The Libertarian Review December 1977 - Libertarianism.org

teen were reserved for minoritiesalone. This means that if two peoplewere equally qualified, race would bethe deciding factor for sixteen admissions;if a "non-minority" studentwere more qualified by conventionalcriteria than a "minority" student, theminority student would be selected,again, with the distinguishing characteristicand deciding factor being thatof race, and race alone.Rather than being a tool to fight theconsequences of racism, affirmativeaction institutionalizes racism, andproclaims that its consequences are tobe continued indefinitely. It is theresult of a stubborn, blind determinationto treat blacks as a separate classof citizens, come what may. It willmake race a permanent feature of discussionand concern in American publiclife.Nothing could be more unjust-toblacks, as well as whites. The State declaresto whites that their success mayhave to be sacrificed, in order to helpblacks. It declares to blacks that theycannot make it on their own, as individuals,but must be treated differentlyfrom all other groups in society.Others can be treated as individuals;blacks must continue to be treated asblacks.Such an attitude, we are told, isnecessary to erase racism in this country.Just who do these liberals thinkthey are kidding? Certainly not the majorityof the American people.But why should the government beallowed to set and enforce explicit criteriafor success in America? Whyshould it, through legislative proclamation,administrative edict, or courtdecree, be allowed to decide who willsucceed, and who will fail? Whyshould we place such a key aspect ofsociety as this in the hands of the Stateapparatus, with its bureaucratic thuggishness,and its tendency to bend withevery political wind? Can we long expectthe white majority in this countryto see itself as being discriminatedagainst, and not to react against suchpolicies?Really, is this what "black pride"has amounted to? Is it this to which thecivil rights movement has led? Is it thisthat has come out of the struggleagainst racism in this country? Are weto sacrifice liberty to equality, equalLibertarian Reviewrights to special privilege?What we must strive for in this societyis a situation where blacks aretreated as individuals to be separatelyevaluated on the basis of their personalqualities, on the basis of theirseparate attribu,tes, competences,abilities, and character. We must stoptreating them as tools in some socialengineering experiment, some egali-. tarian plan gone mad.Liberals may think that they cancontrol "who gets ahead," but do theythink that they can control private attitudeswhich will result, too? Can theycontrol what is said behind people'sbacks? Reverse discrimination masqueradesas a benevolent helpinghand, but it sets the stage for a demagoguewho could make George Wallacelook like a boyscout.This is no laughing matter, and it ishigh time that liberals abandoned theircozy classrooms and thier cocktail partiesto acquire some contact with therest of social reality. Liberals are todayso out of touch with that reality, socaught up in their models of planningand social engineering, that they do notrealize how the average citizen feels.about reverse discrimination and thelike. How average American respondto public polls is one thing; their privatefeelings are often altogetherdifferent. Instead of feeling part of agrand experiment to rid the nation of"our terrible inheritance of racism,"they may well feel that they are beingdiscriminated against because they arewhite, and that someone else was hiredor promoted above them not because ofcompetence or merit, but because hewas black.Once that suspicion sinks into theAnlerican psyche-and it is beginningto-all the progress that blacks havemade over the past decade and a halfwill be threatened. The American peoplehave felt guilty about discriminationagainst blacks-and many of themought to, for that discrimination is notorious-butnow they are beginning tofeel resentment. For a while they sawblack progress as earned, althougheven that was often a grudging admissionon their part. Now they arebeginning to see it as a consequence ofspecial privilege-moreover, a specialprivilege which makes whites its victims.They may even see progresswhich really is earned as instead beinga result of "reverse discrimination,"which would rob upwardly mobileblacks of social recognition for theirachievements. That is only the mostcruel result of reverse discrimination.Like it or not, these are facts, socialfacts, if you will. They must be takeninto ~ccount by any social policy.Liberal must face them, or run the riskof gravely injuring the very peoplethey wish to help. They must at longlast go beneath the surface.To obliterate the legacy of racism,we must all adopt a fierce determinationto judge blacks as individuals, andnot first and foremost as blacksblackswho have to be avoided andsuppressed, or blacks who have to becoddled and helped with "specialprograms." Jesse Jackson seems to benearly alone among black leaders inrealizing that blacks not only mustmake it on their own, but that they cando so. It is no help to anyone's sel£esteemto establish the legal principlethat they are to be treated as socialcripples.There are those who will respondthat what we advocate is too slow tomake up for past injustices. Then by allmeans: let us have those private programswhich will make up for such injustices.We do not seek to delay redressfor past injustices: we seek toprohibit further injustice. But the progresswhich