Come See Us at Our New Location!
No, I'm not abandoning Mutualist Blog--far from it. But I'm not posting anything else here today. I'm blogging over at UnCapitalist Journal. It's an extended ramble on the archives of The Libertarian Forum, newly available online at Mises.Org. If you want the link, come check out the post at my other digs.
posted by Kevin Carson | 12:19 PM
10 Comments:
Rothbard never went as far left as Hess. Hess retreated from his ultra-leftist phase in the '80s and '90s -- compare his two autobiographies, Dear America and Mostly on the Edge, to see what I mean -- but he remained interested in workplace democracy and other ideas associated with the decentalist left up to the end of his life.
colorless,
What Jesse said.
I think Rothbard was probably squirming quite a bit over the Castro fatigues and Wob pin thing (not to mention Hess' flirtation with the labor theory of value). And by that point, Rothbard was already starting to reassess the effectiveness of his New Left strategy, and beginning the long process that would take him to paleo-ism.
Hess' left-wing trajectory went considerably further into the 1970s; he stayed on a fairly hippie-ish track through most of the decade, what with Community Technology and all that. But by the 1980s, he was probably a lot closer to the Goldwater speech writer than the Che-wannabe of 1969. He still hated large organizations, though, as Jesse says, and stuck with the kind of "small is beautiful stuff" that he said in his Plowboy interview.
Murray Bookchin was still willing to contribute an article to Hess's short-lived newsletter in the early '80s. And even when Hess took over the editorship of the Libertarian Party News in the mid/late '80s, his editorials had a communitarian, mutual-aid oriented tinge. He was into the whole cyberpunk thing too.
He was also buddies with Charles Murray, though; he wrote some cranky-conservative flavored pieces in the '90s about welfare and political correctness (a couple of which I edited); and in his last book he seemed more wistful about his period as a red-fighter in the '50s than as a Wobbly in the '70s.
Jesse,
Didn't Bookchin express grudging admiration for free market libertarians at one point, and then lash out at them afterward? I think I remember you quoting him on LeftLibertarian sometime in the past.
Yes -- when Reason interviewed Bookchin in 1979 or 1980, he described the anarcho-capitalists as comrades (though he argued that the system they favor isn't really "capitalist") and even had some kind words for Ayn Rand. He also spoke at a Libertarian Party convention around the same time, and reportedly told an LP activist during the '76 elections that "If I were a voting man, I'd vote for MacBride." There was also an attempt to work with Murray Rothbard in the '60s, though that didn't work out -- mostly because of personality conflicts, or so I'm told; I don't know the details.
His more recent pronouncements on free-market libertarians have been much less friendly.
But the important thing about his article for Hess's newsletter is that, if I remember correctly, it espoused Bookchin's "libertarian municipalist" views, and Hess willingly published it. I should add that Hess wrote at least one article identifying himself with Bookchin's "social ecology" even after he joined the Libertarian Party in the '80s, and that he appeared at a Green confab in the early '90s, where some people were apparently upset at him for an article in Liberty mocking one of those liberal "50 Ways to Save the Earth" books.
Thanks, colorless. That's the quote I was thinking of, but I couldn't remember where I'd seen it.
Bookchin's attitude toward free market libertarians is about as inconstant as Chomsky's.
That silly hat isn't doing him any good, either.
I don't think Chomsky has been even remotely friendly towards free market libertarianism. I'm pretty sure he considers all free market types to be fascists in disguise.
I think Chomsky had a good working relationship with Reason magazine in its early days. Jesse--are you still following this thread?
It wasn't Reason, it was Inquiry, which at the time was published by the Cato Institute.
Ah, OK. I was afraid Chomsky has cancelled his Reason subscription in a huff when Postrel left.
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