This year is the centennial of someone little known outside libertarian circles but very important within: Robert LeFevre.
According to Damon Gross, “Robert LeFevre was a leading intellectual force in the dissemination of libertarian ideas.” As described by Lew Rockwell, he recognized that “civilization stemmed from the voluntary actions of men, not the laws of the state,” and that “Crediting government for the good in society was, to his mind, like crediting the criminal class whenever it leaves us alone to go about our affairs…He astutely observed that all states are prone to expansion and always at the expense of liberty.”
LeFevre not only held to libertarianism’s non-aggression principle, in which force is only justified in defense against attack, but went further, embracing pacifism (rejecting even defensive use of force) and rejecting voting and political parties (because they represented participation in the illegitimate use of aggressive force — “If you value your right to life, liberty and property, then clearly there is every reason to refrain from participating in a process that is calculated to remove the life, liberty, or property from any other person.”)
LeFevre is perhaps best known for the Freedom School he founded and ran (called “one of the most important institutions for teaching free market economics in its day” by Lew Rockwell), whose teachers included Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Harper, Frank Chodorov, Leonard Read, Bruno Leoni, Rose Wilder Lane and Milton Friedman.
100 years after his birth, libertarians need to remember Robert LeFevre and most Americans need to begin learning about his ideas, which in many ways trace back to the Declaration of Independence. That is particularly true, given the staggering expansion in the power and scope of the federal government, falsely presented as a benevolent rescuer rather than an often malign predator on our means and our liberty, that has occurred since he wrote.
In the hope of whetting appetites for serious consideration of Robert LeFevre’s ideas, consider some his especially insightful thoughts.
“If men are good, you don’t need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don’t dare have one.”
“Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men, with the political force to act as though they were infallible.”
“In fact, the only virtue of our government, which was true in the days of its founding, was that it was a severely limited government of very little power…the beast our forefathers caged has burst from its confinement. It is on the prowl in our midst.”
“[Government] is best when it is smallest. Because, as it shrinks in size and power, America, that which we love, grows bigger and more powerful, more beautiful, richer, more generous, more free.”
“We wanted laws to do the governing, with men reduced to as limited a role as possible. But…when we grant to men the power to write the laws, to interpret the laws, to enforce the laws, these men to whom we have granted power are in a position to do as they please with respect to laws…”
“[G]overnments, by their nature, are instruments of privilege…those in government will have power over those not in government…Those limitations it appears to respect are only those which, at the moment, it wishes to retain.”
“When the men in office who have power wish to exercise it, they will do so…And since such is the direction any government may take at any time, it appears that government is unlimited whenever it wishes to be unlimited.”
“Governments, by their nature, are invariably agencies of aggression…employed against the ‘other fellow’ to compel him to provide the money for our schemes, to compel him to do or not to do in accordance with our wishes. But to the degree that we rely on government, which is our agency of aggression, to this degree do we reject civilization…”
“Morally, we inveigh against theft…[but] nearly everyone practices theft… legalized theft, committed through the offices of an agency of plunder and looting called government.”
“[T]o the degree we…look to our government to show us the way, to that degree do we compound our problems and fail utterly either to solve them or to stop creating them.”
“[G]overnment is…force, exerted by some against others. That is all.”
“[W]hen men turn to government…the strength desired is found in compulsive unity…Individuals are the necessary victims…any individual must give way to the violent cohesion of government.”
“Every citizen is a victim of the aggressive tactics of government.”
“[G]overnment has a single, possibly legitimate, function, that of apprehending and punishing the criminal… government has, in its manifold legal actions, gone far beyond its possible legitimacy by passing thousands upon thousands of laws and rules which act to equate the average individual, who is peaceful and orderly, with the criminal who commits acts of aggression with willful intent.”
“Government which passes and enforces endless rules and codes is not out of character when it does so. It is in character. That is the way any government operates…”
“Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.”
“In the one case the government may act defensively, to protect the rights of an individual; in the other case, the government will act aggressively, protecting no individual right but simply compelling universal obedience to its decrees.”
“[I]t is the business of government to employ force and to compel obedience…to punish any individual who does not go along with those mandates imagined as necessary by the men in power.”
“Government begins by protecting some against others and ends up protecting itself against everyone.”
“[T]hat which was formed for our protection becomes, finally, the very reason we need to be protected.”
