rapid growth.

But if we must orient to the middle-class as our long-range strategy, then this means that many of us must give up much of the petty and irrelevant nonsense that is wrapped up in today’s “cultural revolution”—a “revolution” that can never do anything but totally alienate the middle-class. It is too bad that the middle-class is silly enough to place any importance whatever on the fripperies of hair, life-style, etc. But as long as they do, it is criminal negligence to toss away opportunities to influence them in order to cling to the dubious benefits of the drug-rock culture. If millions of kids could go “Clean for Gene” in 1968, isn’t it infinitely more important to go “Clean for Anarchy”?

“Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though 1 shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things.”

— Voltair, 1764

FDP:

NEOLIBERALS IN GERMAN POLITICS

West German President Gustav Heinemann, following this fall’s election, called on Social Democratic Party leader Willy Brandt to become chancellor and Free Democratic Party leader Walter Scheel to become foreign minister in a new cabinet. This coalition’s domestic program is centered upon the reduction of taxes for the white collar and blue collar middle classes, civilian control over the military, and increased individual freedoms. In foreign affairs, they propose permanent good relations with the Soviet Union based upon West Germany’s recognition of the “inviolability of the borders and demarcation lines” in Europe, including the border between East and West Germany, de facto recognition of the East German government through a general treaty, and diplomatic recognition to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. This would mean a renunciation of the Hallstein Doctrine whereby West Germany withdrew diplomatic relations from any country recognizing East Germany; now many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will be likely to recognize East Germany. Meanwhile, West Germany will be able to improve its trading position in East European countries which have long had relations with the U.S., England and France. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) controlling the foreign ministry will give the impetus to this East Bloc diplomatic policy.

The FDP’s policies have been characterized as the “traditions of libertarianism and economic neoliberalism”. It is the heir of the radical individualism of Locke and the rationalism of the French Revolution. Rooted in the values of education and independent property, FDP has been the party of creativity and rebellion. It came into existence after World War II when there was a widespread belief that radical liberalism was outmoded and must disappear before the conservatives’ militarism, clericalism, and authoritarianism or the socialists’ manipulation, repressive tolerance, and exploitation. But, FDP challenged the post-war world with the radical economics of the Austrian School of Mises and Hayek against the Christian Democratic (CDU) and Social Democratic (SPD) parties. When Konrad Adenauer organized the CDU his 1947 program called for nationalization of industry. But, the early necessity for CDU to form a coalition with FDP forced the laissez-faire economist Ludwig Erhard up on the U.S. and Adenauer in 1948 as post-war economic coordinator. Since Erhard belonged to the CDU it was that party and not FDP which gained popular credit for Erhard’s rigorous monetary policies. When the West German government was formed, FDP leader Prof. Theodor Heuss became president, and FDP assumed the justice and interior (police) ministries to keep watch that civil liberties were not violated by the state.

FDP’s disenchantment with CDU came from Adenauer’s pro-U.S. foreign policy. Germans were not enamoured of the U.S. after the brutality they had suffered during the war (cf. Veale, Advance to Barbarism) and during occupation (cf. Salomon, Fragebogen, which was the most widely read post-war German book). Adenauer was viewed as betraying Germany’s historic role of balancing East and West, both during the nineteenth century and the inter-war period. FDP challenged the re-militarization of Germany by the U.S. and led the battle alongside the SPD for reunion of the Saarland Germans when Adenauer sought to sacrifice them to France to gain approval for German re-militarization.

By the mid-1950’s FDP’s demands fox diplomatic relations, with the Soviet Union, trade with East Europe and a neutralist foreign policy pointed to an end to the coalition with the CDU. Extra-parliamentary protest in the streets against U.S. dominated foreign policy influenced the FDP and SPD in parliament into opposition. This street protest was led by now president Heinemann who had resigned from Adenauer’s cabinet and party in 1950 over CDU militarism. As a leading Protestant and anti-collectivist, Heinemann led a campaign for neutralism, and later joined the SPD to agitate for his principles.

In 1957 Adenauer split the FDP, absorbing its cabinet members into CDU while the majority of FDP went into parliamentary opposition. From that date CDU leaders have sought to abolish the proportional representation electoral law in order to destroy the FDP. Dr. Thomas Dehler became FDP chairman and opened party posts to the “Young Rebels” who sought coalition with SPD, who were FDP partners in several state governments. These angry young men rejected the “end of ideology” concept of the 1950’s and replaced “practical” objectives with a totally ideological commitment summarized as “Repeal laws, bureaucracy, and taxation.” They represented the same intellectual ferment which produced the New Left in England and America. The “Young Rebels” established the magazine Liberal and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for radical education. The “Young Rebels”-FDP alliances with SPD in state governments obviously required a broader agreement than opposition to NATO and U.S. foreign policy, or support for civil liberties. Along with the. FDP, SPD reacted to the feudal, corporatist, Christian socialism of CDU; SPD denounced economic planning in its new program: “Competition and the freedom of initiative of the entrepreneur are important elements of the SPD economic policy.” It further declared: “We Social Democrats demand a free economic development, free competition and private property conscious of its responsibilities to the general good.” Thereafter, SPD often supported Erhard when the statists of the CDU deserted his laissez-faire programs.

