Letters (November 1972)

Hunter Conference scored

The recent libertarian conference at Hunter College (October 8,9) has done much to intensify my conviction that the “movement” is going nowhere.

The movement—if Hunter’s conference is a representative cross section of it— largely consists of two bit would-be intellectuals, vitally concerned with proving the “purity” of their ideology, the forensic power of their arguments, and their ability to produce “converts,” that is—more people like themselves.

At a media workshop, the “movement people” attempted—repeatedly—to prove their ideological vigor. No one—as far as I could see—cared to influence the media. All they seemed concerned with is the “philosophical” import of such action.

At a tactical workshop, discussion centered around “proving” that a free society would be well equipped to remain free. I wanted to exchange ideas and programs with others who were working to help free this society. Apparently I was alone in this desire.

The function of ideas is to prepare for action. Social action—e.g., forming free schools, draft counselling, alternative institutions (either communalistic or agoric) are not merely devices for producing “converts.” They are the revolution, if there is to be one. All else is narcissistic “movement” building.

Words confound as well as instruct. I am beginning to realize that the “movement”—which produces nothing but armchair activists—may well stand in the way of freeing this society.

If we chafe under Statism, why not get together to discuss what to do about it, given our limited resources. I’m tired of “pie in the sky” anarchism.

To steal a phrase from John Holt—what do I do Monday?

Sam Frich

A NYC activist, not theoretician

Hunter Conference praised

Why is Lowell Ponte so fascinated with lasers? What do America’s most famous militant atheist and Barry Goldwater’s most famous ex-speechwriter have in common? Can Walter Block really recite eight hundred popular scapegoats without once pausing for breath? If you can’t answer these questions, you must have missed the recent libertarian conference at Hunter College. And if you missed that, you missed a very good show.

You also missed what I consider a very gratifying lesson in the relevance of libertarian thought to American life. To me, the most impressive aspect of the Hunter conference was the fact that it included not only such libertarian lecture circuit regulars as Murray Rothbard, Sharon Presley, Robert LeFevre and Jarret Wollstein, but also a lot of people not ordinarily associated with anarcho-capitalism at all.

John Holt, for example, is definitely not a libertarian, and he wore a McGovern button throughout the conference. What John Holt is, however, is an extremely distinguished American educator whose views on the ills of our public school system have already influenced countless people who have probably not even heard the word “libertarian.” He is a man whose personal involvement with children and their education has led him to support and advocate the decidedly libertarian idea of “kid lib.”

Speaking of which, Neil Rothfeder doesn’t seem to think of himself as a libertarian, either. His interest at this point in his fourteen-year-old life is not in expounding political philosophies. It is in organizing a real movement toward kid’s lib among kids. A movement which has the potential to become the most dramatic libertarian phenomenon of the seventies.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair apparently is a libertarian, although many of us were quite unaware of the fact until recently. She is known primarily as a one-issue person. But what she did at Hunter was to drive home, in a way that no one in her audience will ever forget, the vital relationship between her issue of freedom from religion and the entire issue of human freedom from the bludgeon of the state.

Karl Hess, Carl Oglesby and Fred Woodworth are libertarians. But their leftist anarchism is a far cry from the capitalist outlook of most of those with whom they shared the platform. Their presence at the conference was a tribute to the breadth of libertarian thought, just as their lives are a tribute to the force of a type of individualism which cuts across political categories.

Through all this diversity, there shone the basic unity of libertarian purpose. The libertarian movement is multi-faceted because liberty is multi-faceted. We thirst for liberty from all forms of governmental prohibition. So we laughed enthusiastically at the film, “Reefer Madness.” We thirst for liberty which knows no distinction between the sexes. So we rejoice that women were represented at the conference by Madalyn Murray O’Hair; by Vivian Kellems, the slaty Joan of Arc of the antitax crusade; by Edith Efron, author of The New Twisters; and by representatives of the National Organization of Women. We thirst for liberty on every front, and the strength of the Hunter conference was that it presented such eloquent spokesmen on so many fronts. The appeal of libertarianism must be made as broad as the human craving for liberty. The spectrum represented at Hunter shows that it can be done.

Leland Schubert

[Leland Schubert is a member of the State Committee of the [New York] Free Libertarian Party.—Ed.]

More Peden Vs. LeFevre On Voting

The essential difference between Bob LeFevre’s understanding of the ethics of libertarianism and my own is quite simple. I distinguish between the moral legitimacy of violence, or action taken in self-defence of one’s life or liberty, and the moral legitimacy of violence or action taken to deprive someone else of his life or liberty. Once one is prepared to make such a distinction between the violence of self-defense and the violence of aggression, libertarian politics becomes an ethical possiblity. It is a politics which defends the life and liberty of men against the aggressive encroachments of the coercive State, and attempts to liberate them from existing coercive State power. I reject the pacifist position that treats both forms of “violence” as moral equivalents.

I am also accused of advocating that libertarians force everyone to be a libertarian, and that “those who are at the mercy of those who hold power” will be compelled into a state of anarchy by libertarian power-brokers. Mr. LeFevre here seems to be saying that those who want a State cannot be opposed without denying them their rights. Does he really believe that the alleged right to compel others to obey the State is morally equivalent to the right of libertarians to be free of State coercion? No man has the right to be a master; no group of men has the right to extend their power over other men by coercion.

Finally, Mr. LeFevre asks what history has to say of libertarians who won political power through the electoral process. Did they gladly give up their power? The picture is, as one might expect, mixed. The English Radicals and Liberals did not abolish the State when they achieved political power at various times in the 19th century because that was not their intention! But they did abolish human slavery by act of Parliament; they won religious liberty and civil equality for Catholics and Jews and disestablished the Protestant Church in Ireland; they abolished the Corn Laws and broadened the practice of free trade; they gave the workers the right to freedom of association which permitted the legal functioning of trade unionism; they espoused a foreign policy of peace, anti-militarism and anti-imperialism. That they did not achieve perfect consistency in their libertarian politics should not detract from their very real accomplishments. That they failed ultimately to free England of the last remnants of feudalism, mercantilism, imperialism and statism does not mean that no one should ever try to follow in their footsteps.

In fact, that is the heart of the matter. Human society is always in flux; men make history by their actions or inactions The future of liberty is in our hands—even if we choose to sit on them.

Joseph R. Peden

[Joseph R. Peden is the publisher of Libertarian Forum and Professor of History at Baruch College, C.U.N.Y. The original exchange between Messrs. LeFevre and Peden appeared in the October Outlook. — Ed.]

Who’s laughing?

In a letter to the editor, July-August 1972 Outlook, Mr. Elton Chalmers writes of A is A records, a Colorado company. This letter is to inform you that “A is A” is a trademark of Mega, a Michigan company which currently publishes A is A Newsletter and A is A Libertarian Directory. We would consider the use of “A is A” in connection with the sale of records to be an infringement of our property rights.

Dale Haviland Editor, A is A Newsletter Brighton, Michigan

[?—Ed.]