“Capitalism : The Unknown Ideal” , is not a novel, and is very, very good.
Furthermore, you dont even need to read her books, just watch tv, the movie: The Fountainhead" starrring Gary Cooper, has been released all over the world.
You’ll find them. But the key is whether they are popular or not. Her books are staples among undergrads in the US.
As for the USSR, as was mentioned earlier, I don’t believe her books were available back “in the day”. I could be wrong, but if any books were banned it would’ve been hers. The fact that she was originally from Russia is meaningless, especially since she emigrated to the US in the 20s (she was an illegal alien!).
Susanann may be correct about the founding of the Libs here being somewhat independent of AR, but you can bet dollars to donuts that the party wouldn’t even be 1/10 the size it is (and it ain’t big) without The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Save your time, it would be far more useful to read an overview of American libertarian philosophy than punish yourself with the rather simple-minded pseudo-economics and paranoid mumblings of Rand, a turgid writer at best.
In general, I find people who get their economics from Rand have … the “interesting” if rather fundamentally economically illiterate views presented by this Susanne person.
I would say, however, as to the main issue, that libertarian roots, esp. more properly theorized thinking, do run back rather further than AR. However ‘popular’ libertarianism, esp. like that seen here, does seem very much ‘Randian’ - quite regretably in my opinion.
As Collounsbury noted, Rand is the point source for popular libertarianism in the US.
I would also agree with posters who say that Libertarianism draws on a long-standing American distrust of government. Hell, the country was founded on a distrust of government.
On the other hand, Susanann is wrong to say that the founding fathers were flat-out libertarians. In fact, they had experimented with a very limited form of government under the Articles of Confederation. That experiment was a miserable failure, and the US Constitution was subsequently drafted with the specific idea of creating a stronger central government.
Still, the lingering distrust of government was there, as manifested in the Bill of Rights, tacked onto the Constitution out of fear of over-reaching federal authority.
It’s a discussion of the general availabilty of AR’s books in Europe vs the US, not a discussion of her book’s merits that led to the post you quoted.
But I’d hope that Clair would want to draw her own conclusions about the subject if she has any interest in it.
Well, WHICH aspect of Libertarianism does the OP feel is unrepresented in Europe? Remember, there are two key components to the Libertarian ethic: the unbridled economic component and the social component.
Here in the U.S., it’s fair (though a bit overly simplistic) to say that the Democrats generally believe the government should play a major role in shaping the economy but should butt out of personal issues. The Republicans, generally, believe in laissez-faire economics but are quite comfortable with using government power to police people’s personal lives. In theory, a Libertarian is for smaller government across the board- for lower taxes AND pot legalization, for reducing welfare spending AND repealing sodomy laws.
Given this, why would there be a need for a Libertarian Party in, say, the Netherlands? The Dutch have ALREADY legalized most of the behaviors that the America Libertarians want to legalize here! What social issues remain that a Dutch Libertarian party could campaign on.
That leaves the economic side. And here, I’m afraid, a European Libertarian wouldn’t find many followers. In Europe, even the most conservative politicians accept a degree of socialism that we’d NEVER stand for in the United States. Margaret Thatcher may have made cuts in social sending, but there were certain socialist programs she’d never have dared touch, and certain industries she’d have never dared to privatize.
Europeans simply EXPECT their governments to provide a wide range of services that Americans generally believe are none of the government’s concern. If Margaret Thatcher didn’t dare attempt a complete dismantling of socialism, I can’t imagine European Libertarians making much headway with the voters.
do you know what you are saying?
YOu are saying that the goverment created in 1789 was a second choice of the fouding fathers, and that they tried/prefered an even more limited/libertarian goveernment before the one in 1789.
Yet, as far as the governement that they created in 1789, most libertarians today, would be mostly quite happy with the government that came into being in 1789: no gun laws, no drug laws, no drug war, no prohibition, no standing army, no preemtivie strikes on other nations, minding our own business and staying out of european wars, no income tax, hard money with a gold standard, no long standing budget deficits/national debt, no social security, no health insurance, etc.
The governement of 1789 was quite libertarian, and not at all republiican nor democrat.
These are all major points of the libertarian party, and this was exactly the governemnt that the founding fathers created, and maintained.
