The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

58 The Essential Rothbard
Trenchard and Gordon interpreted Locke in just this way; they
“greatly radicalized the impact of Locke’s libertarian creed.” 144
Cato’s Letters 145 warned against the tyranny of power. This constantly
threatened liberty and must, if necessary, be checked by
revolution.
“Cato” assured his readers that there was no danger that the
public might exercise its right of revolution against tyrannical
government too frequently or imprudently; due to settled
habits, as well as the propaganda and power of government,
the danger is quite the reverse. 146
Rothbard’s comments here raise a fundamental issue: how
influential are intellectuals such as Locke and Trenchard and Gordon,
and what motivates them? His response expresses a fundamental
feature of his entire approach to history. He contrasts two
sorts of intellectual: “court intellectuals,” who serve those in
authority, primarily wish to gain money and power for themselves.
Revolutionary intellectuals, who oppose the state, do so out of
genuine conviction.
He minces no words about the former group:
The ruling class—be it warlords, nobles, bureaucrats, feudal
landlords, monopoly merchants, or a coalition of several of
these groups—must employ intellectuals to convince the
majority of the public that its rule is beneficent, inevitable,
necessary, and even divine. The leading role of the intellectual
throughout history is that of the court intellectual, who,
in return for a share of, a junior partnership in, the power and
pelf offered by the rest of the ruling class, spins the apologias
for state rule with which to convince a misguided public. 147
144 Ibid., p. 192.
145 John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, Cato’s Letters, or Essays on
Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, 4 vols. (New York:
Russell and Russell, 1969).
146 Conceived in Liberty, vol. I, p. 195.
147 Ibid., vol. III, p. 352.