Vol. 1.17, 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. XVII	December 1, 1969	35¢

The Anti-War Movement

October and November saw the outpouring of the most massive opposition movement in the long, black history of the government of the United States. In the October Moratorium literally millions of Americans demonstrated in every village and hamlet in the land. In November, nearly a million took the trouble to travel to Washington and San Francisco for a weekend of demonstration. In a country long inured to “backing the President” in any foreign crisis, this determined and ever growing mass movement against the war is a truly remarkable phenomenon. Who among us, ten, five years ago, could have predicted that millions of Americans would raise their voices and bring their persons to the point of total opposition to an American war effort?

Too many libertarians make various “domestic” questions: the census, taxation, neighborhood control, the central cutting edge of their anti-state concerns. As vitally important as these issues are, they pale into insignificance beside the vital importance of the war and its creator, American imperialism. It is war, losing, perpetual, stalemated war, that will ultimately bring down the American Leviathan. If we look at all the successful revolutions of this century, all of them (with the exception of the Cuban in a very small country) were made possible by a losing or a stalemated war into which the State had brought the country. The stage for the Russian Revolution was set by a disastrous and losing war fomented by the Russian Empire. The Chinese Revolution was made possible by Chiang’s lengthy war against the Japanese. Even the French Revolution of 1789 was the consequence of heavy war debts incurred by the French State. Nothing brings about a revolutionary crisis situation—and no revolutions can occur without such crises—so completely as a “no-win” war; nothing so starkly reveals the inadequacy of the existing State to its citizenry. A losing war is more powerful than decades of patient education in the vital task of demystifying and desanctifying the State apparatus in the eyes of its subject population.

America truly has a bear by the tail in Vietnam. Vietnam is not simply an unfortunate blunder, a mistake that can be promptly rectified. Vietnam is part and parcel of the entire concept of U.S. foreign policy since World War II (in many ways since Woodrow Wilson). For the whole thrust of that policy is to create and preserve American politico-economic domination of the world, or at the very least to preserve that degree of world domination which she already has. This means an American policy of world-wide counterrevolution: the suppression of revolutionary and national liberation movements throughout the “Third World”. Until Vietnam, America was able to exercise its control through puppet and client states, and therefore suffered only a minimal drain on its manpower and financial resources. But in Vietnam this policy was shattered forever on the rock of people’s guerrilla war, a war backed to the hilt by virtually the entire population of Vietnam, North and South. Contrary to much liberal opinion, the Vietnamese war is not a civil war—either between North and South or between different factions within the South. It is a war fought by imperial America and a few of its puppets in Saigon against the liberation movement of the Vietnamese people. It is therefore a war which America cannot win.

The massacre at Song My is not a question of a few battle-crazed soldiers becoming trigger-happy. Such massacres are inherent in the American war effort, and must needs occur time and time again. They have to be a systematic part of the American effort because that effort consists of attempting to use our superior firepower to suppress the independence and the liberation of an entire people. In that sense, the entire population is “VC”, and therefore our war inevitably consists of deliberate slaughter of that huge “enemy”. There is only one way to stop the American massacre policy: to get America the hell out of Vietnam.

Despite the common mythology, President Nixon doesn’t “want peace”—except, of course, the peace of death to the instincts for freedom of the people of Vietnam. For in a way not mentioned by the Establishment, the “domino theory” is correct. It is correct not in the sense that mythical Chinese will “aggress” against more countries in Asia; but in the sense that a clear-cut victory of the Vietnamese people against the American oppressors will give great heart to similar victims of American imperialism throughout the Third World. More liberation struggles will then erupt in Asia and Latin America, and we will have “many Vietnams”. American imperialism will result in a series of permanent stalemate wars, and thereby Death to Leviathan.

The conflict between the dove-moderates and the hawks is but one consequence of the losing Vietnam war. What the Marxists call “the sober circles of American imperialism”—the Harrimans, the Cliffords, etc., seeing the disastrous mess in Vietnam, are now willing to “cut and run”, to take their stand for American imperialism elsewhere—in what would hopefully be more favorable terrain. The right-wingers, as ever motivated by their frenzied and “principled” desire to crush all opposition everywhere without quarter, are determined to save every single domino, come what may.

It is increasingly clear that the Nixon Administration is a right-wing administration. Richard Nixon is an unprincipled and pragmatic opportunist on all conceivable questions but one: “anti-Communism”, that is world counterrevolution. Hence the negotiations at Paris, never very advanced, are moving rapidly backward, and hence the phoniness of the troop withdrawals. I am willing to make the flat prediction that the war in Vietnam will continue for the duration of the Nixon Administration, because the President, cast in the mold of 1940’s anti-Communism, is incapable of liberal co-optation, is incapable of a graceful “cut and run” pullout.

