Rothbard, Purity and Libertarian Politics (1990)

From the Vault: Murray N. Rothbard, “Purity and Libertarian Politics,” Rothbard-Rockwell Report (Nov. 1990) (unz.com archives). This one is not in the collection The Irrepressible Rothbard: The Rothbard-Rockwell Report Essays of Murray N. Rothbard (Center for Libertarian Studies, 2000). Text below.

Related

• Kinsella, The Three Fusionisms: Old, New, and Cautious (Jan. 16, 2022) (on paleolibertarianism etc.)
• Kinsella, Rothbard on the Main Fallacy of our Time: Marx’s Labor Theory of Value, text at n.2, n.2
• Tucker, Scrupulosity and the Condemnation of Every Existing Business, archived comments here;
  • discussed in my post Vulgarism, Left-libertarianism, Taco Bell, and “Power”;
  • see also my posts Is Macy’s Part of the State? A Critique of Left Deviationists and
  • The Walmart Question, or, the Unsupported Assertions of Left-Libertarianism (Apr. 26, 2009) (archived comments)

Murray N. Rothbard, “Purity and Libertarian Politics,” Rothbard-Rockwell Report (Nov. 1990)

Purity and Libertarian Politics

by Murray N. Rothbard

When I was active in the Libertarian Party, I was a notorious advocate of pure and consistent principles and candidates, and I was the scourge of all deviationists. And yet, now that I am moving toward the Republican Party, I seem not to be mentioning, much less insisting upon, pure libertarian candidates. Isn’t that a contradiction, or have I “mellowed” with maturity?

The answer: of course, I haven’t mellowed. The very thought is an insult. Neither is it a contradiction, if one thinks for a moment about the purpose of political action. The main point of having a Libertarian Party was to promote libertarian ideas in the political sphere. Purity and consistency were extremely important, because if you’re flying the libertarian flag, and begin to abandon or waffle on principle, you are counter-productive, and you viciously undercut libertarian doctrine, the very point of having a Libertarian Party in the first place. After all, what’s the point of having a crazy third party, if you’re simply going to offer modified Republican or Democratic or conservative or whatever doctrine?

As I hope to make clear in my series of “Why Paleo?” articles, the Libertarian Party did fill an historic function: spreading the name and the concept of libertarianism throughout the media and society, so that everyone now knows what the doctrine is all about. That task has now been accomplished, and indeed has been fulfilled ever since the 1980 campaign, and the Libertarian Party, now dying, should have the satisfaction of knowing that it has already played its appointed role on the historical scene. Now that the LP has accomplished this task, and conditions have drastically changed with the end of the Cold War, the Libertarian Party only serves the purpose of being a social club for misfits and bunco artists. It is high time, to paraphrase the immortal advice of Senator Aiken on the Vietnam War, to declare victory and get the Hell out. It is time to move on and out of the Libertarian Party: in the current cliche, “to put it all behind us.”

But if we move on to the Republican Party, we have to understand that major party politics is different: it is and always has been coalition politics. To expect a Republican nominee to be a 100% libertarian, or to denounce anyone who isn’t, is a species of imbecility. Moreover, since the Republican Party does not call itself “libertarian,” we have no moral obligation to serve as libertarian purity testers. In coalition politics, you take the best candidate you can get and, in particular, you look for agreement on those issues or sets of issues which you hold to be most important.

But that means that libertarians, as Republicans, have to exercise judgment—a rare quality indeed in our movement. Which issues, both in the long run and in this particular time and place, are most important? In such an exercise of judgment, purity of doctrine doesn’t help. Assessment of, and interest in, the real world now takes high place: and unfortunately these qualities are not exactly the hallmark of libertarians, who tend to be strong in pure theory but weak in finding their way across the street.

For me, political priorities have always been clear: first and foremost, opposition to an interventionist, pro-war U.S. foreign policy; and second, devotion to the free market and private property, and opposition to statism. At the present time, it is clear to me that, apart from foreign intervention and globaloney, the main danger both to liberty and free markets comes from the “social tyranny” that has been able to seize the high moral ground almost without opposition in the past decade: the ideological constellation of environmentalism, Left Puritanism, and Accredited Victimology.

A look then at who our natural allies are, politically and intellectually, in the coming epoch. It should be crystal-clear that they are the “paleo-conservatives” or the Republican right, many of whom have rediscovered and embraced their Old Right roots, in an “isolationist” foreign policy that is more relevant today than it has been in half acentury. The paleo-cons, of course, have always been sound on the social tyranny that is looming as an ever-greater threat to our liberties.

But inevitably, the increasing number of Libertarians who are becoming Republicans—in such organizations as the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee—have not yet made up their mind which Republicans to ally themselves with. In the current realities, there are two choices: the “moderate,” or what used to be called “the Rockefeller” Republicans; and the right-wing paleos. Generally, the “moderates” will line up as: pro-war, pro-statist, pro-high taxes, pro-New World Order, pro-environmentalist, pro-Accredited Victimology, and pro-abortion rights. The paleo-right will be anti-war, and anti-statist, anti-high tax, anti-New World Order, anti-environmentalist, anti-Accredited Victimology, and anti-abortion. (On the drug war, the outcome will be mixed, since the originally pro-drug war paleos have reached the point where their opposition to State tyranny is greater than their hostility to drugs, a hostility which I, for one, share.)

Scanning this list, the choice should be easy. Those Libertarians whose devotion to libertarianism was always, and above all cultural, those who care mainly about sex and drugs, those whose opposition to the State is only a minor aspect of their adolescent rebellion against the family, society, and religion—these libertarians will chose the Rockefeller “moderates.” The two groups richly deserve each other. Paleo-libertarians will, of course, embrace their paleo-rightist cousins. Thus, in the course of working with different groups of Republicans, the old Libertarian movement will split along its natural fault line: and that’s all to the good.

A final consoling note to those paleo-libertarians who, like myself, favor abortion rights: All paleo-cons are strongly opposed to abortion on moral grounds. But most of them, even those who consider abortion murder, do not believe in outlawing abortion and treating it in the same way as the police would treat murder-murder. Largely because they don’t want the State apparatus spying upon, and dictating to, the entire female population of child-bearing age. (Which is what a consistent anti-abortion program would amount to.) With a little goodwill on both sides, I see no reason why all groups of paleos cannot collaborate, even on this issue. •