The Libertarian Review September 1978 - Libertarianism.org

LibertarianReviewSeptember1978Vol. 7, No.8$1.25An interview with Paul GannBuffoonery at the summitJohn Hospers reviews Gulag IIIAmnestIInternationalEnemy ofthe State?

THELIBERTARIANREVIEWVolume 7, No.8 September 1978Amnesty International:Enetny of the State?How does Amnesty International, the winnerof the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize, goabout fighting the most flagrant statistviolations of individual rights? Don Lavoiegives the answers, and explains why AI isimportant to libertarians.Prop. 13Associate Editor Joan Kennedy Taylorlooks at the tidal wave of the tax revoltand how it can help achieve libertariangoals, while Senior Editor Jeff Riggenbachinterviews the other author of Prop. 13,Paul Gann.Buffoonery in BonnWestern political leaders still think theymust continually hatch new schemes tostave off a world economic crisis. Instead,explains Christopher Weber in his look atthe recent economic summit meeting inBonn, they can only make things worse.Big Poison,Little Poison?That the U. S. government is poisoningthose of its citizens who smoke marijuanais no longer in dispute. The question, notesHenry Louis, is how much they are poisoningus.DEPARTMENTS10 The Public TroughThe "new" new economics, by BruceBartlett182428LettersGiving us the businessJustice vs. privacyWho's really attacking the state?VictoryApologiesBooks and the ArtsJohn Hospers reviews Gulag III, by AlexandrSolzhenitsyn; Chris Weber reviewsThe Golden Constant by Roy Jastram;Sharon Presley reviews Psychobabble byR.D. Rosen; G.E.B. Charing reviews OnMoral Fiction by John Gardner and TheWorld Within the Word by William H.Gass; Justin Raimondo reviews MetropolitanLife by Fran Lebowitz.ClassifiedRoy A. Childs, Jr., EditorJeff Riggenbach, Senior EditorMarshall E. Schwartz, 'Executive EditorWalter E. Grinder, Leonard P. Liggio, JoanKennedy Taylor, Associate EditorsMurray N. Rothbard, Tom G. Palmer, BruceBartlett, Contributing EditorsJustin Raimondo, Editorial AssistantPat Pope, Administrative Assistant673145Libertarian Review is published monthly by Libertarian Review, Inc.Editorial and business offices, 1620 Montgomery Street, San Francisco,CA 94111. ©1978 by Libertarian Review, Inc. All rights reserved.Opinions expressed in bylined articles do not necessarily reflect theviews ofthe editor or publisher.EditorialsHedge's LawThe new reactionaries4Subscriptions: Single copy, $1.25; 12 issues (one year), $15; two years,$25; three years, $35. Address Change: Write new address, city, stateand zip code on sheet of plain paper, attach mailing label from recentissue of LR, and send to Circulation Department, Libertarian Review,1620 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94111. Second classpostage paid at San Francisco and additional offices. 3SEPTEMBER 1978

4THELIBERTARIANEDITORIALSThe NewReactionariesFOR THOSE WHOFOLLOW closely the nationalpress- particularlythe'ideological segment ofthe national press-nothinghas been more interestinglately than to watchnot the political repercussionsof the passage of theJarvis-Gann initiative inCalifornia, but the ideologicalrepercussions. Jarvis­Gann-Proposition 13­passed by a margin of nearlytwo-to-one in California,slashing propertytaxes in that state by twothirds.Widely called "theshot heard round the nation"and "the opening salvoof the tax revolution inAmerica," Proposition 13has quickly become a testcase of what we libertarianscan expect to face inthe way of reaction fromthe protax forces, particularlyin the American leftwing. The New Republicblamed the victory ofProposition 13 on a combinationof moneyed interestsand libertarianrhetoric, and other liberaland left wing forces havefollowed suit. But beneaththe scorn and hatred lies ahaunting fear-a fear thatthe left has fallen out ofstep with the Americanpeople, and may soon findits influence in eclipse.We should consider thesmears of the antitax forcesin depth, both to understandthe sort of oppositionwe are likely to face aswe press forward for greaterand greater tax reductionsin the future, and toequip ourselves to counterits arguments. One of themost lively respondents tothe victory of Proposition13, for example, has beenthe independent socialistweekly In These Times,which has wrestled withthe meaning of 13 forweeks. In the August 16­22nd issue, for example,breathless after flying toFrance to "do research onEuro-socialism," NancyLieber wrote that "Proposition13 was a consciousonslaught on the publicsector, and therefore avehicle of class and racialdivision." [Emphasis added.]This sort of simpleminded,knee-jerk reactionhas been typical of manymembers of the New Classwho, like Ms. Lieber (hercolumn is called "In theTwilight of Capitalism:Reflections of Prop. 13 inFrance"), daydream about"historical forces." But thefear and the anger has notbeen limited to socialists.Writing in the August5-12th issue of The NewRepublic, Ken Bode notedthe effects of the victoryof Proposition 13 for theDemocrats, quoting MichaelBarone, vicepresidentof Peter HartAssociates, a firm thatpolls for Democrats: "It'sespecially a problem forour candidates. It meansthat we've lost control ofthe dialogue. The antigovernmentpeople aredetermining what we talkabout." But they are notjust "talking": They aresputtering and fuming, aswell.Writing in the July 22­29th issue of The Nation,Senate aide Peter .Connollycalled the victory ofProposition 13 "TheVoice of Raw Greed":Its participants were notanimated by an outragedsense of justice, but by theugliest kind of resentmentand barely concealed racism.Surely the most stunning pollstatistic regarding Proposition13 was the one that revealedthat a majority of itssupporters thought, withcomplete inaccuracy, thatthey were voting to cut welfare.Blacks, sensing this,opposed Proposition 13solidly. In listening toHoward Jarvis, one hears thevoice of an America onethought was blessedly gone,a country of raw economicgreed, unmodulated by theprecarious though real moralaccomplishments of U.S. societyduring the past thirtyyears.Note the extraordinarycondescension toward"blacks" here-their interestsare virtually identifiedwith "welfare," thusreinforcing vicious Americanstereotypes and coveringup the twin facts thatmore whites than blacksare on welfare in theUnited States and thatblacks are the greatest victimsof the welfare state.This means that Americansfed up with skyrocketingtaxes and malicious governmentprograms are encouragedby Americanliberals' to use "blacks onwelfare" as a scapegoat fortheir anger. But this onlytouches the surface of thedistortions of this sinisterpiece.It is utterly clear, toanyone who watched thebattle over Proposition 13in California, that it wasnot Howard Jarvis (letalone Paul Gann-whoably answers these sortsof charges in· his LR interviewelsewhere in thisissue) who spewed forthmalice during the battleover Prop. 13, but theliberal members of theNew Class, who foughttooth and claw to protecttheir state-gained cash.They were the ones projecting"raw economicgreed," a "greed" for theunearned, for cash seizedfrom the taxpayers.Moreover, no one whosat in audience after audienceduring Proposition13 debates can possiblyclaim that the pro-13forces were not "animatedby an outraged sense ofjustice." That is preciselywhat motivated them, asense that they are beingoppressed. Liberals likeMr. Connolly cannotunderstand this becausefor them self-interest andjustice (in this case, justicein property rights) standin opposition to eachother.In assaulting Proposition13, Mr. Connollywent on to make extraordinaryadmissions:This is not to say thatCalifornia's property taxeswere not in need of prudentreduction. It is to say thatliberals and serious radicalsought to stop banging thePopulist drum and doingtheir bit to destroy theLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

ideological legitimacy of ourgovernmental institutions.For the ever growing contemptfor government, whichis the most perceptibleundercurrent in nationalpolitics, is essentially adisguised form of contemptfor the possibility of humanecollective action. And thevogue for neo-Populistrhetoric among some liberalsand radicals only feeds thiscontempt and thus furtherundermines the prospects fora more decent society. . . .What is needed on the Left isa return to the language ofdomestic liberalism, ratherthan Populism/ progressivism;of appeals to moralobligation, and a sense ofsocial generosity, rather thanto truculence and resentment.People must be insistentlyasked whether ornot they want a societywhere retarded childrenreceive decent care, ratherthan whether or not theythink someone is screwingthem.This trotting forth of"retarded children" as ajustification for oppressivetaxation is about as disgustingan attempt tomanipulate the Americanpeople as we have seen insome decades. Not onlydoes it smear "retardedchildren"-some ofwhom, apparently, growup to be Senate aides-bytrying to tie them intohigh taxes and governmentoppression, but ittries shamefully to usebenevolent feelings-thedesire to help people-asa weapon against outragedtaxpayers.No wonder there is agrowing contempt forgovernment, and forapologists for taxes!But what Mr. Connolly'sremarks really show isnot merely that the liberalshave lost the debate,but that they deserved to.One cannot create adecent and humane societyby taxing people todeath. One ought not totry to identify governmentcoercion with "humanecolle~tiveaction."The only truly "humanecollective action" in societymust come from voluntarycooperation andvoluntary associations.Until liberals learn that,they will be reduced toMr. Connolly's level: singingthe praises of a contemptibleinstitution whichwill stoop to any level tojustify its naked greed, andthe robbery called taxeswhich supports such greed.Hedge's LawA USUALLY RELIABLEPROFESSIONAL associatepassed along the storyone windy day in July.He'd heard it the nightbefore on the TV news: thestory of one James Pearson,who had been arrestedthe month before oncharges of having murder~dhis wife and twoteenage daughters back in1969 and having buriedtheir bodies in the basement.Pearson had allegedlywalked in on his 18­year-old daughter Paula inthe act of rolling a joint,when he became enragedand choked her to death.When his wife and 14­year-old daughter came onthe scene of the murderand began to scream, saidpolice, Pearson murderedthem also. He thenchanged his name toGeorge David Watson IIIand embarked on a newand successful career in anew community. Then,nine years later, a subsequentowner of Pearson'shouse began digging in thebasement.The story was oddlyreminiscent of another,gleaned from the pages __ ofthe New York Times ofNovember 12, 1923,where the following wasprinted under the headline"Slays Bride Who HadPack of Cigarettes":CLARKSBURG, W. VA.­When pretty Luella MaeHedge, a bride offive months,refused to tell how she cameto have a package of cigarettes,her husband, OkeyHedge, shot her dead. Hedgesaid he was maddened at findingthe package of cigarettesin her pocketbook and at hertaunting laugh when he questionedher on the subject.In 1923, as it happens,cigarettes were illegal in 14states (and tobacco prohibitionwas under considerationin 28 others), whilemarijuana was legaleverywhere but Louisiana,California, and a handfulof scattered counties andmunicipalities. In 1923.,righteous anger. And theyproceeded, as might -havebeen predicted, accordingtq the strict letter of whatmight be called Hedge'sLaw. That law, as formu­lated (but not named) byProfessors Lester Grins­poon and James Bakalar ofthe Harvard MedicalSchool, holds that "raisingthe subject of illicit drugssometimes seems to pro­duce an anxiety and abdi­cation of intelligence inthose who do not use themthat is more disturbingthan any effect of the drugsthemselves on those whoeven in those loca1itieswhere it was prohibited,marijuana laws went largelyunenforced, because, asDr. Howard S. Becker haspointed out, "neither thepublic nor law enforcementofficers, apparently,considered the use of marijuanaa serious problem."On the other hand, theyconsidered the use of cigarettesan extremely seriousproblem. Cigarettesmoke, Thomas Edisonannounced in a widelypublicized1914 appeal tohis countrymen to bandtogether against- the com"lent action in the nervecenters, producing degenerationof the cells of thebrain, which is quite rapidamong boys. Unlike mostnarcotics, this degenerationis permanent and uncontrollable.I employ noperson who smokes cigarettes."By 1969, cigarettes werelegal throughout the country,were in fact subsidizedby the government, andmarijuana was everywhereillegal-the fearsome killerweed whose use wouldlead to heroin and death.(Interestingly, one of thechief antimarijuana activistsof the 1930s, EarleAlbert Rowell, argued in1939 that cigarettes shouldbe banned as well, sincetheir use leads to marijuanaand death.) The proscribeddrugs had changed;the manner and the rhetoricof proscription had remainedthe same. And itapparently seemed as reasonableto James Pearsonas it had seemed to a keyHedge to impose the deathsentence on she who daredto defy the proscription.They had been told bytheir government leaders,by the poli'ce, by medical~and scientific authorities,~ that to use these drugs was6 4epraved and suicidal.~ They had been told that~ their ignorance and bigotry~ concerning the drug habits~ of others was actuallymon menace, "has a vio- do."- JR D5SEPTEMBER 1978

6The "new" new.eCOnOlnlCSBRUCE BARTLETTIN THE 1930s,this country saw aneconomic revolutionin which the"new economics"of John MaynardKeynes became theunquestioned orthodoxyin governmenteconomic policy.In the 1950s, acounterrevolutionto this orthodoxyarose, based primarilyon a rejuvenationof the quantitytheory of money,which Keyneshad rejected. By theearly 1970s, themonetarists hadwon this battle, butthe equally criticalarea of fiscal policy wasstill dominated by Keynesianthinking. Now, at last,there is a counterrevolutiontaking place in thisarea of economics as well.The main difference betweenthe new fiscal policyand the old is an emphasison supply, rather thandemand-which is theprimary emphasis ofKeynesian policy. Indeed,the new fiscal policy isoften referred to assupply-sidefiscalism.Put simply, Keynesiantheory argues that supplytakes care of itself orresponds to an increase indemand. The problem,therefore, is one of controllingor stimulating demandthrough monetaryand fiscal measures, suchas running budget deficitsor surpluses. The supplysidefiscalists present theopposite argument: Theysay demand takes care ofitself, and increasing supplyis the real way to helpthe economy. In effect, it isa resurrection of Say'sLaw, which says that supplycreates its own demand(see W.H. Hutt's ARehabilitation of Say'sLaw).The difference betweenthe new economists andthe Keynesians is mostgraphically shown by theirdiffering attitude towardtaxation. To the Keynesiansall tax cuts are thesame. It makes no differencewhether you have atax rebate, a tax cut onlyfor those with low incomes,a tax cut only forthose with high incomes,whether you cut averagetax rates or marginal taxrates, or whether you cuttaxes for individuals or forbusinesses. No matter howyou do it, only one thingcounts: the aggregate sizeof the tax cut, for thisalone determines howmuch fiscal stimulus therewill be to aggregate demand.Consequently, itmakes no difference to theJohn Mayn-ard KeynesKeynesians whether youcut taxes or Increasegovernment spending bythe same amount. It willhave the same effect on theeconomy.By contrast, to the neweconomists, it makes allthe difference in the worldwhether or not you cuttaxes or increase spending,and there are vast differencesbetween the effectsof various kinds oftax cuts. They would saythat tax rebates and increasesin spending onlystimulate inflation and donothing for supply, becausethey must be financedeither through borrowing-whichcrowdsprivate borrowers out ofthe market-or by increasingthe quantity of moneythrough monetization ofthe debt. Thus they arguethat tax cuts should bestructured so as to give themaximum stimulus to investment,saving, andwork incentive. Thismeans a preference formarginal rate reductionsover any other kind of taxcut (the marginal rate beingthe tax paid on eachadditional dollar earned),and a preference for taxcuts aimed at corporationsand those with higher incomes,because this iswhere you get the greatest"bang for the buck" interms of increased savingand investment.Needless to say, the neweconomists are pittedsquarely against the prevailingliberal orthodoxy,which says· that taxesshould be increased forbusinesses and rich peopleand cut only for those withlow incomes. But the neweconomists have very powerfulevidence for theirarguments and, in fact,seem to be winning.One of their importantarguments is that you cannotreally cut taxes for thepoor anymore because theyare hardly paying any taxesas it is. In an important articlefor Harper's (March1978), Paul Craig Robertspointed out that the upper50 percent of taxpayers, interms of adjusted gross income,pay more than 90percent of all income taxes.The lower 50 percent, withincomes below $8,931 peryear, pay only 7.1 percentof all federal income taxes.New economists MichaelBaskin of Stanfordand Martin Feldstein ofHarvard have concentratedon the effects of taxes oninvestment. Boskin hasfound that saving is muchmore highly responsive tochanges in t~x rates than(Continued on page 44)LIBERTARIAN REVIEW

LETTERSTO THEEDITORGiving us thebusinessAPRIL'S "CROSSCURrents"served to remind usof the important rolewhich businessmen haveplayed (and continue toplay) in the development ofthe Corporate State. Thereis little doubt in my mindthat a free market could bebrought about if that'swhat enough businessmenwant.While we probably cannotmake it seem to businessmenthat a free marketwould be to their advantage,I believe we can makelobbying for a free marketseem to them to be in theirbest interests.A newsletter, or a sectionin a magazine, couldbe set up in which the lobbyingactivities of businessescould be presentedto libertarians. Wherefeasible, libertarians couldthen concentrate their purchasesfrom businesseswhich lobby against regulationand withhold purchasesfrom businesseswhich lobby for regulation.It should examinethose companies whosenames appear on the products.This would make iteasy for consumers to identifythe companies. Itwould also avoid the complicationof trying to tracethe course of the productsthrough other companies.This would not be a severelimitation, however, sincemuch of the regulation ison these companies. If successfulwith them, the processcould be extended toother companies.While our small numberwould not have a tremendouseffect on the businesscommunity as a whole, byentirely avoiding the one ortwo greatest proponents ofregulation, and by favoringthe one or two greatest opponentsof regulation ineach industry, we can producea significant shift. Wecan get the companies tocompete with each otheron how vigorously they opposeregulation. Of course,in order to be effective, wewould have to let the companiesknow why we areboycotting or patronizingthem.BRIAN JEDRICKNutley, New JerseyJustice vs. privacyAS A LIBERTARIAN OFlong standing, I found myselfwell satisfied withZurcher v. The StanfordDaily, both for its generalapplication and more importantly,for its strengtheningof my own inalienablerights.Generally speaking, Iliked it because it meansthat if back in Watergatedays, a Nixonian newspaperpossessing evidenceunfavorable to the Presidenthad announced its imminentdestruction thereof,then Mr. Jaworski wouldhave had not only the rightbut the duty to move in bythe warrant procedure toprevent such an obstructionof justice.But specifically speaking,and as regards my owninalienable rights, I like iteven more. Suppose thatmy house is burgled, andthat an alert newspaperphotographer gets picturesof the burglars and theirgetaway car as they rushfrom my home with theloot. The decision meansthat if the newspapershould threaten to destroysuch evidence, then I havethe right to have my servants,the district attorney,judge, and police, take actionby means of a warrantto save those pictures, ifthey can, thus enlargingmy rights not only to bringthe burglars to justice buteven to the possible recoveryof my property.And consider this exampIe:Supposethatl,thoughinnocent, am on trial for acrime, and I learn that anewspaper has evidencehelpful to me which it isthreatening to destroy.Again, the decision meansthat I have the right to havemy servants, the judge,prosecuting attorney andpolice, undertake by thewarrant procedure to savethe evidence and so topreserve my rights to a fairtrail. (It is not difficult toimagine some white supremacyhate sheet threateningto destroy someevidence favorable to anunpopular black defendant.)Nor are these rights, asnow assured by Zurcher,anything novel. They correlate,in fact, with theright guaranteed by Article6 of our Bill of Rights,namely, the right of a personaccused of crime to"have compulsory processfor obtaining witnesses inhis favor. " This means thatif I am on trial and need thetestimony of some recalcitrantwitness, I have theright to bring the power ofgovernment to act on mybehalf, that is, to have thecourt issue subpoenas tosuch persons, who if theystill refuse to appear, mayat my instance be broughtin by force by my servantsthe police; and thereafter,if without good cause theystill refuse to testify, I havethe right to have my servantthe judge punish themwith fine or imprisonment.All this, no matter howpoor and humble I may be!Now, as in the case of allrights, there are no doubtbalancing factors, many ofwhich Mr. Schwartz ablypresents in his July article.But on the whole, based onthe examples I have producedabove, I am con-,vinced that all libertariansshould rejoice in Zurcherv. The Stanford Daily.PARK CHAMBERLAINWoodside, CaliforniaAttorney Park Chamberlainmakes several importantpoints, not all ofwhich can be consideredhere. In his article "Raidingthe Newsroom," LR ExecutiveEditor MarshallSchwartz did not attemptto set forth a complete libertariantheory of legalprocedures. But a few principleswere hinted at. Letus spell them out a littlemore fully. Mr. Chamberlain'scase really rests onthe phrase in Article 6 ofthe Bill of Rights declaringthat a person accused of acrime is to "have compulsoryprocess for obtainingwitnesses in his favor. "He also refers to the "rightto a fair trail." Now, libertarianscan and do disagreeabout the exact meaning ofand justification for suchthings. But surely one thingis clear: that these rightsare procedural rights, andmust of necessity be derivedfrom and subordinateto the basic natural humanrights upon which any libertarianvision ought to bebased. These procedural7SEPTEMBER 1978

8rights cannot ever contradictmore fundamentalrights.And the mostfundamentalnatural right ofall is theright ofself-ownership andits corollary~ the principleof nonaggression: to wit~that no coercion~ agression~or force may be usedagainst a noncriminal.Now~ I propose that alllibertarians ought to be opposedto the SupremeCourt decision in the caseofZurcher v. The StanfordDaily precisely because itattempts to establish agovernment right of "eminentdomain~"in effect~over all private property inthis country~ on the flimsyground that somethingmight be "evidence" of acrime. It establishes theprinciple that the governmentcan seize any propertyof a noncriminal itwants; that it can coerceinnocent individuals notbecause they participatedin a crime, but becausethey~ or something theypossess~ might conceivablybe "evidence" ofa criminalwrongdoing. More to thepoint: What is the differencein the actions oftheburglar Mr. Chamberlainuses in his examples~ andthe hired agents of thegovernment? Both victimizeinnocent people andseize their private propertyfor their own ends. Mr.Chamberlain speaks of"inalienable rights~" butwould precisely alienatethe rights of the noncriminalwho is thuscoerced in the name ofgettingthe maximum amountof evidence possible.Moreover~ once this principleisestablished~ how canwe call a halt to its implications?Ifa crime is committed~can we move into therelevant area and roundeveryone into a concentrationcamp~ on the groundsthat someone who sawsomething relevant to thecrime might otherwise slipthrough ourfingers?As for coerced testimonyitself, this seems to me tobe even worse. If a personsuspected of being a criminalcannot be coerced intooffering testimony againsthimsel.i on what groundscan a person not even suspectedof such be coercedinto giving testimonyfor oragainst someone else? Is itnot a backwards legal systemthat exempts a suspectedcriminal from coercion~but not someonewho is altogether innocent?The desire to provide fora fair trail for someone accusedof a crime is a validone~ but it is no excuse toallow legal authorities torun amok and seize property~violating the principleof nonaggression~ in orderto gather the maximumamount of information.There are indeed considerationsof moral obligationshere~ and it may bethe case that citizens caneven arive at a legal obligationto turn over evidenceby means of contractingsuch with legal authorities.But to give the stateapparatus carte blanche inseizing private property ofnoncriminals seems to ustotally invalid. Particularlytoday~ in our era ofmanufactured"crimes ~ " it wouldbe a horrible principle toestablish-placing in thehands of governmentauthorities power nearlywithout limit.-Roy A.Childs~ Jr.~ EditorWho's reallyattacking the state?TOM PALMER POUREDout a big helping of invectivewhen he reviewedHow To Fight PropertyTaxes~ a recent publicationof the National TaxpayersUnion.As I presume Palmer isaware, a doctrinaire approachto reaching thepublic seldom works. Mostpeople, with good reason,recoil from individualswho seem more interestedin preaching than in addressingproblems.The Cato Institute andInquiry magazine are examplarsof a nondogmaticapproach to the public. Toavoid being stereotyped asrigidly ideological,Inquiry-rightly in myopinion-has seen fit topresent a number of viewpoints.Palmer appears to haveno trouble with libertariansat the Cato Institutepublishing (some) anticapitalistmaterial in thepages of Inquiry-amagazine whose purpose isto build an intellectualmovement opp~sed to thestate. Yet he denounceslibertarians at the NationalTaxpayers Union for publishingmaterial that occasionallyreflects nonlibertarianpremises.Why? Inquiry and theNational Taxpayers Unionshare a desire to be just unpredictableenough to beheard. Palmer shouldenlighten us about his doublestandard: Presumably,intellectuals and taxpayersare equally vital constituenciesto mobilize.Palmer should also explainhis curious haste todenounce "user charges"for institutions thatpresently use taxsupportedmunicipal serviceswithout charge. Introducinga "user pays"principle would do muchto usher in a libertariansociety. The reason is simple.By ending crosssubsidization,the reformwould give everyone areason to work for inexpensiveprovision of services.Thus, the "userpays" system would leadineluctably to privatization.To those who prefer libertarianposturing toresults, reforms are besidethe point. But I would suggestthat Palmer attack theenemy-the State-ratherthan snipe at the all-toofeworganizations thatshare his goals.MARK FRAZIERDirectorLocal Government CenterSanta Barbara, CaliforniaIn his letter~ Mr. Fraziermakes a valid point andthen proceeds from onenon sequitur to another.As I made clear in my review~no single approachto the public is appropriatein all circumstances. Butthere is no need~ when notlaying out the full ~~hardcore"line~ to substitute forit with statist proposals inorder to be Hunpredictable."(By the way~ J challengeFrazier to cite examplesof "anticapitalist"material in Inquiry. Inquiryhas been antistate-capitalist,not antifree-market;apparently~from his letter and variousother ventures into print,Frazier is unable to makethis vital distinction.) As Ihave made clear on manyoccasions~ I do not think itis necessary to shock potentiallylibertarian~ iratehome-owners with thecomplete Htaxation istheft" line when trying tomotivate them to take ac-·tion against governmentaggression. However, toattempt to divert their antitaxire into a movementto tax churches~ to increasethe salaries of tax assessors,and to increase thesales and income taxes issimply grotesque. Theirenergies and anger shouldbe directed toward decreasingtaxation andgovernment power, not increasingit. I have notspoken to a single libertarianor libertarian sympathizerwho did not have(at least) strong criticismsof the Lewolt book~ includingJames Tobin,author of the preface~ whoadmitted to me that he hadnot read the book beforeits publication. I am appalledthat S9meone whogoes around calling himselfa libertarian could, withoutone word of qualification~defend a book whoseLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