will result from Libertarianprograms, slow or fast, will haveat least one advantage over the programsadvocated by the Liberals: it willbe permanent and secure progress, notsubject to the whim of an electoratewhich can and may, at any moment,see itself as a victim, and decide that ithas had enough.For hundreds of years, human beingshave been struggling against theSociety of Status, where a person'sgroup membership is all-important tohis success or failure. Only in the pastfew decades have blacks begun to reapthe benefits of the opposite: the Societyof Contract, with its inherent individualism.Let us not slip back into theracism from which we have only nowbegun to escape. Any "progress" madethrough the collectivism of the Societyof Status would be only illusory. In the.long run, blacks will be its victims, asthey always have.5

By WalterE. Grinder• The YOUNG LIBERTARIAN AL­LIANCE is the youth arm of the LibertarianParty. The Party has recentlypublished a tabloid newspaper,Outlook, for the Y.L.A. to be used fordistribution mainly on college and universitycampuses. Bob Meier and TomPalmer have done an excellent job ofputting together a first-rate distributionpiece. Outlook includes introductoryarticles stating the libertarianposition on a variety of issues including:Drugs, Conscription, Energy,Foreign Policy, the Environment,Women's Liberation, Austrian Economicsand the L.P. Convention in SanFrancisco, last July. Messers Meier andPalmer have done a great job on thispaper, but it must now be circulated oncampuses as broadly as possible if it isto have the effect that is warranted. Tosee how you can help, write to: LibertarianParty,1516 P Street N.W.,Washington, D.C. 20005.• AUSTRIAN ECONOMICSNEWSLETTER The most exciting andimportant trend in the discipline ofeconomics over the past five or sixyears has been the resurgence of interestin Austrian Economics. There is. an intimate relation between the policyimplications stemming from Austriantheory and the policy prescriptions inherentin the libertarian ethic-laissezfaire, laissez passer. The rapid growthof Austrianism and libertarianism isnot likely to have been coincidental. Ithink that libertarianism should thereforekeep abreast of these developmentsin Austrian economics. Now,fortunately, they can, with relativeease. The Austrian Economics Newsletter(200 Park Avenue South, Suite911, New Yurk, NY 10003, Annual subscriptionrate $6 for three issues) is anindependent project, sponsored by theCenter for Libertarian Studies. Theeditor is Gary Short, doctoral candidatein economics at the University ofVirginia, and the managing editor isJohn Kunze, graduate student in economicsat New York University. This isa publication devoted to facilitating theflow of information among the widespreadand growing network of Austrianeconomists. Messers Short andKunze are to be congratulated for theirwork in bringing to the Movement thisvery welcome addition to the Iiterature..• MORE ON AUSTRIANECONOMICS. One of the key indicatorsof growing interest and work inAustrian economics is the publicationof the series, STUDIES IN ECONOMICTHEORY published by Sheed, Andrewsand McMeel. This series is animportant combination of additions tothe literature and reprints of key titleswhich have unfortunately been eitherout-of-print or otherwise inaccessible.The new works are: (l)The Economicsof Ludwig von Mises: Toward a CriticalReappraisal edited by Laurence S.Moss ($12.00 hardcover, $3.95 paperback);(2) The Foundations of ModernAustrian Economics edited by EdwinG. Dolan (This is a particularly useful'introduction to Austrian theory,)($12.00 hardcover, $4.95 paperback);(3) Capital, Interest and Rent: Essay inthe Theory of Distribution edited byM.N. Rothbard ($12.00 hardcover, $4.95paperback). These three are now followedwith the two most recent additions:(4) Economics as a CoordinationProblem: The Contributions ofFriedrich A. Hayek by Gerald P.. O'Driscoll ($12.00 hardcover, $4.95paperback); and (5) Capital, Expectalionsand the Market Process: Essayson the Theory of the Market Economyby Ludwig M. Lachmann, edited byWalter E. Grinder. The two importantreprints of the series are Israel M.Kirzner's The Economic Point of View:An Essay in the History of EconomicThought and Murray N. Rothbard'sAmerica's Great Depression. Thesebooks would serve very nicely as avehicle around which to build an goingstudy or discussion group, either onyour campus or in your community. Allof these books can be purchasedthrough Laissez-Faire Books, 206 MercerStreet, New York, NY 10012.In spite of the rapid and dispersedgrowth of Austrian economics, the NewYork City area remains the center ofAustrian activity. New York Universityhas within its graduate program asub-program for young graduate studentsinterested in learning Austriantheory. The key people in this programare Professors Ludwig M. Lachmann,Israel M. Kirzner, and Mario Rizzo.There are some substantial fellowshipsavailable to those qualified studentswho wish to pursue graduatestudies in economics with an emphasison the Austrian approach. For moreinformation you can write to ProfessorKirzner, Graduate Department of Economics,New York University,Washington Square New York, NY10003. For information from the students'point of view, write to JohnKunze, 62 Pierrepont Street, Apt. lC,Brooklyn, NY 11201. In addition to theregular classes, seminars and colloquia,there is the. Austrian EconomicsSeminar (AES) which meets monthly.The AES is a seminar whose membersinclude not only the NYU students andfaculty, but also other Austrian economistsin the NYC area. Occasionallythe AES has guest speakers. For instance,in late October, Roger Garrisonpresented his proposal for a veryinteresting Austrian-oriented dissertationhe will be writing for completionof his doctoral requirements at theUniversity of Virginia.Besides the formal work done atNYU, the graduate students from NYUand other schools in the NYC areameet in seminars at the Center forLibertarian Studies. The incoming graduatestudents meet once a week to go6December 1977

