Re: [RC] non-obvious self-identified "Libertarians"

This is a curious interview; here he responds to a question about why he calls himself a "libertarian" given its association with figures like Nozick, Hayek, Rand, and Friedman:

Actually, I don't think I've ever called myself a "libertarian," because the term is too ambiguous. I do often call myself a "libertarian socialist," however.

The term "libertarian" has an idiosyncratic usage in the US and Canada, reflecting, I suppose, the unusual power of business in these societies. In the European tradition, "libertarian socialism" ("socialisme libertaire") was the anti-state branch of the socialist movement: anarchism (in the European, not the US sense).

I use the term in the traditional sense, not the US sense.

I strongly dislike the figures you mention. Rand in my view is one of the most evil figures of modern intellectual history. Friedman was an important economist. I'll leave it at that.

Nozick, who I knew, was a clever philosopher. He did call himself a libertarian but it was fraud. He was a Stalinist-style supporter of Israeli power and violence. People who knew him used to joke that he believed in a two-state solution: Israel, and the US government because it had to support Israeli actions.

Hayek was the kind of "libertarian" who was quite tolerant of such free societies as Pinochet's Chile, one of the most grotesque of the National Security States instituted with US backing or direct initiative during the hideous plague of terror and violence that spread over the hemisphere from the 60s through the 80s. He even sank to the level of arranging a meeting of his Mont Pelerin society there during the most vicious days of the dictatorship.

Quite apart from practice, I don't suggest that they understood it, but in their "libertarian" writings these figures were in fact supporting some of the worst kinds of tyranny that can be imagined: namely private tyranny, in principle out of public control. Traditional European libertarian socialism addressed this issue. I often found myself agreeing with US-style libertarians -- not those you mention, but many in the Cato Institute, for example; in fact I could only publish in a journal of theirs for years. But we had fundamental differences, specifically, about the nature of freedom.

I'm not trying to convince you. Merely to respond to your question, and explain why I'm comfortable with the terms I use, "libertarian socialism" -- which to US (and I suppose many Canadian) ears sounds like an oxymoron.

Re: [RC] non-obvious self-identified "Libertarians"

Chomsky on Libertarianism and Its Meaning

Reply via email to