Re: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism chronological thread From: "Charles Brown" (via marxism-thaxis Mailing List) To: marxism-thaxis@lists.riseup.net Subject: Re: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2018 22:44:40 -0400 Bertell Ollman , I read your _Alienation_ a number of years ago . For Marx and Engels , words are like bats - smiles. Charles Brown Sent from my iPhone On Mar 30, 2018, at 7:33 PM, wrote: Ralph! So good to see you in good spirits! And thanks for the kind words! Nice to see Jim and my mentor—and dear friend—Bertell! Have no fear: many libertarians already consider me a Marxist. : ) If I may mention: I was a cofounder of this very list, coming up with that ridiculous “thaxis” name (as a combination of THeory and praXIS). I’ve never dropped off, and have been keeping abreast of discussions here for eons. It’s just that my email address changed slightly, and Jim fixed it for me. Cheers, Chris From: marxism-thaxis-request@lists.riseup.net On Behalf Of rdumain Sent: Friday, March 30, 2018 7:23 PM To: marxism-thaxis@lists.riseup.net Subject: Re: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism Is this the Chris I think it is? If so, he acknowledged me in one of his books, may Marx have mercy on my soul. And he's still full of shit. On 3/30/2018 7:17 PM, Jim Farmelant wrote: I suppose that if Chris had become a Marxist professor, the revolution might have already happened. But given that he didn't go in that direction , it must be said that he has written some very decent books on Marx, Hayek, and Ayn Rand. I am no fan of Ayn Rand, but Chris's Ayn Rand book has great coverage of the intellectual and cultural climate of early 20th century Russia which is more that worth the price of admission. Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Bertell Ollman" (via marxism-thaxis Mailing List) To: marxism-thaxis@lists.riseup.net Subject: Re: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2018 11:28:20 -0400 Chris - You would make even a troupe of dragons seem like pussy cats (maybe you just did). But anyone who mentions Kolko (and might even have read him) can't be all bad. Still, I can't help but think that we could have delivered a decent world by now if you had become a Marxist professor. Bertell -----Original Message----- From: cms10 To: marxism-thaxis Sent: Thu, Mar 29, 2018 7:02 pm Subject: Re: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism I read that piece on "libertarian fascism" with some interest, and I don't have time to get into any lengthy debate over the issue. Marx, Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and others were all imperfect men theorizing and working in an imperfect world. But whatever Mises or Hayek or others identified with "libertarian" ideology did with regard to their support or lack of support of so-called "far-right" regimes, the fact is that their work offered a profound indictment of state capitalism and fascism as destructive of the free society they championed in their work. Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" was as much an attack on Nazism as it was on "socialism"; Mises's "Human Action," "Omnipotent Government" and his other works on "Bureaucracy," etc. are formal indictments of fascism. Even Ayn Rand herself (whose acolytes most certainly do ~~not~~ dominate the current Trump administration) argued (like Gabriel Kolko before her) that the U.S. economic system was a form of "neofascism" that was built historically by big business, which used government as a means of consolidating monopoly power, and (like the Austrian economists before her) used the monopolization of the financial sector (through the Federal Reserve System) to protect banks from failure and rivalrous competition, and to institutionalize the boom-bust cycle. There are some remarkable parallels between the Austrian and Marxist theories of the boom-bust cycle as the outgrowth of "political" economy. As I've argued in my book, "Marx, Hayek, and Utopia," Marx himself argued that the state's ability to thrust an arbitrary amount of paper money into circulation creates an inflationary dynamic that favors debtors (mostly capital-intensive industry) at the expense of creditors. Both Marx and the Austrians root the boom-bust cycle in the dynamics of specifically political economy, and their indictment of the "state-banking nexus" is remarkably similar. It is one of the great ironies of history that Mises fled Nazi Germany, only to have his earliest works and library seized by the Gestapo. And that years later, these "lost papers" of Mises were discovered by the Soviets and transported to Moscow under the supervision of the KGB, where they were catalogued, organized, and preserved. Years later, through the work of Richard Ebeling and others, copies of all these lost works, many of them indictments of both fascism and socialism (see http://explorersfoundation.org/notebooks/ef/attachments/MisesLostPapers_Ebel i.pdf ), were recovered and deposited at the Ludwig von Mises Library Room of Hillsdale College for the benefit of future generations of scholars. Politics and history are replete with examples of how imperfect men living in the real world take questionable stands on real-world politics, and how some of their most virulent imperfect ideological opponents have preserved their intellectual legacies. Whatever Mises said about the calculational chaos of communism, we can thank the Soviets for having organized and preserved a "lost" aspect of his intellectual legacy. Chris Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2018 19:41:31 GMT From: "Jim Farmelant" Subject: Re: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism See this article:http://theweek.com/articles/761372/fraud-classical-liberalism Following up to the article posted above, I would stress that there is a long history of anti-democratic thinking within libertarianism which can be traced back to its intellectual founding fathers - people like the economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who was one of the founders of neoclassical economics, and was a staunch supporter of free market capitalism. Pareto in the last years of his life was a supporter of Benito Mussolini, who appointed him to the Italian Senate. Then there was the case of the Austrian School economist, Ludwig von Mises, who in his 1927 book, Liberalism, wrote this tribute to Mussolini's regime: "It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error." Ludwig von Mises, likewise, supported the clerico-fascist regime in his native Austria. He would be run out of Europe by the Nazis on account of his Jewish ancestry. He emigrated to the US, and in the US, he continued to be a supporter of far right movements and groups like the John Birch Society. Later on, economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, both of whom are revered in libertarian circles, would be supportive of Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. Friedman was rather mealy-mouth in his support, claiming to be only interested in attempting to persuade the dictator to adopt sound economic policies. Many of Pinochet's economic advisers were trained at the University of Chicago. Hayek was much more forthright in his support of Pinochet and commended his "liberal dictatorship" as a model that ought to be adopted in other countries. He even attempted to persuade Margaret Thatcher to adopt this model in the UK, but she demurred. Jim Farmelanthttp://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelanthttp://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Charles Brown" (via marxism-thaxis Mailing List) To: marxism-thaxis@lists.riseup.net, a-list@lists.riseup.net Subject: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2018 15:30:47 -0400 Lone nuts have extreme Libertarian thinking : individuals are sovereign , to the level of being their own state with life and death decision making power . Their thinking is an extreme version of the thinking of millions. NRA thinking is basically libertarian fascist ideology in claiming an _individual_ , self determined _power_ to use deadly force. Basically , the same power as a police officer of their own personal , state power https://ipmcdn.avast.com/images/icons/icon-envelope-tick-round-orange-animated-no-repeat-v1.gif Virus-free. www.avast.com Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.riseup.net To change your options or unsubscribe go to: https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/marxism-thaxis Re: [marxism-thaxis] libertarian fascism, Charl