SEPTEMBER 1978central point is to increasethe taxes ofothers in orderto decrease one's own (notonly is this profoundlystatist, it is inefficacious aswell; such "tax-the-otherguy"strategies neverwork-the governmentjust" increases taxationunevenly).Further, what Fraziercalls a "doctrinaire" approach-namely,one Inwhich one mentions "freedom,""liberty," or evenopposition to CCbiggovernment"-clearly doeswork in many cases.Frazier must not read thepapers, for if he had hewould have noticed thatthe exciting and "doctrinaire"(using Frazier'sterminology) Proposition13 passed in his state ofresidence by a margin oftwo to one against a barrageof hysterical propagandaand trumped up"impact statements. "It seems that Frazier notonly does not read thepapers, but evidently hedid not read my revieweither. He takes no cognizanceof the fact that Idid not call for "preaching"in my review and he fails toaddress one of my centralpoints, namely that "usercharges" for state "services"are not "fees," andthe services provided arenot services. So long as oneis uable to refuse theprivilege ofbeing ruled, theinvoluntary charge for it isnot a fee; it is robbery. Ifwe can charge churcheswithout their consent forpolice and fire protectionthey cannot refuse, what isthe difference between thisand any other act of robbery?Why not charge a"fee" for the privilege ofliving in a state-"educated"society; the so-called 'treerider" benefits that statisteconomists and politicansmoan about are the samein both cases. Lewolt'sclaim that we are justifiedin taxing churches because"they can hardly pleadpoverty" is maliciously insensItIveto the importantmoral considerations oflibertarianism. A politicalviewpoint which is notmotivated fundamentallyby moral considerations inevitablyfalls prey to thehoary clutches of statism.(This should not be interpretedto preclude the useof other arguments in apublic context, however.)Why need the NationalTaxpayer's Union be "unpredictable"(i.e., occasionallystatist) in order tobe heard? The media,which has been delugingN. T. U. with requests forstatements about theirplans in the wake of Propo$ition13's victory, is notinterested in their viewsbecause they are unpredictable,but because they expectthem to be predictable.They expect them tolead a nation-wide taxrevolt, not to bore themwith proposals for widerfire hoses and increasedsalaries for tax assessors.My own interest lies inresults and not in mere"posturing," as Frazier implies.I would honestly liketo see Frazier, however, attackthe state even once.His most rece1J.t article inReader's Digest (February1978), detailing how efficient(compared to othermunicipalities) the governmentof Scottsdale, Arizonais in picking up trashcans, hardly dealt a blowto the state or to its intellectualbasis. More tothe point, how is it "attackling)the enemy-theState" to announce to themillions of Reader'sDigest's readers that thereis "no cause to fight cityhall" (sic) in Scottsdalebecause the government is"is fighting for the taxpayers",(sic) as Frazierdid? Calling for efficientgovernment, as Frazierdoes, is quite differentfrom calling for liberty.Libertarians should hailgovernment inefficiency,because the things governmentsdo are wrong. Eitherthey have no business doingthem and are invadingthe province of society, orthey are actively engagingin immoral and unjust violationsof rights on awholesale scale. WillRogers summed up the libertarianapproach when hequipped, "Thank God wedon't get all the governmentwe payfor. "So long as certain peoplecontinue to range themselveson the side of thestate "in the short run,"while posing as libertarians"in the long run," I willcontinue to criticize them.This is the very same cancerwhich devastated theclassical liberal movement,and it is my fervent hopethat the modern libertarianmovement will not fallprey to its siren call.-TomG. PalmerVictoryRE: "VICTORY IN CALifornia"by Roy A. ChildsJr. in your July 1978 issue.This one hit the spot. Itput so nicely into wordswhat I think in my headand what I feel deep inside.Hopefully, that socialsickness whereby peoplerelate to each other by wayof institutionalized bruteforce (also known as government)is on the decline.R.A.KLEINRailroad WorkerMonterey Park, CaliforniaApologiesApologies are in order totwo LR contributors whohave had their workmangled by the editorialknife. David Ramsay Steelehad the meanings of severalpassages in his article"Who's Twisting Now? AResponse to Edith Efron"(April) changed andgarbled, so that he endedup appearing to say the oppositeofwhat he meant.In the same issue, JustusDoenecke, one of America'sforemost scholars onthe literature of isolationismand noninterventionism,saw his actualview of the America FirstCommittee distortedwhen, through error, theadjective "notorious" wasinserted in describing it atone point. Since neitherLR's editors nor Prof.Doenecke view the AmericaFirst Committee as"notorious"-it was dedicatedto keeping Americaout of World War II-thatinsertion was particularlyunfortunate.Our apologies to bothMr. Steele and Prof.Doenecke!THE EDITORSDUNTIL NOW, NOAUTHOR HASDARED TOCHALLENGE THISASPECT OF YOURSELF-DESTRUCTIVEBELIEFSDr. Walter Block demonstrateshow you pay a burdensomeeconomic and emotionalprice by not defendingsuch victims as the pimp,prostitute, drug pusher,slanderer, slumlord, profiteer,loan shark and scab.Now his book Defending theUndefendable, has itselfbecome a victim. Althoughthis intellectual adventurehas received rave reviewsfrom Hayek, Szasz, Hazlitt,Rothbard, Hospers, Nozick,MacBride, Childs, Palmerand many others, it has beenvirtually banned by the nation'sbookstores as too controversial.So order yourhard-cover copy directlyfrom the publisher. $9.95. 3week moneyback guarantee.Or send for brochure.Fleet PressP.O. Box 2KBrooklyn, NY 112359

nestyInternational:Enemy of the State?DON LAVOIE10"Everybody asks what do 1 need and what theycan send me," wrote Soviet "prisoner of conscience"Mark Nashpits to Amnesty International'sAdoption Group No. 17 in Great Neck,New York. "I need freedom."That simple plea from the prisoner in Tshita,Siberia, to the group of middle- and upper-classAmericans with whom he had been correspondinghad momentarily brought two completelydifferent worlds into contact: the dark, isolated,lonely world of a prisoner had toucheet that relativelyfree, comfortable existence with .whichmost of us are so routinely familiar. The contrastwas a bit jolting. Concrete prison wallshad met hamburgers and drive-in movies. Electric-shocktorture implements had been introducedto portable hair dryers. Muttered complaintsabout rush-hour traffic had come face toface with desperate screams for a sadist's mercy.Our relatively trivial day-to-day problems hadtemporarily intersect~d the nearly hopeless existenceofan innocent human being, enslavedand tortured by agents ofhis government.This is the essence of Amnesty International:making the world aware of governments'worstcrimes against individual human beings.Torture has been a stain on human historysince long before the Spanish Inquisition madeit into a holy institution. Today, in the modernscientific age, the very latest discoveries of thevery brightest minds of our time are applied inthe fast-growing field of Torture Technology.Sophisticated experts in medicine, psychiatry,biochemistry, and many other fields pool theirintellectual resources to determine precisely thecombinations of pain, isolation, fear, intimidation;demoralization, discomfort, sexual abuse,drugs and other techniques of human 4egradationwhich will destroy the will while keepingthe body physically alive, and perhaps even conscious inorder to prolong the pain. It used to be necessary in orderto save our souls. Now it is necessary to save us fromcommunism, or from "capitalism," or from terrorism.Even the Inquisitors did not try to claim that torturingpeople like this would make this world a better one.According to Amnesty International, torture is used byover 60 national governments today, and is used regularlyand systematically as a normal, operating officialpolicy by at least a third of them. Concern with politics isthus of crucial importance today for the simple reasonthat any other contributions we may try to make to thelives of our fellow men and women-from nuclear energyto drug research, from medicine to computer sciencerunsthe serious risk of being appropriated and transformedby governments into tools of repression. We maystudy pain and the nervous system to find ways of alleviatinghuman suffering, only to have our skills abused bysadistic "doctors" (as, all over the world, torture expertsnearly always call themselves) who are trying to maximizehuman suffering. Political power will continue todivert the productive efforts of human beings to its ownpurposes, to protecting'its own privilege by crushing anyresistance, until enough people come to realize that theyhave the strength to stop these "official" criminals.History knows no social force as potent as an overwhelmingpopular consensus: a people terrorized, taxed,conscripted or otherwise bullied into saying, "We're fedup," and removing tyranny. Governments are only assolid as the myths they perpetrate about how necessarythey are, myths whose frail foundations have alreadybeen exposed. And only mass dissemination of such exposesto the state's victims is necessary before statistmythology goes the way of religious apologia for inquisitions.Amnesty International is one of the world's most powerfulorganizations for arousing public opinion againstthese blatant abuses of human rights. It engages in research,documenting and verifying the mistreatment ofprisoners all over the world, and publishes its findings forthe historical record. But more importantly, it seeks toenrage the public with these brutal facts, to disgust themLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

SJTFMRFR 197Rinto political action, to shock them out of their lethargyinto doing something. It reports on fingernails that areripped out of human hands, because it believes that ifmost people realized this was going on they would wantto stop it. It details the plunging of hot irons into terrorstrickeneyes, because it believes that if they were youreyes you would not want this crime to be forgotten.When Amnesty International publishes grisly accounts ofcrushing genitals, sexually abusing women and children,forcing people to crawl over nails and then stand toreceive their daily beatings, denying them sleep, food,toilet facilities, communication, trial by jury, medicalcare ... it is not because its members can stomach theseoutrages any more than the rest of us. On the contrary, itis just because these crimes make them sick that they insiston repeating them. It is bad enough that these thingshappen at all, but when they happen in silence, when theygo on occurring regularly, routinely, sanctioned and excusedby the highest leaders of the world's governments,then none of us can afford the luxury of averting his eyesfrom the horror.If we on the "outside" are serious about wanting to putan end to these subhuman practices we must at least bewilling to become and remain informed. AI is the leadingresearch organization for documenting extreme abuses ofA military officer sent this photograph of a prisoner beingtortured in Uruguay (with "el caballete," or the sawhorse)to Amnesty International because of "the revulsion I feelfor all 'that I have the misery of witnessing."rights around the world, and for this reason alone oughtto be supported wholeheartedly by every decent person.We must identify the people who are both permitting andperpetrating these crimes, and we must unmask the lawsand institutions that make them possible. And then wemust fight them.With their long, though increasingly corrupted, traditionof individual liberty, Americans should be in theforefront of this battle. We should be particularly concernedwhen we learn that the American state, while notan especially blatant offender directly against its owncitizens, aids in numerous ways the continuation of thisgross affront to humanity. Our tax dollars have helped toprop up many of the most obnoxious of these officialcriminals: CIA agents have trained torturers; U.S. ImmigrationService thugs have blocked victims from escapingthe sadists' knives. And they are still doing so. Andthey are doing this with our tax dollars. We cannot avoidthese unpleasantries by ignoring them. We are involved.Just to take one example of the complicity of the U.S. 11

LIBERTARIAN REVIEW12...J« zoi=« za:wI-~~fa z~«government, consider the case of the Phillipines. The impositionof martial law in September 1972 was (not coincidentally)simultaneous with a 106 percent increase inmilitary aid from the United States, supplying the dictatorshipwith tools of repression at the rate of $40million a year (see Bello & Rivera, The Logistics ofRepression). According to the Phillipine government'sown estimates, within a few weeks of this Americanfinancedsuspension of traditional liberties, some 30,000individuals had been arrested and detained. PresidentMarcos has almost completely undermined the formerlyindependent civilian judicial system, shifting the law intohis military courts. AI reports that the torture of martiallaw detainees has been "widespread and systematic." Forexample, of 107 prisoners from eight detention centersthat AI interviewed, 7'1 reported that "they had been subjectedto brutal treatment and torture" (Matchbox,Winter 1977). As usual, these reports were scrupulouslydoublechecked against independent testimony, and manyspecific torturers were named by prisoners from differentdetention centers who had had no previous opportunityto meet. Typical was the ordeal of two sisterswho wereforced to watch each other endure 45 minutes of electroshockeach:You can't help screaming-it makes you writhe all over . . .We had hallucinations afterwards-we each lost five poundsfrom the torture sessions. We couldn't walk straight. We hadburns on our hands. They didn't allow us to sleep for almosttwo nights running. We were threatened with rape from thevery beginning.These are not isolated instances of abuse by a fewsadistic cops. They are representative of a systematic,government-sanctioned program of repression whichMarcos could not have instituted without the substantialassistance ofthe American government.Then there ·are the United States immigration restrictions-viciouscold-war relic that accepts refugees fromcommunist countries, but turns away victims from rightwingtyrannies on the grounds that they would competefor American jobs. Beyond the fact that there are goodeconomic arguments why open immigration would improvethe standard of living of American workers (seeRichard Ebeling's article in the June 1978 LR), does thismake you proud to be an American? Would you personallykeep an innocent person in prison to keep himfrom competing freely with you for your job? Yet thereare agents of our government, acting in our name, doingprecisely that. There are people in South American prisonswho, but for the U.S. government, would be freemen and women, .and who are mistreated by their owngovernments every day.E.L. Doctorow reminds us that we cannot avoid theseevents by regarding them as other people's problems.Their horrible world is closer to us than it seems:You and I might by nature avoid stepping on insects, but thetorturers of Iran and Chile are as close to us as the child is to theparent. They are our being, born from our loins. A terrible connectionis made with these dark exotic faraway places, thesebarbaric civilizations who do not have our tradition of freedomand justice: they are ours. We made them with our Agency forInternational Development, and our Office ofPublic Safety. Wemade them with our Drug Enforcement Administration and our~nestyInternational member participates in a Prisonerof Conscience Week demonstration at the Indonesianconsulate in San Francisco.

South Korean "prisoner of conscience" Kim Won Jongbeing led into courthouse for High Court trial in May1976.Military Assistance Program. (Matchbox~ Summer 1977)Amnesty reports on violations from all contemporarypolitical systems, from fascist Argentina to agrariancommunistChina, from monarchist-feudal Iran to racistapartheidSouth Africa, from Marxist-Leninist Ethiopiato "democratic" Italy. When AI-USA's Larry Cox wasasked if there were any countries in the world whichstand out as at least relatively decent in this nauseatingparade of cold-blooded cruelty, he was able to tentativelysuggest two-after a long pause that said as much as hisanswer. Amnesty International has a lot of work cut outfor it.How Amnesty worksCCl am grateful to be free. I know in large part this isbecause during my years of confinement many peopleassociated with Amnesty International steadfastly continuedto bring my case before public opinion and stateauthorities."-Vladimir B. BukovskyAmnesty International was founded in 1961, after anappeal by British lawyer Peter Benenson. It quicklybecame an international organization, largely on the effortsof Sean MacBride (Nobel Peace Prize laureate,1974), and today has more than 168,000 members andsupporters in 107 countries. Its International Secretariatin London has a 100-member staff that handles nearly5000 cases of human rights violations each year. FromJune 1976 to June 1977 AI responded to violations ofhuman rights in 116 countries, sent missions and observersto 22 countries, issued 70 news releases on 36countries, published extensive reports on 19 countries,and dispensed over $200,000 in relief to prisoners andtheir families. In that same period, the cases of 2,285 newprisoners were taken up and 1,657 adopted prisonerswere released.The central activity of the organization is case work forindividual prisoners, conducted by its 2000 adoptiongroups and national sections. Each group works for atleast two "prisoners of conscience" from countries otherthan its own-countries that are balanced geographicallyand politically to ensure impartiality. (Interestinglyenough, by attacking both left-wing and right-wing governments,AI unwittingly induces a bias for libertarianism.)Amnesty does not advocate or condemn any particularform of government but simply reports on, and appliespublic pressure against, severe human rights violationswherever they occur. The London research stalfsupplies each adoption group with detailed informationabout each particular prisoner's situation-e.g., whichofficials in the state or prominent individuals in the communityto send appeals to, what to say or not to say toimprove the prisoners's chances for more decent conditionsor release, what specific institutional obstacles (suchas immigration barriers) there may be and how to confrontor circumvent them. Writing politely worded lettersto officials may seem a desperately futile gesture againstpeople with the ethical constitution of torturers, but theamazing fact is that AI gets results. In its 16 years it hasaided in securing the release of over 8,000 of the 15,000individual prisoners of conscience on whose behalf itsmembers have worked.Beyond its adoption groups' case work, AI has a varietyof specific projects to amass broader organizationalpressure where needed. It sends missions to various countriesto investigate the treatment of prisoners-whereverthe countries will let them in. It produces well-documentedreports on investigated countries, in addition topublishing its quarterly, Matchbox~ and its annual A.I.Report~ which details violations in over a hundred countries.Amnesty also organizes separate campaigns whichpermit members to select the issues they want to concentrateon: the Campaign to Abolish Torture, the Prisonerof the Month Campaign (which focuses broader organizationalstrength on a particularly difficult case),Prisoner of Conscience Week (the second week of October),greeting cards for prisoners, specific country campaigns,and "Urgent Actions" (emergency cases in whichtime is dangerously short-due, for example to the failinghealth of a prisoner, his imminent execution, or his ongo- 13

LIBERTARIAN REVIEW14ing torture).This variety of action programs makes AI an ideal institutionfor people of almost any political persuasion tojoin. This carefully structured organization isn't just acollection of well-intentioned folks flailing in vain at thebehemoth states of our time. It is an effective, professionallyrun, flexible, and yet specifically focused activistorganization. It does not exist merely to assuage theguilty consciences of middle-class liberals. It is a brilliantlydesigned force on the political scene and, especiallynow that it has received the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize, itstands a reasQnably good chance of significantly changingthe world. .Amnesty is absolutely independent of any government,and, due no doubt to its extensive research, in fact showsa healthy distrust of all of them. David Hawk, the ExecutiveDirector of AI-USA, for example, writes that"sovereign states-with their age-old and inevitable tendenciesto repress the rights and liberties of their citizens-cannotbe entrusted to preserve and protect humanrights" (Matchbox~ Fall 1977). And Dr. Mumtaz Soysal,vice-chairman of the International Executive Committeeof AI, succinctly declares that "human rights will not beprotected if left solely to the governments of this world"(Matchbox~ Winter 1978).Thus the organization wisely avoids using one state topressure another, recognizing that no one governmentcan accuse another without hypocrisy, and that humanrights, as Larry Cox of AI~USA has remarked, shouldnot become reduced to a mere tool of foreign policy.(Indeed, an aggravated international scene and its product,war, are the primary breeding grounds·· for rightsviolations.) Instead, it stands outside of governments,utilizing its growing resources to amass public opinion onan international scale to pressure all governments to limittheir abuses ofrights.Amnesty has had a significant positive influence on theUnited Nations, with which it has consultative status,and it constantly presses for observance of the UN'sUniversal Declaration of Human Rights and StandardMinimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Internationalbodies which represent the very governments thatcommit these atrocities cannot be expected to defendhuman rights consistently. Thus a recurrent UN debatehas been waged over whether so-called "economic andsocial rights" can be used to justify watering downdemands for political liberty. In this battle, Amnesty hasunwaveringly come down for an absolute commitment toindividual liberty. Commenting in his address to the recentAI-USA annual meeting in San Francisco, C.L.Lamb emphasized the fundamental difference betweenthese kinds of "rights":Civil and political rights are capable of being ensured byrestraint on the part of government. Economic and socialrights, on the other hand, can only be assured by the adoptionof policies geared to positive action on the part of governments I.... It is difficult, if not impossible, to contemplate a uniformstandard for the right to an adequate standard ofliving.AI does not explicitly reject these so-called "socioeconomicrights" the way a libertarian would. While wewould argue that these "rights" actually constitue severeinfringements on the rights of businessmen to establishand profit from any noncoercive business ventures theycare to undertake, Amnesty spokesmen tend to concedethat they are legitimate rights, but rights which cannotoverride basic political rights. AI is committed to allow-ing nothing to serve as an excuse for violating the simplepolitical rights the organization is specifically mandatedto uphold. Indeed, if Amnesty had the resources behindit, the consistent application of its own defense of.prisoners of conscience would invariably lead it to defendpeaceful tax rebels and "free-enterprisers of conscience"everywhere. And we all know where that avenue leads!Does AI go far enough?"Amnesty International was not founded to work forgeneral economic~ social and political justice in thevarious countries of the world-however much its membersmay wish to do so~ and are free to do so throughother bodies-but to bring relief to individual victims ofinjustice. "-Amnesty International HandbookAI clearly is not a libertarian organization. It does notdefend actively every category of individual rights. It cannotbe expected to come to the rescue when a businessmanis prevented from hiring someone at a mutuallyagreeable wage, or when a prostitute is routinely jailedfor practicing her profession, or when a young person isforced to attend public schools. Amnesty rather concentratesits resources on what Larry Cox calls the "classicprisoner" cases-i.e., those particularly gross violationsof basic rights which most people would immediatelyrecognize as such.Some libertarians might argue that since all rights areindivisible, it is arbitrary and hypocritical to focus on certaincommonly recognized instances of coercion to theexclusion of less popular but equally unjust violations ofrights. If the conscription of conscientious objectors,which Amnesty opposes, is to be condemned, while taxationof conscientious objectors for the income they earnfrom January to May is to be condoned, is this not a fundamentalinconsistency which principled libertariansshould forthrightly denounce? If governments fail to assemblevia the draft enough cannon fodder for their wars,is it then justice when they coercively collect taxes to paymercenaries instead? Can one justifiably object to a warby refusing to fight it but not by refusing to pay for it?Yet Amnesty is not a. broad-based politic:almovementthat is responsible for addressing all social and politicalissues, and should not be judged by such standards. It is aspecific, ad hoc organization that purposefully (and wisely)limits its goals, and remains noncommittal over allquestions outside its carefully circumscribed mandate.From a strategic point of view, it would be foolish forAmnesty International to bite off a broader challengethan it can chew effectively.There can be no question but that AI's defense ofhuman rights is incomplete. But it is no condemnation ofan ad hoc organization to say that it doesn't do everything.It is the most impotent of imaginable strategies toreject every cause that does not fully coincide with one'scomplete political ideal, or to reject po-ssible allies on oneissue only because they are our opponents on another. If,by joining a cause, one step toward liberty can be takenwithout directly worsening anyone's freedom, then oneshould join that cause. We must always promote consistencyin the application of rights, of course, but wecannot afford to insist on consistency among all allies as aprecondition for our every political action.Even so, it is important to realize that AI is so designed