through M.N. Rothbard's Man,Economy and State in a systematicfashion. The advanced graduate studentsmeet weekly to discuss advancetopics in Austrian capital theory. Theyare studying the works of Bohm­Bawerk, Hayek, Lachmann and Hicks.• RUTGERS UNIVERSITY at Newarkis also a good place for libertarians tobe aware of. Austrian economist Dr.Walter Block teaches several advancedundergraduate courses thereand he will likely be teaching a graduatecourse per term in the mastersdegree program. In addition to Block,Richard Fink, an Austrian economistwho has his M.A. from U.C.L.A. and isfinishing his doctorate at N.Y.U., isteaching several introductory coursesand will soon probably, be teachingmore advanced courses. All in all, theNYC area is still where a large part ofthe action is in Austrian economics.However, a large part clearly is notall. The Department of Economics atthe University of Colorado at Boulder,in cooperation with the William 1. KochFoundation and the Economic Institutefor Research and Education issponsoring a lecture program entitled"The Austrian School of Economics:An Alternative to the Neoclassical andMarxist Paradigms". The first lecturewas delivered in October by ProfessorLudwig M. Lachmann, "History of AustrianEconomic Thought." The othersin the series will be delivered inMarch. On March 6, Israel M. Kirznerof New York University will speak on,"Austrian Approach to Competitionand Market Process." On March 10Steven Swiff of Metropolitan State Collegewill speak on "Austrian Eco-. nomics and the Rule of Law". OnMarch 17 Richard E. Wagner of VirginiaPolytechnical Institute will speakon "Austrian Economics and theTheory of the Public Sector". OnMarch 24 Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. ofIowa State University will speak on"Austrian Theory of the BusinessCycle." This program is patter'ned aftera similar, very successful series of talksgiven last year at the University of Chicago.For further information contactProfessor Fred R. Glahe, Departmentof Economics, University of Colorado,Boulder, CO 80302.Also at the University of Coloradoin June 1978, under the direction ofProfessor Glahe, the Institute forHumane Studies is planning its thirdannual Instructional Seminar in Austrianeconomics. This will be a twoweekseminar devoted to introducing-Austrian theory to young college anduniversity instructors, graduate students,and even highly qualifiedundergraduates. The previous two conferences,one at the University of Delawareand the other at Mills College inOakland, California, were verysuccessful, and the third is sure to belikewise.Perhaps the most prestigious academicAustrian conference yet to beheld is being arranged by ProfessorMario Rizzo at New York Universityfor January 7, 8, and 9. This conference,"Issues in Economic Theory:A Evaluation of Current Austrian Perspectives"is being sponsored by theNYU Department of Economics, NYU'sCenter for Applied Economics and theInstitute for Humane Studies. Speakerswill include Sir John Hicks, NobelLaureate in Economics; Professor HarveyLeibenstein of Harvard University;Harold Demsetz of U.C.L.A.;Gerald P. O'Driscoll of Iowa StateUniversity; Leland Yeager of theUniversity of Virginia and Mario Rizzoof NYU. Comments will be deliveredby Ludwig M. Lachmann of NYU; IsraelM. Kirzner of NYU; John Egger ofGoucher College, Richard E. Wagner ofVirginia Polytechnical Institute, RogerGarrison of the University of Virginia,and by Murray N. Rothbard of PolytechnicalInstitute of New York. Forfurther information about this topnotchconference, contact Prof. Rizzo,500 Tisch Hall, New York University,Washington Square, New York, NY10003.• RACISM IN AMERICA. Racism is arecurrent and haunting theme inAmerican history whose roots are mostdifficult to trace. Leonard P. Liggiodoes a masterful job of tracing the originsof America's treatment of the nativeAmericans as well as the Blacks tothe manner in which the Englishearlier dealt with the Irish. See: LeonardP. Liggio, "English Origins of EarlyAmerican Racism" in Radical HistoryReview, Spring 1976.• NEW SPO.ONER ESSAYDISCOVERED. Just think of it-a newlydiscovered essay by one of the greatestfigures out of our libertarian heritage.Thanks to Carl Watner's diligentresearch into the works of the 19thCentury American individualistanarchists, we now have availableLysander Spooner's Vices Are NotCrimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty($2.95 in paperback). This brilliantessay was first published anonymouslyin 1875 and has been out ofprint ever since. This edition includesa Forward by Carl Watner, an introductionby Murray N. Rothbard, andthe essay on Spooner by BenjaminTucker, "Our Nester taken From Us"in which Tucker disclosed thatSpooner was the author of "Vices areNot Crimes".I think that the Spooner essay willserve very nicely as a complement andas a balanced corrective to the similarbut more abrasively presented positionset forth in Walter Block's justlycontroversial Defending the Undefendable.The two works could serve asthe topic for several weeks of discussionat a local study ggroup.i, Fororders write to Janice Allen, TAN­STAAFL, P.O.Box 257, Cupertino, CA95014.