Political Theory

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Jon Irenicus — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:12:55 GMT

In the end I think that race is by far the biggest threat to libertarianism as we know it. I've been convinced of this ever since fringelements who produced (and occasionally still does produce) quite high-quality anti-statist material turned around and started spending the vast majority of his time fighting endless battles over the source of racial IQ gaps rather than anti-statist stuff. It's been an issue ever since Rothbard and I think that it's just going to get worse in a time that we need it to get infinitely better.

Considering how the anti-racist knee-jerk response is a product of the educational establishment, an considering how Fringe has made it very clear why he fights the battle on his particular ground, i.e. that IQ gaps are often treated as sources of some sort of institutionally driven form of inequality, I cannot agree. True, this isn't an inherently libertarian issue but libertarians have interests outside of their own ideology and I think it is brave of him to take on an area mired in absurdity. We do this with the global warming cult, too. Just because people have been indoctrinated into a particular ideology, and therefore combatting it can be a source of unpopularity, does not mean the nonsense should go unopposed.

I also reject that minorities increasing in numbers in the future poses an issue in this respect. Assuming that China and India don't collapse and that their populations aren't, for whatever reason, decimated due to statist failures or catastrophes, they are hardly going to take offence to race realism, and I would argue that these countries probably do not reject the idea of it, unlike brainwashed liberal western democracies. I don't know about Brazil, but I assume it is similar in that regard. Russia, too, a major future power-broker and predominantly white, is not mired in silly egalitarian myths anymore. There is a whole world outside the US. Even so, their own birthrates are going to reverse into decline eventually as well as they grow richer. The only reason minorities in the US are increasing still is because they are not yet as affluent as the rest of the population. Moreover, race realism isn't a position against minorities as it advocates nothing on the political level; if some people draw out political implications thence, it is due to their own premises. It does point out why various government programmes do nothing to help them soi-disant minorities, in spite the supposedly noble intentions that drive these policies. Besides, many of these minorities might comprise individuals who are or might become conservative, and as such emphasising the harmony of libertarianism with preserving their values (that aren't contradictory to the NAP) might actually increase our following.

I realise that some people have a vested interest in pretending that reality is other than it is. E.g. women can pretend all they wish that they are the more intelligent gender and that wage gaps are due to males oppressing them and keeping them down. In part, the governent does make discrimination easier, even through its anti-discrimination laws (as these make employers reluctant to touch employees who can be a legal minefield for them if anything goes wrong.) However, are we therefore supposed to pretend there are no sex-driven differences, just because we want to pander to women? It makes no sense to me. Nor does it make sense to me to pretend AGW is occuring just because the majority of public school troglodyes believe that the IPCC has declared the issue as resolved for all posterity, in the name of science.

A lot of bad policy is driven by even worse science. Now a lot of this stuff is debatable and the minutiae are lost in avenues such as YT discussions, so it might be worth avoiding them on that prudential ground. If you think that minorities are egalitarian in mindset, however, and not prone to racism, you should look a little harder. Libertarianism comes with the right to dissociate as well as to associate, and is the only ideology that can calmly and peacefully reconcile the desire of certain groups to remain at arms length distance but still trade and therefore profit from one another. I also think you should forget of the US as it is today. It is unstable and will eventually fracture. Forcing people to get along and sweeping their disagreements or unwillingness to associate with each other is not a proscription for progress.

You ought not to confuse race-realism with racist political ideologies. The only reason FE brings it up and discusses it, besides the intellectual dishonesty of those who oppose it, is that its contrary is evoked in all sorts of policy proscriptions. I don't take a stance on the matter as yet but so far I think FE has more than made the case for his position, and I think he is a good counter to the likes of Stefbot in some regards, who whilst he makes some good points re parenting, can often veer into the 100% environmental determinist camp, perhaps due to unintentional sloppiness.

An intellectual revolution is necessary and it will take a long time for it to be consummated. I for one see no harm in exercising the right of dissociation entailed by libertarianism or explaining how it may be exercised. At the moment, the precise opposite to this is communicated by the establishment (the duty of forced association) and it is a mentally sick ideology that needs to be hacked away. Libertarianism is at odds with nearly every single element of modern "academia". It is at the heart of most voluntary interactions. Most people are indoctrinated by the state and are in a position of false consciousnss whereby they assent to voluntaryist principles in their personal lives, but believe in statist hogwash on the intellectual level because... well because the government told them to, and taught them not to think outside the boxes it defines! Opposing Keynesianism alone probably does it more damage than some libertarians making allusions to race-realism.