Therefore, the war will go on and on. And therefore, “the movement” is, and will continue to be for many years, primarily an anti-war movement. From May 1968 until the end of that year, virtually the entire Left was duped by the Paris negotiations into thinking that the war was over; then for many months, the Left was paralyzed by the view that Nixon would keep his promises and end the war shortly. Now all that is over. The growth of the anti-war movement is all the more remarkable because it has only been alive for a few months, after a lapse of a year and a half.

And so the renascent anti-war movement builds and builds, surge after mighty surge, month after month. The “silent majority”, a concept based on a few thousand hack Republican telegrams to the White House, pales beside the many vociferous millions, whose number and whose radicalism escalates every week that the war drags on. Every month’s Moratorium will build the pressure, will escalate slowly but surely in its massive pressure on the government, and will continue to radicalize countless millions of middle-class liberals. Yesterday it was “stop the bombing”; today it is “immediate withdrawal”; tomorrow it will be support for the NLF and/or mass civil disobedience, and/or a tax strike or a general strike. The endless war will be the open sluice-gate for massive radicalization.

In the face of this great upsurge, the Nixon Administration has made clear its bursting desire to move over into open fascism—to all-out repression of anti-war dissent. The evidence has been clear for several weeks: Spiro Agnew’s shift from unconscious clown to conscious fascist threatener of the press and the media; Attorney-General Mitchell’s incredible assertion that Agnew was too soft on the traitorous dissenters; Deputy Attorney-General Kleindienst’s move to attempt to indict the life-long pacifist David Dellinger for “incitement to violence”; White House aide Kevin Phillips’ call for the “willingness to go out and crack skulls”. The right-wing Administration is obviously straining at the leash, bursting to give vent to the typical rightist desire to crush and stomp on all opposition.

Only one thing is restraining the Administration from moving into open fascism: the knowledge that the cardinal point of the liberal credo is at least the facade of civil liberties. This facade of freedom to dissent is vital to the whole system and ideology of corporate liberalism; this is its central distinction from open dictatorship. And both conservatives and liberals know that if all-out repression comes, it will have to be far worse than in the old McCarthy-HUAC era of the 1940’s and 1950’s. For the reason why the corporate liberals went along with this repression, or did not fight it too strongly, is that the repression was carefully confined to Communist party members and “Communist fronts”. The witch-hunters of those days always claimed to be perfectly content with “heretics” and dissenters; it was not their ideas or their active opposition that concerned them, went the line, but the fact that these were “transmission belts” for the “international Communist conspiracy” through “Communist fronts” certified by the Attorney-General or other sources. Liberals could then step aside and be unconcerned with a narrowly pin-pointed repression. But as even the Department of Justice knows by now, there are no Communist fronts any longer; no one can point to Mr. X’s membership in so-and-so many front groups. Any repression will have to be directed against any and all members of the opposition, which could include liberals as well as anyone else.

Therefore, if Nixon-Agnew attempt open fascism, the result will be a fantastic shift leftward of all liberals everywhere. Even the austere New York Times will be ready to man the barricades. Open fascism could well generate a real revolutionary crisis in the United States.

Our present situation, then, is fraught with enormous opportunities. The prognosis is that, since the war will go on, the anti-war movement will spread and intensify; and if Nixon unleashes his right-wing instincts for all-out repression, he could generate a successful revolution. Only one thing could spoil this picture: if the Administration succeeds in maneuvering the anti-war movement into precipitate violence, and then making that violence an excuse for moving into open fascism. If the movement gives Nixon that excuse, then it would tragically polarize the mass of middle-class liberals rightward instead of leftward, and thus so isolate itself that Nixon could stomp on the radicals without generating liberal resistance. In the coming period, then, it becomes especially important for radicals in the anti-war movement to avoid as the plague any stigma of violence, which would reverse the process of radicalizing the liberal masses, and give Nixon the opportunity to move unopposed into open fascism. Great success is in the air for the anti-war movement; let us not kick it away in futile ultra-left adventures.

A Letter To Moloch

For some time past I have been telling others that the best way to kill a beast is to starve him to death, to withhold from him that particular type of nourishment which keeps him alive, well and powerful. Moloch thrives on human sacrifice; he demands a sizable portion of human productivity in the form of tax dollars which he converts into weapons of murder and other tools of coercion to oppress the very people from whom he exacts his nourishment. Since it is hypocritical to incite others to action while doing nothing oneself, I have decided to take a few small actions designed to give Moloch a hunger pang or two.