• The Resurgence of Political Economy.In recent years the discipline ofpolitical economy has remained a capturedpreserve of collectivist liberal,Marxist and other such statist-orientedeconomists. I'm' happy to report thatJames M. Buchanan and Richard E.Wagner have helped to reverse this unhappysituation with the publication oftheir recent book Democracy inDeficit: The Political Legacy of LordKeynes (Academic Press). This is notonly an excellent critique of Keynesianinflationism, but it brings back into discussionthe Hayekian insights about inflationcausing the misdirection andmalinvestment of resources, i.e., thecore of the Mises-Hayek theory of thebusiness cycle. These professors areboth at Virginia Polytechnic Institute,and they have both recently becomefare more receptive to "Austrian"ideas.Libertarian Review7

UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE WEDGEBy Bruce BartlettThe Humphrey-Hawkins Bill wasthought to. have died a quiet death inthe 94th Congress when the HouseDemocratic Caucus asked that it not bebrought up for a vote before the election:too many congressmen feared thepolitical dynamite contained in the billespecially at a time when a large numberof them were running for their firstreelections.The measure was revived again thisyear for two reasons: the failing healthof Senator Humphrey, and the enormouspressure brought to bear onPresident Carter by Black groups andlabor unions to make good on his campaignpromise to support Humphrey­Hqwkins.The President did demand that substantialchanges be made in the bill,and in the course of making revisionsthe bill was essentially gutted.Whereas the original Humphrey­Hawkins Bill had set out to legislate athree percent unemployment rate, thenew bill mandates four. Where the firstbill required the Federal Governmentto hire as many people as necessary toacheive the goal, the new bill makes nosuch requirement. Where the originalversion ignored inflation, PresidentCarter demanded a provision which require~that full employment beacheived in the context of price stability.In its present form, therefore, theHumphrey-Hawkins Bill echoes theEmployment Act of 1946, whichalready commits the Federal Governmentto achieving full employment(without setting any numerical figure).Under these circumstances, passage ofthe measure during the next session ofCongress would seem assured.Nevertheless, debate on theHumphrey-Hawkins Bill will bevigorous and heated. To many it hasbecome the key issue of our time:Liberals see full employment as criticalto their commitment for so justice;Conservatives fear the growth ofgovernment which it implies and theinflation that it guarantees.Is there a program that canrestore full employmentwhich is not inflationary? Theanswer is yes.The so-called "trade off" betweeninflation and unemployment-tacitlyaccepted by all parties to the debateisutter nonsense. Milton Friedman,among others, has demonstrated thatthe statistical proof of the "trade off",called the Phillips Curve, is only validunder conditions of unanticipated inflation.Once you. realize that full employmentper se is not inflationary, and thatinflation does not create any employmentat all (actually it destroys jobs),you can begin to ask the question: Isthere a program which can restore fullemployment which is not inflationaryand compatible with a free society?The answer is yes.It involves the realization that overthe years a· huge wedge has beencreated between employers' costs andemployee benefits. When you add upall the taxes and costs which standbetween the total cost of hiring an employeeand the employee's take-homepay the disparity is enormous.Take, for example, a single workerearning $20,000. This worker is in the 38percent tax bracket, meaning that hepays 38 percent tax on each additionaldollar he earns. On top of this both heand his employer pay a combined totalof almost 13 percent in Social Securitytaxes (under provision recently passedby Congress). This means that, takingonly Federal taxes into consideration,it costs an employer $1.00 to give hisemployee an additional 49c in aftertaxincome.In addition to Federal taxes, ofcourse, there are any number of othertaxes and government mandated costswhich drive up the cost of hiringworkers and reduce employee benefits:state and local taxes, unemploymentinsurance, OSHA costs,pollutionabatement costs, government paperworkcosts, and a host of others go intomaking up the wedge.A reduction in this wedge, whetherit is through a tax ra,te reduction, an eliminationof government regulations, ora reduction in other costs of employmentwill, in effect, reduce the totalcost of hiring workers to the employerwhile simultaneously increasing thereward for work to employees. The resultwill be increased employmentopportunities and increased workerproductivity at the same time.This approach to the unemploymentproblem is still new and not fullyaccepted either by liberals or conservatives.Liberals hate to cut taxes becausethey prefer more governmentspending to reduce unemployment,while conservatives are afraid that thebudget deficit may go up. The lattercriticism is easily dismissed: an increasein employment guarantees anincrease in government tax revenuesand a reduction in government expendituresfor unemployment compensationand make-work jobs.The only major public figure toexplicitly make the connectionbetween tax rate reduction and fullemployment is Congressman JackKemp of Buffalo, New York. His JobsCreation Act and Tax Reduction Actare the two principle bills in this area.His exposition of this approach haswon him the support of virtually everymajor union and business leader inWestern New York. It may be the waveof the fu ture.8December 1977