It was not until much later, that the “libertarian” government set up by Washington and jefferson, was degraded by republicans and democrats, and it was the more recent republicans and democrats that instituted an income tax in the early 1900’s, a draft , a drug war in the early 1900’s, gun laws starting in 1934, going off the gold/silver standard in 1934/1965/1970, prohibition in the late 1920’s, etc.
Why do you continue to say that the founding fathers were at odds with the libertarians?? The government that the founding fathers created in 1789 is the closest government ever created in the ideals of the libertarians.
The united states was very much libertarian for its first 150 years, and only a libertarian would trade our current government devised/warped/deformed by republicans and democrats, for the government that we had for our first 150 years of our history.
Good post, Astorian. Ties in well with the OP’s other thread: Do socialist politics have a future in the United States? It appears that (from the European viewpoint) in the U.S. there is a deep seated antipathy to socialist tenets. Of course, from the U.S. viewpoint there is a dangerous infatuation in Europe with socialist arrangements. And ne’er the twain shall meet?
I have to agree with Susanann on this one. The FF may not have been actual Libertarians or “flat-out” libertarians, but the fact of the matter is that most would be considered more libertarian than anything else judged by today’s standard. The one huge exception would be slavery, which was somehow compartmentalized as a seperate issue which needed to be left alone to ensure that the Union could actually be formed. Jefferson, in particular, comes to mind as a libertarian type thinker.
And many of the pieces of legislation that we take for granted today would be seen as crazy just 100 yrs ago, by a country that was much more libertarian-minded than it is today.
I’m not saying our predecesors were actuallly libertarians (even with a small “l”), but that they were much closer to that way of thinking than people typically are today.
“That government is best which governs least” and all that.
I will point out that the “whiskey rebellion” was caused by GW and his tax on booze. Federal taxes were excise & import in those days, but there wasn’t much Fderal Government to pay for. True, the Federal Gov’t had few of those laws, but the various State governments did- such as Income taxes, prohibition, etc. In fact some local Governments were VERY restrictive, more so than today- regulating such things as dress, church attendance, etc.
We have always had a standing army, also, although some did talk about getting rid of it (and it grew very small for a while). Jefferson bought the Lousiania purchase- something no Libertarian would think was OK. Note that the Militia act also made every able bodied man a member of the Miltitary. The War of 1812 was certainly us “meddling” in European wars, in fact the basic idea was for us to grab Canada while the Brits were busy with Napoleon.
Yes, those were simpler times, and a smaller FEDERAL government could run well. But even though those times were more libertarian than today, they were hardly libertarian. Not to mention we had slavery for over 100 of those years, which does seem to be a trifle “coercive” at least for those who were black.
In some ways, today is more libertarian, in fact. No government tells you where & how to worship, or many other restrictions that were common in local governments in the early days.
Sorry to disgress, but there’s something I don’t understand, here. It’s quite clear why, given their philosophy, the libertarians would support all the things you listed…except one…I don’t get what the ** gold standard ** has to do with libertarianism…
Gold standard is considered to be critically important to a good economy to at least some Libertarians.
They don’t like the “fake money”, ie anything not backed up by Gold or Silver. Its supposed to prevent inflation or something, and its used in some libertarian explanations of history to talk about why different depressions happened.
Mind:
I don’t fully understand it either, but I think you got it mostly right. It takes a lot of discipline to not have inflation when money can just be printed. Witness most of S. America and even the US at various times in recent history.
Milton Friedman has, I think, proposed replacing the Federal Reserve with a computer to take the human element out of it. It’s **awefully[b/] tempting for pols to think they can circumvent the laws of economics “just this one time” and head a country into an inflationary nightmare.
Posted by Susanann:
Well, Susanann, it depends on what you mean by “government.” The federal government in the early decades had libertarian policies, mainly because the general policing power was in the hands of the state governments, but it does not necessarily follow that the Framers had enacted a libertarian constitution. Any federal exercise of power is constitutional if it is not expressly prohibited by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, and if it can be fitted into the powers expressly delegated to Congress. These include the power to regulate interstate commerce, and the Supreme Court has long accepted the theory that this covers anything that affects interstate commerce to the slightest degree – which, in a nationally integrated economy, includes practically any economic activity. The “necessary and proper” clause justifies almost everything else. And don’t forget, the same generation of politicians that drafted and enacted the Constitution also enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts. How libertarian could they have been in their principles? Remember, also, that the Bill of Rights originally restrained the federal government only; the Supreme Court has gradually, piece by piece, decided that most but not all of its amendments also restrain state-level action. All of the cases extending the BOR to the states were post-Civil-War.