Echoing Minarchist's point, whilst anarcho-capitalism is neutral to personal morals, one can still tie in libertarianism with traditional mores. In fact, the virtue of anarcho-capitalism could be seen as the fact that it will crush the state, which stands in the way of the development of organic structures, such as the family or Hoppe's "natural elites", which could provide integrity and cohesion to such a society. There is always the risk of replacing old sources of illegitimate authority with new ones, and we don't obviously want a return to the abusive familial relations that dominated prior to the present era. I think there is a huge problem in defending tradition for its own sake. I include in this vision communists who would subjugate the individual to their beloved commune, in the name of "freedom".

Yet I also believe a purely atomistic, "survival of the fittest" anarchist society (the caricature of Objectivism) that saw no value in anything but monetary reward would not last, either. Humans are not conditioned in that manner, nor do many anarcho-capitalists argue in this way. They are still free to exist, however, and may do well. Who knows. Likewise, conservative leftists like communitarians, but also the egalitarian anarcho-communist sort, could also institute their own societies provided they did not aggress against anyone. There would be a lot of competition between such arrangements. So it is understandable for libertarians to try and draw a picture of how an e.g. liberal or traditionalist society would function in this context.

Of course it isn't libertarianism's role to imbue people's life with meaning. It is just there to delineate justifiable from unjustifiable actions. The state falls into the latter category. However, as per the above, libertarians do the ideology justice by showing how the institutions (including for-profit firms, and the dreaded MNC) that could arise under it would supersede and exceed the state in providing this "meaning" that people seek.

Re monarchies, I am favourably inclined to them. I've always had a love for them and inegalitarian social arrangements i.e. aristocracy. If the choice were between any democratic form of organisation, and an indifferent laissez-faire, laissez-passer monarchy, I'd be happy with that, though obviously I'd have an even stronger preference to see anarcho-capitalism materialise. Such micro-monarchies might arise in conjunction with it all the same.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Clayton — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:49:39 GMT

Hadn’t it been for such clarity form the LvMI, I would hardly have become a libertarian myself.

+++++++++++++1 Merlin

The dispassoinate approach of Mises is a real break from the vast, vast majority of discussion of matters with any social dimension to them. Motivated belief has become so common that the moment you find some unmotivated, rational discussion, it's like you realize you've been drinking some kind of ideological sludge your whole life and now that you've found clean, healthy, natural water, you can't even bear to taste a drip of the old stuff.

Neodoxy:
I completely disagree. I think that some form of libertarianism either needs to become a mass movement or manifest itself as some sort of secessionary movement if it is to actually take hold. With the current groups in this world who are having children at the fastest rates this is what is going to have to happen and any association with racism could kill the entire movement. I suppose that things might look a little different on the other side of the planet though...

What does what Aristippus said have anything to do with race?

“History has never been dominated by majorities, but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith.” - RJ Rushdoony

Now, Rushdoony was a Christian Reconstructionist - head of a movement dedicated to bringing about a Protestant theocracy in the US but his point stands on its own merits. And while we are not (or at least I am not) in the business of "dominating history", the fact remains that it is, only can be, and only ever has been "dedicated minorities" that bring about change.

But we (those on the side of liberty) have an immense, double-advantage as against our opponents - we're telling the truth. I think a lot of people miss why this matters so much. It's not that God is on our side, or that the truth is in any way more automatically persuasive than falsehood (if it were, there would be no such thing as a State) - rather, it's that the truth is like a self-powered repeater or beacon. All we need to do is show people the right "wavelength" to tune in - that is, how to use their own brain. Other than that, Nature does the rest for us, because no matter how many different ways you think about the issues, no matter how many sides you consider, you will always end up coming back to the truth to one degree or another. So long as the individual is not completely beyond hope (a social parasite such as a politician or a brainwashed devotee of such), that "truth signal" will keep impinging on them again and again, like one of those annoying Top-40 songs you can't get out of your head.