The first is membership in the War Resisters League by which one agrees to withhold the tax portion of his monthly phone bill, which is largely used to finance the war in Vietnam. Those desiring more information about this project can contact WRL at Room 1025, 5 Beekman Street, N.Y., N.Y. 10038.

The second step is of a “religious” nature. After careful consideration I have decided to become an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, an honor which carries with it broad benefits in the form of tax reductions. Anyone discovering a sudden yen for that old-time religion can write the Universal Life Church, 1766 Poland Rd., Modesto, California 95351, and be ordained just for the asking.

Other measures will include refusal to pay my surtax, sales tax on COD purchases, and any other steps anyone can suggest as a means of bumping Moloch from his pedestal. All suggestions are welcomed and will be held in confidence.

To the list of rallying cries now being raised across the nation by our fellow revolutionaries, I would like to add yet another:

STARVE THE BEAST!

— Jerome Tuccille

The Airline Cartel

As Adam Smith so wisely noted: “People of the same trade seldom meet together but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some diversion to raise prices.” For many decades the world’s international airlines have met seasonally to act out Smith’s scenario under the auspices of their cartel—the International Air Transport Association. At these meetings the airline representatives would seek to eliminate competition in the vital area of international fare rates. Fixing prices for air travel meant that competition was limited to auxiliary services—the quality of food, the beauty of stewardesses, the supply of magazines and sweets.

But three factors have recently converged to destroy, at least for the moment, the smooth working of the cartel. Within the next year, 27 airlines will be receiving the first of some 183 Boeing 747 jumbo jets now on order. These carriers are designed to accommodate 350 to 500 passengers and demand a very rapid rise in the number of overseas passengers if they are to be economically profitable. But the whole thrust of the IATA rate policy has been to prefer high fares to an expanded market. Now the market must be expanded as the jumbo jet enters the scene.

Secondly, a number of airline executives have been urging drastic fare reductions, coupled with redirecting merchandising efforts toward creating a mass market for offseason overseas travel. But others have preferred to base their off-season rates on the small but steady stream of businessmen customers who must travel during the offseason whatever the fare. And so the regular fares have remained high and the passenger traffic low, the summer traffic paying for the underutilized winter flights. This dispute over merchandising has been heightened by the desire of certain European countries to expand their tourist season to increase regular year-round employment and develop their winter resort facilities. Advertising has begun to push ski holidays in the Alps, theatre holidays in London, winter music and art festivals in Paris, Amsterdam and Rome.

Lastly, the various governmental bodies which supervise the airlines have, under the pressures of conflicting national interest groups, been less able to coordinate their policies to maintain the cartel and its rate schedules. The dam finally broke when on Sept. 19, Alitalia announced that, since the American CAB had failed to approve, except on a temporary basis, the rate schedule agreed upon at the IATA conference in Dallas, Alitalia was breaking the cartel agreement and cutting its economy fare for New York-Rome round trip off-season flights from $573 to $299 for a minimum of 22 days’ stay abroad. Pan American and the other lines soon announced that they would meet the Alitalia rates. Fares to all points in Europe dropped proportionately, and some lines like Iberian offered free additional flights to Stockholm, Paris and other cities for passengers buying an Iberian flight to Madrid. The immediate effect of the fare reduction was a dramatic jump in sales and passenger loads. The stimulation of the free market has brought new interest in off-season travel and good bargains for vacation seekers. But the big question remains whether the IATA will be able to put the lid on again. A meeting is due to be held in Caracas to establish the fares for the summer of 1970. If the proponents of competition have their way, no such agreement will be made, and the international cartel will be smashed. As Paul Friedlander put it in the N.Y. Times (11/16/69), “if the lesson holds, and the industry can sweep away its 50 year old IATA-dominated tradition of restrictive pricing, selling and treatment of the customer, it might give the spirit of competition an opportunity to build new markets for the airlines, expanding the present limited market to a genuine mass market able to pay the prevailing air fares and willing to fill all the new seats in the brave new airplanes about to come competitively into aviation’s, marketplace.” Or as Adam Smith put it, they must recognize that “consumption is the sole end and purpose of production”.

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Note: The N.Y. Times (11/26/69) reports that the IATA meeting in Caracas has tentatively agreed upon a new uniform trans-Atlantic rate schedule which, while reducing fares somewhat from the old IATA rates, would eliminate competition among the airlines in the area of individual and group ticket prices. How long the monopoly can maintain itself is still open to question, since the factors contributing to its breakdown still exist.

— J. R. P.

