Rothbard’s historical method raises a fundamental issue, writes David Gordon: how influential are intellectuals in the course of history, and what motivates them? Rothbard’s response expresses a feature of his entire approach to history. He contrasts two sorts of intellectuals: “court intellectuals”, who serve those in authority, primarily wish to gain money and power for themselves. Revolutionary intellectuals, who oppose the state, do so out of genuine conviction. He minces no words about the former group. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/6613/a-rothbardian-view-of-american-history/
A Rothbardian View of American History
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While I think Rothbard’s assessments of George Washington and Ben Franklin are wrong and disgusting, I find a lot of truth in his views on the Pietist movement. Postmillenial and amillenial teachings did encourage Christians to use the state to build the Kindgom of God on earth and they were suckers for socialism.
Today, most of the socialist thinking comes from mainline denominations, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran, who have abandoned traditional Christianity (they don’t follow the Bible) for socialism, or the minority among them who remain postmillenial or amillenial.
For the past century at least, Baptist, Bible Church and Charistmastic/Pentecostals have held to a premillenial view of the future, believing that only Christ has the power to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. As premillenialists, Baptists rarely trusted government. Roger Williams was a Baptist and his state gave the US the first instance of religious liberty. Until the 1980′s, Baptists stayed away from politics. But the influence of evangelicals within the Republican party has been too seductive and many Baptist leaders are joining those who think they can create a utopia in North America with the right legislation. What a shame.
The problem with writing history for a political purpose (not matter how noble the political purpose is), rather than as someone who is just explaining what happened, is that one tends to get carried away.
For example, Thomas Paine (for all his talk of freedom and liberty) was no libertarian – he was an ardent statist (as the second part of the his “Rights of Man” and later works such as “Agrarian Justice” make clear.
Paine’s statistical claims (for example that getting rid of Royal hangers on would pay for various health, education and welfare projects) are flat wrong. And his claims of oppression and luxury at the public expense in England are fantasy. And they sit ill comming from a government employee from Norfolk who was fired for endlessly demanding more pay.
Thomas Paine was not a bad man, but to make a statue of him and worship it is not sensible.
As for the various revolts in what became the United States, before and after 1776, against local authorities – some are indeed tax revolts. But some are in favour of paper money (although, yes, sometimes ordinary people were also against this), or wiping out debts. And some have mixed motives.
One has to go into the various motiviations of people in each individual revolt (by examining all the things they said and did) – not just pick libertarian bits and write sweeping conclusions.
Lastly talk of a “National Liberation moverment against Western Imperialism” reminds me of when Murry Rothbard was writing this work – the 1970′s. The time when the “National Liberation Movements” in IndoChina that he had supported were busy murdering millions of people and enslaving tens of millions.
For, no, one does not (for all the claims of Hume and Rothbard)need at least the passive support of a majority to rule – an armed and organized minority can defeat and rule over a less well organized majority (the Russian Civil War, to give another example, proved that).
Saddam Hussain was hated by the majority of the population of Iraq – but that did not stop him defeating revolts and ruling for decades. Of course that does not mean that going into Iraq was the correct thing to do – but it happens to be the truth that Saddam was hated and opposed by most of the population and that this did not stop him ruling.
To return to general matters.
Murry Rothbard never understood the basic fact (that Ludwig Von Mises understood without any difficulty) that, for all the faults of Washington D.C., the enemies of the United States are a lot worse than the United States.
“Today, most of the socialist thinking comes from mainline denominations, Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican, Lutheran, who have abandoned traditional Christianity (they don’t follow the Bible) for socialism, or the minority among them who remain postmillenial or amillenial.”
