-Caveat Lector-
The following appeared in the December 1995 issue of OUT OF STEP, my monthly
newsletter, under the headline "Calling for a Left-Right Anti-War
Coalition":
"So Clinton is getting his damned shooting war - er, his 'peacekeeping
intervention.' American troops are being launched into what has already been
the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II. After his November 27
television address, the president quickly fled the country while the
nation's money powers, intelligentsia, and media fell into line behind his
plan.
"The New York Times called Clinton's plan 'limited, achievable and in
accordance with American national interests.' The Miami Herald agreed with
the president that 'only America has the armed might and geopolitical
suasion to make this peace agreement work.' And the Los Angeles Times chimed
in by calling Clinton's arguments for intervention "compelling." It
continued: 'The United States has no choice. Clinton said the U.S. troops
should be out in a year; that sounds optimistic. Congress must question that
target date. But the president's cause is right.'
"In a bizarre analysis, Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to
President George Bush, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that to not
send 20,000 troops to Bosnia would be a 'catastrophe for U.S. reliability.'
He then added that if troops are deployed, 'the possibility for significant
reverses, if not disaster, is fairly high.' Sounds like a no-win situation,
doesn't it? Henry Kissinger, never far from any significant moves toward a
New World Order, weighed in with some uninspired comment: 'I do not believe
we have a vital national security interest in Bosnia. But the president has
committed us and I don't believe that Congress will disavow the president at
this stage. That would be harmful to the United States.'
"Then, of course, the Republican Party leadership caved in to Clinton's
desires 'reluctantly.'
"But not so the American people. They don't seem to really have the stomach
for another Iraq, or Somalia, or Haiti, or any U.S. military presence on
foreign soil. Curiously, Clinton's TV talk was not followed immediately by
the usual polling results. Instead, it took a day or two for any solid
polling numbers to come in as Clinton's journalistic lapdogs scrambled to
gather 'good news' for their man in the White House. And even then, the
president's planned I-FOR - 'peace implementation force' - garnered a
lackluster 46-percent support. This number will likely rise as the troops
actually arrive in Bosnia accompanied by the expected patriotic pomp, then
nosedive after the first few American deaths are revealed and the body bags
start arriving home.
"The most stirring speech given at last month's annual meeting of the
paleo-right John Randolph Club in Northern California erupted from Justin
Raimondo, libertarian political activist and author of Reclaiming the
American Right, a well-written history of the Old Right of Albert Jay Nock,
H.L. Mencken, and Garet Garrett. Raimondo called for the building of a new
America First Committee, following closely the anti-war and anti-imperialist
model of more than 50 years ago. Declaring that the anti-war movement is now
located on the Right, Raimondo concluded, 'We must act and organize now to
stop the War Machine of the Power Elite!'
"Raimondo's correct. The time to act and organize is now. And I think his
call for a new America First movement is well-intentioned. But his
right-wing vision may be too small. Take a look at the articles on
intervention in Bosnia that appear on page two of this issue - one from the
Far Left, the other the Far Right. We have now a rare opportunity to forge a
solid coalition of New Left and Hard Right - anti-imperialist, anti-war,
anti-interventionist, anti-conspiracy, anti-statist, and strongly anti-power
elite - to fight the American Warfare State, now led by Bill Clinton but led
earlier by every president since Woodrow Wilson.
"The idea of such a coalition isn't new. The late founders of modern
libertarianism, Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess, tried to build such a
Left-Right Opposition back in the late '60s. Well, it's time to try again -
particularly while the real Left is demoralized by liberal-centrists of the
Clinton school and the hardcore libertarian Right is compromised and
sold-out by political hacks of both the Republican and Libertarian Parties.
"Earlier this year, my friend Samuel Edward Konkin III, of the Movement of
the Libertarian Left, reintroduced the idea of a radical Left-Right
partnership. He wrote in a pamphlet titled 'What's Left?': 'While we can and
should discuss and debate the merits and demerits of a Left/Libertarian
coalition, ultimately, someone will have to, as libertarians say, take the
risk and make the investment.'
"The time is now to take the risk and make the investment.
"It's never been truer than it is today, friends: we have nothing to lose
but our chains."
The following appeared in the January 1996 of my newsletter, OUT OF STEP:
"Editor's Note: Samuel Edward Konkin III (SEK3) has been at the center of
radical, anti-party libertarianism, agorism, and Counter-Economics for
almost 30 years. In January 1970, he began publishing New Libertarian (first
appearing as Laissez-Faire!, then New Libertarian Notes, then New
Libertarian Weekly). In '78, Konkin founded the Movement of the Libertarian
Left. His stirring call to Counter-Economic activism, New Libertarian
Manifesto, first appeared in 1980. Konkin now serves as Executive Director
of The Agorist Institute, which was founded (symbolically) at the end of
1984. For that organization, he produces The Agorist Quarterly, a scholarly
journal, The New Isolationist, and Counter-Economics: The Newsletter.
