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Libertarianism and European-American National Struggle
--- Kevin Walsh, Editor of EASPF and NACAZAI
Libertarianism is a utopian ideology that is most commonly found among the European-American petit-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia which favors bourgeois property relations with little or no state apparatus to support those relations. Libertarians are opposed to involuntary taxation, military conscription, laws against narcotics, laws against prostitution, professional police forces, laws restricting private ownership of weapons, public education, government social programs, and just about all regulations on business. Libertarians favor privatizing all or nearly all government functions. Many Libertarians even favor privately owned highways, streets and sidewalks.
Libertarianism is rare outside the USA, and in eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, it is virtually unknown. Within the USA, Libertarianism is unusual outside the European-American community. The idea that bourgeois property relations could be maintained without a strong state apparatus justly seems bizzare to most of the world's people, but in view of the unusual history of the USA, it is understandable that some European-Americans could be led to believe this.
For much of European-American history, class struggle has been retarded. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, class struggle was retarded by the availability of large quantities of free or cheap land. It was easy for most of the population to set up as independent freeholding farmers and therefore difficult to force most of the population into an industrial proletariat. Where European-Americans joined the proletariat, they could usually negotiate generous wages given their other options. The level of antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was generally much less than that which prevailed in Europe at the time. Waves of immigrants were required for the European-American bourgeoisie
to establish a disciplined and easily exploitable proletariat. The emancipation of the African-American chattel slaves was also needed for this purpose. Karl Marx wrote of the retardation of the class struggle in the USA in Chapter 33 of Capital.
In the mid to late 20th Century, class struggle was retarded by the Cold War bargain. The imperialist grand-bourgeoisie needed the loyalty of the European-American proletariat in order to conduct the Cold War without having to worry about a fifth column of European-American workers sympathetic to the Soviet Union and People's China. To secure this loyalty, the government was lenient with workers and did not substantially suppress trade-unions, as long as workers remained loyal to imperialism. Most of today's Libertarians either lived through that time or had parents and grandparents who did, and it is understandable that those who don't examine such things too deeply might conclude that the bourgeoisie will pay a decent wage to workers without substantial class struggle and that bourgeois property relations are good for working people, not just thebourgeoisie. They may also look back to a 19th Century ideal of self-reliant farmers who paid few taxes and were seldom bothered by police or government agents.
Modern Libertarianism, having its origins in the 1970s, was a vulgar and utopian reaction to the breakdown of the Cold War bargain. Those uneasy about having nuclear weapons pointed at them, having a huge national debt, and having to pay heavy taxes for all of this, tended to blame big government itself as the problem, rather than to address the class character of that big government. They disliked what their children were taught in the public schools, so they saw the idea of public education as the problem, not the class character of the government that ran it. They rebelled against authority itself rather than the class character of the authority.
We must struggle against all incorrect ideas, because correct ideas are what produce correct results. Incorrect ideas, however popular, only lead the masses astray, and this is the case with Libertarianism. Sometimes those with incorrect ideas, however, can still be objectively useful in the short term, and we may make alliances with such people, even while struggling against those incorrect ideas. Libertarians can be objectively useful in the short term, because they are willing to struggle against imperialist wars and against state repression. They can therefore make it more difficult for the state to engage in these reactionary activities. Certainly a triumph of the revolution will ultimately be hindered by those who continue to follow Libertarianism after the imperialists are smashed, and that is why it is necessary to struggle against this idea, but in the short term alliances with Libertarians can be useful.