Nobody needs to resort to Hegelian dialectic or postmodern narrative to prove that 2+2=4 or that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of its sides - these facts reside, dispassionately, within any study of artihmetic and geometry and must, inevitably, be rediscovered by anyone who studies the subject, even if they start without the benefit of Euclid, etc. The same is true of the subject of human action, though this is not clear until you've read Mises because of all the noise in this discipline generated by special interests seeking to confound public opinion and generally hide the fact that there are laws of human behavior to which all humans and human groups are subject, including organizations like government and collectives like "society".

Those who want to promote the State or some other system of exploitation built on other means of manipulation (e.g. emotional) are locked in an eternal battle with the truth. They must invent a million counter-arguments, they must devise a million different brainwashing techniques to block off every avenue of approach for the truth. Should they overlook even one avenue of approach, the truth will have a crack through which it can reach the minds of devotees. So long as there is anybody out there repeating the truth - however quietly, however humbly, however weakly - the truth will begin to spread.

So, the role of a "dedicated minority" of libertarians is merely to keep the the truth itself alive. Just keep the pilot light on. Nothing more is needed to set the world on fire.

Clayton -

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Merlin — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 15:21:45 GMT

I read some, and skimmed most of the articles there. Though much is interesting, I keep finding the same issue with far-rightists: they seem much too interested in poetic talk to give a clear image of the society they seek. Past all the talk of “inherent conflict” and “nature”, I still cannot see what they seek, besides expressing frustration at the world as it is.

This was and still is my impression of Nietzsche, of the precursors of Fascism and a few other such ‘traditionalists’.

Perhaps I’m wrong but ideologies which really heavily on literary effect to make their muddled point are suspect to me, as they seem to shoot for emotional effect instead of logic. And to think that libertarianism is there expressively accused of using religious-like memes to make its point!

For an example closer to home, the general libertarian feel you get form the LvMI seems to me to be superior to that emanating from Molineux, who again relies heavily on emotional and literary effect. Hadn’t it been for such clarity form the LvMI, I would hardly have become a libertarian myself.

And let’s not ever repeat John Ess’ point here: that it befits any ideology seemingly placing virility, courage and such manly virtues at the top to clearly prove how its very followers conform to such ideals. Perhaps it would make the whole think less confused (but then again, had any exponent of Nazism conformed to the stereotype of the “Aryan”, that particular ideology too could have survived the war).

All in all, I think I will keep reading what they write. Perhaps there really is nothing more than frustration there.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Torsten — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:04:34 GMT

I would think anything "reactionary" would be an automatically self defeating position

I'd think that as well. A reactionary is just against change. That is not enough imo.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Minarchist — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:47:18 GMT

Anarcho-capitalism is naturally hostile to democracy since it tends to undermine property rights and, being extremely hostile to socialism for obvious reasons, anarcho-capitalism is also hostile to the New Culture, since it sees this (rightly IMO) as an aspect of the slow socialist revolution (ordo ab chao)*. So, then, we have an anarcho-capitalism which is hostile to the two chief deities of modern society in the West. If this is what is meant by "reactionary," then it makes perfect sense to me that anarcho-capitalism would be reactionary. As the OP mentioned, there is within this reactionary strain a sense of being participants in a battle for civilization, and this finds expression in sentimental, sometimes hyperbolic, and definitely un-PC statements. We, who understand that civilization is a product of respect for property rights, are the civilized men, manning the walls against hordes of socialist barbarians. There's a siege mentality. I'm familiar with these sentiments, because I share them, I've expressed them here on occasion. So, I guess I'm saying: yea, I'm a reactionary, what of it?

*Note, this hostility has nothing necessarily to do with the personal morality of the anarcho-capitalist. That is, opposition to the new (im)morality is not necessarily founded on ethical grounds at all, but might be driven purely by worry about its impact on society. For example, I myself am an atheist, but I worry about the decline of Christianity in the West, because I wonder what will replace it - and the State seems like a probable replacement for God.

P.S. Another interesting reactionary tome is "The Closing of the American Mind," by Allan Bloom.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Jargon — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:44:14 GMT

+ 1 Aristippus

The reason why some Libertarians are going further right? Take a look at Sweden. Honestly, just any recent news article that focuses on domestic issues from Sweden.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

vive la insurrection — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:42:29 GMT

wow, just read a couple articles - strange site.

One could level a disdain for such views in the same way one could do the same for radical leftists - they are "coffee house revolutionaries" as Schumpeter calls them...but only more silly because they are reactionaries, and judging by their writing style, not ready for a blog just yet (Mencius Moldbug like him or not however, is).