SEPTEMBER 1978as to have a naturaf tendency to universalize its ownunderstanding of human rights. A "prisoner of conscience"is defined as anyone imprisoned for his' beliefswho has neither used nor advocated violence-which isclose enough to the libertarian principle of nonaggressionto provide for a considerable overlap in evaluating individualcases. Amnesty's continual application of thisprinciple forces it to face up to the tricky cases broughtbefore its Borderline Committee. Last year, AI decided toaccept a gay rights case as within its mandate; and as thegroup's influence grows, it encounters broader andbroader appeals. That Amnesy, like libertarianism, isfundamentally concerned with applying universally asimple principle of freedom, makes this organizationideally susceptible to being nudged, by its own borderlinecases, into a continually more comprehensive defense ofliberty. Amnesty's mandate seeks to remove from theworld's prisons all those who have neither used nor advocatedviolence, which is one giant step in the libertariandirection of also removing all those who have not initiatedthe use ofviolence.Consider the following example: In 1976, Admiralment offers for its immigration policy: unemployment~this time in Java. Once again a government tries to solvean employment problem by restricting people's freechoices about where they live, what they produce, andwhat they do with their property. Once again a governmentis using coercion against innocent persons to "protect"jobs. Beyond the fact that no jobs are created bysuch coercive activities, but are only shuffled around at anet loss to everyone, who among us would have the impudenceto defend such practices?Who among us can excusekeeping an innocent man in a prison, or on anisland, or out of a country, to keep him from competingwith us in free, voluntary transactions?Happily, the Indonesian government's excuses for itscrimes have fallen on deaf ears at AI. That organization'sdefense of individual rights as inviolate against any claimsfor so-called "socio-economic rights" has kept it from ex-Prisoners on the Ind:onesian prison island of Buru havehad to build all their own facilities since they wererelocated there from regular prisons.Sudomo, head of the Indonesian state security agencyKopKamtib~ announced that government's three year"release program" which, translated from the Orwelliannewspeak of the announcement, 'actually meant alteringthe location and surroundings, but not the essence~ ofprison. Between 1969 and 1977, the governmentrelocated on Buru Island some 14,000 of the estimated55,000 to 100,000 political prisoners it holds (most ofwhom are now in their 13th year of imprisonmentwithout trial). This is exactly the kind of borderline casethat expands the application of the slogan, "release thoseimprisoned for their beliefs who have neither used nor advocatedviolence." This case highlights the question ofjust what a prison is. Is it only the "classic": the ,concretewalls, barbed wire, and guard towers? Or can it not alsobe a Buru Island? These "liberated" prisoners have beenforced to clear a tropical jungle, to build their own detentioncamps, and to produce food and livestock, one-thirdof which is seized by their military guards.The Indonesian government offers the same justificationfor its "resettlement centers" that the_ U.S. governoneratingthe Indonesian authorities for their no doubtsincere concern over their unemployment statistics. AndAmnesty's humanistic attitude has kept it from beingconned either by this disguised prison or by the flimsyarguments for delaying the full release of these prisoners.These people, who have already suffered so much, AI hasdeclared, "should not be forced to endure for another daythe harsh conditions of prison or separation from theirfamilies"-mostof" whom,not too surprisingly, did notwant to move to Buru Island. Amnesty has distinctly rejectedthe government's lame suggestion that these peoplehave been freed, stating concisely that "[f]orced exile to adistant and harsh location does not constitute a 'release'ofpolitical prisoners."As an oppressive state tries to relieve itself of internationalpublic pressure by changing the form of its coercionwhile retaining its essential content~ Amnesty isnaturally led to block these evasions at every turn. Onceyou begin to examine the essence rather than the surfaceappearance of governmental activities, the logic for extendingthe defense of rights to all areas becomes in-15

Indonesian prisoners live in camps under the most prim­,itive of conditions.escapable. A prison is, in essence, only a special and extremepoint along the continuum of constraints uponliberty.No doubt the founders of AI were unaware of the fullradical implications of their own principles, and itsmembers cannot be expected to immediately carry thislogic as far as we would like. But especially with our influencefrom within the organization, libertarians can bea positive, universalizing influence. We can take somepride in a significant comment an AI leader in New Yorkmade to LR Editor Roy Childs and myself: "You guys[libertarians] are like Amnesty International's good conscience,always keeping us honest."Overlapping goalsHIn a world of increasing brutality, internationalizationofviolence, terrorism and torture, Amnesty Internationalused its forces for the protection ofhuman values. Its effortson behalf of defending human dignity againstviolence and subjugation have proved that the basis forpeace in the world must be justice for all human beings."-citationfor the 1977 Nobel Peace PrizeWhether one endorses AI on every single issue or not,libertarians should support this humane and effectivehuman rights organization. It is precisely the kind of international,principled, strategically sophisticated, andwidely respected group with which libertarians can enthusiasticallyinvolve themselves. Far from being a reasonto avoid the organizaztion, the fact that Amnesty'smembers and leaders are not fully consistent advocates ofliberty is rather another good reason for joining it. Hereis a group whose clearly stated goals overlap ours, andwhose members are advancing our interests even thoughmany of them have never heard of libertarianism. In theirdaily activism these people continually confront some ofthe most grotesque of the crimes of governments. Suchpeople should be as ripe for our ideas as we are for theiractivism. What better opportunity can we imagine, notonly for increasing the clout of our own activities but alsofor influencing these partial allies in the direction of ourwider perspective?But more importantly, we should remember whatlibertarianism is all 'about. The people of the world do, not need to tolerate the treatment of human beings inways the ASPCA would not tolerate for dogs. We havethe power, if we are willing to work for it, to wield thetremendous weight of an international popular consensusagainst such atrocities. Let us echo the appeal by E.L.Doctorow (Matchbox, Summer 1977) and commit ourselves,as a first step toward achieving a free society, tothe modest proposals of Amnesty International:If you or I do not condone torture, who among us does? If weabhor gangsters and tyrants and dictators, who among us installsthem in their power? Let us have their names, who act inOO~. ~16Don 'Lavoie is a graduate student in economics at New YorkUniversity. His essay "The Decay of Radical Socialism" appearedin the October 1977 issue of LR.LIBERTARIAN REVIEW

SEPTEMBER 1978Harry Schultz, intemationalinvestment consultant,receives $1,250per hour for his advice.By Harry SchultzI've always felt very strongly thatno book should be written unlessthere is a genuine need for it. DouglasCasey's book, The International Man,is a book that fills a true need, in fact,a desperate need.Furthermore, it does the job professionally.I've read so much garbageabout "how things are abroad" byscores of U.S. or Canadian writersbased on their vacations out of theU.S. or Canada, or a period of residenceabroad that was short and limitedin scope. As I'm known to be a"mold" for what an international manprobably is, I'm naturally not taken inby amateurs. Thus, I trust my praise ofthis book will carry some weight for itdeserves wide distribution. I've lived inevery really important country in theworld. I have offices and homes inmany countries and I'm now as muchat home in Copenhagen, London orParis as in the U.S. cities where I grewup. I say this so you'll give credence towhat I say about this book's quality,and also to emphasize the purpose ofthis book, Le., to make a case to becomean international man (orwoman) yourself.One grows up thinking one's countryis the greatest, especially Americans.I think, in fact, it probably wasthe greatest for a certain period of history.But all countries have changednow to the point where they now consistof faceless bureaucracies, spoutingvarying degrees of socialism and zoomingalong the high road to Big BrotherdomeTo make socialism work, it isnecessary to make a kind of robot ofall citizenry. The only hope of escapingthis, in part or in full, is to be veryinternational, maximizing your optionsand untying yourself from yourconcepts of red, white and blue patriotism.This is no longer just amusingcocktail chatter; it's life and death interms of freedom-physically, financiallyand psychologically.The coverage on passports in thisbook is especially intriguing. I predictyou'll read it with your breath held,unable tolay the book down. Thesematters we had no need to think about10 to 15 years ago. But now they havebecome survival essentials. The worldhas changed, scientifically for thebetter, but politically for the worse.We must change, too. If you're notgood at changing to match the times,you had better read this book threetimes. The rest of you should read ittwice.By the way, it's no good saying,"Things are bad all over; I may justas well stay put and stick it out."That's a lazy excuse at best. Thingsare not equally bad all over, buteven if they were, you gain by beingflexible and not belonging to onecountry or being so irrevocably tied toone. Ideally, one should always be a"foreigner," wherever you are. Thatway, you have more freedom of movementand less tax exposure. One canbe a foreigner in varying ways. Certainlyyour assets must be internationalizedvia citizenship, via an alternativehome, and most importantly viaknow-how. Learn about foreign banks.Learn to be at home everywhere.Learn how to cope with any situation.Learn now, before so many barriersare built that you'll have no choices ofaction left.Learn to think in terms of Germanmarks and Swiss francs. Make foreigninvestments. You will build a wallaround yourself if you are only able tothink in terms of dollars and WallStreet. We have, in fact, two walls toknock down; the one we erect ourselvesand the one governments havebuilt. The latter is tough enough. Theleast you can do is be sure the firstwall is flattened.Another concept I urge you adopt:just because you were born in a givencountry doesn't mean you need tostay there, or that it's automaticallythe best, or the best for you. It is, infact, a sin, in my view, to have livedmost of your life in just one country.How provincial, how narrow, how youhave cheated yourself of viewing theworld with wide-angle lenses, with 3Dvision. How can you profess to be aproper citizen of the world if you havenot actually lived (no vacations please)in at least two other countries for afew years? You owe it to your mind tomove about. And this is quite asidefrom the financial and political necessityto be international. I have longthought a requirement for a man torun for President of the United Statesshould be that he has lived abroad forat least two years. How can he passjudgment on foreign policy if he hasnever left Chicago? If you feel thatmakes sense for a president, why notfor you?Some people are less mobile thanothers by virtue of special problems.But there is no justification to becompletely provincial. Not if you wantto survive. I urge you to take the adviceof this book and become an internationalperson. As Emerson said:Choose which laws you will (or can)live under. You're not stuck with anyset of laws. The limitations are thewindmills of your mind. Go forth.Grow forth. Good luck and welcometo the world.(Reprinted from the Foreword)* * * * *The International Man: The CompleteGuide to the World's Last Frontiersfor Freedom Seekers, Investors,Adventurers, Speculators and Expatriates,by Douglas R. Casey, may beordered from Kephart Communications,Inc., Dept. 3429 ,P.O. Box2599, Landover Hills, MD 20784. Theprice is $14.95 postpaid and taxdeductible.Satisfaction guaranteed oryour money back.SA91117

Proposition 13Riding theTidal WaveoftheTax RevoltJOAN KENNEDY TAYLOR18The pundits don't quite know what to make ofProposition 13. What does the idea of taxlimitation, an idea whose time .seems to havecome, mean to the United States? "Meat-axeradicalism," wrote Walter Heller in the WallStreet Journal. "Popular mistrust.of. public of- 'ficials gives license to middle-class greed,"wrote columnist Joe Kraft. Columnist CarlRowan called it "mobocracy." Michael Harringtonsaid, "As a man of the democratic Left,I was of course appalled by the passage.of Proposition13 in California." And an editorial in theNew Republic said that "a blending of libertarianrhetoric with cash prizes for the middleclass is the central appeal of the new backlashthat is gaining momentum in the country."It's all very well for writers to call a popularmovement names, or even for a bureaucrat likePatricia Roberts Harris ofHUD to say thatProposition 13 was "rather like burning downthe barn to roast the pig." But people who earntheir livings. as a result of popular electio,ns areunderstandably more cautious. Bill Brock, RepublicanNational Chairman, thought it meantthat "people are just plain sick to death of moregovernment than they rieed and more taxes thanthey can afford," while California's DemocraticGovernor Jerry Brown called it "the will of thepeople"! ,One thing is unmistakable - there is suddenlya nationwide antagonism toward taxes.School taxes and bond issues have been defeatedin Ohio, in Illinois, in Virginia, inMichigan, and in Texas. Tax limitation amendmentsmay be going on the ballot in severalstates. In Massachusetts, for instance, at least25 .percent of two successive legislatures mustendorse a petition-initiated amendment to thestate constitution before it can be submitted tothe voters. Mter a petition campaign last fall inwhich the Libertarian Party played a large part, 90 percentof the Massachusetts legislature (222 to 23) endorseda tax limitation amendment on June 28.A nervous Congress has been slashing between two andfive percent from appropriations bills. The United StatesConference of Mayors felt called upon to urge the federalgovernment to spend less, ignoring the fact that thefastest growing item in the federal budget is aid to localgovernments. An ABC News-Lou Harris poll in Junefound a 62 percent majority in favor of a tax limitationamendment for the voter's home state. A CBS News-NewYork Times. poll found 78 percent thought governmentwas "wasting a lot of the money we pay in taxes." And,not to be outdone, NBC News and the Associated Pressfound that 83 percent ofthose polled knew what Proposition13 was (far'more than knew the name of their owncongressman), and two-thirds of those polled favored anamendment to the U.S. Constitution to limit all taxes.Something important is obviously going on. Do anylibertarians remember the old Liberty Amendment, theconstitutional amendment to eliminate the income tax? Itwas one of those charming, abolitionist ideas that weknew wouldn't really get anywhere but was a good propagandatool, right? Well, Howard Jarvis cut his politicalteeth on the Liberty Amendment, and now he is tellingpress conferences in Washington, "I hope to educate thecapital about what happened in California," and there istalk in Congress and in nationwide polls about a constitutionaltax limitation.Everywhere you go these days, people are beginning tosound like libertarians. Politicians are falling all overtheir feet in their rush to endorse tax limitations, tax cuts,even ceilings on their own salaries - anything that willenable them to warm themselves at the conflagrationstarted when Howard Jarvis, as colum'nist MaryMcGrory put it, "dropped a match in the dry brush ofproperty owners' rage."A gentleman from California' visiting in Massachusettssaid he had worked for Proposition 13. and he knewpolicemen and firemen and school teachers who voted forit, because they either owned their own homes or hadelderly parents who did. "If I get laid off from my job," hequoted such people as saying, "I can find another one.LIBERTARIAN REVIEW

But this has to stop. "A woman lawyer for a major corporation said at aNew York party, "I would do anything to help limit taxesin New York. My daughter is a public school teacher,and she's going to be able to retire before I can. I pay formy own pension plan, but my taxes are paying for hers,too. Remember when they said that the unions 'generously'lent their pension funds to the city? That was ourmoney! There's millions of dollars in those funds thatbelong to the taxpayers! It has to stop."Howard Jarvis spread the fear of the tax revolt inWashington when he met with Republican senators (includingRobert Dole of Kansas, in the background) inmid-June.In Otis, Massachusetts, a taxpayers' revolt put thepolice department out of business at a June townmeeting. Rejecting a proposal to add another full-timepoliceman, making a total of three, voters chose insteadnot to fund the department as of July 1. All that was leftof the Otis police a week after that was a recordedmessage on the telephone, saying "if this is an emergency,call the state police at Lee" (a neighboring town of about6,000). A spokesman for the state police said to areporter that he was surprised they weren't getting manycalls from Otis. In mid-August, Otis residents voted notto pay for their police force for the rest ofthe year.Many libertarians have been concerned for a long timeas to how the reversal in the size of government wouldcome about. The New Deal formula of "We will spendand spend, and elect and elect" seemed to be unbeatableat the ballot box. Well, not any more. We have a genuine,nationwide, grassroots tax revolt going on here andit's going to change things. We had one before, and itchanged things, too, in 1776.There were two conditions necessary to our breakingfrom England, and they prevail today. First, taxation wasimposed above a level which the people perceived as"reasonable." The author of Parkinson's Law, C. NorthcoteParkinson, speculated in a 1960 book calling for taxlimitation that people and capital will start to move awaywhen taxation exceeds 10 percent. If there is no place betterto move to, they will put up with taxes of up to 20percent, but above this limit, each increase brings specificevil results. First, tax avoidance stiffens, productivitybegins to level off. At 25 percent, taxes cause inflation.At 30 percent, national influence begins to decline. At 35percent, loss of individual freedom accelerates and peoplebegin to lose hope. And at 36 percent, he says, "there isdisaster, complete and final although not always immediate."Taxation in the United States now takes 40percent of our gross national product.The other condition necessary for a tax revolt is that itis perceived that the taxes are laid by some people uponothers. During a major war, for instance, when peoplethink they are fighting for survival, they will put up withtaxes as high as 50 percent. Today in the United States,this condition, too, has been fulfilled. Americans don'tknow the name of their congressman, not because theyare dumb, but because they rarely feel that he representsthem. They know that the bureaucrats they have to dealwith don't represent them. And in general, as MurrayRothbard pointed out in his speech to the 1975 LibertarianParty Convention, in the aftermath of Nixon noone says that "the government is us" anymore. Americans.in huge numbers have perceived that those people ingovernment are not us, and that they are taking ourmoney and wasting it according to standards of theirown.A political reporter for the New York Sunday Timesevaluated Proposition 13 this way, on June 11: "Thegrumpy electorate may be rejecting government. InCalifornia, 6.5 million people voted on Propostion 13;only 5.7 million voted for any candidate for governor. Ifeither party can successfully appeal to that concern - antitax,antispending groups in many states reject both parties- it may be able to score gains in November thattraditional measurements would not foretell." Libertarians,are you listening?"The people" is not just a collection of special interestgroups, as politicians have been assuming for too long."The people" is made up of individuals. The sense offairness that so many commentators have noticed as acharacteristic of our culture has finally turned againstthose who thought they could spend and spend and electand elect forever. We may be fortunate enough to be livingat the beginning of the end of American Big Govern-~m.Joan Kennedy Taylor is associate editor of Libertarian Review.D19SEPTEMBER 1978

Proposition 13Paul Gann, Revolntionary:An IR InterviewJEFF RIGGENBACHIf the pundits don't know quite what to make ofProposition 13, neither do the politicians.Some, like California Governor Jerry Brownand law-and-order State Senator GeorgeDeukmejian, have bounded onto the tax-revoltbandwagon. And their example has been followedin recent weeks by politicians all over thecountry. Others, like the elected officials of SanFrancisco, Oakland, and Sonoma County, California,have begun calmly replacing their lostproperty tax income by imposing increases in."fees." "In the wake of Jarvis-Ganll," the SanFrancisco Chronicle reported in mid-August,"county officials across the state have raised feesfor such services as building permits, septic tankpermits and routine construction inspections."In Sonoma County, the cost of a building permithas gone up 20 percent, the cost of a septictank permit has nearly tripled, and other costshave been adjusted so steeply that it can costnearly a thousand dollars merely to obtain thepermits to build a vacation or retirement cottagethere. Californians, needless to say, arefighting mad, and one of the maddest is the manwho helped start it all in the first place, PaulGann.Gann is a retired real estate broker who livesin the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, headquartersfor his statewide taxpayers' activistgroup, People's Advocate, Inc. People's Advocatecame very, very close to qualifying a Proposition13-type ballot initiative in 1976, thesame year Southern California tax rebel HowardJarvis almost accomplished the same thing.In 1977, they joined forces behind the samepetition drive-and made history. Gann is moresoft spoken, even retiring in manner, than Jarvis,and the crotchety, acid-tongued presidentof the Apartment House Association of Los20 Angeles has thus captured most of the headlinessince Prop. 13 became a national issue. But, as LRdiscovered during an early August meeting with Gann inthe office of People's Advocate in Carmichael, a softspoken,retiring manner can merely mask the soul of arevolutionary with an iron determination.LR: How do you feel about how Proposition 13 has beenimplemented?GaDD: It's been terrible. In fact, most of our localbureaucrats,almost all of them, have in some way circumventedProposition 13. They no longer call it taxes; they call itdues and fees. But we don't care what they call it as longas they're depleting the funds which come from our wallets.Some cities have increased their sewer fees by 500percent and the cost of building permits by 1000 percent.We've gone to court in San Francisco and Oakland becauseof the way the bureaucrats in those cities have violatedthe spirit and the letter of Proposition 13. We trustthe court will rule that a fee is a tax. If it doesn't and thecities are legally allowed to raise these fees, then of coursewe'll have to do something else. I've been working withSenator Deukmejian since June, trying to get his budgetlimitation bill out of committee, so that it can get on theAssembly floor. If we can get that out of committee andget it on the ballot this fall, what it will do is put a cap onthe budgets of all governments in the state of California-cities,counties, school districts, everything. [Themeasure was not approved by the legislature-JR.] Now,'if we can do that, that's going to help. I don't know thatthat will complete the job. I hope it will. But if it doesn't,then we may have to circulate another petition.LR: Time magazine commented recently that Proposition13 proves the willingness of California voters to tolerate"cruel, destructive cuts in public services" in order toreduce taxes..Gaoo: There haven't been any. Whoever wrote that storywrote it from an interview with some old maid schoolteacheror something, because those cruel cuts aren'tcoming. During the campaign one of the universities evenverified the claim that if Proposition. 13 became law itwould cost 450,000 jobs. By the end of June that hadbecome 50,000, and now it's dropped to 9,000. And nowI'm worried, because normally we lose 86,000 peopleevery year just through attrition alone. They're spendingLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