Opposition to Erhard in CDU was centered among the Christian trade unionists and major business interests. In 1959 when President Heuss’ term ended, Adenauer was persuaded to accept the presidency until he realized that Erhard was the popular choice to succeed him as chancellor. Adenauer then tried unsuccessfully to force Erhard to become president. Thereafter, FDP campaigned for the retirement of Adenauer and the appointment of Erhard as chancellor. In 1961 that issue gave FDP its highest vote depriving CDU of a majority in Parliament. A CDU-FDF coalition was based on Adenauer’s retirement.

The coalition temporarily split in October 1962 in the Spiegel affair. That magazine, which had the closest ties to FDP, was closed by government police and its editors imprisoned on charges that they had earlier printed information critical of NATO military policy. This suppression occurred in the same week that followed Kennedy’s launching of the Cuban crisis about the editors were known to be critical. Amidst student demonstrations against a police state, FDP ministers resigned and returned only on the dismissal of the guilty party, defense minister Franz Josef Strauss. Adenauer was forced to set his own resignation for mid-1963 when SPD threatened to join FDP in a coalition headed by Erhard. Erhard became chancellor in 1963 in a coalition with FDP. This coalition was successful in the 1965 national elections. But, when Erhard was pressured by the U.S. in 1966 to impose tax increases to pay U.S. occupation army costs to offset the expenses of the Vietnam war, FDP voted against the taxes and Erhard resigned. The new CDU chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, restored Strauss (a supporter of U.S. war in Vietnam) to the cabinet. To FDP, coalition was impossible with anyone like Kiesinger who had declared: “the question these days is not one of the freedom of the individual vis-à-vis the state, but vice versa, a question of how to defend the authority of the state against an unbridled, anarchic freedom.”

Thereafter, FDP, under the chairmanship of Walter Scheel, used its opposition role to champion the right of protest of German youth and citizens’ rights against the state. In the spring of 1969 FDP joined with SPD to elect Heinemann as West German president in preparation for a joint campaign against Kiesinger in the fall elections. The authoritarianism of Kiesinger, Strauss and the CDU were repudiated by the voters.

— Leonard P. Liggio

ATTENTION, LIBERTARIANS

Many readers of the Libertarian Forum have expressed interest in finding other libertarians near them. Therefore, early next year, the Forum will begin to publish the names and addresses of people who would like to be contacted by other readers of the Libertarian Forum. If you’d like your name to be included, please fill out the coupon on the back of this notice.

A YAF Conversion

Many of us have known Ralph Fucetola III, until recently state chairman of New Jersey YAF and member of the Libertarian Caucus, as an extreme right-winger, and a warmongering and red-baiting “libertarian”. From a recent letter of Fucetola’s to the New Left newsletter Hard Times (Oct. 20-27), it appears that Ralph has seen the light. He writes that he was the one who originally introduced Don Meinshausen (HUAC agent in SDS who later recanted publicly) to Herb Romerstein, long-time HUAC operative and anti-Communist “expert” on youth movements. Ralph adds: “In return, Don introduced me and the rest of the almost-libertarian right to what was happening to our generation. Now it’s three months later, the right is splitting, “anarchy” is the wave of the future. With Don’s—and Karl Hess’s—help we learned the quasi-fascist nature of much of the conservative movement; we learned that we have a role in the Movement, that the state can be stopped, that freedom can be won.” Great, Ralph. May your example be followed by many others. There is more joy in Heaven . . .

Recommended Reading

RAMPARTS, November 1969. With former editors Scheer and Hinckle out, Ramparts is better than ever. Particularly good are: J. Goulden and M. Singer, “Dial-A-Bomb: AT&T and ABM”, an excellent dissection of the giant monopoly AT&T’s political clout in American’s government-industrial complex (and note the revelations about the exploitative super-proci
exploitative super-profits made from defense sub-contracting); Sol Stern’s “Canyon: A Troubled Paradise”, about the persecution of the private property of hippieish Canyon, California by all conceivable agencies of local government; and Earl Shorris’ dissection of the new Social-Democrat idol of the right-wing, “Hayakawa in Thought and Action”.

Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States (Princeton University Press). This huge, sprawling (1,005 pages) and expensive book is a thorough, definitive history of religious and consistent pacifism before the Civil War. Much material on such great people and individualist anarchists as William Lloyd Garrison and Henry Clarke Wright.

Michael A. Heilperin, Aspects of the Pathology of Money (London: Michael Joseph), $9.50. Professor Heilperin, a student of Ludwig von Mises, is one of the very few economists who still favor a return to the gold standard. This is a collection of his valuable monetary essays ranging over four decades.

Wilhelm von Humboldt, The Limits of State Action (Cambridge University Press), $7.50. A new translation of this little classic, one of the best defenses of laissez-faire in political philosophy. This book influenced Mill’s On Liberty, and is considerably better than Mill’s compromising work.

Corinne Jacker, The Black Flag of Anarchy: Anti-statism in the United States (Charles Scribner’s Sons), $4.50. A pleasant, though superficial, little book which, however, serves as a useful introduction to the history of American anarchism. For one thing, it is the only history of American anarchism now in print.