Also if you hate "the progressive left" (and I kind of do) it IS FUN to play épater le bourgeois with them every once in awhile - but I think these guys went off the deep end and took at all a bit too seriously, or they're just simply not that clever.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Neodoxy — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:06:21 GMT

Very well written and clear enough to fortunately avoid tl;dr

That was very interesting and insightful, but with this said I think that it fails in ultimately fulfilling its goals because

It overemphasizes Hoppe's argument in favor of monarchy (which I find has rather clear limits, although the basic insight is indeed useful). The main problem is that there is no profit test here because there is no market for a country. A good king might be better than a good democracy, but a good king may well be much harder to find than a good democracy. A limited system of either is better than a less limited version of the other. The idea of some sort of consent and input with government is also much more classical liberal, although not quite as libertarian. And trust me I don't like saying this. There are few things in this world I hate quite as much as democracy.
It never properly addresses how there could be classical liberals on both the right and left, nor how someone could be anti-enlightenment and pro-libertarian since that is exactly where the humanistic values which we enjoy now originated.
It seems to marginalize the original values of the revolution, assume that everything flows historically from the original setting of the revolution, and ignores other developments soon after the revolution itself.

It does indeed seem to be a much more "rightist" interpretation of things, but I find the infatuation with monarchy especially gross. At best it's a necessary evil. It should never be celebrated.

Edit

Also, libertarianism has its roots in classical liberalism, not far-rightism. I also think that the idea that the primary concerns of the ultra-rightists were really the arguments employed by Hoppe and not the mystical (even more so than ultra-egalitarianism) concepts of the divine right of kings. Even worse they supported the only suitable stance of any libertarian in relation to government: marginalization and limitation.

@vive

Could you elaborate?

Re: "Reactionary" Right

vive la insurrection — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:06:18 GMT

I would think anything "reactionary" would be an automatically self defeating position

Re: "Reactionary" Right

RothbardsDisciple — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:56:54 GMT

"Are you really saying that the supporters of the ancien regime were socialists and that classical liberals could be seen as "radical right wingers" who are counter revolutionaries?"

No. I'm saying that the centre-right had some more socialistic and protectionist tendencies (and in that way agreed with the leftist idea of redistribution). On the other hand, the ultra right--the ones I admire--didn't have this tendency, and believed in property rights. In fact, some of them shared classical liberal economics philosophy, but simply combined it with tradition.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

RothbardsDisciple — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:51:26 GMT

See the longer post. ;)

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Neodoxy — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:50:31 GMT

Are you really saying that the supporters of the ancien regime were socialists and that classical liberals could be seen as "radical right wingers" who are counter revolutionaries? The whole original point of the left wing and right wing was to separate those who supported and those who opposed the French Revolution which later manifested itself into a more anti and pro ancien regime state. Classical liberals certainly supported the original intent of the French Revolution, which eventually spiraled way out of control.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

RothbardsDisciple — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:42:45 GMT

This is what I was looking for to explain my original position, Neodoxy. I was worried that it had been lost in the interwebs forever; it was part of the reason I became a "right wing anarchist":

"A good deal of words are wasted by pragmatic-reformist libertarians - desperate to win elections - about how libertarianism stands against both the Left and the Right politically. O, how they despair of being called "extremist", "idealistic", and "un-realistic" and try to explain why their political vision is somehow actually centrist and "reasonable".

Some self-described left-libertarians, taken by the sheer logical consistency of the case for non-aggression and private property, feel the feeble need to trace libertarian back and turn it into a movement of the Left! Even the great Murray Rothbard attempted this silly endeavor before he had the good sense to see himself culturally aligned not with the shrill, moralist egalitarianism of the Left, but with the palaeoconservatives of the Right. It's a sad sight to see and a discouraging sound to hear and, beyond those misfortunes, I find it historically and logically incoherent. The true libertarian (agorist, anarchist, capitalist) is the very epitome of Right-Wing political sympathies and is in stark contrast to every possible form of Leftism, the common denominator of which is support for democracy.

Before we can go any further, a good working definition of Left and Right is required. Many people, even many thinkers, consider the United States Democratic Party to be vaguely Leftist and the United States Republican Party to be vaguely of the Right. The social democratic parties of Europe are generally seen as Leftist and the Euro-skeptic, liberal, market-oriented, monarchist, and-or nationalist parties of Europe are viewed as Rightist. Some of these classifications are more true than others and, as we shall see, the only way to separate the wheat from the chaff is by method of historical interpretation.