"more money now than they did before Proposition 13became law.LR: Do you think we need further tax cuts beyond Proposition13?Gann: We're going to have to have them if some of ourstate officials are telling the truth. The California statetreasurer, Jess Unruh, recently said that we're going tohave another four to five billion dollar surplus in the statetreasury at the end of 1978-79. Now if that's true, afterwe cut taxes by six billion dollars, then it's obscene, and Iwish there were some way we could send the people responsiblefor it to jail. In a state where people are beingtaxed beyond their ability to pay, to have those kinds ofsurpluses is absolutely cruel and should be criminal.LR: How about nationwide? Is a national tax revolt inthe works?Gaoo: Well, there certainly is a lot of unrest. I've been in11 states myself and everyone of them is ready to fight.In fact, in Oregon, the first state I went into, they'vequalified a property tax initiative for the ballot this fall.The next state we worked with was Michigan. They'vequalified their property tax initiative. Idaho has an initiativewhich will be on the ballot to limit spending, which isjust as good. We have about 16 or 17 other states. I justreceived a telegram from Florida. I was down there becausethey were having a little trouble getting going, andthey sent me a nice telegram thanking me for comingdown and saying that, come hell or high water, they weregoing to qualify their initiative. They tell me that tomorrowmorning I should have five to ten thousand people ata rally in New York; it's been the same in Virginia, Maryland,Colorado, wherever we go.LR: There's a move afoot now to amend the U.S. Constitutionto limit federal spending. Do you think Proposition13 had something to do with spurring that?Gaoo: No question about it. You see, what Proposition13 did was convince people that we can do something.Despondency and apathy had set in over the years, andpeople had gotten to the point where, even in talking tome, they would say, "Well, what can we do? There'snothing we can do. Anything we do they'll beat us oneway or another." But I don't believe that. The only timeyou're whipped is when you refuse to get up. They got upthis time. And look what happened. People throughoutthe other 49 states have taken heart. They're saying,"They did it, in California!" I see a difference in the expressionson people's faces. The gleam is back in theireyes. They aren't ashamed to be Americans anymore.They're taking a position and they're not being doormats.That's what we've been for years, really. Bureaucracyhasrun this country. We now have a fourth branch of thegovernment-the bureaucrats. And they now dictate tothe three legal branches. When you think about theamount of real power elected officials have today in ourgovernment, it's almost frightening. They don't have a lotto say about what's happening-they can only say "yes"to special interests.LR: A great many politicians have jumped on your bandwagonsince Proposition 13 passed, even politicians likeJerry Brown who opposed it before it passed. And whenyou consider that Jerry Brown is a liberal, you see thatpoliticians from both the liberal and conservative constituenciesare coming out in favor of tax reduction. Yet alot of people in the media are calling the tax revolt a conservativebacklash, a swing to the right. Do you think

that's accurate?Gann: That isn't true at all. They'd like to make it that.People in the state of California, as well as in the rest ofthe states, are tired of being pushed around by bureaucrats.They would like to see the government get out oftheir personal lives. They'd like to start thinking a littlebit for themselves. The proof that the government does alousy job is that it started out 30 years ago to control thelives of the people of this country and manage them andit's only gone into debt 500 billion dollars in the last 22 or23 years trying to accomplish that. That isn't a very goodsuccess story. They've failed utterly. Too many of usforget that before the government giveth, the governmenttaketh. That's always true.LR: The New Republic has described the tax revolt aslibertarian. They say "a blending of libertarian rhetoricwith cash prizes for the middle class is the central appealofthe new backlash."Gann: This is not a specifically libertarian movement. It'snot a right-wing or a left-wing movement. This is thepeople. The people are tired of being milked like a Holsteincow with an electric milking machine.LR: It's been pointed out by your critics that only theSwiss and the Japanese pay fewer taxes than Americans,comparing all the citizens of Western, free-world countries.The Danes pay more, the Canadians pay more, theEnglish pay more. . . .Gann: I couldn't give a damn less what they do inEngland. I don't'live in England. If I lived there I'd beraising holy hell, because the Queen, I understand, getsfive million dollars a year. And anytime I had to share ajohn with two other families because I couldn't makeenough money to pay my taxes and live, I'd be out picketingin front of Buckingham Palace. I keep hearing aboutwhat they're doing in Europe. Who cares? I don't livethere. I live here. And just because those people are stupidenough to sit down and allow themselves to be used assanitation paper doesn't mean we have to follow their example.Our forefathers all came from those other countriesover there, and they came over here because theydidn't like what was going on there. So now we have tobring it with us? No, we don't.LR: So you wouldn't agree that it's greed that'smotivating the people who voted for Proposition 13?Gann: Greed is what has brought us to where we're at.The people now are waking up to the fact that what wehave been going through in the last several years has reallybeen a phony prosperity based on borrowed money.Look what inflation is doing to us. According to a reportI have out of Washington, D.C. the average Americanfamily's living standard is now going down at a rate of$270 a year. Down, not up. And that's an average. Ofcourse there are some people, particularly the people whowork for the government, who get a guaranteed cost ofliving raise every year plus a little more pension. Theycould care less. Why should they care as long as the taxpayeris willing to continue to pay and not object? Iwonder what's wrong with people objecting to beingrobbed. There's a People's Advocate member in Malibu.He's 80 years old and he's probably wealthy. I neverknew that was a sin. I always thought that was theAmerican ideal. If you're smart enough to make money,make it. But this man's property tax has gone up from$2000 to $5600 and he is upset. He says, "The fact that Ican afford to pay it is beside the point. When people takemy money, I want them to show enough respect to pull agun on me." And I agree with that. They talk aboutgreedy taxpayers, because we're trying to save one or twoof our own bucks. These bureaucrats continuously leechand take. In San Francisco they bought $265,000 worthof stoves and refrigerators over the last two or threeyears, and now they can't find a stove or a refrigerator.And we're "greedy" and "mean" and a bunch of dirtybastards if we don't like that. A food stamp store closedrecently because the boys in charge left the door open onenight and packrats came in and got five million dollarsworth of food stamps. We don't like that. Really wedon't. But then of course if that's bureaucracy you're not"Greed is what has brought us to where we'reat. The people now are waking up to the factthat what we have been going through in thelast several years has really been a phonyprosperity based on borrowed money."Z

SEPTEMBER 1978"Right now, we can exercise a lot of influence.Proposition 13 has inspired the peopleof this country to the point that they nowknow that they can win, if they're willing toget out and put their hearts and souls into it."supposed to say anything about it. They'd better clean uptheir act, that's all I have to say about it, because we'redeveloping some of the most beautiful resignation formsyou've ever seen.LR: Some of the critics of Proposition 13 have called it anexample of "mobocracy.;' They say the whole initi~tiveprocess is a means of allowing what they call "kookie"policies and unwise decisions to take the form oflaw.Gann: Kookie? Unwise? While the bureaucratic plannersare busy planning bridges and freeways that go nowhereand bridges that don't have highways at either end ofthem? Such brilliant things as that? And the health,education and welfare system that admits to seven billiondollars a year being stolen from it-that kind of perfection?Doesn't make sense, does it? These people areafraid they're going to lose their banana. Who knows?Some of them may have to start working in private enterprise.That would really crush them. I think their honeymoon'sover. The bureaucrats have had their way in thiscountry so long that they seriously believe we're invadingtheir privacy-they really do. But how long do they thinkwe can continue borrowing money to maintain thisphony prosperity? They think we have nothing to worryabout-if you run out of dough, you raise the debt ceilingand you print some more money. You borrow again. Exceptthat is the phoniest thing we do, because what we'redoing is hocking the very souls of generations yet to beborn. What's so great about that? If you took a gun anddid it, it'd be honest, anyway.LR: Who's your favorite in the California gubernatorialrace?Gann: Well, I only have two choices and one ofthem isn'tBrown. That's about the nearest I can come to endorsinganybody. The Libertarian candidate, Ed Clark, wouldbe, no doubt, a tremendous governor, but I think we allknow that the race is going to be between the attorneygeneral [Republican Evelle Younger] and GovernorBrown. Whether that's right or wrong is beside the point.I think Governor Brown has been a very brilliant politicianin his move on Proposition 13, but I also rememberthat just three weeks or so before the election the governorsaid, "If you vote yes on Proposition 13, don't cometo Sacramento expecting the state to bail you out, becausewe will not be your sugar daddy." Then on theeighth day of June, two days after the tremendous votefor Proposition 13, he said, in essence, to the people ofCalifornia, "Come unto me all ye who labor and areheavy laden, and I will give you rest." That's what you'dcall a 180 degree turn in about four weeks. I hope thepeople are thinking about his position before the election.I hope. I also hope we will eliminate some legislators,because we made one tremendous mistake last time: Wesent back 86 percent ofthe incumbents. We sent the messback to clean itself up-and that's never happened. And itnever will happen.LR: Is tax reduction all the cleaning up you're interestedin seeing?Gann: No.. I don't want to win just Proposition 13. Tome it's no panacea. It's only a step in the right direction.That's all it's ever been. Eventually we want to limit theterm of office that a legislator can serve. We'd like 'to seeeach legislator spend six months out of every year athome with his constituents. We love 'em up here in Sacramento,but we don't want them turning into residents,you know. And we will eventually return control of theincome of the top echelons in government to the people,so that they can't vote themselves those outrageoussalaries. It's ridiculous that we've allowed the governmentto go to the point where it dictates our lives completely.As an example: When the government can tell you when~to send your kids to school, to me that's the last straw. Ijust can't understand people taking that, myself.I wish I could convince Howard Jarvis that we can'tstop with Proposition 13. Howard's a first-rate radical,but unlike me, he wants to be known as a radical. Ifyou're known as a radical, it's not long before you don'thave much influence any more. And right now wecan exercisea lot of influence. Proposition13 has inspired thepeople of this country to the point that they now knowthat they can win, if they're willing to get out and puttheir hearts and souls into it.DJeff Riggenbach is senior editor of Libertarian Review.23

•IDODDThe Western leaders' fourth economic summit producednothing tnore than some atnus*ng press reports.24CHRIS WEBERWorld economic summits have become an annualfixture. The most recent was in July, inBonn, West Germany. But it is increasingly apparentto all concerned that such summits don'treally solve anything, and that whenever thebold proclamations. made at these gatheringsare realized it is only because the participantshad planned beforehand to realize them anyway.Further, it is becoming apparent that mostof these proclamations rest on spurious economiclogic. In fact, if we scan the history ofthese summits, we see that they are really onlyexhibitions of political showmanship, whoseantics have either amused or disgusted theworld, but whose successive promises of a betterworld to come have followed each other intothe dustbin of history.In 1975, the world found itself in the worsteconomic straits since the Great Depression.Two-digit inflation was rampant, and unemploymentwas climbing everywhere. In timespast, only one of these ills-either inflation orunemployment-or sometimes neither, waspresent at one time, but to have them bothwreaking havoc at once was something fairlynew. Moreover, the world monetary systemhad collapsed (see "The Shattered WorldEconomy," January-February LR), and the old,fixed exchange-rate regime had given way to theinflationary floating rates of today. To theworld's politicians, the situation cried for "action."The leaders of the six largest economicnations responded by agreeing to gather in aneconomic summit to discuss their plight at Rambouillet,an 18th century palace near Paris. TheChristopher Weber writes frequently on financial topics for LRand many other publications. Parts of this article have beenrevised from Mr. Weber's piece in "The Swiss Economic Viewpoint"of July 1978 (published by Foreign Commerce Bank,Zurich).LIBERTARIAN REVIEWsummit was called with great fanfare. British PrimeMinister Harold Wilson lauded it as "a developmentwithout precedent in economic history." But the realitywas nothing like the myth. In Mr. Wilson's own capitalof London, a similar conference had been held in1932-a remarkably similar conference both in the programsoffered and in the results attained. Then as now,France was the world's preeminent supporter of hardmoney.In 1932 that nation had demanded a return to the goldstandard. And 42 years later they took another hardmoneyposition: They proposed a return to fixed rates,which in roday's world was about the best they could expect.Their hopes in both cases were dashed, each time byAmerican wishes for a world money system characterizedby official caprice. That original' London conferencefeatured proposals for a coordinated. world inflationthrough an internationally funded scheme of publicworks projects, concerted fiscal and monetary policiesaimed at reflation, and official supports for world commodityprices. All three of these proposals also foundtheir counterparts at Rambouillet, and they fell on fertileground both times. There were also better (i.e., noninterventionist)proposals common to each conference: for atruce on tariffs, and for gradual abolition of controls onimports and capital movements. Not surprisingly, theseovertures were twice ignored. The Rambouillet summittook place over the weekend of November 15-17, 1975.We shall quote at greater length from the communiqueissued at the end of this summit than from any of the latercommuniques, because this first one set the tone for itssuccessors.The Rambouillet conferees began by introducingthemselves in no uncertain terms: "We are each responsiblefor the government of an open, democratic societydedicated to individual liberty and social advancement."Next, these libertarians boldly set forth their positions:The industrial democracies are determined to overcome highunemployment, continuing inflation and serious energy problems.The purpose of our meeting was to review our progress,identify more clearly the problems that we must overcome inthe future, and to set a course that we will follow in the periodahead . . . . The most urgent task is to assure the recovery ofour economies and to reduce the waste of human resources in-

volved in unemployment. In consolidating the recovery it isessential to avoid unleashing additional inflationary forceswhich would threaten its success. The objective must be growththat is steady and lasting. In this way consumer confidence willbe restored . . . . We will not accept another outburst of inflation. . . . In a period where pressures are developing for areturn to protectionism, it is essential for the main trading nationsto confirm their commitment to the principles of theO.E.C.D. pledge and to avoid resorting to measures by whichthey could try to solve their problems at the expense of others;with damaging consequences in the economic, social, andpolitical fields.The government leaders uncovered such profoundtruths as this one: "A cooperative relationship and improvedunderstanding between the developing nationsand the industrial world is fundamental to the prosperityof each. Sustained growth in our economies is necessaryto growth in developing countries. And their growth contributessignificantly to health in our own economies."Reading between the lines (and indeed, it is tedious toread the lines themselves), one sees the global exhortationthat emerged from Rambouillet: "All together, inflate!"As if politicians needed to meet at a French chateau todecide that.So each of the national economies represented tookthat exhortation to heart, and inflate they did. The summititself had proved to be remarkably good publicity forthe participants, and, with almost indecent haste, theydecided to stage a repeat performance. Seven monthslater, seven "leaders"-Canada's Trudeau having joinedthe heads of state ofJapan, West Germany, Italy, France,Great Britain, and the United States-ensconced themselvesin a Puerto Rican resort, "isolated in tropical splendor,"as the New York Times put it.Few results were expected, and the expectations wererichly fulfilled. The same generalities were both· exchangedamong the participants and trumpeted forth to aweary world. The summit solved nothing, but at least itprovided a pleasant vacation for the politicians and theirstaffs of bureaucrats. The New Yark Times of June 29,1976-the day after the conference's close-could findvery little to report on. The article was reduced to revealingthat "the British Prime Minister, James Callaghan, 'ina moment of levity', fingered Mr. Kissinger's creamcoloredultrasuede sports Jacket"; that "yesteroay tneUnited States Secretary of the Treasury, William F.Simon, wore a pink coat and green plaid jeans," and that"President Ford's Sunday dinner included roast primebeef, bibb lettuce salad and petits fours. Several membersof the American delegation were observed loungingabout, not appearing to be doing any particular preparatorywork for the first session yesterday, while theJapanese Prime Minister, TakeoMiki, it was rumored,played golf." When Secretary of State Kissinger was corneredby reporters and asked about what the summithoped to achieve, he replied that it was being held "mainlyto review the international situation with a particularemphasis on economics." It was only further down in theTimes article that the report finally revealed that "themost important specific piece of business, a high WestGerman official said, was to instruct the Italians and theBritish on the need for more fiscal, monetary and wagerestraint."Western leaders and their aides prepare to pose for theirformal group portrait at Bonn-one of the few tangibleitems produced at the meeting.William Simon wears pinkIn other words, "All together, watch inflation!" Afterthis weekend "instruction" was over, the suntannedteachers and pupils returned home to conduct business asusual.The Puerto Rico summit was a flop. It certainly didn'tincrease Gerald Ford's standing in the eyes of the Americanpeople enough to elect him president that November.One year later, therefore, the United States had a newpresident, Jimmy Carter. He too was eager to play therole of "leading world economic statesman." One of hisadministration's first acts was to arrange for the Londonsummit ofMay oflast year.Things went swimmingly at that conference for Carter'simage as a leader; but one year later, looking back,that image seems more like a mirage. The communiqueissued at the parley's end proclaimed that the creation ofjobs was "our most urgent task." Read "inflation" for"creation of jobs"· because, sadly, that's the only waygovernments seem to believe economies can grow. This istrue regardless of the familiar promise "to reduce inflation"which attended that statement. If politicians werereally serious about creating jobs, they would slash taxes 25SEPTEMBER 1978

26and abolish such strangling regulations as minimum wagelaws, which particularly hurt the young. Youth unemploymentwas given high billing in London. But to cure it,the participants agreed to "an exchange of experience andideas": "Wait for it," mocked the London Economist aweek later.Perhaps sensing that the public was losing patience afterhearing once again the same old bromides on economicmatters, the London summit turned into a forum forthe multiple discharge of the various politicians' .particularpolitical preoccupations. Resolutions were passedagreeing to eliminate "irregular practices and improperconduct"-better known as bribery and corruption-inbusiness, and Carter, at a news conference, pronouncedhimself "ah, impressed" by this act of bulldog courage.There were also pronouncements on such disparate issuesas energy (find more of it); nuclear proliferation (stop it);and human rights (protect them).The primary concrete result of the talks was that theseven nations, for the first time, stated "growth targets"which they promised to abide by. For the following year,the United States pledged an economic expansion of5.8%. The others followed suit: Japan, 6.7%; West Germany,5 % ; France, 3.25 % ; Canada, 2.75 % ; Italy,1.25 % ; and England, 1%. For the designated "boomleaders," Germany and Japan, the stated targets meantexcessive inflation.Big deal at BonnFortunately, these promises were not kept. Althoughthese targets were publicly stated, the politicians wenthome to follow whatever policies they had alreadyplanned to pursue. As a result, neither Bonn nor Tokyoinflated as the Americans wanted them to. Germany expandedby only half of the five percent she promised; forJapan the figure was barely five percent of the almostseven percent that was "planned."The whole idea of economic targets is, of course, quitefallacious. Even assuming that the various nationswanted to monitor all economic information, the economyis far too complex for governments to keep suchstatistics. Much information is never even availableopportunitycosts, for instance-and data which can bemeasured officially becomes available only long afteranything can be done to affect them.After a history of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations,the summiters, clearly humbled, met again inBonn this past July ~ Only Japan and Canada sought toecho the discredited targetry by simply reaffirming theiraims of a five percent growth in output. The Germans,however, visibly recoiled at the entire idea. Their promiseto reBate by "up to" one percent of GNP was clearly notto American liking, even though four attempts were madeby the drafters to make it look as bright as possible.Even in areas where the participants announced apolicy, the leitmotiv throughout was vagueness. Soalthough Japan agreed to import more and hold down exportsto last year's level, the wording-or lack of it-wascleverly chosen. The appreciating yen is already taking acompetitive shine offJapanese exports (down five percentin June from year-earlier figures). But the price ofJapanese goods in dollars is soaring (21 percent higher inJune). Since the dollar price of Japanese imports is risingmuch less rapidly, the new pledge still enables Japan'sdollar surplus to rise. Also left vague was the Japanesepromise to double its foreign aid outlay in three years; thecommunique didn't specify whether. aid was to be measuredin rising yen or falling dollars. If the latter,Japanese aid might actually fall.But vagueness was also the order of the day concerningthe most pressing area of the Bonn summit. The other officialshad long told Carter their wishes to see America'soil imports cut, because they believed this "paymentsdeficit" to be the chief cause of the dollar's decline. Carterdid not agree to this, persuading Chancellor Schmidt thatany action to reduce imports (by quotas or taxes) wouldhinder his energy bill now in Congress. Schmidt wasgiven to understand that Carter would act after the congressionalelections.Actually, all this skirts the real issue, and skirts it badly.First of all, if Carter wants to reduce America's"dependence" on foreign oil, he can do it in better waysthan by imposing quotas and taxes to disco.urage oil use.He could work to deregulate completely the entireAmerican oil industry, and make it profitable for companiesto find and refine as much oil as possible. But evenif this happened and we no longer needed imported oil atall, the dollar's ills would remain uncured. For the wholeidea that balance of payments "deficits" cause the troubleneeds to be attacked. Even more importantly, the wholeidea of balance of payments "deficits" needs to be attacked.If I am willing to trade my money for your magazine,no one speaks of a deficit. I value the journal more thanthe money; you value the money more than the journal.When we trade, we each get what we want. If this is truewith the trades of each and every individual, it must betrue with nations-collections of individuals. WhenAmericans buy something that is produced elsewhere ingreater abundanceand at a lower price, they are merelyre-enacting the same value preferences seen in the individualcase. If the United States must import all of itsSung dynasty porcelain vases, because we can't produceour own, no one speaks of a "porcelain vase deficit." Itwould simply be a case of our exchanging money forthose vases, which we either couldn't produce at all, orcould produce only at a very high price. The money wepay for these goods is not depreciated because we buythem. Similarly, the American oil trade does not affectthe foreign-exchange value of the dollar. The mere factthat a nation imports more than it exports does notbetoken a stagnating economy: The United States "ran atrade deficit" throughout most of the 19th century, aperiod of perhaps the greatest economic expansion in thehistory of the world. What a country needs for economicgrowth are internal conditions to attract research anddevelopment of goods and services, and investrnentforeignand domestic-in such goods and services. Thismeans a minimum of taxes and regulations. It also meansa money whose value will not depreciate. For the wildprinting of dollars is the only cause of the dollar's decline.And governments are the only culprits.Economic summits are meetings of buffoons mouthingplatitudes that are not believed and making promises thatare not kept. They are malevolent buffoons, too, continuallyraising the hope among the world's peoples thatconditions will improve. But as with so many other sortsof government promises, fewer and fewer people arebelieving them.That is as it should be. [JLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

SILVER IS INI"In our opinion, every Amer-You can purchase full bagsican family should own at ($1 ,DOD face value), halfleast one bag of $1,000bags ($500 face value), orface value U.S. silver coins,quarter bags ($250 faceminted before 1965, as value); Peace or Morganprotection against the fail-tYfJe Silver dollars in rolls ofure of our currency. Whenthe time comes that green- BUD REED OF BRAMBLE20 or lots of 100 to 1,ODD.This may be the best posbacksare useful only for starting fires, ible time for you to acquire your silversilver coins, (dimes, quarters and half hedge for the future, so order today.dollars), will buy all your groceries and Call us now on our Toll-Free Wats lineother necessities of life.for up-to-date delivered prices."BUD REEDINQUIRE TODAY ABOUT OUR MONTHLY GOLD & SILVER COIN PROGRAMWe are coin brokers and 'We have the lowpremium gold coins. The Krugerrands, Austrian andHungarian i00-Coronas, Mexican 50, 20, 10 and 2-Peso gold coins, Austrian 20-Coronas,4-Ducat and i-Ducat coins, and British Sovereigns. We guaranteequoted prices, safe delivery ­and authenticity of every coin we sell.NEW MINI-BOOK! "The Tax Rebellion" by Kelly MacNaughton. 40_ ea. plus postage.BUD REED1604 MICHIGAN NATIONAL TOWERLANSING, MICHIGAN 489331-800-248-5952 New Toll Free number.Michigan residents please call 1-517-484-3198To learn more about purchasing gold and silver, write todayfor ourfree brochure.27SEPTEMBER 1978

