Worried About Anarcho-Capitalism

Famed liberal journo Joe Conason is worried about the increasing influence of Rothbardian “anarcho-capitalism” and the related “Austrian school of economics.” As well he should be. It is these radical ideas–undistorted by the journos–that enthrall the young, and indeed any thinking person. We all know there is something desperately wrong–morally and economically–with the US empire and its police state, welfare state, and banksterism. We are, after all, living in yet another Federal Reserve depression. The average family’s income has not increased in real terms since the 1970s, the first decade of full Fed power. The state and its related corporations are enriching themselves by making us poorer.

“The Austrian craze is particularly curious because it has displaced a school of economics that ought to be more appealing to the proud and patriotic, especially those who claim to be true to the views of the nation’s founders. That would be the school known as ‘the American system’…[a]s articulated by thinkers from Alexander Hamilton to Henry Clay to Abraham Lincoln….” Very funny. Why can’t you people just be government-loving, trade-warring, state-building mercantilists? Then journos could praise you.

“If the ‘Austrian’ ideology prevailed in tearing down government, extirpating regulation and destroying public institutions, what would be left standing? Not much except giant corporations, mammoth banks and hedge funds, whose proprietors would then be able to completely dominate an increasingly impoverished, uneducated and undefended people.” Say, isn’t that the current system, as made possible by the apparatus of aggression known as the state? We, on the other hand, understand that civilization itself, as well as international peace and prosperity, depend on private property and laissez-faire. We are sick of government and its allied merchants of death and fractional-reserves, its wars and its secret police, its taxes and inflation, its bailed-out buddies. We don’t want military socialism, school socialism, or road socialism. We don’t want Wall Street, big bank, MIC, or petro fascism.

The Consason article is, of course, just another indication of how worried the ruling class is. Not about Koch thinktanks, neocon magazines, or coordinating state universities. Not because Republicans will soon replace Democrats, but because the climate of opinion is changing. Joe Conason recognizes that it is works like these that are responsible. He doesn’t yet recognize that our ideas are unstoppable.