We can derive a theory of what constitutes Left and Right from history itself. Unlike a science such as praxeology, which is primordial and cannot be taken from history, political traditions are purely human creations and their defining qualities can be known from the context of their historical origins.

The origins of the political categories Left and Right lie with the infamous French Revolution of 1789. With the storming of the Bastille and the subsequent overthrow of the customary and traditional Ancien Regime of King, Church, and Aristocracy, the succession of Revolutionary legislatures were divided into several partisan factions, each with competing political ideals and loyalties.

It must be recognized that legislation, the institution of a legislature, and "positive law", were a fairly modern innovation and largely the product of the Enlightenment. The traditional Occidental understanding of law was grounded in the Classical Graeco-Roman (largely Aristotelian-Thomistic) notion of lex naturalis, or Natural Law. This law was ahistorical, logically derived, and absolutely unchanging. Law was something to be discovered and interpreted through internally consistent legal reasoning, not an edifice to be built up by the positive and whimsical creativity of political rulers. It is not so surprising, then, that there was a genuine diversity of ideological opinion in the early French legislatures (including a robust contingent of anti-legislative and anti-parliamentary leaders) but that said diversity would erode over time as legislatures became progressively more dominated by pro-legislative and pro-parliamentary officials and the socialistic tendencies they inevitably follow.

The political spectrum in the successive Revolutionary French legislatures - National Assembly, National Constituent Assembly, Legislative Assembly, National Convention, and Directory - was split between revolutionaries, who sat to the left of the speaker, and conservatives and reactionaries, who sat to the right of the speaker. The major and definitive ideological difference between these two broad groups was the degree to which they supported either democracy (left-revolutionary) or monarchy (right-conservative/reactionary).

An important note that might be added is the fact that by no means was liberalism (in the original, European sense; or what might be termed Classical Liberalism) confined solely to the democratic Left. As Classical Liberalism is essentially an individualist political philosophy stressing the importance of freedom and liberty of association, commerce, conscience, exchange, press, religion, trade, et cetera, it appeals much more to the aristocratic tendencies of the traditional Right than to the conformist-majoritarian tyranny worshipped by Leftists. While Classical Liberalism is fatally flawed in its traditional insistence on the existence of a "minimal" or "night-watchman" state, its fundamental emphasis on the achievement and creativity of the individual, and advocacy of the general conditions necessary to allow those to flourish, is an aristocratic and noble tendency.

Joseph-Marie, Comte de Maistre, perhaps the most cutting and vehement reactionary critic of the entire structure of Enlightenment-Modernity that was embodied in the French Revolution, was himself a free-trade Physiocrat in the mold of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune. Remember that the Physiocrats were the intellectual precursors of the French Liberal School of economics, containing such great minds as Jean-Baptiste Say, Claude Frederic Bastiat, and Gustave de Molinari (the first theorist of anarcho-capitalism). That same French Liberal School would lay the groundwork for the even more laissez-faire Austrian School of economics that would produce Ludwig von Mises, Murray Newton Rothbard, and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

For more on aristocratic support for freedom of religion, see the 17th Century English example; the High-Anglican and Roman Catholic monarchists and agrarian conservatives were against the persecution of religious minorities while the doctrinaire, lower-class, pietist (and more democratic) Puritans who dominated Parliament were in favor of such persecution, particularly of Roman Catholics. It was this group of democratic anti-liberals and Protestant radicals that overthrew the Jacobite King James II in the Inglorious Revolution of 1689 (ironic, perhaps, that it was 100 years before the French Revolution) and replaced him with the more parliamentarian pretenders, William and Mary.

Returning to the original political spectrum from which we obtain the categories Left and Right, we can see the four partisan factions in relatively clear fashion. On the Far Left, including the Jacobins, we see the supporters of continual revolution, direct democracy, and mob-rule generally. At their most extreme (Robespierre) they envisioned the Rousseauvian General Will of "the people" embodied, entirely democratically, in a single dictator charged with inflicting a Reign of Terror on the enemies of the Revolution. If the dictator is in power by the will of the majority, how can he violate the principles of democracy at all? These democratic extremists were impatient with prevailing distributions of wealth and saw the democratic state as a means toward radical socialist redistribution in favor of the lower classes in general and the less productive of those lower classes in particular. Furthermore, they were anti-traditional nationalists who desired, ultimately, the "brotherhood of mankind", but would settle in the mean time for attempting to amalgamate and centralize the incredibly diverse cultures found in the country of France.