Big Poison,Little Poison?How much marijuana is contaminated with Paraquat? HENRYLOVIS seeks an ans\Ver.The original story broke late in July: The NationalCenter for Disease Control in Atlanta,Georgia had challenged the much-publicizedstatistics of the PharmChem Research Foundationon exactly how much Paraquat was gettinginto street marijuana in this country. Pharm­Chem claimed that more than a third of the15,000 marijuana samples tested in its NorthernCalifornialab were "positive"-that is, containedsignificant traces of the deadly herbicide.But the CDC claimed to have found Paraquat inonly one in 40 of PharmChem's positivesamples. Where was the truth? Was Uncle Sampoisoning his pot-smoking citizens in largenumbers, or wasn't he?That he was poisoning them in some numbersseemed plain enough. Since 1975, the U.S. governmenthas been providing helicopters, advisors,and millions of dollars to spray marijuanafields in Mexico with the herbicide Paraquat-achemical which, in small doses, maytake years to affect those exposed to it, butwhich may ultimately kill them or leave them tolive with irreversible lung damage. Small dosesof Paraquat are almost certainly finding theirway into the lungs of Americans who smokeMexican grass. And enormous doses of it arecoating the fields, homes, and livestock of uncountedMexican peasants and their familiesall,courtesyof Uncle S\am. The question Pharm­Chern and the CDC are trying to answer is:How small are the doses of Paraquat the U.S.government is spending so much to dispense toits citizens?For libertarians, the issue was even larger:Was a state-financed, state-operated agency likeCDC proving itself more accurate and reliablein practice than its free-market counterpart,PharmChem?Henry Louis is a writer-producer for the Public Affairs BroadcastGroup. His 30-minute documentary, "Libertarianism: AMovement of Individualists," has been heard on more than 15028 radio stations throughout the United States.The black market in pleasure drugs, after all, operatesin many ways like a free market. No government officialtells the entrepreneur in dope where or during what hourshe may conduct his business, who his customers may be,what quantities he may sell, or what prices he maycharge. No government official tells him what he may sayin his efforts to sell his product. And no government officialoffers legal recourse to his buyer if he sells it byfraud.The buyer in this black market must be wary, and everon the lookout for misrepresented goods. As in the idealfree market, he is on his own, dependent on his own expertiseas a consumer, and on the goodwill of the entrepreneurswith whom he deals. And, as everyone whohas traded in the dope market knows, such goodwill isnot at all rare. Those in the retail marijuana and cocainebusinesses have at least as much interest in developingregular, satisfied customers as do retail businessmen whodeal in tobacco and spirits. Their suppliers, in turn, wishto develop long-range business relatio!1ships with boththeir customers and their own suppliers. Long-range relationships-notthe sorts of short-range ones which lead tolarge, quick profits and even quicker, and more frequent,changes of address. PharmChem figures suggest that wellover 90 percent of the marijuana sold on the street is exactlyas represented, and that between 55 and 95 percentof the cocaine sold on the street is either exactly asrepresented or "cut" (adulterated) with the local anaesthetics(procaine, lidocaine, benozocaine) which streetbuyers commonly expect.The PharmChem Research Foundation of Menlo Park,California, performs the same· service for consumers inthe dope market which is performed for consumers in thecontrolled market by the government: the service of testingretail drugs for purity. To find out more aboutPharmChem-how it works and how well it works-wepaid a visit to its headquarters on the last day ofJuly andtalked with PharmChem's executive director, JohnKotecki.LR: What exactly is PharmChem?Kotecki: The best way to answer that is to start at thebeginning. The foundation got started in 1972, at aboutthe time that Dr"James- ()sirenga, who IS president ofthefoundation, had opened PharmChem Laboratories to donothing but urinanalysis testing-that is,. they test urine'for the presence of drugs. People were repeatedly comingto him and asking him to identify unidentified substan-LIBERTARIAN REVIEW

ernment took a very neutral or noncommital position,wouldn't go on record as to whether there was Paraquatmarijuana going around. So PharmChem got involved indocumenting that there was. We have since turned forsupportive studies to local and state agencies and thefederal government, and have largely gotten very noncommital,nonresponsive answers. We've even been unableto get the government to send us a sample of somemarijuana sprayed with Paraquat or even just some Paraquatby itself, and we really need these samples in orderto be certain about our own findings. One response wedid get was some interest by the Center for Disease Controlin trying to find out what the consequences had beenfor people who'd been smoking allegedly contaminatedmarijuana. They did a survey project here. They surveyedpeople on the phone who'd been smoking contaminatedmarijuana. They'd want to know: Did you notice a funnyodor? Did you have trouble breathing? Was there dizziz«~ces-street drugs. He was unable to do so, because his labwasn't set· up for that. His is a very specialized lab. Recognizingthat demand or need, though, he decided to goahead and start the PharmChem Research Foundation.And in 1972 we got going largely under his auspices. Thefoundation primarily tests street drugs; that is, we test analleged unidentified or an alleged street drug for actualcontent. We then let the individual know, on an anonymousbasis, what he has. On a monthly basis we reprintthe results of the previous month's testing, and make thatavailable to the public. And on a more immediate basis,we put out what is called the Street Drug News~ which isa reprint of the previous week's local analysis. That goesout to the media. Typically it's carried by a number oflocal radio stations. It's educational; it lets the publicknow what drugs are being circulated. It allows us to pickout samples which are very dangerous or harmful, andwarn people, alert them to the hazard. That basically is~zwẈ.Jthe function ofthe foundation: to let people know what'sgoing on with drugs-their content-and to let themknow what the hazards are, if any, of a given drug.LR: If someone has some marijuana which he fears iscontaminated with Paraquat and he's in Duluth, Minnesota,what should he do?Kotecki: The same thing he should do ifhe's in San Franciscoor anywhere else. He should send us a minimum ofone tablespoon of plant material along with $8 to coverthe cost of analysis and a random five-digit number toidentify his sample. We don't want his name or any otheridentification other than that number. Our service iscalled Analysis Anonymous. He should wait approximatelyten days, then call us and give us his ID number,and we'll give him the results ofthe test.LR: How many people avail themselves of your services?Kotecki: Well, prior to Paraquat, it was about 300 peoplea month, on a pretty regular basis, with an averageannual increase of about ten percent a year. Paraquat hasbeen an exceptional experience. We've analyzed some15,000 samples to date. It's just been a horrendousundertaking. We're now on the other side of that crisisand down to only about 30 or 40 samples a day comingin for Paraquat testing.LR: The National Center for Disease Control haschallenged your estimates of how much Paraquat is actuallyin street marijuana in the United States.Kotecki: Well, it's not really a challenge. What happenedwas, when this thing first happened, when we first becameaware of the Paraquat spraying program, the gov-Marijuana is tested for Paraquat contamination atPharmChem.ness or pain? That kind of thing. They also asked thepeople to resubmit their positive samples. If they'd sent usa marijuana sample that turned up contaminated, they'dsay at the end of the interview, would you send us somemore of the same batch? About SO people took them upon that and resubmitted their samples. And then theCenter for Disease Control announced that in analyzingthe first 40, they only found one positive. Our first questionis: Why didn't they find out what the problem wasbefore they announced this? Maybe people actually sentin different batches, took a different batch of marijuanaand said, well, I'll get it tested for free this time. A coupleof people have admitted that they did just that. Our-secondquestion is whether there's a problem with CDC'stesting methodology, which is, to our minds, a distinctpossibility. They have unusual ways of doing things. Forexample, we use sulphuric acid to isolate the Paraquatfrom the plant material. A standard laboratory procedure.They have a sonic device that vibrates it out. Buteven when the methodology is standard, the interpretationofthe result is subject to the human element, particularlywhen you talk about something like a court-orderedanalysis,when a lot is hinging on the result.So basically there's a discrepancy. We don't know why.We're trying to track it down. They've promised to sendus some confirmed positive material to test our procedurewith. I picked that sample up this morning.ffi..J29SEPTEMBER 1978

30PharmChem carries out its Paraquat testing and otherprocedures in unpretentious storefront office space in anindustrial park about 45 minutes south of downtown SanFrancisco. There's a small outer office, a private office forKotecki, the lab itself, and a giant warehouse room whereeach day's mail is opened and sorted into two categories:marijua'na for Paraquat testing, and everything else. Themarijuana is soaked in sulphuric acid; the liquids andpowders and pills and tabs of blotter paper are soaked inmethyl alcohol. And the resulting extracts are subjectedto a laboratory process called thin-layer chromatography.First, they're applied in small amounts to silica gelscreening plates-glass plates coated with silica gel to athickness of 250 micromillimeters (about one one-hundred-thousandthof an inch). Such plates turn white afterbeing soaked in screening solvent and heat-dried in alaboratory oven. And each of the different chemicalspsychoactiveor otherwise-that were part of the extractsoriginally applied to the plates stands out on the whitebackground as a colored spot--'-a different color or a differentposition on the. plate for each of 285 differentsubstances.Each analysis takes from four to six hours to run, andmarijuana samples alone pour into the lab at the rate ofbetween 30 and 40 submissions a day. Things are busy atPharmChem. So after observing and asking questions inthe lab for a brief while, we returned to Kotecki's officefor clarification of the exact nature of PharmChem's relationto the government.According to Kotecki, there's been no effort by theDrug Enforcement Administration to trace the drug usersand dealers who submit samples to PharmChem. Andthere have also been no public funds to aid research. AsKotecki puts it, "The government has given us no helpand no trouble."LR: So you protect your clients' anonymity with yourrandom five digit numbers, even though the D.E.A. hasmade no effort to track any ofthem down.Kotecki: We're licensed by the D.E.A. to receive samplesof illegal drugs and to perform the analysis. Having thatlicense is the extent of our relationship with the government.That's as much contact as we ever have.LR: What's the exact relationship between PharmChemResearch and PharmChem Laboratories?Kotecki: They're a commercial, money-making endeavor,and happily, they do make money. So when we producean annual deficit, as we normally do, usually JimOstrenga, who's the president of the foundation and alsothe head ofthe company, usually underwrites that deficit.LR: And his lab does urinalysis?Kotecki: Yes. For methadone maintenance programs,drug detoxification programs, therapeutic communities,drug treatment programs generally. The State of Californiaparole and probation people are a big client.LR: These are programs designed to make sure heroinusers on methadone maintenance aren't backsliding andshooting up junk?Kotecki: And also to make sure they are taking theirmethadone, and that they're not taking something else inaddition. If someone on a methadone maintenance programcomes up clean in a urinalysis, he's not taking hismethadone. He may be selling it.We shot a few more pictures and said goodbye to thefolks at PharmChem. But we were destined to reestablishcontact sooner than we'd expected. Four days later,PharmChem tested that contaminated marijuana returnedthe morning of our original interview by theCenter for Disease Control. And the test revealed thatPharmChem's testing methodology had been faulty. OnAugust 7, PharmChem temporarily suspended its Paraquattesting program, pending identification of the flawin the procedure and the culprit responsible. On August9, Kotecki told San Francisco area radio and TV stationsabout the suspension. And on the morning of August 10,he talked with LR again about the implications of thisnew wrinkle in the developing Paraquat story.John KoteckiLR: What exactly have you discovered about the Pharm­Chern testing methodology?Kotecki: That it seems to have worked on the positivesamples, but not on all of the negative ones. That is, allthe marijuana we said was clean was clean. But some ofthe marijuana we said was contaminated was clean, too.We don't know why yet.LR: Does this mean CDC's figures are correct andPharmChem's are incorrect? Was PharmChem error thecause ofthe discrepancy in the figures?Kotecki: We don't think that's the whole story. We dohave a problem at PharmChem, but that doesn't mean tous that everything is perfectly all right at CDC.So at this juncture, it reamins unclear just how much ofthe poison Uncle Sam is deliberately dumping on Mexican(and, reportedly, Venezuelan) marijuana fields isreaching the lungs of American dope smokers. Only governmentlabs and government-licensed labs may performthe needed analysis (as LR was going to press, a would-befree market rival in Louisiana was being threatened withmassive fines for attempting to do the work without sucha license), and both government and government licenseeare now looking at the reliability of their testing procedures.And while they search for methodological errors,the spraying, and the poisoning, continue. Thatprocedure is the greatest methodological error of all. .[jLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

SEPTEMBER 1978BOOKSANDTHEARTSThe epicarchipelago:Gulag illJOHN HOSPERSThe Gulag Archipelago,Volume 3,by Aleksandr 801­zhenitsyn. Harperand Row, 558 pp.,$17.WITH THE PUBlicationof VolumeIII (Books 5-7),Solzhenitsyn's2,OOO-page saga ofthe, Soviet methodsof arrest, interrogation,and punishmentis now complete."It is the epicof our times,"wrote the Parisnewspaper LeMonde after thefirst publication ofthe Gulag in Paris(in Russian). "Anepic is the creationof an entire peoplewritten by one personwho has thecreative power andthe genius to become thespokesman for his nation.And in this work, we heara people speaking throughthe impassioned, intrepid,ironic, furious , lyrical,brutal, and often tendervoice ofthe narrator."Gulag I was on the bestsellerlists in the UnitedStates for several monthsafter its publication inEnglish in 1974. It hasbeen translated and isstill being translated intomany languages. The word"Gulag," an acronym ofthe Russian words referringto the Soviet -penalsystem, has become international,known andrecognized in most of thelanguages of the West.There are also far fewerapologists for the Sovietsystem today than therewere even ten years ago;most of its former proponentshave now denouncedit or remain uncomfortablysilent. Only afew die-hards like LillianHellman, who fought Nazismbut has not recantedher Stalinism, and AngelaDavis, who, when askedabout the civil rights ofCzech dissenters after theSoviet takeover in 1968,replied, "Let them rot inprison! They deserve it!"are left to defend the Soviettyranny. That this is so isdue largely to the monumentalachievement of oneman, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.Solzhenitsyn is far frombeing the first person tocall the West's attention tothe nature of the Sovietpenal system. Even in the1930s, American engineers,lured by Soviet gold,went to Russia, saw aspectsof the system atwork, and wrote articlesabout it. Many witnessesedthe forced collectivizationof the kulaks - a villagewould be surrounded bybarbed wire and machineguns, all the grain wouldbe hauled out and none·permitted in, and everyoneinside would die of starvation.In that way Stalin gotrid of more than five millionof his alleged enemies.There were murmurs ofdissent in the United Stateswhen America joined theU.S.S.R. in the war effort,but they were swept asidein the tide of Allied victory.In 1948, Professor DavidDallin's book ForcedLabor in Soviet Russia waspublished by Yale UniversityPress - a detailed andscholarly work, with interviews,maps, and data onthe 127 known complexesof labor camps. In the faceof a 50 percent annual-mortality rate from cold,starvation, disease, andbrutality, most of the victimsnever lived to tell thetale (including those whoengineered the projects,who were shot on variouspretexts before they couldreturn to Moscow). Therewas an amnesty for Polishprisoners (in exchange forAllied favors) and hundredsof these prisonerstestified, independently ofeach other, to the unspeakablebrutality of lifewithin the camps. But aspainstaking and scholarly,even dramatic, as it was,the book caused scarcely aripple, and many in America-still agreed with HowardFast that "a truebrotherhood of man hasemerged in the SovietUnion."More and more evidenceto the contrary continuedto appear, however. Therewere numerous autobiographicalaccounts of experienceswith Sovietmethods of arrest, detention'and interrogation,some from ex-prisonersand some -from defectedSoviet officials; e.g., I Wasan NKVD Agent~ by AnatolyGranovsky; (1962);Magadan, by MichaelSolomon (1971); MyTestimony~ by AnatolyMarchenko; AlexanderDolgun's Story (An Americanin the Gulag) (1975);Isaac Levine's Eyewitnessto History (1971); Insidethe KGB~ by AlexeiMyagkov (1978), andothers. There were detailedaccounts by outsiders collectedfrom numeroussources, such as John Barron'sKGB (1974); exposesof American-British collaborationin the forciblerepatriation of Russian nationalsto certain death intheir "homeland" afterWorld War II, such asJulius Epstein's OperationKeelhaul (1973); andequally detailed accountsof anti-Soviet Russian armiestoward the end ofWorld War II, such as SvenSteenberg's Vlasov andHuxley Blythe's The EastCame West. In 1963 thereappeared an intenselydramatic volume of trueshort stories about theslave camps in the Kolymaregion of Siberia, Gamalisand Other Stories~ by aformer KGB official there,Vladimir Andreyev. And,of course, there wereSolzhenitsyn's own novels,The First Circle~ CancerWard~ and A Day in theLife ofIvan Denisovich~ ofwhich only the last-namedwas-published in the SovietUnion, during the earlydays of the "Khrushchevthaw." Of all these, onlySolzhenitsyn's novels madea dent in public opinion inthe West prior to the appearanceofthe Gulag.The most detailed andscholarly of all the workson the Soviet system is31

LIBERTARIAN REVIEWprobably The Great Terror(1965) by the British poethistorianRobert Conquest.It describes in gruesomedetail (and documentswith almost a hundredpages of footnotes)the full horror of the Soviettyranny under Stalin: theassassinations, the phonytrials and executions, theslave labor camps. It ismore than sufficiently researchedto satisfy even themost skeptical historian.Some of the incidents itrelates, such as the visit byHenry Wallace and OwenLattimore to one of theworst of these camp complexes,Kolyma, and theirpraise of these camps(which admittedly hadbeen "doctored up" fortheir·visit), are so .bizarrethat but for the elaboratedocumentation few would_have believed the accounts.(In a novel, they wouldhave been put down as"too improbable.") Togetherthese books provideadamning and decisive indictmentof the multifacetedSoviet tyranny.There is no longer anyroom for doubt. For thosewho are willing and able toread and investigate, theevidence is detailed andmassive, and there is nolonger any rational possibilityof denying it. Withinthe last month RobertConquest's new book,Kolyma (on the slavesystemin the northeasternSiberian gold mines) hasappeared to cap all theother accounts. Those whowant to see totalitarianismin a favorable light mustnow turn to China, whoserecord (64 million deathsby Mao's own admission)is apparently even worse.Only in the groves ofacademe is it still fashionableto praise the tyrannyin China and to considerSolzhenitsyn an embarrassment,or to act as if he hadnever existed.What Solzhenitsyn'sgreat non-fictional work32 adds to the accounts al-UPIready written is primarilytwofold: hundreds uponhundreds of incidents,eyewitness accounts ofbrutality and corruption,torture and killing, sufferingand heroism, which donot appear (at least notthese .. specific incidents) inother works; and the dramaticpower of a greatnovelist, who is able notonly to cite facts andstatistics, but to bringhome to the reader in themost powerful and oftenheart-rending way the fullagony and heroism of theindividual sufferers. It ishis spell-binding narrativepower that has capturedthe imagination of millionsof readers round theworld, and aroused at lastthe moral indignation ofreaders who had previouslybelieved that the Nazicamps had been the ultimatein degradation andcruelty.I reviewed the first volumeof the Gulag in theSeptember 1974 issue ofLibertarian Review. ButGulag II was never reviewedin LR., so I shallcombine some commentson this work with those onthe newly published GulagIII.While Gulag I was concernedwith the processesof arrest, interrogation,torture, and trial in the Sovietpenal system, Gulag IIand III are concernedprimarily with the "correctivelabor camps" and, forthose who survived these,the years of exile followingupon the labor sentences.Here and there through thelong narrative, Solzhenitsynintersperses his ownpersonal experiences. Forhe himself, a soldier inWorId War II, was arrestedwhen a letter of his criticizingStalin was read by Sovietofficials, and he spenteight years in various laborcamps, followed by yearsof exile in Kazakhstanwhich are described powerfullyin Gulag III.Throughout most of the

SFPTFMRER 1978Stalin period, beginningabout 1928, the populationof the slave laborcamps averaged between12 and 15 million people.In the early years, andagain during World WarII, the annual death rateaveraged almost half.Prisoners who became sickfrom malnutrition, overwork,or exposure to cold(-70°F in some cases) hadtheir rations cut - thestate had no more use forthem - and they simplydied by the thousands.One of the first largescaleSoviet projects wasthe building of the BelmoralCanal, from Leningradto the White Sea."Stalin simply needed agreat construction projectsomewhere which woulddevour many workinghands and many lives-thesurplus of people as aresult of the liquidation ofthe kulaks-with the reliabilityof a gas executionvan but more cheaply...." (Gulag It 86)The engineers said, "Wemust make the structure ofconcrete." The Sovietgovernment said: "There isnot enough time." Theengineers said: "We needlarge quantities of iron."The Soviet governmentsaid: "Replace it withwood." The engineers said:"We need tractors, cranes,machinery." The Sovietgovernment said: "Therecan be none of that ... doit all by hand." "Theengineers were put to workmaking a plan before thesurveys had been made onthe ground," Solzhenitsynwrites. "Trainloads ofprisoners arrived at thecanal site before there wereany barracks there, or supplies,or tools, or a plan; itwas already autumn.There were no draftingpapers, no rulers, nothumbtacks, no light in thework barracks." Fromcamps in central Asia, theybrought tribesmen ofminority groups (whomStalin would eliminateafter he had used up theirlabor) into the subzerocold. The normal day'stask was to break up twoand-a-halfcubic yards ofgranite and move it a hundredyards in a wheelbarrow.And the snow keptfalling and coveringeverything up:The ugly depression,powdered over with snow,was full of people and stones.They bent over, twp or threeof them together and takinghold of a boulder, tried to liftit. The boulder did not move.They called a fourth and fifth.But at this point the technologyof our glorious centurycame to their aid: theydragged the boulder out of theexcavation with a net-thenet being hauled by a cable,and the cable in turn by adrum turned by a horse. Andthey used wooden cranes forlifting stones . . . .They were hurled from the20th century into the age ofthe caveman .... And howwere trees to be felled if therewere neither saws nor axes?Ropes were tied around thetrees, and they were rockedback and forth by brigades (ofslaves) pulling in differentdirections-they rocked thetrees out. After all, the canalwas being built on the initiativeand instructions ofComrade Stalin! This waswritten in the newspapers andrepeated on the radio everyday .... No, it would be unjust,to compare this mostsavage construction project ofthe 20th century, this canalbuilt with wheelbarrow andpick, with the Egyptian pyramids;after all, the pyramidswere built with contemporarytechnology! And we used thetechnology of 40 centuriesearlier! .... Make use of thetechnology of the caveman,but bear the responsibility accordingto the rules of the20th century: if it leaksanywhere, "off with yourhead!" And thousands ofengineers were purged whowere just doing the best theycould. (II, 89)The canal was at lastcompleted. And more than100,000 prisoners perishedin the building of it. Butthis is far from the worstSolzenhenitsyn describes:"In the goldfields of northeastSiberia, they sent out500 people to drive prospectingshafts to a depth of25 to 30 feet in the permafrost.They completedthem. Half the prisonersdied before this had beendone. It was time to startblasting, but they changedtheir minds: the metal contentwas low. They abandonedit. Next May theprospecting shafts thawed,and all the work was lost.And two years later, againin March, in the Kolymafrosts, they had anotherbrainstorm: to drive prospectingshafts! in the verysame place! urgently! don'tspare lives!" (II, 585).Solzhenitsyn devotes anentire chapter to the largeexperimental camp in the1920s in the SolovetskyIslands near Murmansk;people there were used asguinea pigs to test exposureto cold and impossibleconditions oflabor, and the cells in thedisbanded monasteries inthese islands were used asdungeons and torturechambers.These experimentsset the pattern forthe hundreds of camps thatspread out like sores allover the face of Russia duringthe 1930s. The horrifyingdrama of these experimentswith humanlives, which graduallyspread out over the wholefive thousand miles east toKamchatka, is dramaticallyrecounted in Gulag IIand III. Most of thismaterial is unrelievedlydepressing, and cannot beread in long stretches, butits cumulative effect isshattering.The resultantmoralityMore gripping even thanthe description of conditionsin the labor camps isthe effect on the morality,not only of the inmates,but of the entire civilianpopulation of the U.S.S.R.With the KGB able to actwith virtually total autonomy,everyone is at themercy of this organization,whose employees receiveseveral times the wages ofthe highest paid workers inRussia; it is as if thecriminals and murderers ofa nation were to be releasedfrom the prisons andleft to do as they liked withthe nonprison population.The wicked prosper. Theone who denounces anotherfor not listening to aspeech by Stalin is the onewho wins, never the onewho is denounced (who isshot or sent to 25 years in alabor camp-a sentencewhich few survive). Absolutesecrecy even amongintimates is essential:Many men owe their livesto not telling even theirwives or mothers abouttheir ideas, since in adomestic quarrel the wifecould always report it andhave the husband sent toSiberia, while she occupieshis house. Betrayal becomes,in this horribly invertedmoral scheme, theonly way to survive.The mildest and mostwidespread form of betrayalwas not to do anything baddirectly, just not to notice thedoomed person next to one,not to help him, to turn awayone's face, to shrink back.They had arrested a neighbor,your comrade at work, oryour close friend; you sit insilence. You acted as if youhad not noticed. After all, youcould not afford to lose yourjob! And then it was announcedat work, at a generalmeeting, that the person, whohad disappeared the day before,was an inveterate enemyof the people. And you, whohad bent your back besidehim for 20 years at the samedesk, now by your noble silence,or even your condemningspeech, had to show howhostile you were to his crimes.You had to make this sacrificefor the sake of your own dearfamily, for your own dearones! what right had you notto think about THEM? Butthe person arrested had leftbehind him a wife, a mother,children, perhaps at least33

LIBERTARIAN REVIEW34these ought to be helped? No,no, that would be dangerous;after all, these were the wifeof an "enemy" and the motherof an "enemy", and the childrenof an "enemy"-andyour own children had a longeducation ahead of them!" (II,737)A mother and littlechildren were being takento the railroad station bythe police to be sent intoexile. "'All of a sudden,when they went throughthe starion, the small boy,aged 8, disappeared. Thepolicemen wore themselvesout looking for him butcouldn't find him. So theyexiled the family withoutthe boy. And what hadhappened was that hedived' under the red clothwound around the highpedestal beneath the bustof Stalin, and he sat theretill the danger passed. Andthen he returned homewherethe apartment wassealed shut. He went toneighbors, and to friendsof his parents; no one tookhim in, they refused evento l~t him spend the night!And so he turned himself inat an orphanage." (II, 678)The permanent"lie becomesthe only safe form ofexistence. Every wag of thetongue can be overheardby someone; every facialexpression observed bysomeone. "A shake of thehead instead of a nodmight cost you resettlementin the archipelago.... [And] yourchildren were growing up.If they weren't old enough,you and your wife had toavoid saying openly infront of them what youreally thought; after all,they were being brought upin the schools to . . . .betray their own parents. . . . And if the childrenwere too little, then youhad to decide what was thebest way to'bring them up:whether to start them offon lies instead of thetruth-so that it would beeasier for them to liveandthen to lie forevermorein front of them too; or totell them the truth, withthe risk that they mightsometime make a slip, thatthey might let it out, whichmeant that you had to instillinto them from thestart that the truth wasmurderous, that beyond,the threshold of the houseyou had to lie, only to lie,just like their father andmother." (II, 646)Alexandr SolzhenitsynChildren, of course, aretaken away from theirparents at any time thestate chooses, particularlyif they are accused of beingdissenters or religiousbelievers. The children arethen brought up in state orphanages;they never seetheir parents again; theyare taught the official doctrine,and are required todenounce their parents andcall them traitors.There are children in thelabor camps also; Article12 of the Criminal Codepermits children from theage of 12 to be sentenced.Forty-eight percent of theprisoners in the laborcamps were (and are, accordingto Solzhenitsyn, asof 1966) under 24 yearsold. They are often thestrongest workers, able tolast longest under impossibleconditions of cold andoverwork and exposure,and when large contingentsof labor are needed at acertain place, vast ndmbersof juveniles are arrested("Just give us the person,we'll invent the crime") andsent there. A boy of 12 wassentenced to death for gettingdrunk and taking aride around the block onan officer;s horse. A groupof juveniles was given 25­year sentences in the Gulagfor putting objects on railroadtracks. When mistakeswere made in farm orfactory from carelessness-thatis, unintentionally-theirmakers weregiven the full sentence.When a 13-year-old, havingworked on the statefarm the entire day, tooksome wheat from alongsidethe road for the use of hisown family, he was caughtand sentenced to 25 yearsfor stealing state property.Children who filled theirpockets with potatoes fromthe state farm, to keepthemselves from beinghungry, were given eightyears. (II, 450). Thechildren who ran awayfrom Factory ApprenticeshipTraining weresentenced, too: They wereassigned to dump the excrementfrom the latrines.The children were hitchedup like horses to carts containingbarrels of thissludge, and the guardsurged them on with clubs.The children of theparents who had gonebefore usually ended up inprisons or in labor campsthemselves, later on."There was an eighth gradegirl, Nina. They came toarrest her father in November1941. There was asearch. Suddenly she rememberedthat inside thestove lay a crumpled butnot yet burned humorousrhyme. She decided shemust tear it up at once. Shereached into the firebox;but the dozing policemangrabbed her. And here wasthe sacrilege she had written:The stars in heavenare shining downAnd their lightfallson the dew.