MINIMUM WAGESBy David R. HendersonThe news media have uncritically reportedthe federal government's claimthat the recently enacted increase inthe minimum wage from $2.30 an hourwill increase the wages of five millionworkers. This claim is untrue. A significantfraction of the five millionworkers will find their wages reduced-tozero-since these workerswill be put out of work by the new $2.65minimum. The government's estimatesignore the fact that the numberof people working is inversely relatedto the wage employers must pay.Imagine an employer decidingwhether to retain a worker currentlyworking at the $2.30 minimum. If hekeeps him, he will be forced to pay him$2.65 starting January 1978. If theworker is productive enough that he isworth at least $2.65, the employer willretain him and the worker will be betteroff. This is the simple story thatmany proponents of minimum wagestell, and their story ends here. But,alas, the true story does not end here.His hourly output is probably notworth $2.65. It is probably worth about$2.30, the current wage. Why? Becauseof the employer's benevolence? No.Because of the employer's greed, andthe greed of other employers. If theemployer tried to pay the worker lessthan his value, a rival employer wouldspot a profit opportunity in luring himaway with a slightly higher wage andmaking a profit equal to the differencebetween the value of the worker's outputand the wage. As long as there issuch a difference, there will be a profitopportunity for a rival employer.Therefore, the wage will be bid up untilno further profit opportunity remains.The wage will equal the valueof the worker's output. In economists'jargon, competition by employersdrives workers' wages to equality withthe value of their marginal product.Since the value of the worker's productis about $2.30, the employer willfire him rather than retain him at $2.65and lose money. This will happenthroughout the economy. The effect onemployment of an increase in the mini-mum wage is unambiguous. Manymarginal, unskilled workers will losetheir jobs. Thus my contention that thenew law will reduce many workers'wages to zero.This analysis does not depend onthe employer's being able to afford theminimum wage. The employer couldbe Rockefeller and he would still fireworkers whose productivity was lessthan the minimum wage. The disemploymenteffect of minimum wages resultsnot from the poverty of employers,but from the low productivity ofsome workers.Not surprisingly, the group ofmarginal workers is composed primarilyof teenagers and young adults, withblacks representing a significantlylarger fraction than their share in thepopulation. The effect of the minimumwage on their fortunes is significant.UCLA economists Finis Welch andJames Cunningham have estimatedthat the present minimum wage reducesemployment of 14-15 year oldsby 46 percent, 16-17 year aIds by 27 percent,and 18-19 year olds by 15 percentof what it would be with no minimum.They estimate that further significantreductions in employment will resultfrom the new law. Most economists'studies of the effect of minimum wageson employment have found similar results.Every time the minimum wage'rises, the employment of marginalworkers drops, and then rises slowly asinflation and increases in workerproductivity ameliorate the law's effect.Many studies have failed to findan effect of the minimum wage onunemployment but this is a consequenceof the way unemployment ismeasured. A member of the labor forceis officially unemployed if he is out ofwork and actively seeking work. Manylow productivity workers who lose, their jobs due to the minimum wagebecome discouraged and drop out ofthe labor force. These workers are notcounted as unemployed in the officialunemployment statistics. This is smallcomfort to a discouraged worker.The minimum wage has other adverseconsequences. It increases thesensitivity of marginal workers to businesscycle fluctuations. During a recession,the value of labor, marginal orotherwise, falls. However, the minimumwage prevents the wage of marginalworkers from falling to reflectthis lower value. Therefore, employerslayoff marginal workers more thanthey would with no minimum wage.The minimum wage also turns jobswhich combine low wages with on-thejobtraining into higher wage, deadendjobs. An employer offering a wage of$1.50 an hour plus on-the-job trainingcosting $.80 an hour, will eliminate theon-the-job training if forced to pay$2.30. A recent study by Harvardeconomist Martin Feldstein reports asignificant "deadend effect."These adverse effects of the minimumwage are obviously serious,especially for young blacks. A significantfraction of the current generationof blacks will never have a career.They are priced out of careers by theminimum wage. A black student in oneof my classes told me that when hevisited his home in Philadelphia recentlynone of his friends on the blockhad jobs.Why have so many politicians advocatedincreasing the minimum wage? Isit due to their ignorance of these effects?Probably not. Whenever hearingsare held on minimum wage increases,economists of varied ideologicalstripes point out the adverse consequences.But there is one effect ofwhich politicians from the Northernstates are very much aware: the adverseimpact of the minimum wage onindustrial competition from low-wageSouthern states. In the words of SenatorJacob Javits:-of New York:I point out to Senators from industrial stateslike my own that a minimum wage increasewould also give industry in our states somemeasure of protection, as we have too longsuffered from the unfair competition basedon substandard wages and other laborconditions in effect in certain areas of thecountry-primarily in the South.What is my stand on the minimumwage? I agree with the position theSupreme Court took in its 1923 decisionin the Adkins .v. Children's Hoscontinuedon page 35Libertarian Review9