ATTENTION, LIBERTARIANS

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A Leftist Looks At YAF

The circus came to town in St. Louis over Labor Day weekend, and the freaks on display were truly an entertaining bunch. John MacKay and Randy Teague were co-ringmasters, making sure that everything” came off just as they had planned. Main attractions included William F. Buckley, Jr., doing his famous word game act. He can cut another notch in his pencil for having won over yet another audience without having used one iota of logic in his entire speech. Also on hand were Fulton Lewis III and Buz Lukens, with Buz stealing the show with some of the most hate-filled, nonsensical demagoguery we have heard in a long time. Keep it up, Buz, we war lovers are behind you all the way! Among the most touching scenes of the show was provided by Officer McClintock of the Pueblo. Most of the audience pitied him because of what he had been through and because the United States government refused to annihilate his captors. A small clique of true libertarians also pitied him, because they couldn’t believe that anyone could be so stupid as to go through what he went through and still come out of it with the same narrow-minded Weltanschauung that he had been fed originally by U.S. propagandists. And what circus would be complete without a clown? On hand to keep everyone in high spirits was that old stand-by, Al Capp. Al was in his usual form, regaling all with such insightful witticisms as the one about how it’s better to be in a rice paddy with the enemy in your cross-hair than to be in college. With rib-ticklers like that, it is no wonder he is the darling of the right.

So if one went to St. Louis for entertainment, one was sure to find satisfaction. The trouble is, is that the above named performers and the bulk of their audience were not simply making idle jests about the desirability of stamping out freedom and self-determination around the world, but were actually serious in their threats and fulminations. The leaders of this venomous gang call themselves “traditionalists”, or “trads”. But with a program like theirs, one wonders what tradition they referring to. Certainly no organization which espouses collective massacre can claim any attachment to a tradition of individual liberty. No organization so adoring of the destructive powers of government can say the philosophy of laissez-faire is part of their tradition. What tradition can there be for an organization which descries the growth of state power one minute, and calls for a greater “defense” budget the next? What philosophy of yesteryear hailed the freedom of the individual to determine his own life as a paramount good, and still insisted that he could not break a law even if obeying meant he became a slave to the government’s will? Even Thomas Hobbes had the generosity to allow for the individual’s self-defense in the face of government aggression. Who, then, can these trads call their intellectual ancestors? Looking back over the history of man, there is only one theory which can be found that is consistent with the ideas of these trads: the theory of the fascist, totalitarian state.

YAF is a morass of contradictions. It wants to be radical but it doesn’t want to break the law. It claims to be fighting for democracy, yet its own internal policy is dictated by a dogma which allows for democratic process only when the majority decision of the voters agrees with the policy of the National Board. YAF board members seem to think that democracy consists of purging all dissenting voices within the organization. The most glaring contradiction in YAF is, of course, the name itself. If “young” means having a senile, illogical, hate-filled mind encased in a young body, then the “Y” in YAF makes sense. If “American” means love of aggressive imperialism abroad and violent repression at home, then the “A” in YAF fits. And if “freedom” means enslavement to arbitrary rule, then the “F” in YAF is comprehensible. I, however, do not share their definition of these terms. Nor will the bulk of American youth be able to make much sense of them. As a youth movement, YAF is hopelessly out of step. YAFers march more with Metternich than Marcuse. Intelligent American youths will be found joining SDS, the RLA, SLAM, the Panthers, or some other such militant anti-government force. Even militant right-wingers with essentially the same viewpoint as YAF will shun it because of YAF’s aversion to action. YAF will continue to exist, though, as a showplace where conservative American businessmen can go to reaffirm their faith in a fascist future for America. That is all that YAF ever really was—or will be.

— John Hogen

Famous Last Words

“Ultra-left adventurism is fun.”

— A libertarian militant

Recommended Reading

Milton Kotler, Neighborhood Government (Bobbs-Merrill, hard cover and paper). Brief work on neighborhoods vs. the expanding central city. Particularly valuable is the historical discussion of the “imperialist” way in which the central cities in the U.S. have seized control over the outlying neighborhoods, very often through the state legislatures and without the neighborhoods’ consent. (Also see Karl Hess’s review of the Kotler book in the December Ramparts.)

Murray N. Rothbard, “Review of J. Weinstein’s The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918”, Ramparts, December 1969. Review of a book that ranks with Gabriel Kolko’s in revealing how our present interventionist, Mixed Economy, was put in by Big Business for purposes of monopolization.

I. F. Stone, The Hidden Theory of the Korean War (Monthly Review Press), $7.50. It is good to have this great Revisionist work on the Korean War back in print (originally published in 1952). Stone shows conclusively that the U.S. was responsible for the war. For you anarcho-rightists still bamboozled by Cold War myths, read it!

Alfred F. Young, The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins 1763-1797 (University of North Carolina Press). Brilliant, definitive, neo-Beardian work on the political struggles over the Constitution and in the 1790’s in New York. One of the best books on the whole period.