The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

The Essential Rothbard 99
Why, then, do many intellectuals continue to claim that the division
of labor dehumanizes?
In large part, Rothbard argues, these intellectuals have fallen
victim to a myth popular in the Romantic Era. The Romantics
conjured up primitive men who, untouched by the division of
labor, lived in harmony with nature. Rothbard will have none of
this. In a few well-chosen words, he excoriates Karl Polanyi, an
influential panegyrist of the primitive: “This worship of the primitive
permeates Polanyi’s book, which at one point seriously applies
the term ‘noble savage’ to the Kaffirs of South Africa.” 261
In an “Introduction” dated February 1991 to a reprint of the
essay, he refines his critique even further. He notes, following
M.H. Abrams, that the Romantic myth of primitivism rests upon a
yet deeper layer of myth. According to the “emanationist” view,
which has influenced both neo-Platonism and Gnosticism, creation
is fundamentally evil. Human beings must be reabsorbed
into the primitive oneness of all things. Rothbard sees this strange
doctrine as “constituting a heretical and mystical underground in
Western thought.” 262
It is clear that Rothbard views Romanticism in decidedly negative
terms, at least so far as its impact on politics is concerned. He
makes clear the nefarious consequences of Romanticism in the
aforementioned article, “Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty.”
263 The exaltation of the primitive, which characterizes the
Romantics, is by no means confined to the Left. Quite the contrary,
it underlies apologies for what Rothbard terms the “Old
Order” of feudalism and militarism. Both European conservatism
and socialism reject the free market. Accordingly, Rothbard
argues, a task of lovers of liberty is to oppose both these ideologies.
261 “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor,” in
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, note on p. 64.
262 Ibid., p. 298.
263 Reprinted in ibid., pp. 21–53.