AN INTERVIEWWITHROBERT NOZICK;':j~'By AlbertZlab'ngerWhen Robert Nozick's National Book Awardwinningtreatise Anarchy, State and Utopia waspublished in 1974, it was a work eagerly awaited. by Libertarians and non-Libertarians alike. ForLibertarians, here was a wide-ranging heuristic work treating manyproblems in libertarian theory, a defense of a "minimum state" andof "capitalist acts between consenting adults." Establishment philosopherslooked to the work for its critique of the theory of justiceoffered by John Rawls, and for its defense of an alternative viewtheentitlement theory of justice. With that one work, RobertNozick leaped into prominence as a defender of individual liberty,and as a political philosopher with few peers.Robert Nozick was interviewed in August 1977 at the UCLAConference Center in Lake Arrowhead, California, by AlbertZlabinger, professor of Economics at Valdosta State College inGeorgia. In a wide-ranging discussion, Prof. Nozick discusses subjectsas wide-ranging as his conversion from socialism, sports, andthe nature of envy.Robert Nozick was originally interviewed with the audience ofWorld Research Inc.-the producers of the Incredible BreadMachine film-in mind. But after consultation, World Research,Inc., and Libertarian Review decided to publish the interviewsimultaneously, in the December issues of Ink and LR, to give itthe widest possible circulation.For more information about World Research, Inc., write to it at:11722 Sorrento Valley Road, San Diego, California 92121.The text of the interview follows.10December 1977

know that there is an external world existing independentlyof our sensations, but still he is an important philosopherbecause we do not know how to answer him. This is a purelyprofessional criterion that leads to a certain respect for peoplein philosophy. I think I have kept those professionalcriteria. There are some libertarians in philosophy that Irespect, and others not so much, even though they are libertarians.And some non-libertarians that I respect, and othersnot so much because of purely professional criteria. Whatcounts for me is how good they are at constructing philosophicalarguments and doing all the stuff that philosphersare supposed to do.LR: Do you have respect for Marx as a philosopher?Nozick: Not very high, no.LR: Did you in the early 60's?Nozick: I do not think so. I must admit I became morewidely read in Marx after I became a libertarian than I wasbefore. Because then I thought I had to know the best argumentsagainst what I believed and had to read opponents ofit. I think a lot of Marx was quite sloppy. There was all sortsof politically aggressive language when he lacked argumentsfor things. So I was never a big fan of Marx; though therewas a time when it seemed to me, when I was an undergraduateat Columbia, that i,t was not possible to take acourse without reading the Communist Manifesto. Itseemed to be Columbia's way of showing that it was open toall ideas. The Communist Manifesto kept popping up in allsorts of courses. And there were jokes whether we wouldfind it in a math course, or something like that.LR: Exactly how active were you politically dUring the timeyou considered yourself a socialist?Nozick: I was a member of a socialist student group calledthe Student League for Industrial Democracy, which was theyouth branch of the League for Industrial Democracy. It wasstarted in the early 1900's by Upton Sinclair and JackLondon, and various other socialists. It was a NormanThomas-type of organization. Its only activity when I was amember was to hold lectures on various campuses, and toadvocate socialism strongly.But in 1962 (if I have the date correct), which was aftermy membership and actual participation in the nationalboard of that organization had expired, the Student Leaguefor Industrial Democracy held its annual meeting in PortHuron, Michigan. They issued the so-called "Port HuronStatement" and broke off from the parent organization, theLeague for Industrial Democracy, and changed the name toStudents for a Democratic Society. So I was at one time actuallyon the national board of the precursor organization ofthe S.O.S.!1R: Today you like to make it clear to people that you arenot a professional libertarian, and that you dislike taking partin public political debates and activities. Do you think there isa moral obligation on the part of a gifted scholar to stand upfor his views publicly? Or may he leave the task of"spreading the word" to others who might be more effective?Nozick: Good question. Good because it is a question thatwill probably make me uncomfortable. So let me think aboutit a bit. ... What I meant by not considering myself a professionallibertarian was that I never viewed it as the most importantactivity of my life to advance the libertarian cause. Ido not want to knock people who do. It is a noble goal, but Ido not think of myself as a political person. The major publicgoals in my life are intellectual goals. There are various philosophicalthings that I want to work on and work out. Sowriting the book Anarchy, State and Utopia was my workingat political philosophy and I, of course, hoped that it wouldadvance libertarian ideas. 