You might want to distinguish between PC-USA Presbyterians and Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) Presbyterians. The PCA is extremely conservative (not fake Bush conservative) and is far from socialism. In fact, I was introduced to the ideas here at the Mises Institute by an economics professor at my PCA church, and come to find out, I’ve met many Christians within the PCA church that agree with the economic philosophy espoused here. I would argue that the Baptist churches, etc… that are considered traditionally conservative really aren’t that much into pure capitalism, and they loved mixed economies (ie socialism since that’s where it ultimately leads). I meet so many Christians on a daily basis that believe the government should do charity work…when in fact, it isn’t charity at all…it is coercion. The PCA is one of the few churches I have been able to find people that understand economics and capitalism, and they understand that charity is done freely by individuals that choose to do so…not through their tax money, which is not charity at all.
“Murry Rothbard never understood the basic fact (that Ludwig Von Mises understood without any difficulty) that, for all the faults of Washington D.C., the enemies of the United States are a lot worse than the United States.”
Paul, what makes you believe that?
I think the largest example of the US government trying to take out freedom is this new environmentalist movement.
D. Saul Weiner, I’m very glad you asked that question. The reason is observation of net migration rates. If more people are “voting with their feet” by leaving country A for country B we can conclude that B is a nicer place than A. The US has long had a positive rate of net migration with a lot of countries. East Germany had to build a wall to keep their people in, the rafts go from Cuba to Miami, people escape from North to South in Korea and did so as well in Vietnam when there was a South. Currently the French are escaping to England, and Blue Staters to Red States. In all these cases we can conclude that the latter are nicer than the former.
TGGP, I was really asking a different question. Paul Marks was suggesting that Rothbard thought that the enemies of the U.S. were in some way better than the U.S. I am not sure why he believes that Rothbard thought that. So my question is not really whether or not the U.S. is better or worse than other places, but why Marks thinks that Rothbard thought it was worse.
alt1985: “You might want to distinguish between PC-USA Presbyterians and Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) Presbyterians.”
That’s good news to hear about the PCA. The reformed movement in general tends to follow the economics of John Calvin, who retained most of the Catholic view that the church/state should control economies in order to produce just exchange. Baptists, like Tony Campolo, have merely decided that socialism equals Christianity, which is stupid. I don’t know what denomination Chuck Colson is, although he favors reformed churches, but his has been taling very much like a socialist lately, even praising the Social Democrats of Europe.
FYI: RogerM (or anyone else who wants to respond), I posed a question to you in the more recent post, Modern Historians Confront the American Revolution. It seemed more relevant there. From your comments here it seemed you might have a better understanding. Speaking only as an interested novice, if you haven’t read the book mentioned there, I highly recommend it.
I apologize for not replying before now. I did not check to see if anyone had replyed to what I wrote.
Why do I say what I say about Murry Rothbard. A thinker vastly greater than myself.
Well I do not say it because of off hand comments like the U.S. government is the worst govenment in the world because it spends the most money – that was a joke (most likely at the expense of people who do not understand that it is government as percentage of the economy that is the correct measure of government spending) Rothbard did not mean it as a serious point.
I say it because of all this “national liberation movement” stuff. And it was not just the V.C. and N.V.A. in Vietnam (and the other Marxist military formations in Indo China). It even sometimes included the socialist I.R.A. (which the United States was not even fighting – part of a Rothbard anti British thing, fair enough I am British so perhaps oversensitive).
It really did go beyond the line of “these guys are terrible but we should not do anything about them” (which is a libertarian line). One can say that “yes Korea and …… should have been allowed to fall to the Marxists even though the consequences would have been terrible, because this is the pure noninterventionist line” but it went beyond this.
There was an implication that these guys were not terrible – at least not as bad as the wicked U.S. of A.
Sometimes it was as if one was dealing Soviet (or other Marxist) propaganda. Almost any story against the United States government or military forces was believed and repeated.
X movement was not “really” Marxist and so on.
Karl Hess (explaining his part in all this “join hands with the left” stuff back in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s) said “well I was on drugs at the time”.
But Murry Rothbard was not on drugs (he never used anything like that in his life). He just seemed to have a common sense failure.