I’ve sometimes read a button at science-fiction conventions, obviously libertarian in inspiration: “The United States Constitution has its faults, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what we’ve got now.” It’s a clever slogan, but it’s a lie. The truth is, the United States Constitution is a hell of a lot worse than what we’ve got now, insofar as it differs, as anyone can see who looks dispassionately at the Constitution’s history and at our present needs. We need a federal government with the clout to regulate our national economy, just for starters. No modern industrialized society has found a way to do without such a thing. But I’d better stop this line of argument – I don’t want to hijack my own thread, which was not intended to start a debate on the merits of libertarianism.
Well, just one more point: Several posters have mentioned the constitutionally protected status of slavery as an anomaly in the Constitution’s generally libertarian tone. But you could make a libertarian case for slavery, provided you define “liberty” as the simple absence of state interference, and provided you conceive of slavery as something that just happens when the state keeps its nose out, as opposed to something that thrives because the state supports it. In some times and places the first has been the case – especially, in places where there was no effective state and people were free to kidnap and enslave their neighbors if they were strong enough. But in the American context, the institution of slavery, from early colonial times to the Civil War, always depended on government support. Mainly local or state-level support. White Southerners at the time were apparently oblivious to this distinction; they seem to have had the idea that nothing was an encroachment on liberty unless it came out of Washington. There was one Southern slaveowner (I forget his name) who declared on the floor of the U.S. Senate, punctuating his remarks with the crack of a bullwhip, “I am an aristocrat. I love liberty. I hate equality.” Sometimes I wonder how many libertarians or Libertarians really share this viewpoint, deep down.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Do you know what the “liber” in “libertarian” means? Latin for “free”. Libertarians start with the basic premise that all citizens are free and equal. ALL citizens. It would be 100% contraditctory to the most basic tenets of libertarians to say that the gov’t would allow the enslavement of one human by another. Libs would argue that the primary function of gov’t is to ensure the basic rights of it’s citizens, which start with the right of owning your body and the fruits of one’s labor.
The senator you quoted was not a libertarian. The hint should have been the reference to being an “aristocrat”.
Many of the functions performed by today’s federal government can’t be “fitted into” the delegated powers of Congress under any reasonable interpretation. The fact that the Constitution has been ineffective at preventing these usurpations doesn’t mean that it was designed to allow them.
Anarchists define liberty that way, not libertarians. Libertarians believe that the proper function–indeed, the only appropriate function–of government is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its inhabitants. By countenancing the existence of slavery, the original Constitution failed to do this, with horrific consequences.
Well, I have read – don’t have any cite for it, it was mentioned in one of my college economics textbooks – that Libertarians support something called “voluntary slavery.” No idea what that means, it sounds oxymoronic. Perhaps it means I should have the freedom to sell myself into your ownership if I want to – but if I change my mind later, and the state will not step in to enforce your power over me, then what does my enslaved status really mean? It’s just an unenforceable contract.
I’ll let a real Libertarian answer that question (I’m not a real one, I just play one on TV:)) I’ll just say that if the “salvery” is voluntary, it’s hardly slavery. You can sell yourself as a “voluntary slave” today if you want. There are web sites, organizations, and magazines devoted specifically to that activity.
Many Libs would support, for example, the right of someone to sell one of their kidneys or for a woman to receive cash for being a surrogate mother. Much as today men can sell their sperm.
[playing devil’s advocate] See, though, you’re making an assumption that a lot of antebellum slaveholders wouldn’t make. You’re assuming that slaves are human beings who can understand the concept of liberty and have rights being violated by their enslavement.
After all, nobody (or almost nobody) says that the government should act to prevent someone from owning a cow, or a mule. Why, then, should the government prevent someone from owning a negro, who is, after all, just another kind of animal. [/devil’s advocate]
Good point. I had a whole paragraph in my original post about that, but deleted it because I couldn’t articulate the argument very well. Suffice it to say that our modern scientific view of the relatedness of the various human “races” was not available to our antebellum forefathers. Doesn’t excuse it, but it does explain it somewhat. They certainly knew that we were the same species, as per all the slave children sired by slaveowners who then had no problem reprudcing themselves.