On the Center-Left stood the constitutional republicans, who were a generally bourgeois and liberal phenomenon. They imagined a governmental system with a written constitution, Montesquieuian "separation of powers", and almost universal suffrage. They were less antagonistic to inequality of income and wealth than were the Far Left, but shared the more extreme revolutionaries' radical political egalitarianism and support for democracy, albeit "liberal" and representative rather than direct and wholeheartedly revolutionary.

While the defining characteristic of the original Left was support for democracy (direct or representative), the central feature of the original Right was monarchism of various shades. The Center Right was composed of constitutional monarchists who were parliamentarians but also advocated the partial sovereignty of the Bourbons. Liberalism was also prevalent in the Center Right, and they could be seen as the Left-Wing of the aristocrats and clergy. Importantly, the constitutional monarchists were much more skeptical of the merits of universal suffrage than were the Leftists.

Finally, and most importantly, we examine the Far Right. These were the out-and-out Ancien Regime monarchists, who would later organize as the Ultra-Royalists and Legitimists. The Far Right demanded the unqualified return of the Bourbons to political sovereignty, dissolution of the Revolutionary legislatures, abolition of the various Revolutionary constitutions and "declarations of the rights of man", and immediate enforcement of property and tradition through custom and law. The aristocrats and the clergy, the First and Second Estates, were the major groups represented in the royalist camp, and they included thinkers who recognized the inherent economic, ethical, and political superiority of monarchy to every form of democracy, ideas that are being echoed this day in the brilliant writings of Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe. The King was the owner of the country, not its temporary caretaker or renter, and he had every material and psychic incentive to preserve its capital value over the course of his lifetime and beyond, that it might be passed on to be enjoyed by his heirs and posterity. Unlike democratic, populist rulers, who had no reason not to use their offices to exploit all the resources of the country before their terms were up, the King minimized his interference with the workings of the economy (at least in a relative sense).

The argument in favor of monarchy is essentially the argument in favor of the utilitarian superiority of private property to public property. Perhaps one can see where a libertarian anarcho-capitalist may be headed with this line of reasoning. How can I, as such an anarchic capitalist, possibly support the principle of monarchy? Not only do I advocate monarchy, I say it ought to be universalized! That is, "every man a king"! Down with democracy, give me liberty and property instead! If every actor is sovereign over his or her own body and property we are in a state of universalized monarchy, otherwise known as anarchy. The ONLY government that exists is individual hereditary government over the self and private property, which is to say that the ONLY government that exists is monarchy. That is what we anarchic-capitalists desire... So tell me now, do you really still think libertarianism is beyond Left and Right?

Give me monarchy, or give me death!"

Re: "Reactionary" Right

RothbardsDisciple — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:25:40 GMT

You're talking about the so-called centre right, not the right wing counter revolutionaries who sat on the far right. But yeah, you're right, there was a distinction between the conservative right wingers and radical right wingers. The former were just socialists and really were leftists.

Re: "Reactionary" Right

Neodoxy — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:08:07 GMT

"Even if the classical liberals associated with the left, that doesn't mean they were left wing."

Why not exactly? What else is being on the left supposed to entail?

It's pretty clear: Bastiat sat on the left wing of the French Legislature. The old conservatives opposed industrialism and the death of privilege while supporting trade barriers, tariffs, serfdom & slavery, militarism, colonialism, and agrarianism. This is an even more perfect form of everything that libertarianism opposes than socialism. In this context libertarianism/classical liberalism clearly WASN'T reactionary; it was revolutionary. The reason why classical liberalism can be considered to be on the right in our day is because, from a modern standpoint, it fits there since conceptions of what is "new", what is "left" and opposing the status quo has changed as the status quo itself has changed.

Implying that classical liberalism fits more comfortably with facism than it does socialism is truly a stretch.

Aristippus,

1. I agree, but this does not mean that libertarianism cannot do this. I believe that it really can. See Ron Paul's success as evidence of this. The people who were drawn to him were by no means just the best and brightest, nor just those interested in being well educated in their political views.