"Early last year, SEK3 addressed the idea of forging a Left-Right Opposition
movement in a widely-circulated pamphlet titled 'What's Left?' I endorsed
such a coalition in these pages last June, then again last month in response
to Clinton's U.S.-U.N. imperialist military intervention in Bosnia. It is to
last month's article that Konkin is responding below.
"Counter-Conspiring
"by Samuel Edward Konkin III
"For many years, I have enjoyed and increasingly admired out of step and
hope that it is signing up only 'for the duration.' Nevertheless, I applaud
Editor Conger's decision to enlist in the Grand Coalition that I called for.
"Actually, Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess called for it in 1965 with their
Radical Libertarian Alliance (RLA), and I joined in the chorus belatedly in
late 1969. When the New Left exploded, the RLA died, and the Libertarian
Party (LP) came along, I intensified the call, reviving the all-anarchist
Student Libertarian Action Movement (SLAM) and creating a brief "radical
caucus" within the infant LP, using proven New Left tactics to break off the
hardcore into SLAM. But as the historical moment 'slipped away,' we
libertarian revolutionaries belatedly joined our Weather-cousins underground
as the New Libertarian Alliance, testing and proving Counter-Economics.
"Surfacing in the Agorist Institute (AI) in 1985, I had no trouble
attracting 'Old' New Leftists to my publications. Some, such as Robert Anton
Wilson and Carl Oglesby, crossed over to become Libertarians. (Oglesby ran
for the LP in Vermont three years ago.) Most relevant to Editor Conger's
call was the strong positive response to New Isolationist. When AI started
up that newsletter with reprints seven years ago, Noam Chomsky and Alexander
Cockburn were supportive enough to lend their articles to it and refer us to
their friends.
"Anecdote: when Cockburn was signing his Corruptions of Empire at Midnight
Special in Santa Monica, I bought one for my sidekick, Kent Hastings, and we
stood in line for his signature. I had sent him several zines but handed him
a copy of New Libertarian with his picture on the cover before asking for
his autograph for Kent. One of his comrades asked him puzzledly, 'Do we like
Libertarians?'
"Cockburn answered, 'I love Libertarians!' And he autographed the book,
'Happy Birthday, Kent. Best for a Libertarian World.'
"In November 1994, the Monday morning after the election, I was still up in
the wee hours with C-SPAN on the TV in the background, when a Left-Right
panel came on. Mona Charen represented National Review and Christopher
Hitchens came from The Nation. Charen gloated. Phone calls poured in from
triumphant Republicans and downcast Democrats.
"Finally, one disheartened liberal asked Hitchens for some ray of hope. What
would he do to save the Democratic Party? Replied Hitchens, 'I don't want to
save the Democratic Party.' He preferred the left-wing to split off and join
'the Libertarians' in a new opposition movement.
"That night, the Karl Hess Club was meeting, and when the Republican and
Libertarian Party spokesmen had their say, I brought up the revived Third
Alternative: as the Italians say, appertura alla sinistra. The responses
were highly instructive.
"The LP rep, Ted Brown, uneasily suggested that the New Leftists interested
in such a coalition should join the LP. 'O.K.,' I replied, 'but what if they
should outnumber the existing Party membership?' No answer from Ted, but
several other Partyarchs (i.e., 'party anarchists') cried for membership
requirements and non-aggression pledges.
"The Republican, who had been chosen because he had been a former LP
candidate, simply looked dumbfounded at a front table made up of well-known
Left Libertarians such as myself, Brad Linaweaver, Kent Hastings, and
others, and said, 'What's a Left Libertarian? I don't believe they exist!'
As the psychobabblers say, he was in Serious Denial.
"The Karl Hess Club was created for a variety of reasons. Karl Hess had just
died and so had the Albert J. Nock and H.L. Mencken Forums (fora), leaving
L.A. without a non-party supper club. But of all the things Hess was known
for in his half-century of activism, it was his call under the arch in St.
Louis at the 1969 Young Americans for Freedom convention for young
libertarians stuck in the conservative-controlled YAF to split and join the
New Left for which he will be remembered. He joined the Black Panthers and
the Institute for Policy Studies, and when Murray Rothbard swung Right,
Left, Party and Paleo, Hess kept up his associations.
"Let Murray's words (from 1965 in Left and Right) and Karl's actions, Carl
Oglesby (in 1965 in Containment and Change) and Alex Cockburn's responses,
down to Chris Hitchens and myself only yesterday, provide the historical
chorus to Wally Conger's Clear Call for a Coalition against The Third Balkan
War, and against the Imperial State that could create such a monstrosity.
"Then let's roll up our sleeves and build this movement."
I would tremendously appreciate any comment anyone might contribute about
this material. Are Left-Right "pop front" coalitions viable in fighting
issues where Right and Left may agree? Must Left and Right agree about
*everything* in order to work together?
Wally Conger
74603,2710
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