Smolensk is alreadylost and goneAnd we're going tolose Moscow too.And of course these fullgrownmen engaged in savingtheir Motherland hadto stop such dangerousthoughts." She was arrestedand sentenced toeight years-first in prison,and then in a labor camp.But she survived. Herfather was sent to a differentcamp, of course.They never sent membersof a family to the samecamp. You didn't last longin Russia in a loggingcamp; it's the same as asentence of death. Thework norms at these campswere totally impossible tofulfill, no matter howstrong you were or howhard you worked, and ifyou didn't fulfill, the wholework-brigade was punishedby receiving even lessbread and gruel than thestarvation rations they'dhad before. Sixteen hoursof work a day, plus a threemile walk to the forest andthree miles back. Of coursethe camp administrationwas merciful: The workday was shorter when thetemperature was lowerthan 60 below zero. Butthen the work had to bemade up later. Anyway,there were hundreds whosimply froze to death onsuch days; and the oneswho were left couldn'twalk any longer, and werestraining every sinew tocrawl along on all fours onthe way back to camp (toget their pitiful cupful ofgruel). These the convoysimply shot. And that iswhy the little girl's fatherdied a few months after hewas sentenced to a loggingcamp.But for those foundguilty of article 58-thatis, political crimes-nominimum age existed: InLithuania there were sixyear-oldchildren takenfrom their parents (II, 463)and sent to the labor camp.The offense? Writing apaper in school in defenseof the independence of Lithuania.And in the courseof the liquidation of thekulaks, thousands of littlechildren, after their parentswere shot or deported tothe camps, were simplythrown out to die. Andmillions upon millions ofchildren were and are orphanedby the arrest oftheir parents.Here· is [a little girl] Galya.She remembers very well hersixth birthday in 1933. Thefamily celebrated it joyfully.The next morning she wokeup. Her father and motherwere gone, strangers were inthe house. Her father hadbeen taken out and shot. Hermother had been taken to prison;there she died a monthlater. The girl was taken to anorphanage in a monasterynear Tobolsk. Conditionsthere were such that theyoung girls lived in constantfear of violence . . . . Thedirector [of the orphanage]talked to her: "You are thechildren of enemies of thepeople, and nonetheless youare being clothed and fed!". . . Galya became like a wolfcub. At the age of 11 she wasalready given her firstpolitical interrogation. Beingof independent mind, she gota ten-year sentence. She actuallymanaged to survive it.Today in her 40s, she lives alonely life in a town far up inthe Arctic, and she writes,"My life came to an end withmy father's arrest. I love himso much to this very day that Iam afraid to even think aboutit. My heart is sick with lovefor him. [The day they tookhim away] they took all ourthings out into the street andsat me there on top of them,and a heavy rain was falling. Ihave been sick at heart everyday since then. From the ageof six I have been daughter of'a traitor to the Motherland.'" (II, 464)But most of the childrenwho were sent to the laborcamps did not turn outeven so happily as this.What do you expect wouldhappen to them in the dogeat-dogconditions of thecamp, where stealing wasrequired for the barest survival?Solzhenitsyn writes:Out in freedom they hadunderstood very well that lifewas built upon injustice. Butout there some of it wasdressed up in decent clothing,and some of it was softenedby a mother's kind word. Inthe Archipelago the childrensaw the world as it is seen byanimals: only might makesright! only the beast of preyhas the right to live! ....Children accepted the Archipelagowith the divine impressionabilityof childhood. Andin a few DAYS children becamebeasts there-the worstkind of beasts, with no ethicalconcepts whatever . . . . Thechild masters the truth: ifother teeth are weaker thanyour own, then tear the piece(of bread) away from them. Itbelongs to you! ... Wellwhat could you expect? Nochild could avoid beingcooked in this mash. No childcould remain a separateindividual-he would betrampled, torn apart, if hedidn't steal and maim to survive.(And imagine your ownchild in this place!) (II, 452)The' mess hall at this campwas a plank lean-to not adequatefor the Siberian winter.The gruel and the bread rationhad to be carried about150 yards in the cold from thekitchen to the dugout. For theelderly this was a dangerousand difficult operation. Theypushed their bread ration fardown inside· their shirt andgripped their mess tin withfreezing hands. But suddenly,with diabolical speed, two orthree children would attackfrom the side. They knockedone old man to the ground,six hands frisked him over,and they made off like awhirlwind. His bread ration(10 oz. a day) had beenpilfered, his gruel spilled, hisempty mess tin lay there onthe ground, and the old manstruggled to get to his knees. . . . And the weaker the victimthe more merciless werethe children. They openly torethe bread ration from thehands of a very weak oldman. The old man wept andimplored them to give it backto him: "I'm dying of starvation,"he said. "So you're goingto die soon anywaywhat'sthe difference?" Andthe children went on, attackingthe sick: the gang (ofchildren) would hurl their victimto the ground, sit on hishands, his legs, and his head,take his food and what clothingthey wanted [until theguards, after they'd stoppedbeing amused, came at themwith clubs]. (11,458)The children's chief weaponbecame the slingshot: that is,the index and middle fingersof the hand parted in a "V"sign-like butting horns. Butthey were not for butting.They were for gouging. Theywere always aimed at theeyes. Among the children thisbecame a favorite dangerousgame: all of a sudden like asnake's head a "slingshot"arises out of nowhere in frontof an old man's eyes, and thefingers move steadily towardthe eyes. The old man recoils.He is pushed in the chest, andanother child has alreadyknelt on the ground behindhis legs; and the old man fallsbackwards, his head bangingon the ground, accompaniedby the laughter of the children."(II, 462)And there was retaliationagainst the children,too. One man Solzhenitsyndescribes worked out amethod for getting rid ofsome of them in secret:"He would creep up on achild, hurI him to theground and press down onthe boy's chest with hisknees until he could hearthe ribs crack-but hedidn't break them. Hewould let the child up atthat point. The childwouldn't survive long, andthere wasn't a physicianwho could diagnose whatwas wrong with him. Andin this way the man sentseveral children to the nextworld before they themselvesganged up on himand beat him to death."Attempts at escapeThe first hundred pagesor so of Gulag III showsigns of being written inhaste; the narrative issometimes jerky and discontinuous.(Gulag II is, byall odds, the best of thethree.) The author himselfapologizes for this in anAfterword: "Never once 35

T,THERT ARIAN REVIEWdid this whole book, in allits parts, lie on the samedesk at the same time. InSeptember 1965, whenwork on the Archipelagowas at its most intensive, Isuffered a setback: my archivewas raided and mynovel [The First Circle] impounded.At this point theparts of the Archipelagoalready written, and thematerials for the Oiherparts, were scattered, andnever reassembled." (III,526-7)But for those readerswho found I and II continuouslydepressing, IIIpresents, much ofthe time,a considerable contrast,largely because of its subjectmatter. Much of GulagIII deals with escape attempts;and even thoughalmost all attempts at escapewere unsuccessful,and the escapers knew thatthe chances of bringing itoff were thousands to one,the reader identifies withtheir heroism in the face ofgreat odds. I did not thinkthat any story of escape attemptscould possiblymatch the powerful tale ofattempted escape from theKolyma, in the openingstory of Andreyev's Gamalis;but the story of GeorgiTenno in Chapter 7 ofBook 5 (Gulag III) matchesit. All of them would makestunning movies, but it isvery unlikely that any filmswill ever be made fromthese true stories.Solzhenitsyn's tales of individualvalor are sometimesinterspersed withcomments of his own-ahabit which some readersmay find irritating. Yetthey add a kind of cosmicdimension to the narrative.In one tale of escapethrough the deserts nearthe Aral Sea, the prisonersgo more than a week withoutwater, until they findand kill a horse and drinkdirectly from its woundsatwhich point Solzhenitsynremarks, "Partisansof peace! That very36 year you were loudly insession In Vienna orStockholm, and sippingcocktails through straws.Did it occur to you thatcompatriots of the versifierTikhonov and the journalistEhrenburg weresucking the blood of deadhorses? Did they explain toyou in their speeches thatthat was the meaning ofpeace, Soviet style?" (III,195)And when he has describedthe brutal tortureof one prisoner, a pacifist,Solzhenitsyn remarks,"Had he been brought intothe world by the State?Why, then, had the Stateusurped the right to decidehow this man should live?"And then he adds, "Wedon't mind having a fellowcountryman called LeoTolstoy. It's a goodtrademark. It even makesa good postage stamp.Foreigners can be taken ontrips to Yasilaya Polyana.We are always ready todrool over his oppositionto Tsarism and his excommunication(the announcer'svoice will trembleat this point). But, mydear countrymen, if someonetakes Tolstoy seriously,if a real live Tolstoyansprings up among us-lookout! Don't fall under ourcaterpillar tracks!" (III,110)Very little has been writtenabout exiled populations.Banishment underthe Soviets was not as inCzarist days, to Irkutsk,with all one's wealth intact.'''These peasants . . .were banished . . . not to acenter of population, aplace made habitable, butto the haunt of wild beasts,into the wilderness . . . .Even in their primeval stateour forbears at least choseplaces near water for theirsettlements . . . but forspecial settlements [theSoviet authorities] choseplaces on stony hillsides-l00meters upabove the river Pinega,where it was impossible todig down to water, andnothing would grow in the marily for the West, butsoil. Three or four kilo- _for readers inside themeters off there might be Soviet Union; it is his ownconvenient water mea- countrymen that he wantsdows-but no, according to awaken to an awarenessto instructions no one was of these evils and a publicsupposed to settle there renunciation of them. But" the Gulag has never beenSeventy thousand people permitted publication inwere driven through the Soviet Union; until itT omsk and "from there is, Solzhenitsyn considerswere driven farther, at first his main purpose in writingon foot, down the Tom al- it to remain unachieved.though it was winter, then Yet the publication ofalong the Ob, then up- Gulag in the West hasstream along the Vasy- changed history. Johnugan-still over the ice. Lukacs, in his book 1945:The inhabitants of villages Year Zero, writes (quotedon the route were ordered by George Will in News­Ollt afterward to pick up week, June 12, 1978, p.the bodies .... In the up- 112):per reaches of the Vasy- Something happened in 1945,ugan and the Tara they in a most unlikely place: inwere marooned on patches the pine forests of East Prusoffirm ground in the sia ... under the cap of amarshes. No food or tools Soviet captain, into the graywere left for them. The fur of which the metallic redroads were impassable, star was deeply impressed. Acold, crystalline thoughtand there was no way which eventually led this manthrough to the world out- far, far enough to reject theside, except for two entire mental system of thebrushwood paths, one to- world in which he was bornward Tobolsk and one and in which he lived, to thetoward the Ob. Machine- point where the very rulers ofgunners manned barriers that enormous empire beganon both paths and let no to worry about him and toone through from the fear him, while to many mildeathcamp .... Desper- came that new thing, a Lightlions of other people he be­ate people came out to the from the East. Truly a singlebarriers begging to be let event in a single mind maythrough, and were shot on change the world. It may eventhe spot .... They died bring about-and not merelyoff-everyone of them." hasten-the collapse of the(III, 363)Communist system which isAlmost half the popula- inevitable, though only in thetions of Latvia, Lithuania, long run. If so, the most imandEsthonia were exiled portant event in 1945 may nothave been the division ofin this way (III, 390-5), Europe, and not the dawn ofand the only reason they the atomic age, but the suddid·notall die within the den opening and the suddenyear was that parcels of dawning of something in thefood and supplies were mind of a ragged Soviet ofpermittedfrom their native ficer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.lands. The exiled popula- The greatest significancetions from other areas, of this work of Solzhenitwithno one left back home syn is that it presents to theto send them anything, world, more vividly andfared differently-they more ruthlessly than anywere totally destroyed. work ever written, the finalconsequences of collectivismThe final impact in practice. The ex-cuse given for the camps,and for the entire SovietIt is quite clear through- penal system, is containedout this immense work that in the manual of instrucitwas intended not pri- tions to trainees in the

SEPTEMBER 1978Sept. 1878LAISSEZ FAI RE BOOKSBOOKS REVIEWED IN THIS ISSUETHE GULAG ARCmPELAGO THREE by SolzhenitsynPSYCHOBABBLE by R. D. RosenTHE GOLDEN CONSTANT by Roy JastramMETROPOLITAN LIFE by Fran LebowitzON MORAL FICTION by John GardinerTHE WORLD WITmN THE WORD by William GassAmerica's Leading Libertarian Bookseller$16.95$ 8.95$17.95$ 8.50S 8.95$10.00RECENT ADDITIONSTHE ULTIMATE FOUNDATION OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE byLudwig von Mises. An exposition of the methodological principles ofAustrian economics offering detailed criticisms of positivism andmacroeconomic concepts. Also analyzes many of the popular economicfallacies that are based on positivist and macroeconomic ideas. (1962,138p) $4.95/$15.00THE MACmNERY OF FREEDOM by David Friedman. A defense ofprivate property institutions (the machinery of freedom) showing howprivate property and the free market are far more practical and desirablethan coercive governmental institutions. Covers numerous contemporaryeconomic and social problems, shows how a future libertarian societymight work, and suggests how it could be achieved. (1973, hd, 236p)$10.00BEST SELLERSPOLITICAL pmLOSOPHYTHE INFLATION CRISIS, AND HOW TO RESOLVE IT by HenryHazlitt. A clear and up to date analysis of the causes, consequences andcures of' inflation. HazIitt details the pernicious nature of inflation andshows that "there is no safe hedge against inflation except to stop it." Heupholds the gold standard as opposed to Friedmanite "monetary rules"or Hayekian paper money. (hd, 19Op) $8.95THE CLASH OF GROUP INTERESTS & OTHER ESSAYS by Ludwigvon Mises. (bklt, 28p) $1.50WELFARE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WELFARE REFORMIN THE UNITED STATES by Martin Anderson. A detailed and exhaustivecritique of contemporary welfare programs and the built in institutionalbarriers that perpetuate the current mess. (hd, 238p) $10.00WHY THE FUTILE CRUSADE? by Leonard P. Liggio. Incisive critiqueof the militarism and imperialism inherent in the anti-communist crusadeas seen by its leading opponents, especially Senator Robert A. Taft .and hissupporters. (bklt, 51p) $1.50GOOD GOVERNMENT: Hope or muslon? by Robert LeFevre. Reprint ofa lecture delivered at Santa Ana College in May 1977. (bklt, 32p) $1.95FORTHCOMING IN NOVEMBERFOR A NEW LIBERTY by Murray Rothbard. Revised and expandedpaperback edition. $4.95Greaves, MISES MADE EASIER, 58 Martin, SAGA OF HOG ISLAND. Other Ella,., 53.95Hayek, DENATIONALISATION OF MONEY, $6.25 Oglesby, THE YANKEE. COWBOY WAR, 51.95Hayek, INDIVIDUALISM. ECONOMIC ORDER, 52.50 Radosh, PROPHETS ON THE RIGHT, 55.95Hayek, NEW STUDIES Ia PhDo., PoUt., Eeoa. Me., 515 Radosh & Rothbard, A NEW HISTORY OF LEVIATHAN, 53.45Hayek, THE ROAD TO SERFDOM,53.95/58.00 Rothbard, CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY, Vol. I (1600·1700), 515;Bastiat. THE LAW, 51 Hayek, STUDIES IN POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY • ECON., 512 Vol. 2 (1700·1760), 512.95; Vol. 3 (1760·1775), 512.95Campus Stds Inst, THE INCREDIBLE BREAD MACHINE, 51.95Fricdman, THE MACHINERY OF FREEDOM, 510 Hazlitt, ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON, 51.50 OBJECTIVISMHazlitt, THE INFLATION CRISIS • How To ReeoI.elt, 58.95Hayek, THE CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY, 55.95/512.50 Katz, THE PAPER ARISTOCRACY, 54.95/57.95 Childs, OPEN LETTER TO AYN RAND, 5.40Hayek, THE INTELLECfUALS. S()CJALISM, 51 Mises, THE ANTI.CAPITALISTIC MENTALITY, 54 Rand, ATLAS SHRUGGED, 52.95/515.00Hayek, LAW, LEGISLATION. LIBERTY, Vol. I, 54.45 Mises, A CRITIQUE OFINTERVENTIONISM, 58.95 Rand, CAPITALISM, THE UNKNOWN IDEAL, 51.50Hayek, LAW,LEGISLATION. LIBERTY, Vol. 2,510 Mises, HUMAN AcnON,520 Rand, FOR THE NEW INTELLECl'UAL, 51.75/510.95Hess, THE DEATH OF POLITICS, 5.50 Mises, NOTES. RECOLLEcnONS, 59.95 Rand. THE FOUNTAINHEAD, 52.50/513.95Hospers, LIBERTARIANISM, 510 Mises, ON THE MANIPULATION OF MONEY. CREDIT,514 Rand, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS, 51.50Lane, GIVE ME LIBERTY, 52 FRE 54 0 0LeFevre, THE PHILOSOPHY OF OWNERSHIP, 52.50 Mises, PLANNING FOR EDOM, PSYCH L GY. RAMERICA 595 Mises, SOCIALISM,515MacBnde, A NEW DAWN FO , . M' THEORY OF MONEY. CREDIT $6 Branden, THE DISOWNED SELF, 51.95Machan, HUMAN RIGHTS. HUMAN LIBERTIES, 511.95 M: ses , THE ULTIMATE FOUNDATION OF ECONOMIC Branden, DISCUSSION OF BIOCENTRIC THERAPY, 51.25Machan (cd), THE LIBERTARIAN ALTERNATIVE, 58.95/513.95 ~CE 54 95/515 Branden, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF.ESTEEM, 51.95Mill, ON LIBERTY, 52.25 Mises, Marslt, MY YEARS WITH LUDWIG VON MISES, 59.95 Browne, HOW I FOUND FREEDOM IN UNFREE WORLD, 52.25Morley (cd), ESSAYS ON INDIVIDUALITY, 58 Moss (cd), THE ECONOMICS OF VON MISES, 53.95/512 Ringer, LOOKING OUT FOR'I,52.50Nock, OUR ENEMY THE STATE,54.95 North & Miller, ABORTION,BASEBALL. WEED,51.75 Schoeck, ENVY,53.95Nozick, ANARCHY, STATE. UTOPIA,55.95/512.95 Rothbard, AMERICA'S GREAT DEPRESSION, 54.95/512 Szasz, THE MANUFACI'URE OF MADNESS, 53.95Oppenheimer, THE STATE. 53.95 Rothbard THE ESSENTIAL VON MISES 51 Szasz, THE MYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS, 52.95Paine, THE ESSENTIAL THOMAS PAINE, 51.50 Rothbari MAN ECONOMY. STATE 5io/5JO Szasz, THE MYTH OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, 58.95Rothbard, FOR A NEW LIBERTY, 54.9S (due in Nov.) Rothbard' THE CASE FOR A I~ GOLD DOLLAR 52 Szasz, THE THEOLOGY OF MEDICINE, 53.9SSchiff, THE BIGGEST CON, 55.95 Rothbard: POWER. MARKET,54.95/515.00 ' OTHERSimon, A TIME FOR TRUTH, 512.50 Rothbard, WHAT BAS GOVT. DONE TO OUR MONEY', 52Spencer, THE RIGHT TO IGNORE THE STATE, 5.50 Smith, THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS, 52.95/59.95Spooner, NO TREASON,'I1Ie CoaIdt1Idaa ofNo AathorIty, $1Spooner, VICES ARE NOT CRIMES, 52.95Smith, WEALTH OF NATIONS (complete), $6.9STucker, STATE SOCIAUSM I:: ANARCHISM, 51ECONOMICSmSTORYAdler, ECOLOGICAL FANTASIES, 52.95"Diogenes," THE APRIL GAME, 51.50Heinlein, THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, 51.95Mencken, MENCKEN CHRESlOMATHY, 515Mencken, PREJUDICES, 52.95Ashton, THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. 52 Mencken, THE VINTAGE MENCKEN, 52.45Armentano, THE MYTHS OF ANTITRUST, 511.95 Bailyn, THE IDEOL. ORIGINS OF THE AMER. REVOL., 53.50 Mitchell, U.S. ENERGY POUCY. A PRIMER, 53Block, DEFENDING THE UNDEFENDABLE, 59.95 Flynn,AS WE GO MARCHING, 53.45 Poole, CUT LOCAL TAXES, 52Blumenfeld (cd), PROPERTY IN A HUMANE ECONOMY,54.95 Hayek (cd), CAPITALISM. THE HISTORIANS, 52.95 Rickenbacker (00), THE TWELVE YEAR SENTENCE, 52.75Chamberlain, THE ROOTS OF CAPITALISM, 53.00/59.00 Kolko, RAILROADS. REGULATION, 54.25 Rothbard, EDUCATION, FREE. COMPUlSORY, 51Dolan, TANSTAAFL, 54.95 Kolko. TRIUMPHOFCONSERVATIVISM,55.95 Russell, THEGREATEXPLOSION,51.95Dolan (cd) THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN AUSTRIAN liggio, WHY THE FUTILE CRUSADE', 51.50 Sagan, DRAGONS OF EDEN, 52.25ECONOMICS, 54.95/512.00 Martin, MEN AGAINST THE STATE, $2.50 Shea & Wilson, ILLUMINATUSI, 3 .011., 51.50 each-S4.50Fricdman, CAPITALISM. FREEDOM, 53.45/59.00 Martin, REVISIONIST VIEWPOINTS, 52.50 Tuccille, IT USUALLY BEGINS WITH AYN RAND, 52.95~--------------------------- -------_ ............. ----'~----~" FREE.C.ATALOG. . 0r:tDER FORM ITEMPRICEOur catalog, containing over 700 titles on hbertanan-I. ~ ~m, f~ma~~e.conom~s, m~~on~th~~~, phi~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~osophy, psychology, education, and other topics, isIavailable free on request.I. BOO·KS CREDIT CERTIFICATESCredit certificates, which may be applied toward future purchases, are given on allorders over $25.00. If your order totals $25 to $39.99, you'll get a credit certificateI for $1.00; $40 to $69.99, a certificate for $2.50, $70 to $99.99, a certificate for$5.00; and on orders of $100 or more, a credit certificate for 10% of your purchase.ISATISFACTION GUARANTEEDIf for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your pur~hase, just returnI the books and we'll promptly refund your money.I Name , .IStreet................................................................... POSTAGE - Add $1.00 for postage and handling on all orders $1.00 IClty'State Zip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . N.Y. State residents please add appropriate salestax.,~e~.ro~.2!'~~~A2~~~~!..o.2.~.2.e.e!-l.R.:!:1~~~~!:.~~~k~:!;22~2~ ...__.....r~~'~~~'.:.:.~J37

