5 responses so far ↓

• 1 Carl M // Dec 12, 2008 at 7:04 pm

  Ah, the delusions:

  1. Libertarianism as Rothbard defines it elsewhere was not a mass movement in the 19th Century. Liberalism was. HUGE difference.

  2. While modern communism didn’t work — at least not in the face of sustained low level warfare from the West — other totalitarian systems do work, unfortunately. Rome did not collapse in a day.

  3. If freedom is the natural state of man, why is it so rare?

  4. The French Revolution was hardly an explosion of freedom.

  5. Communism is a very old idea. Some primitive tribes are pretty close to communist. The Incas had a system pretty close to modern socialism.

• 2 Gene Trosper // Dec 12, 2008 at 11:29 pm

  The Murray Bookchin segments are taken from a documentary called “Anarchism In America”. The movie is a fascinating watch and I recommend it for the wonderful piece of history that it is. You can buy the DVD (like I have) or you can watch it on the internet.

• 3 mscrib // Dec 13, 2008 at 1:12 am

  Carl M,

  Regarding your second point, do you think there is a modern totalitarian state that will last, say, for another 100 years? I guess this is hard to ask since these states tend to attract outside military liberators, and we all know what happens then…

• 4 JimDavidson // Dec 13, 2008 at 6:49 am

  At 44 minutes Murray points out that in 1989, instead of passing resolutions about the exciting freedom activities in China, or the various Warsaw bloc freedom events, the LP national committee was vilifying one of their own members and targeting him for removal.

  So, there you have it folks. Twenty years on, and the LP is doing pretty much the same thing.

  Oh, no kidding, Susan Hogarth’s very important Afghanistan war should end resolution was passed by the LNC. And what does that puke Andrew Davis do yesterday? He puts up a poll to find out how many LP enthusiasts support sending *more* troops to Afghanistan (running about ten or eleven to one against right now).

  Meanwhile, most of the angst was spent, not talking about how to take advantage of current conditions to promote freedom, but deciding whether Angela Keaton gets to say things just as she thinks them. Gosh, how entirely pointless.

  Which, after all, is one of the many reasons Tom Knapp founded the Boston Tea Party in 2006. You LNC people really need to get a grip.

• 5 Carl M // Dec 13, 2008 at 3:03 pm

  mscrib:

  Hard to say. The semi-autonomous bureaucracy that’s evolving in Europe seems to be the wave of the future at the moment; i.e., a veneer of democracy on top of a largely self-directed civil service.

  If I recall my history classes correctly, the Chinese civil service managed to run the country for centuries with changes in dynasty having little effect. Mongol or Manchu? Who cares?

  Other systems to consider: the Hindu caste system and the Japanese Shogunate. Tyranny can last and last without foreign intervention.

  Note: the “non-working” Soviet system was putting a gigantic amount of its economy to military spending. Without U.S. provocation, the Soviet system may well have reached a stable equilibrium.

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