I repeat that Murry Rothbard was a vastly better thinker than me (I will not put an arbitrary number on how many hundreds or thousands of times better he was), but this basic common sense thing (the sort of thing the guy sweeping out the local store would have no trouble with) just escaped him.
In spite of all our faults we are not the bad guys – the enemy are the bad guys. And, no, their badness is not Washington D.C. propaganda.
In this Murry Rothbard was similar to many great minds of both left and right. Perhaps it is possible to be too intelligent.
“That’s good news to hear about the PCA. The reformed movement in general tends to follow the economics of John Calvin, who retained most of the Catholic view that the church/state should control economies in order to produce just exchange. Baptists, like Tony Campolo, have merely decided that socialism equals Christianity, which is stupid. I don’t know what denomination Chuck Colson is, although he favors reformed churches, but his has been taling very much like a socialist lately, even praising the Social Democrats of Europe.”
I think the reason you find some departing from John Calvin in the PCA, which is a reformed church, is because the PCA is purely Bible alone, Scripture as authoritative. I know that’s the position John Calvin took, and generally, he was right on many things. It seems there are lots of Christians are right on almost everything, at least the pertinent doctrines, but then they depart at economics. The people that I have met in the PCA that really understand economics very much follow the lines of Frederic Bastiat and natural law theory. There is a private school, Briarwood Presbyterian School that also has a major church, in Birmingham that has a line that they teach students basically that when you are an adult capable of working, if you don’t work, you don’t eat (when you are capable of working and just don’t choose…you use private charity, the church, to take care of people that hit hard times). That follows Paul’s teaching in 1 Thessalonians. You are right…the majority of Christians, ones that would be highly conservative otherwise, tend to take a mixed economy, socialist stance regarding the economy. It is clearly incorrect, but they have grown up in a generation in which it is believed charity takes place through the government.
alt1985: “I think the reason you find some departing from John Calvin in the PCA, which is a reformed church, is because the PCA is purely Bible alone, Scripture as authoritative.”
That’s great news! Maybe the PCA can teach Baptists some economics. Calvin was a great man and I don’t fault him for paying little attention to economics. We can thank him for driving a stake through the heart of usury laws for Protestants, anyway.
Of course Rothbard (and others) were fond of pointing out that the cartoon view of Roman Catholics before the Reformation (i.e. that the all defined the “just price” as something that could be measured by an external authority – rather than a just price simply being a free price) is wrong.
Catholic thinkers took up many different points of view – and it is not even true that statism was the main view (interesting enough the statist line in Catholic thought can be traced back, in part, to those thinkers who were connected to Charles the Great “Charlemagne” – the first of the new Emperors was an ardent statist, who supported price controls amongst other things).
Even on lending money for interest (the great weak spot in many thinkers) the picture was quite complex.
Catholic writers are still split on economic issues (as the example of our friend Woods shows) although it is true that since 1891 (Leo XIII’s move under the advice of Cardinal Manning) statist thinking does seem to be the majority view.
Of course, as an Anglican (what Americans call an Episcopalian) neither Roman Catholics or Protestants might consider me a proper Christian – although I certainly do not suppport the antics of the Episcopalian church (which seems to be even more in trouble that the Church of England these days).
Paul: “Catholic thinkers took up many different points of view – and it is not even true that statism was the main view…”
From my limited knowledge of Catholic writings, I would say you’re right. My personal opinion is that the Late Scholastics at the School of Salamanca provided the intellectual and religious foundation for capitalism while the Protestants of the Dutch Republic implemented their ideas. But if you look at practice, rather than writings, the practice of economics in Catholic countries was overwhelmingly statist, and that’s what John Calvin was following.
could someone introduce a few Economics concepts for those of us learning … I have been reading about Mises as a suggestion from one of my students. I’m currently working through some theological views on government that are leading me toward presuppositions of economics … help… My email address is Godhiker@aol.com
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