LIBERTARIAN REVIEW38KGB: "You must think ofhumanity-past, present,and future-as one greatbody that requires surgery.You cannot perform surgerywithout severingmembranes, destroyingtissue, spilling blood.Similarly, in intelligencewe sometimes destroy individualswho are expendabletissues in the body ofhumanity. Occasionally wemust perform unpleasantacts, even kidnapping andliquidation. But none ofthis is immoral. All actsthat further socialism aremoral acts." (]ohn Barron,KGB~ p. 366)The definitive commenton this was made by AynRand, in her essay on theconsequences of the ideathat "each of us is a part,who lives only to serve thewhole"-if not in the present,then for the sake ofsome glorious future ("CollectivizedEthics," The Virtueof Selfishness~ p. 84):"The waiting has no end.The unborn profiteers ofthat wholesale sacrificialslaughter will never beborn. The sacrificialanimals will merely breednew hordes of sacrificialanimals-while the unfocusedeyes of a collectivizedbrain will stare on,undeterred, and speak ofhis vision of service tomankind, mixing interchangeablythe corpses ofthe present with the ghostsof the future, but seeing nomen."The long dark night ofthe Russian people has notyet ended. Khrushchev'sexpos~s of the Stalinistatrocities resulted in adiminution of the numberof people "chewed up"(Solzhenitsyn's term) bythe "Soviet justice system."But to this day the torturechambers and the campscontinue, easier than beforeon the thieves andmurderers sent there butharder on the Section 58s(political prisoners)-Solzhenitsyndescribes it in hispenultimate chapter, "Rul-ers Change, the ArchipelagoRemains." Even nowmore revelations appear:Early in 1978, convergingevidence from varioussources came to light concerningWrangel Island,100 miles north of Siberiain the Arctic Ocean. There,a complex of three exterminationcamps has beenoperating for years, withhuman experiments oncold survival, pain tolerance,and disease inoculation.The horror continues.Now in exile in theUnited States, Solzhenitsyntoo would have beenchewed up by the systembut for his fame in the outsideworld; a manpossessed, he continues towrite, hoping to live untilthe day he may return to.~saner Russia. Until thehorror is over and theguilty exposed, he willhave no rest. Nor, for thatmatter, should we. DJohn Hospers is professor ofphilosophy at the Universityof Southern California, and afrequent contributor to LR.Marvelous charts,monstrous theoriesCHRISTOPHERWEBERThe Golden Constant, byRoy Jastram. John Wileyand Sons~ 229 pp; $9.95IN THE GOLDEN CONStant~Dr. Roy ]astram ofUC Berkeley has given usone of the most unusualbooks to emerge recentlyfrom the economics establishment.In effect, if not inintention, ]astram's workmakes a terrific, sweepingstatistical case for the goldstandard.The Golden Constant issubtitled "The English andAmericanExperience, 1560-1976." "Experience" heremeans price experience.What ] astram has done isto painstakingly gather andcompile a history of bothEnglish gold prices andEnglish commodity pricesover the past four centuries.He does the samewith American prices from1800 onward. His is an original,long-term wholesaleprice index, made possibleby England's unique positionamong nations: Forcenturies England has hadthe same territory, hasbeen free from invasion,and has kept the pound asher national money. Theinstitutions whose centuries-oldaccount books]astram works with are oftenof a respectable characterindeed: WestminsterAbbey, Eton College, andChelsea Hospital all had tobuy wheat, bricks, cheeseand cloth. And as for theprice of gold, the Englishmint has continuous recordsdating back to 1343.For the past two centuries,with only short breaks,] astram uses the LondonMarket price-which is,of course, the most accurateprice of all. Puttingthe two series together,]astram then derives an indexof gold's purchasingpower over the centuries.He does the same for theAmerican price experience,certainly an easier job witha young country. But theBritish results, with theirlonger sweep, are moreuseful. He uses 1930 as thebase year, which equals100. (1930 was the lastyear in which the Keynesiandoctrine of inflationismwas still not official Britishpolicy.)The salient fact that e­merges from the charts isthis: Prices doubled between1585 and 1718. Thenthey remained roughly stablefor the next two hundredyears, until 1930.Since that time, prices haverocketed to the stars, soaringan incredible 1,434 percent!The American recordhas been similar, only lessdrastic. Our wholesalecommodity index was, bythis reckoning, 100 in1804; it was 100 in 1930.As recently as 1940, it was90.8. Then, a five-foldclimb begins: 185.7 in1948; 247.5 in 1970; and410 in 1976, the year thecalculations end. This is analmost 500 per cent jump.One question leaps outat us after observing thiscenturies-long record. Wemust ask ourselves whytwo centuries, from 1718to 1914, had price stability,with no inflation, anexperience so unlike thefew decades since then. (Ihave not included the years1914-1930 in the "stable"period, for there was mas- ,sive government interventionin prices during WorldWar I and its aftermath.)Why this stability? Itwas because the gold standardtriumphed duringboth these centuries, theeighteenth and the nineteenth.It conspicuouslydid not in the centuriesbefore and since. By "goldstandard" I mean the ideathat paper currency onlyrepresents a specific quantityof gold, that it has novalue of its own, and, further,that this gold valuecannot be changed by thewhims of either kings orgovernment central banks.Gold and silver had circulatedas money for centuriesbefore 1718. Butduring earlier times, bullioncoins were regarded ascreatures of kings. Thegold guinea, for example,was arbitrarily fixed at 20shillings, but the marketplacevalued it more highly.Kings kept shifting the"official" value up anddown. They also clippedand shaved down the goldcontent of the coins for extraincome, thus debasingthe money. In short, theypaid no respect to theweights of gold which thecoins were supposed torepresent. Until the eighteenthcentury, almost

everyone believed thatcoinage was a prerogativeof the king, who could dowith it as he pleased.John Locke changed allthat. We know him todayas a great libertarian politicalphilosopher, but hewas very interested in questionsof monetary economicsas well. Widely respectedfor his brilliance, he wascalled in by the Lord Keeper(the treasurer) duringthe 1690s, when debasementwas wreaking havocwith the English monetarysystem. Once again, therewas talk of devaluation; ofreducing the bullion contentof the pound. Againstthis popular sentiment,Locke wrote the essay,"Further ConsiderationsConcerning Raising theValue of Money." Whilewriting this, he was in frequentassociation with SirIssac Newton, who wasMaster of the Mint at thattime. We know that thegreat mathematician a­greed with the great philosopher;however, onlyLocke's views have comedown to us. Locke railedagainst the further debasementin the name of justice:The lessening of thecoin's bullion contentwould "without any reason,deprive great numbersof blameless men of a fifthof their estates beyond therelief of chancery."Locke then put forwardthe simple and radical viewthat the only true poundwas a fixed and immutableweight of bullion, and thatnone could change thisvalue, not even the kinghimself. This view prevailedover those of thebankers, goldsmiths, andbusinessmen. Thus, onDecember 12, 1717, Masterof the Mint Issac Newtonplaced the pound, ineffect if not by outrightproclamation, on a goldstandard of 3 pounds, 17shillings, and 10.5 penceper standard ounce ofgold.The doctrines of reasonand liberty had translatedthemselves into a hardmoney policy which intime brought stability tothe world. Another type ofthinking would prevail twocenturies later and moneywould once more be subjectto changeable whim.We are now feeling the effectsof this shift backwardto pre-Enlightenmentthought.It is in jastram's discussionof the rise ofthe soundmoney philosophy in England,as well as in his statisticaldata, that thestrength of The GoldenConstant lies. Unfortunately,Jastram does notfavor the gold standard.He foresees "a furthermoving of gold out of themonetary systems of theworld." And while he acknowledgesthat goldworked undeniably wellfor centuries, times havechanged, he says, and nationswon't return to goldjust because of the"nostalgia, romanticism,and wishful thinking" ofsome. Why does Jastrammisinterpret his own informativedata and implicitlyaccept the notion thatgold is finished and inflationwill be with us forever?He even makes the extraordinarystatement that"gold is a poor hedgeagainst major inflation,"and statistically "proves"that gold's purchasingpower lags behind commodityprice rises duringinflations, although itcatches up in times ofdeflation. Here, of course,he is proceeding from theconventional and mistakenpremise that economictheories (his own or anyoneelse's) can be "tested"or "proved" by statistics orhistorical fact. All sorts offactors contribute to themaking of an historicalfact. One must be aware ofmany causal factors inorder to understand whyprices did what they didduring a certain timeperiod. For example, jastrampoints to the historicalfact that from 1933 to1976, British commodityprices rose more than 1400per cent, and yet gold lost25 per cent of its purchasingpower during this time.Strangely, he doesn't mentionhere that gold from1933 to 1971 was subjectto a stringent governmentprice control: There wasan official governmentprice of $35 an ouncethroughout this 40-yearperiod. Just in the past fewyears, since the market hasbegun to reassert itself, thisprice control has beenRoy Jastramsmashed and gold's pricehas soared. And because ofthat large rise (which somehold has not yet ended),while the purchasing powerof British currency hasfallen by more than 1400per cent, gold's has fallenby only 25 per cent. If thisstatistical survey had beenmade 10 years ago, whengold was still controlled at$35, bullion would haveshown the same 1400 percent fall. Only now, withthe barriers down, is thisartificial gap being erased.Still more strangely,when Jastram does mentiongovernment attemptsto control gold's price, herefers to them astonishingly,as "heroic measures" tokeep gold "stable." And allthe while, the governmentsin question were inflatingwildly. Further in this vein,he lauds the formation ofthe London Gold Pool,which, beginning in 1961,sought to seal off officialgold whenever the marketprice began to act up. ProgoldFrance was the first towithdraw from the Pool, in1967, and Jastram calls theantimarket efforts of theremaining nations "valiant."Those efforts collapseda year later-unfortunatelyso, to Jastram'sway of thinking. In thedecade since then, gold'sprice has quintupled. Butthis book was written inmid-1977, and gold at thattime, after having explodedfrom $35 to almost$200 an ounce, had fallenback to $120 briefly, thenhad stayed at around $140for a long while. This wasan expected price correction,and considering theheights to which it hadrisen, not a very severeone. Jastram, however,proclaims that "since 1975the price of gold has fallendrastically." He impliesthat gold is back to her"pattern" of falling duringinflation. Nonsense. Thiswas a natural and temporaryphenomenon. At thiswriting, gold prices haveset new records, more than$200 an ounce.Finally, Jastram overlooksa starkly simple fact.In all his talk about goldbeing a bad inflationhedge, he forgets the greatlessons of his own charts:When paper money isbacked by gold, no oneneeds an inflation hedge.There is no inflation.Fortunately, however,the essence of jastram'sbook is not his economicor political analysis. It israther those wonderfulcharts of his, which deserveto be pored over byeveryone concerned withinflation. DChristopher Weber writes frequentlyon economic and financialmatters for LR and anumber ofother publications.39SEPTEMBER 1978

40The therapyis themessageSHARONPRESLEYPsychobabble: Fast Talkand Quick Cure in the Eraof Feeling, by R.D. Rosen.Atheneum~ 233 pp.~$8.95.ARE YOU TIRED OF"getting your act together"?Do you recoilfrom "getting in touch withyourself"? Do you have afervent desire to stuff largeobjects down the throats ofthose who admonish youto "do your own thing"?Perhaps you're just "bummedout" and need more"space" to be in. Or maybeyou're just part of a growingtrickle bucking theswelling flood of psychobabbleprecipitated by thepsychological self-liberationmovement.As anyone who has beenawake the last few yearsmust surely be aware,psychological self-liberation,or the Human PotentialMovement as it issometimes called, is veryin. Self-liberation is commerciallyhotter than DavyCrockett, the Beatles, andColonel Sanders put together.How ta Be YaurOwn Best Friend~ LookingOut for #1~ How to BeAwake and Alive~ It's Meand I'm Here - the listrolls on and on. As TomWolfe has so wryly observed,this is "the MeDecade."Libertarians-as part ofthe well-educated middleclass which forms the bulkof the devotees of theHuman Potential Moveent-havenot been immuneto the siren calleither:• A libertarian candidatefor mayor in a major cityspouts est jargon instead oflibertarian rhetoric; he isbut one of a growing numberof libertarians whohave "gotten It" throughest.• A libertarian financial advisordrops out to studymeditation.• A stalwart of a local LibertarianParty practices astrologyas an aid to selfliberation.The backlash was inevitable:Tom Wolfe's TheMe Decade and the ThirdGreat Awakening; TheNew Narcissism by PeterMarin; The Serial~ awicked satire on life in thatfountainhead of psychobabble,Marin County;and, inevitably, a TV specialon disillusionmentwith the Human PotentialMovement, filmed inwhereelse?-Marin County.Joining the ranks of theskeptics is R.D. Rosen,who, with perceptive eyeand witty tongue, deftlydissects some of the excessesof the psychologicalself-liberation movementin his latest book Psychobabble:"Please! one wantsto cry-no more books byunhappy housewives crying,'I've just got to be me!'No more female ad agencyexecutives telling me howthey make men want to getinto their pants at singlesbars! No more divorcedmen screaming for justice!No more daydreams ofGreat Danes with searchingtongues! Enough!"Psychobabble-Rosen'sterm for the substitution offacile psychological jargonfor meaningful and preciselanguage to describe one'sinner mental states-is, hecontends, rampant in theself-liberation movement.It has even insinuated itselfinto the contemporaryAmerican consciousness,and at a high price. "Theprevalence of psychobabble,"says Rosen, "signifiesmore than a mere 'loss forwords.' One never losesjust words ... and sopsychobabble represents aloss of understanding andthe freedom that accompaniesund~rstanding aswell."Language, as Rosen seesit, is the best access wehave to the meanings ofour feelings. But "languagefrozen in the Lucite ofready-made concepts" concealsthese feelings ratherthan allowing their expression.As an alternative topsychobabble, Rosen callsfor a "language that hasbetter access to the paradoxesof emotional life andtherefore a language that ismore revealing, more powerful,more therapeutic."Rosen guides the readerthrough the dense jungle ofpsychobabble currentlyblossoming forth from sixpopular therapies-DavidViscott, est, co-counseling,computer therapy(!), Rebirthing,and Primaltherapy. Examining thejargon and methods usedin these therapies, and theexperiences of the peopleinvolved in them, Rosen effectivelyshows the simplemindednessand antirationalityof their approaches.Looking for aR.D.Rosenquick cure, a single cause,they eschew the patientanalysis and hard worknecessary for a realunderstanding of personalproblems, and settle insteadfor the Alka-Seltzerapproach. Plop-plop-fizzfizz,oh, what a relief it is,and all in one easy swallow.Dunk yourself in a tub ofwarm, salty water and "reexperience"your birth.Presto-panacea. Getdown to the "primal" levelof your being and screamyour guts out. Bingo-instantcure. But, as Rosenpoints out, any real anddurable self-improvement"must engage the rational,conceptualizing faculties torecall and reintegrate. . . memories and feelingsfrom all periods of one'slife." To take the emotionalexperience peddledby Rebirthing or Primaltherapy as the whole process,rather than simplypart of a carefully developed,multilayered investigationof one's psyche is, inRosen's opinion, "to believethat to make an omelette,one need only crackeggs."Then there is est with itsgoal of "getting It" (whatever"It" is) . "You can't putit together ... It's alreadytogether," says Werner Erhard,founder of est."Thinking won't get youthere ...." Est is, accordingto Rosen, not just"your standard nickle-dimepsychobabble" but a "ClassicComics" version ofsome of the great psychologicaland philosophicaltraditions, the "clearchicken broth" oftherapies.David Viscott, on theother hand, might be calledthe McDonald's of psychotherapy.Churning out notonly book after book butalso greeting card aftergreeting card, Viscott, accordingto Rosen, remindspeople of the same obviouspoints over and over andover again. "This is aLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

emarkable thing aboutAmerican self-help booksin general," says Rosen."Each seems to be the sameroll of Life Savers, onlywith the colors arranged ina different order."But it is not just simplemindednessthat makespsychobabble so dangerous.Running throughoutthe therapies Rosen discussesare two commonthreads: authoritarianismand abdication of personalresponsibility. They "allhelp make human growthinto something of a game.Doing so may increase atherapy's effectiveness inthe short run, but the dangeris that in playing by someoneelse's rules . . . oneforfeits the chance to gainany independence-includingindependence fromtherapy-in the longrun .... At work is avery subtle totalitarianismwhose therapeutic benefitsare received at the cost ofrelinquishing one's abilityto develop more independentjudgments about oneself.""Primal therapy," for example,"claims to be antiauthoritarianbut by beinganti-intellectual aboutpsychology, it is tyrannicalon an emotional level."Scorning rational analysis,Primal therapy makes"having a primal" the allconsuminggoal, the onlyway to get to the root ofone's problems.Co-counseling claims toadvocate taking responsibility;but, in the wordsof one disillusioned woman,it "bestows on you ahalo of goodness, so nothing'syour fault ... Cocounselingis heavily intonot criticizing-it normallyassumes a problem is notyour fault, but the result ofsomeone else's distress pattern."Rosen intentionally doesnot offer a radical new proposal,but he does suggestthat therapeutic methodsshould entail an emphasison rationality, psychologicalresponsibility and aprecise use of language.Unfortunately, this sensibleproposal is marred bytheimplication that psychoanalysis,updated andrevamped through ideaslike those expressed in RoySchafer's A New Languagefor Psychoanalysis (whichRosen discll'sses at length)can provide an alternative.While Schafer's methods,as outlined by Rosen, arethoughtful, and would certainlyimprove psychoanalysis,that alone is notenough. The basic assumptionsof psychoanalysis arewhat need to be questioned-somethingRosendoesn't do. Effective examinationof one's psychedoesn't require the oftendestructive intellectualbaggage of Freudianism,no matter how updated.But Rosen's affinity forpsychoanalysis is a minorflaw. In providing a highlyreadable warning againstthe misuse of psychologicallanguage, he has doneskeptics and believers alikea great service. Skeptics, ofcourse, will find Psychobabbledelightful reading.But even those who don'tagree with all his criticismcan profit from the book'smost important lessonnotthat one should avoidparticular therapies like estor Primal but that oneshould always be critical,even skeptical, in judgingthem. Even Rosen admitsthat some people find thesetherapies useful. But notherapy, whether dubiousor reasonable, should be asubstitute for patient, carefulself-examination. Notas much fun as screamingor being screamed at, nodoubt, but considerablymore effective in the longrun. [JSharon Presley holds an M.A.in psychology and is currentlycompleting work on herPh.D. in social psychology atthe City University of NewYork.Oflife andliterature andlibertyG.E.B. CHARINGOn Moral Fiction, by JohnGardner. Basic Books, 214pp., $8.95.The World Within theWord, by William H.Casso Alfred A. Knopf,341 pp., $10.IN JOHN GARDNER'Sview, "We are living, forall practical purposes, inan age of mediocre art."And nowhere is this moreevident, Gardner feels,than in the field of fiction:When one talks with editorsof serious fiction, they allsound the same: they speak oftheir pleasure and satisfactionin their work, but more oftenthan not the editor cannotthink, under the moment'spressure, of a single contemporarywriter he really enjoysreading. Some deny, even publicly,that any first-rate Americannovelists now exist. Theordinary reader has been sayingthat for years. Critics maystill be enthusiastic-discoveringnew writers or discoveringnew depths in ourestablished writers-but criticsaren't exactly disinterested.Never judge the age of ahorse by the smile of thefarmer.But how then shall wejudge the horse's age, thefiction's value? "The firstbusinessofcriticism,"Gardnerwrites, "should be tojudge works of literature(or painting or even music)on grounds of the production'smoral worth." Awork of art is good, saysGardner, "only when it hasa clear positive moral effeet,presenting valid modelsfor imitation, eternalverities worth keeping inmind, and a benevolentvision.""Whereverpossible;'saysGardner, "moral art holdsup models of decent behavior;for example, charactersin fiction, drama,and film whose basic goodnessand struggle againstconfusion, error, and evil-in themselves and inothers-give firm intellectualand emotional supportto our own struggle. A brilliantlyimagined novelabout a rapist or murderer... has obvious valueand may even be beautifulin its execution, but it isonly in a marginal senseart." "Life's imitation of artis direct," adds Gardner,"and not necessarily intelligent.After Marlon Brandoappeared in On theWaterfront, an entiregeneration took to slumping,mumbling, turning upits collar, and hanging itscigarette casually off thelip. After the appearance ofRoy Rogers, hordes oftwelve-year-olds took tosquinting."But is it really necessaryto point out that this isprecisely the view of artheld by the advocates ofbowdlerization and cen-Put your current cash ingold.You know the destructive natureof inflation - and how difficultit is to protect your currentcash from inflation. Goldcoins and gold bullion are unpracticalfor current cashneeds: the former has a buysellspread ranging up to 10%while the latter involves quantitiestoo inconvenient.However, our gold accountsmake it far more practical tokeep your current (or otherwise)cash in gold units. Forexample, 20 grams of gold accountwould cost $123.92 (at arecent, June 23, exchange rate)or would cost $123. 15 if sold.Our exchange rate, of course,changes from day to day; butour buy-sell spread is maintainedconstant -for any quantity.What's more, our currentg-'lld accounts can provide privacy,earn interestandmay beused as an ordinary checkingaccount. Forinformation, sendfour US first-class stamps to:Anthony Hargis & Co.Suite 105W1525 Mesa Verde Drive EastCosta Mesa, CA 9262641SEPTEMBER 1978