“[I]f reliance upon the state as a defender of property is taken as the best safeguard, consider the melancholy record of states versus property and property rights throughout recorded history.”
“While professing to protect all legally recognized boundaries from any and all intruders, the state makes of itself a legal exception…The state says it will protect men and their property. But no state has ever come forward to protest that it will protect the life and other property of anyone from itself.”
“We have led ourselves to believe that society is impossible without government at the core…But ask yourself this question…just how much force, authority or coercion are necessary in MY case?”
“The thing which characterizes all government is that the people in the government have guns. They can use force. But they cannot make capitalism or the marketplace work better by force. This process injures capitalism and its effectiveness…erected on a structure of service to al in a voluntary manner.”
“The government…has exhibited skill and efficiency in only one area — that of collecting whatever it wants from the populace.”
“[E]conomic freedom is almost a thing of the past. The regulators bestride our affairs…no one knows what the government will do next.”
“[W]hat is the status of freedom in the United States? It is clear that the grip each individual should have over the products of his own labor is gradually slipping over the last knot in the dangling rope.”
“[E]ach act of plunder gives birth to the necessity for additional acts of plunder. And the number of laws curtailing us, regimenting us, restricting us, and punishing us grows hourly larger and more difficult of evasion.”
“[B]ecause we hold that [something] is good, we have decided that a coercive and corruptive means of obtaining that end is good…the end must be reached in the employment of the wrong means.”
“An act of theft is an act which removes from the producer that which he has produced. This is viewed universally as an act of theft, until the act is sanctioned by a state. Then, strangely, the intrinsic nature of the act is lost.”
“[I]t is always wrong to steal…legal justification does not make right that which is morally wrong.”
“Aggression is always wrong…we must not join the ranks of the aggressors, even for what may appear to be cause.”
“[Those] who comprehend freedom…live without violating the freedom of others…”
“Harm no one. After that, do as you like.”
“Admitting that free man may err in no way invalidates the importance of his ability to decide for himself.”
“[It] is an evil when no one protects the individual. It is an intolerable evil when the act of looting occurs at the hand of the very agency the individual has hired to protect him and his capital.”
“The great merit of marketplace choosing is that no one is bound by any other person’s selection…When we express a preference politically, we do so precisely because we intend to bind others to our will.”
“[W]e value freedom and are quite willing to accept attendant responsibilities. When security becomes the topmost value, force will invariably be invoked to prevent others from being free…While we grant that a man has a right to seek security…we cannot grant that in his search for security he has a right to prevent someone else from being free.”
“Freedom is not so much a goal as it is a direction to be taken in an effort to reach our various and divergent goals.”
“True progress does not come rapidly. But if we can resist the blandishments of the politicians, who are forever trying to divest us of our rights in our property so they can manage things for us against our best interest, we will move in the right direction.”
Robert LeFevre distinguished government (voluntary arrangements and social institutions) from the state (involuntary impositions of some on others), and rather than endorsing the state, argued insightfully for “autarchism” or self-government. He saw the damage caused as employing force crowded out our capacity for voluntary cooperation, not only in its countless modern expansions, but even in areas commonly accepted as the province of the state, such as police and national defense. As he put it:
“Whenever a government invades any normal field of human endeavor, the tendency of human being is to surrender that field and to make no further effort in it. Had market entrepreneurs been free all those ages to examine and explore adequate means of defense rather than relying upon the government to provide it, who can tell what marvelous means of protecting ourselves and our property might now be available to all?”
Robert LeFevre recognized that coercion is the heart of the state, because it has no resources it does not extract from citizens and no powers that do not detract from liberty. In consequence, there is no guarantee that individuals’ well-being will be advanced as a result. Rather, the opposite will be the case. In his words, “The nature of government is such that, whatever strength it has, it will be used to amass greater strength by draining away the strength of individuals.” Today, Americans have barely an inkling of that essential insight, from which LeFevre concluded that “If there is one lesson which the times cry out for us to learn, it is this: STOP TRUSTING GOVERNMENT.” For the sake of liberty, it is long past time that those in what was at least once “the land of the free” awaken to it.
[Note: The Ludwig von Mises Institute is the trustee of the writings of Robert LeFevre and the Freedom School]
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So does this mean we will see complete scans of his work plus freedom school pubs on the Moses site??
I don’t think so
But maybe on the Mises site we might
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