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How can
one combine professional life with
the advancement of liberty? Of course it is presumptuous
to offer a definitive answer since all jobs and careers in the market economy are subject to the
forces of the division of labor. Because a person focuses on one task doesn't mean that he or she
isn't great at many tasks;
it means only that the highest productive gains for everyone
come from dividing tasks up among many people of a wide range of
talents.
So it
is with the freedom movement. The more of
us there are, the more we
do well to specialize, to
cooperate through
exchange, to boost our
impact by dividing the labor.
There is no way to know
in advance what is right for any person in particular. There are
so many wonderful paths from which to choose (and which I will discuss below). But this much we can
know. The usual answer
– go into government
– is wrongheaded. Too many good minds have been corrupted and lost by following this fateful course.
If often
happens that an ideological movement will make great
strides through education and organization and
cultural influence, only to take
the illogical leap of believing that politics and political
influence, which usually means taking jobs within the bureaucracy, is the next rung
on the ladder to success.
This is like trying to fight a fire with matches and gasoline. This is what happened to the Christian
right in the 1980s. They got
involved in politics in order to throw off the yoke of the state. Twenty years later, many of these people are working in the Department of
Education or for the White House, doing the prep work to amend the Constitution or invade
some foreign country.
This is a disastrous waste of intellectual capital.
It is
particularly important that
believers in liberty not take
this course. Government work has been the chosen career path of socialists, social reformers,
and Keynesians for at
least a century. It is
the natural home to them because their ambition is to control society through government. It works for them but it does
not work for us.
In the first half of the 20th century, libertarians knew how to oppose
statism. They went into business and journalism. They wrote books. They agitated within the cultural arena. They developed
fortunes to help fund newspapers,
schools, foundations, and
public-education organizations.
They expanded their commercial ventures to serve as a bulwark against central
planning. They became teachers and, when possible, professors. They cultivated wonderful families and focused on the education of their children.
It is
a long struggle but it is
the way the struggle for liberty has always taken place. But somewhere along the way, some people, enticed by the prospect of a fast track to reform, rethought this idea. Perhaps
we should try the same technique that the left did. We should
get our people in power
and displace their
people, and then we can bring about change toward liberty. In fact, isn't this the most important goal of all? So long as the left controls the state, it will expand
in ways that are
incompatible with freedom.
We need to take back the state.
So goes
the logic. What is wrong with
it? The state's only function is as an apparatus of coercion and compulsion. That is
its distinguishing mark.
It is what makes the state the state. To the same
extent that the state responds well to arguments that it should
be larger and more powerful, it is institutionally hostile to anyone who says
that it should be less
powerful and less coercive. That is not to say that some
work from the "inside" cannot do some good, some of the time.
But it is far more likely that the state will convert the libertarian than for the libertarian to convert the
state.
We've all seen this a thousand times. It rarely takes more than a few months for a libertarian intellectual headed for the Beltway to
"mature" and realize that
his or her old ideals were
rather childish and insufficiently real world. A politician
promising to defang
Washington later becomes
the leading expert in applying
tooth enamel. Once that fateful step is taken,
there are no limits. I
know a bureaucrat who helped run martial law in Iraq who once swore fidelity to Rothbardian political economy.
The reason
has to do with ambition, which
is not normally a bad impulse. The culture of
Washington, however, requires
that ambition work itself out by paying maximum deference to the powers that be. At
first, this is easy to justify: how else can the state be converted except by being friendly to it? The state is our enemy,
but for now, we must pretend to be its pal. In time, the dreams
are displaced by the daily
need to curry favor. Eventually the person becomes precisely the kind of person he or she once despised. (For Lord
of the Rings fans, it's like
being asked to carry the
ring for a while; you don't want to give it up.)
I've known people
who have gone this route
and one day took an honest look in the mirror, and didn't like what
they saw. They have said to me that they were
mistaken to think it could work.
They didn't recognize the subtle ways in which they themselves were being drawn
in. They recognize the futility of politely asking the state, day after day, to permit a bit more
liberty here and there. Ultimately you must frame your arguments in terms of what is good for the state, and
the reality is that
liberty is not usually
good for the state. Hence, the rhetoric
and finally the goal begin
to change.