42sorship? For if life does imitateart, they argue, mustn'twe see to it that no artdepicting rape or murderor drug use or crimes a­gainst nature is displayedor published, lest we findmore rapists, murderers,drug addicts, and criminalsagainst nature among us?Gardner does not arguein this way, to be sure, butit is nevertheless useful tonote the fundamental similarityof his argument tothat of the.puritan, becausethe answer to both is thesame: Life does imitate art,but not in so crude and unimaginativea way.Oscar Wilde, who firstannounced that life imitatesart, understood thisissue perfectly. "Where, ifnot from the Impressionists,"he demands in his essay"The Decay of Lying"(1891),do we get those wonderfulbrown fogs that come creepingdown our streets, blurringthe gas lamps and changingthe houses into monstrousshadows? To whom, if not to'them and their master, do weowe the lovely silver miststhat brood over our river, andturn to faint forms of fadinggrace curved bridge and swayingbarge? ... For what isNature? Nature is no greatmother who has borne us. Sheis our creation. It is in ourbrain that she quickens to life... What we see and howwe see it depends on the Artsthat have influenced us.Herbert Read made thesame point more than fiftyyears later, when he spokeof the arts as offering"aesthetic education - theeducation of those sensesupon which consciousness,and ultimately the intelligenceand judgment of thehuman individual, arebased." So did Ayn Randless than a decade ago,when she spoke of art astelling man "in effect,which aspects of his experienceare to be regarded asessential, significant, important.In this sense artteaches man how to use hisconsciousness. It condi-tions or stylizes man's consciousnessby conveying tohim a certain way of lookingat existence."And each writer, ofcourse, tells a differentstory about which aspectsof experience are to be regardedas essential, significant,important. Eachwriter embodies in hiswork a different way oflooking at existence. Andreading a great many novelsand stories by a greatmany diverse writers istherefore rather like gazingout at the world throughdiverse pairs of eyes, filteredby diverse experiencesand prejudices. It islike learning first hand, indetail, and hundreds oftimes over, what it is reallylike to be somebody else.Ultimately, it is this process(whether applied tofiction, film, theater, oreven television) by whicheach of us gropes her wayto his own unique "way oflooking at existence."This is how life imitatesart. We watch Roy Rogerson TV and learn from it,not that we should squintor chase "outlaws" onhorseback, but that tosome eyes life is an ongoingbattle between good andevil. We read a novel likeJames M. Cain's recentlyreissued The PostmanAlways Rings Twice andlearn from it, not that weshould murder for profit,but that to some eyes life isa meaningless series ofgrimly ironic chance encounters.We read a novellike Samuel R. Delany'sDhalgren (1975) and learnfrom it, not that rape isadmirable and worthy ofworship, but that to someeyes life is a waking dreamin which violence, sex, andritual are inextricably intertwined.The puritanshave never been able toproduce a single sex criminalwho committed hiscrime in exact mimicry of a"Pornographic" novel, andJohn Gardner would besimilarly unable, I suspect,to produce a single humanbeing of any kind who hadbeen led to become a moralhuman being by imitating acharacter in a novel. We goto art, not for particularmodels of behavior, but forgeneral modes of awareness.Samuel R. Delany's nameis nowhere to be found inthis book which pompouslyand faruously declaresthat no first-rate Americannovelists now exist. Neitherdoes it contain a singlereference to Gene Wolfe,whose most recent novels,The Fifth Head of Cerberus(1972) and Peace(1975), are fit to stand besideanything in Americanliterature. Nor does it containa single reference toWilfrid Sheed or to UrsulaK. LeGuin or to Eve Babitzor to Joanna Russ or toJoan Samson or to PhillipK. Dick or to WilliamKotzwinkle or to KenKesey or to the late EdgarPangborn. And the referencesto J.D. Salinger, toDonald Barthelme, and toWilliam H. Gass are not,as one might reasonablyexpect, laudatory. Salinger'sis, Gardner suspects,"an inflated reputation."Barthelme, "even athis best, as in The DeadFather . .. goes not forthe profound but for theclever." Gass is "stubbornlyunreadable," a writerwho, "after working for awhile within fiction's oldconventions, has brokenthe rules, quit the gamelike a sorehead, when he'sthe only pitcher we've got."But wait a minute. Let'srun that last objection byone more time: after workingfor a while within fiction'sold conventions, hehas broken the rules. Andsuddenly what began as anindictment of "immoral"fiction has become a slapon the wrist for fiction thatdoes not follow "the rules."Or has any transformationactually taken place?Aren't the two positionsthe same at bottom?Consider,. since Gardnerraises it, the case of WilliamH. Gass. His onlynovel, Omensetter's Luck(1966), is one of the finestthings in the language - asare his only story collection,In the Heart of theHeart of the Country(1968), and his two previousvolumes of essays, Fictionand the Figures ofLife(1969) and On Being Blue(1976). Omensetter's Luckescapes being the greatestAmerican novel .of the1960s only by the coincidenceof Nabokov's PaleFire also being publishedduring that incredible decade.At 54, in midcareer,Gass is in a position rathersimilar to that of JamesBranch Cabell during the1920s. He already is probablyas famous as he is evergoing to be, and as widelyand intelligently read. Butthe recognition has cometoo late. The years ofrejection,neglect, and incomprehensionhave left himbitter, rancorous, cynical.Now, he is painfully a­ware, his books are mostadmired among those graduatestudents in English heonce dismissed as wouldbephilosophers wholacked the. intellectual rigorfor true philosophy.Himself a protessor ofphilosophy, he is littleenough read or understoodamong his colleagues. Forthe philosophers, he's toomuch the poet; for thepoets, too much, too relentlessly,rigorously, uncomfortably,the philosopher.Yet, like Cabell's 50years ago, his books arefaithfully reviewed, reprinted,even done obeisanceto. "The thinness ofhis argument notwithstanding,"his reviewerschant, "what language!What sentences! To readthem is to walk at leisuredown an elegantly, elaboratelylaid out pathway,while all around one, fromevery direction, metaphorsare bursting into life likefireworks which fall toLIBERTARIAN REVIEW

earth as living flowers-apathway through a gardenso fecund that to tarry is totakerootoneselfandleave!"They're right about thelanguage, of course, butnot about the "thinness ofthe argument." It's not thinat all, but fleshy, redolentand resonant as the proseit's swathed in. Once upona time, it used to go by thename of "art for art'ssake," perhaps a misleadingname for the doctrinethat art, for both creatorand contemplator is properlyan end in itself, not ameans to some other end,such as truth, morality, orpatriotism.Curiously enough, underthe name "art for art'ssake," this doctrine hasfound spokesmen amongthe same writers who wereinvoked earlier to refuteJohn Gardner's view ofhow life imitates art. "Ofwisdom," wrote Walter Paterin his conclusion to TheRenaissance (1873), "thepoetic passion, the desireof beauty, the love of artfor its own sake, has most.For art comes to you proposingfrankly to givenothing but the highestquality to your moments asthey pass, and simply forthose moments' sake." Pater'schief disciple, OscarWilde,-whoin 1890calledThe Renaissance "the holywrit of beauty" - declaredfurther, in his 1891 prefaceto The Picture of DorianGray, that "no artist hasethical sympathies" and"no artist desires to proveanything," and went on tosay in his courtroom testimonyin 1895 that "nowork of art ever puts forwardviews; views belongto people who are not artists."For Ayn Rand, writingin 1965, "one of the distinguishingcharacteristics ofa work of art (including literature)is that it serves nopractical, material end, butis an end in itself; it servesno purpose other than contemplation."And for Wil-Ham Gass in 1978, "the responsibilityof any science,any pure pursuit, is ultimatelyto itself, and on thispoint physics, philosophy,and poetry unite with Satanin their determinationnot to serve."There'a a touch, not onlyof aestheticism, but alsoof libertarianism in theway Gass puts that; andthis is no accident. Likemost creative artists, Gasshas a strong streak of antiauthoritarianindividualismrunning through histhinking. And it crops upeven in apolitical bookslike The World Within theWord. His suspiciousnessabout the authoritarianismof psychoanalysis, for example,leads him to write(in "The Anatomy ofMind," his masterly andencyclopedic essay onFreud) thatthe therapeutic success ofpsychoanalysis has been dubious;its empirical base remainsweak; its testability isnearly nil; its openness toquantification, despite Freud'searly predilections, is preciselythat of the latched lid. Inaddition, it has remained suspiciouslytied to its founders,and has shattered like a dumsybeaker into faddy camps ofevery conceivable Californucopialkind, rival schoolswhose appearance could havebeen anticipated if Freudianismhad been perceived as aphilosophical or religious undertakinginstead of a scientificone.Politics he lumps with"witchcraft, astrology anddiets" as an illusory andpernicious means of a­chieving order.And in this latter view,Gass has much literarycompany, especially-andby no mere coincidence-­among art-for-art's-sakersand those who believe artpresents, not particularmodels of behaviour, butparticular ways of apprehendingthe world. OscarWilde and Herbert Readwere anarchists. AynRand, though she rejectsthe label, is a limitedgovernment libertarian.That's how the sides lineup. John Gardner and thepuritans on one side, sayingthat art is the maidservantof morality, that itmust set a good example,that it must follow certainrules. "Art is in one sensefascistic," says Gardner inso many words. "It claims,on good authority, thatsome things are healthy forindividuals and society andsome things are not."On the other side, in anemphatically nonunanimousand not infrequentlyuneasy alliance, are Pater,Wilde, Read, Rand, andGass, saying that art is noone's maidservant; it urgesno ideas, sets no examples,but simply is; it needfollow only one rule-to betrue to the unique visionwhich created it. True artis libertarian. It thrives, asdoes society, on diversity.As Herbert Read pointedout four decades ago, "theproblem of good and badart, of a right and wrongsystem of education, of a .just and unjust social structure,is in the end one andthe same problem." Andthe solution is liberty, not a"morality" characterizedby rules and fascism. ToJohn Gardner's assertionthat "moral art and moralcriticism are necessary and,in a democracy, essential,"there is but one reply - thereply directed by H. L.Mencken against the literaryestablishment of hisday in the opening lines ofhis 1927 essay on JamesBranch Cabell:What ails American literature,fundamentally, is whatails the whole of Americanculture, politely so-called: adelusion of moral duty. Itcomes down to us, I daresay,from the Puritans who huntedclams and salvation along themiserable New England coast;it remains the chief pox of thisgreat and puissant land to thepresent day. DG.E.B. Charing is the authorof"Unfinished Essays."Shecovers thewaterfrontJUSTIN RAIMONDOMetropolitan Life, by FranLebowitz. E.P. Dutton,177pp., $8.50.THE METEORIC SUCcessof Fran Lebowitz is awonderful thing to behold.God knows we have allwatched the rise of leisuresuits, est, and Peoplemagazine in recent yearswith Spenglerian despair.In the face of all this, anysign of life, metropolitanor otherwise, is a welcomerespite.For years, Fran's column"I Cover the Waterfront"was the only conceivableexcuse for purchasing acopy of Andy Warhol's Interview(a tabloid concernedchiefly with thedeterminedly languid activitiesof the leisure class).With Algeresque tenacity,little Fran-who had alwaysstood out from therest of the glitterati likereal cashmere in a roomfulof Dacron-was soon turningout "The Lebowitz Report"for Mademoiselleevery month.The essays in thisbook-taken largely fromher Intervietv colurnns-­are more than merely funny(after all, even Idi Aminis funny, provided youaren't one of his subjects).No, it isn't enough to bemerely funny anymore. Ina world positively awashwith persons who have justdiscovered the word "relationship"and those whoinsist on the word "chairperson,"one has to bemerciless, brutal, evervigilant,without becomingpedantic, longwinded, orotherwise unamusing. Andwhatever MetropolitanLife is, it isn't longwinded.In fact, it's so slender as toappear neurasthenic. That,alas, is the price one43SEPTEMBER 1978

46times to modern America.Send $7.95 to TraumwaldPress, 3550 Lake Shore Drive,Suite 10, Chicago 60657, foryour copy. It's a real turn-onfor libertarians.CROSSWORD BONANZA!Exceptional collection of 60original crossword puzzlesspotlighting music. $3.50.Onesime Piette, 320 GreenwoodPlace, Syracuse, NY13210.PERIODICALSPHILOLOGOS-Privatenewsletter of libertariancommentar.y and satiricalspeculation. Sample $ .50,12 issues $5.00. OEHILR2,Box 2586, Tallahassee, FL32304.THE VINEYARD: Weeklypublication of the AmericanOrthodox, a true ChristianLibertarian viewpoint. $1.00for a sample copy. $10.00 forthe year. P.O. Box 618, LakeWorth, Florida 33460.MOVEMENT OF THELIBERTARIAN LEFT. Formost radical activists. Introductorypamphlet andsample newsletter, STRAT­EGY, for $1. Order fromNew Libertarian Enterprises,Box 1748, Long Beach, CA90801.LIVE AND LET LIVE is ourreligious doctrine and thename of our newsletter. Freesample issues available. WriteChurch of Eternal Life &Liberty, Box 622, Southfield,MI48037.ROCKY MOUNTAINEMPLOYMENT NEWS­LETTER!! Colorado, Idaho,Montana, Wyoming! Free details.... Intermountain-4D,3506 Birch, Cheyenne, Wyoming82001.BOOK SERVICESLIBERTARIAN, REVISION­IST, FREETHOUGHT, andRadical books. Over 400used, scarce, and new titles.Send $1.00 for catalogue(credited to first purchase).UNPOPULAR BOOKS, P.O.Box 85277, Los Angeles, CA90072.PSYCHIC CAN ADVISE onbusiness, love and personaldirection. J AMIL, Box10154, Eugene, OR 97440.Phone (503) 342-2210,484-2441. Donations appreciated.There is anotherLIBERTARIAN BOOK­STORE with more titles thanthe one you order from now.FREE CATALOG from LIB­ERTY, 184 N. SunnyvaleAve., Sunnyvale, CA 94086.LITERARY SERVICES$20,000 YEARLY POS­SIBLE-writing short, simplearticles. Free booklet,"Writing For Money," Albin's,5625 LR NorthamptonBlvd., Omaha, Nebraska68104.OVER-LOOKED MARKETfor 300-700 word articlesabout people-places-things.Sell same article for $25-50many times. Top writershows "Tricks-Of-Trade."How easy it is! Free booklet,"Writing For Money." Smith,1141-L Elm, Placerville, CA95667.LEARN TV SCRIPTWRITING. Free details,Astrocal, Dept. 9, 7471Melrose, Hollywood, CAPERSONALSWRITING A BOOK ONMARIJUANA; I would like tocorrespond with people whocan offer anecdotes, opinions,ideas. Use a pseudonym if youwish. For more informationwrite: Wm. Novak, 98 ProfessorsRow, Medford, Ma.02155.EDUCATIONADULT DEGREE PRO­GRAM for self-motivatedadults. Two-week residencein Vermont alternates with 6­month home study projectsunder faculty supervisionleading to fully accreditedB.A. Also unusual Residential,Graduate and TeacherCertification programs available.Approved for paymentof Veterans benefits. Write:Box 37, A.D.P., GoddardCollege, Plainfield, Vermont05667. Goddard College admitsstudents of any race,color, nationality, sex or ethnicorigin.90046. TEACHERS _ HEAD-WRITERS: "Problem" MASTERS - LIBRARIANS -Manuscript? Try Author Aid ADMINISTRATORS:Associates, Dept. LR, 340 Monthly publication listingEast 52nd Street, N.Y.C. school and college openings in10022. U.S. $5.95; Abroad $5.95.Publication listing leadingWANTED: Unpublished school and college placementBook Manuscripts. Alsosources in U.S.$3.95;Promotion for PrivateIy Foreign $4.95. Check intoPrinted Books. Send for our "Instant Alert Job Serdetails.Literati Press, Dept. vice." EISR, Box 662, New­LR, P.O. Box 153, Freeport,NY 11520.ton, Massachusetts 02162.LIBRARY RESEARCH,HOME STUDY COURSE INECONOMICS. A 10-lessonWriting, Editing. Scholarly study that will throw light onwork in all subjects. We offer today's baffling problems.the highest quality at the Tuition free: small charge forlowest rates. Research Group, materials. Write to HenryBox 3, North White Plains, George Institute, 55 W. 42ndNY 10603. St., New York, NY 10036.BOOKS PRINTED, Compu- ; EDUCATORS-If you havegraphic typesetting. Biogra- some practical, real worldphy Press, Route 1-745, approaches on how toAransas Pass, TX78336. privatize schools in areceptive community, let usknow. Write soon to SchoolProject, 805a West Figueroa,Santa Barbara, CA 93101.ALTERNATIVE DOC­TORAL PROGRAM withminimum residency. Write:Southeastern Universtiy,5163 DeGaulle Drive, NewOrleans, LA. 70114.FREE MARKETPROTECT YOUR AL­BUMS. White cardboardreplacement jackets 35c. Grayplastic lined inner sleeves 15c.Postage $1.25. Record boxesand 78 sleeves available.CABCO LM, Box 8212,Columbus, OH 43201.ELECTRONIC JEWELRY:Send $1.00 for catalog toLightning Bug, Dept. LRE,5640 W. 38th, #11, Indianapolis,IND 46254.BELT BUCKLES, key rings,necklaces, belts. Over 300designs available. Send $1.00for catalog to Lightning Bug,Dept. LRB, 5640 W. 38th,#11, Indianapolis, IND46254.MILLIONS WON IN FED­ERAL OIL. Drawings supervisedby U.S. Government.Free Brochure: Research, Box27571, Phoenix, AZ85061.STAR WARS necklaces:DARTH VADER, R2D2,C3PO. Send $5.00 for eachnecklace wanted to LightningBug, Dept. LRS, 5640 W.38th, #11, Indianapolis, IND46254.FREE CALCULATOR! Withour catalog. We offer a widerange of Jewelry, Watches,and fine gifts at below retailprices. Send only $1.00 tocover postage. Your freecalculator will be included!D.M.M., 158 Wompatuck,Hingham, MA 02043.THOMAS PAINE WALLPLAQUE. Strikingly decorativeand meaningful. Informationwrite exclusive distributor:Independent Publications,Box 162, Patterson,N.J. 07513.REWARD YOUR FAVOR­ITE RACONTEUR! Handsome,suitable-for-framingbe-ribboned certificate(9"x12") announcing electionto Story-Tellers' Hall ofFame. Personalized-pleaseprint candidate's name(election guaranteed);includes space for yoursignature as "Chairperson,Nominating Committee,"$4.95, postpaid. Alreadyframed (unglazed), $6.95.WRY Idea, Unltd., Box22408, San Diego, CA92122.LIBERTARIAN REVIEW

PSORIASIS successfullytreated without medication.For complete instructionssend $7.50 moneyorder toSugar Hill Health resort, PortCarling, Ontario, Canada,POBIJO.FLATULENT? (Frequently?)Fear not! Read BenjaminFranklin's long-suppressedessay of 1780 on (believe it ornot) farting. Hilarious!Frameable. $3. "Essay," Box69-B, Carrboro, NC 27510.WONDERFULOFFER-may I have the following:A Woman's DreamLiterature, 40c.NUBAGS, P.O. Box 696,Morton Grove, Ill. 60053.FOODS MEN hurry homefor. Series No.2. $1.00. P.O.Box 696, Morton Grove, Ill.60053.FREE: Wholesale coinscatalog. Guaranteed. LindseyWholesale, B-13041 , Tucson,AZ 85732.RUBBER STAMPS. 3-lines,$1.50 ($.25 additional line);Signature, $4.50; Bank Deposit,$1.50; c.w.o., FMS,Box 2319-L, Lancaster, CA93534.FLAT EARTH SOCIETY OFAMERICA: Help abolish thecontrary, revolutionary, anddangerous notion that Earthis a sphere. Flat EarthersStraighten things Out. Yearsmembership, card and FESANewsletter (twice yearly)-$3.00.FESA, 27 YorkshireT ~rrace #9, Shrewsbury,Mass. 01545.ANTI-INFLATION bumperstrip kit. "Inflation isgovernment fraud" bumperstrips, balloons, pseudodollars,letter stickers andother goodies $2.00 postpaid.Order from COMFORT,P.O. Box 1442, Mission,Kansas 66222.NowAvaIlable:John Randolph of RoanokeBy Russell KirkA masterful study of one of America's best, but leastknown,political thinkers. Included in this third editionare appendices containing several of Randolph's mostimportant speeches and a representative selection ofhis letters. Dr. Kirk is author of The ConservativeMind and other books. "Never has an historian ofpolitics done a better job of this kind"--Samuel FlaggBemis in The Yale Review. "Kirk's scholarship isadmirable"-New York Herald Tribune. "An ablechampionship of conservative philosophy"- AmericanHistorical Review. IIWill move its reader pleasantlythrough a chapter of American history that toocommonly is told only from the dominant, theJeffersonian, side of the record"- St. Louis Post­Dispatch. Hardcover $9.00,Paperback $3.50.AratorBy John TaylorThe most popular and influential work by John Taylorof Caroline, foremost philosopher of the conservativeJeffersonians. This edition includes sixty-four essays,practical and political, on farming and the soci8i\order of an agricultural republic. Edited and wit} \an introduction by M. E. Bradford. Hardcover $~,Joo,Softcover $3.00.We pay postage on prepaid orders.To order these books, or for a copyof our catalog, write:LibertyPress/LibertyClassics7440 North Shadeland, Dept. F13Indianapolis, Indiana 46250RELIGION: Any life afterdeath is better thannothing-even this one, forexplanation send $1 toHEREBEFORES, Box 2138,Youngstown, OH 44504.BUMPER STICKERPRINTING DEVICE. Cheap,Simple, Portahie. FreeDetails. Bumper, POB 22791(AZ), Tampa, FL 33622.47SEPTEMBER 1978

1,',jp row: Ed Crane, Robert Nozick, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Murray Rothbard, Walter Grinder, John Hospers; Bottom row: Thomas Szasz,Friedrich A. Hayek, Roger MacBride, Roy A. Childs, Jr., Ralph Raico, Bill Evers.tere's one team that won't let you down. Every"lth the Libertarian Review teampfovides informedreaders around the world with hard-Hitting exposes ofgovernment malfeasance, with in-depJh analyses of currentissues and events, and with! revealing, no-holdsbarredinterviews with the men and women who aremaking the fight for liberty count. Ther.e is only onemagazine that keeps you up to date on the battle between:government power cfnp individual liberty. Thereis ,only one magazine up froilt and actively engaged inthat struggle-LR.'LR provides its readers with reports on the libertarianmovement in the United States and'around the world, amovement of which LR is a vitafpart, serving as aforum for such leading proponents. of freedom asThomas Szasz, Murray N. Rothbard': John Hospers,RoyA. Childs, Jr., Roger MacBride" ,Ralph Raico,Williamson Evers, Leonard~ Liggio, W~lter Grinder,D.T.,Armentano, and David Brudnoy to' name only afew. LR's readers are exposed to the best'k books andthe arts through stimulating reviews by leadingautporities-reviews which inform and challenge themirid.AlI this and more-only in LR.That's why John Hospers calls Libertarian Review"an invaluable as~et to the libertarian movement." Andthat's why Roger\;MacBride calls us "cover-to-coverreading-a ml1st fqr everybody who cares ." And whyMurray N. Roth~kard,says that "no one interested inliberty can affordto bewit~outthismagazine." Find out ­why for yourself--'J9i9the LR team!LIBERTARIAN ~:;oF~::(~~~=~7 ::i..r----~-····-··--------·-,Revie\\"o Yes, I want to join the LR team, foro 1 year (15) 0 2 years ($25) 0 3 years ($35) ID Payment enclosedIo Charge my D VISA D Mastercharge account. INumber Expiration date IInterbc:lnk No. (Mastercharge)_o I'dUke to see a sample copy ofLR before subscribing. NameIAdd~ssI SigJlatureL! · I~III