The state is
open to persuasion, to be sure, but it usually acts
out of fear, not friendship.
If the bureaucrats and politicians
fear backlash, they will not increase taxes or regulations.
If they sense a high enough degree of public outrage, they will even repeal
controls and programs. An example
is the end of alcohol
prohibition or the repeal of the 55 mph speed limit. These were pulled
back because politicians
and bureaucrats sensed too high a cost from continued enforcement.
The problem
of strategy was something that fascinated Murray Rothbard, who wrote several
important articles on the need for never compromising the long-run goal for short-term gain through the political process. That doesn't mean we should
not welcome a 1 percent tax
cut or repeal a section
of some law. But we should never
allow ourselves to be sucked into
the trade-off racket: e.g., repeal
this bad tax to impose this better tax. That would be using
a means (a tax) that contradicts
the goal (elimination of taxation).
The Rothbardian
approach to a pro-freedom
strategy comes down to
the following four affirmations:
- the victory
of liberty is the highest
political end;
- the proper
groundwork for this
goal is a moral
passion for justice;
- the end should
be pursued by the speediest and most efficacious possible means;
and
- the means
taken must never contradict the goal – "whether by advocating gradualism, by employing
or advocating any aggression against
liberty, by advocating planned
programs, by failing to seize any opportunities to reduce State power, or by ever
increasing it in any area."
Libertarians are not the first people who have confronted the
question of strategy for social advance
and cultural and political change. After the Civil War, a large
part of the population of the South, namely former slaves, found themselves in a perilous
situation. They had a crying need to advance socially within society, but lacked education, skill, and capital. They also bore the burden of pushing social change
that permitted them to be regarded
as full citizens who made
the most of their new freedom. In many ways, they found
themselves in a position somewhat
like new immigrants but with
an additional burden of throwing off an old social status for a new one.
The Reconstruction period of Union-run martial law invited many
blacks to participate in politics
as a primary goal. This proved
to be a terrible temptation
for many, as the former Virginia slave Booker T. Washington said.
"During the whole of
the Reconstruction period our
people throughout the South looked
to the Federal Government
for everything, very much as a child looks to its mother." He rejected this political model because
"the general political
agitation drew the attention of our
people away from the more
fundamental matters of perfecting themselves in the
industries at their doors and in securing property."
Washington wrote
that "the temptations
to enter political life were
so alluring that I came very near yielding to them at one time" but he resisted this
in favor of "the laying
of the foundation of the race through
a generous education of
the hand, head and heart."
Later when he visited DC, he knew that
he had been right.
"A large proportion of these people had been drawn to Washington because they felt that they
could lead a life of ease
there," he wrote. "Others had secured minor
government positions, and still
another large class was there in the hope of securing Federal
positions."
As it
was in the 1870s it is today. The state chews up and either eats or spits out those with a passion for
liberty. The extent to which
W.E.B. DuBois's Marxian
push for political agitation has prevailed over Washington's
push for commercial advance has been tragic for black Americans and
for the whole of American society. Many obtained political power, but not liberty classically
understood.
We can learn from this.
The thousands of young
people who are discovering
the ideas of liberty for the first time ought to stay away from the Beltway and all its allures. Instead, they should pursue their love and passion through
arts, commerce, education, and even
the ministry. These are fields that offer
genuine promise with a
high return.
When a libertarian
tells me that he is doing some
good as a procurement officer
at HUD, I don't doubt his word.
But how much more would he do by quitting his job and writing an expose
on the entire bureaucratic
racket? One well-placed blast against
such an agency can bring about more reform, and do more good, than decades of attempted subversion
from within.
Are there
politicians who do some good? Certainly, and the name Ron Paul is the first that comes to mind. But the good he does is not as a legislator as such but as an educator with a prominent platform from which to speak. Every no vote is a lesson
to the multitudes. We need
more Ron Pauls.
But Ron is
the first to say that,
more importantly, we need more professors, business owners, fathers and mothers, religious leaders, and
entrepreneurs. The party of liberty loves commerce and culture, not the
state. Commerce and culture is our
home and our launching ground for social reform and revolution.
A
version of this article appeared
the Free Market, May 2004
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