'But I never imagined that I would, go on and continue to devote a major portion of my energyto libertarianism and the libertarian movement. I knew therewere other areas of philosophy that I wanted to work on. Iwanted to write on free will, the nature of knowledge, themeaning of life, and the nature of the self. (This is actually aplug for my next book.) So I never thought of politics as myimportant goal.But now back to your question whether I have a moralobligation to advance libertarian ideas if I can do so withsome skill and success. I think the answer is yes, to some ex-Photos By Albert Zlablnger12December 1977

tent I do; and I cannot say that I saw the writing of my bookas fulfilling that obligation. I was really doing that out of personalmotives. Also, I wanted to say those things, and Ithought they would be received with interest. So occasionallyI now offer courses at Harvard I perhaps would notchoose to give if I was concerned only with what I felt liketeaching. But I think it is important that libertarian studentsat Harvard find some course they can come to to work onlibertarian ideas, and even to meet each other in thesecourse, and that other students learn something about libertarianideas also. It's not that I'm a propagandist, but I thinkit is important to bring those ideas before a student. It is truethat I have turned down a lot of other public occasions suchas T.V. appearances, radio spots and things like that. I dothis in order to preserve my private life and to be able towork on other things.LR: So you want to protect your scholarly sphere for thepurpose of more important work, really.Nozick: Yes. I suppose I am also making some estimate ofthe probability of my success or of the sort of effect that Iwould actually have. Look, if I thought that if I really wentout and spent the next few years devoting all of my energiesto propagating libertarianism, that then we would have alibertarian society, Iwould certainly go out and do it. Ithink itis very important to have a libertarian society. But I am doingsom.e expected-value calculation and weighting of the importanceby the difference in probability that I think my activitieswould make, and I guess I do not think it would makeall that much difference.LR: If somebody told you that you had a very good chanceof becoming President of the United States if you ran on theLibertarian Party ticket, would you accept the nomination?Nozick: God! Would I accept the nomination? I don't liketo think that anyone is indispensible in various ways. I wouldcertainly cast the ballot with all my might to someone elsewho could succeed better because I really would not want tohave to spend time being President. I forget now who madethe statement, "I would rather be right than President." Asfar as I am concerned, "I'd rather be wrong than President."Now, I would like to be right. I mean, I do not want to havefaults or incorrect views. So that shows how much I don'twant to hold political office. I actually thought this way evenwhen I was a socialist way back. There was a time when (as akid in high school, actually) I had very youthful ambitions togo ahead and become a socialist president of the UnitedStates or something like that. And then at some point, Ithought, well ... do I really want that? What sort of societydo I want there to be? Then if there was that sort of society,what sort of life would I want to live in that society? CertainlyI thought then, if there was a socialist society, Iwouldn't havewanted to be a politician. And now if there was a libertariansociety, I would not choose to be a political figure in a liber-tarian society. So why should I be a prisoner of the time thatI am born in? It seems to me reasonable that I ought to thinkabout what sort of society I want to live in and how I wouldlive in that ideal society. I would work a lot in philosophy,and spend time with my family, and do various things likethat. I don't see why the very unfortunate fact that we do nothave a libertarian society should deflect me from what I reallywant to do with my life.LR: Systematic thinking about economics was begun byphilosophers, and you are one of the few modern philospherswho have returned to economics. Why has therebeen such a reluctance on the part of philosophers to dealwith economic questions and use more precise andsystematic analysis as well as go into the economicliberature? Do you have an explanation?Nozick: Yes, certainly there was a long period of time whenphilosophers (even philosophers concerned with social philosophyor political philosophy) didn't think that economicswas the important thing they had to know in order to keepworking. I don't know whether I really can explain the reasonsfor the move away from it and then the move backtowards it. One is that economics became more and moretechnical and mathematical, and some philosophers droppedoff that wagon which they could no longer follow. But,of course, there are large numbers of philosophers now whoreally are mathematically qUite proficient. Mathematicallogic is now a branch of mathematics and is followed andworked on by philosophers, so I don't think that mathematicsis the whole story; but I don't know what else there isto the story.1R: How would you go about encouraging philosophers todeal with economic questions more seriously?Nozick: I think that now it's not so clear that encouragementis needed any longer. I think the current atmosphere,in the United States at any rate, is that in order to work atpolitical and social philosophy, one really has to learn economicsplus connected things like decision theory, gametheory, utility theory, etc. That is, theories that are actuallydealing with individual chOice and satisfy methodological individualistcriteria. Now I haven't really explained how thatchange in atmosphere has taken place. To a very large extent,it was due to my colleague in the philosophy departmentat Harvard, John Rawls, whose book A Theory ofJustice received enorrnous attention. It made heavy use ofeconomics. Not in a way, I think, which is friendly to libertarianideas but at any rate it had a great effect on the philosophyprofession.LR: Do you require courses in economics in the philosophyprogram at Harvard?Nozick: We don't actually require it, but we certainly encourageour students who are interested in those questionsLibertarian Review13

to go and take courses in the economics department.LR: Hayek once was accused of "being polite to a fault"towards socialists and accusing them of nothing more thansimple intellectual error. Do you think that these socialtheorists who come up with recommendations for socialreform which tend to infringe on liberty simply have a lack ofunderstanding (that is, are subject to intellectual error) orcan some of their actions and recommendations be explainedon the basis of their being simply "mean"?Nozick: I don't think "mean" is right. But I don't think itsonly intellectual error either. I am puzzled over it. I thinkthere is some deep psychological explanation that oneshould offer as to why people just automatically reject libertarianideas. Maybe that's self-serving. Maybe I don't want tosay the ideas are obviously false so I am going to find somedeep psychological flaw in those people to explain their rejectinglibertarian ideas. I don't know of anything in the libertarianliterature that really gets at that. Ayn Rand speculatesabout the psychology of people who are threatened by theidea of independent people who want to live their own lives.I don't even remember accurately how she explains it, but Ithink one wants· to work on this and find some relativelydeep explanation. I think it's going to turn out to be an uncomplimentaryexplanation for those people, discussingwhat sorts of festering motivations lead them to impose theirwill on others and to feel threatened themselves about beingleft alone as independent individuals. And it might well bethat if we had a good theory and brought it to people's attention(though of course at first they would resist it), theywould recognize those psychological motivations as beingtheir own. Then they would be so embarrassed that theywould want to transform themselves, and so on. Maybe not.Maybe they would then think up other reasons for their position.But one effect might be that if one saw that this was hisreason for rejecting libertarianism, then he might wonderwhether he really wants to be a person who is motivated inthat way. Of course, if it's a sufficiently unpleasant sort ofmotivation, the answer would be no, and maybe that wouldreally have an effect. That may be too optimistic an idea.However, I don't yet have an adequate understanding of thepsychology involved.LR: It is sometimes said that the case for equality in materialwell-being rests ultimately on envy and not on any wellreasonedarguments. Do you agree? Do you think that envyis ever justifiable or excusable on moral grounds? Should itbe considered in making social policy? In other words, doyou have a theory of envy?Nozick: If envy means, look, somebody else has somethingthat you do not have, and you wish you had it alsothat'sfine. That's not envy, yet. But there is a further thingthat would constitute envy and that's if you can't have it, youwould prefer that neither of you had it than that the otherperson has it and you don't. That's envy. I think it is a nasty,14vicious, and awful emotion, and I cannot think of legitimateareas where it should playa role. If people are made unhappyby that sort of envy, I don't think that social policy shouldtake account of it, that is, should act· so as to reduce thatenvy. Sometimes one meets people who say we need moreequality because there is this unhappiness created by inequalitybecause envy makes people unhappy. That's theirproblem! They will have to find out a way to get rid of theenvy. See, it's even the mere knowledge that somebody elseis better off that makes some people unhappy. Now peopleon the left usually tend to focus on that kind of knowledge.They argue that if unhappiness is caused by the knowledgethat something is happening in society then that's groundsfor stopping the thing from going on. As a general principle,this is even unacceptable to people on the left. The examplethat I often use with students on the left is an interracial couple.Forget even public streets; the mere knowledge thatthere is an interracial couple in some private home mightcause unhappiness to some bigots. That's their tough luck.That's not a reason for forbidding interracial couples. And Ido not see-and I challenge these students to find thedifference-why stopping people from being wealthybecause the mere knowledge that they are wealthy makesother people unhappy differs from stopping interracial coupIesbecause the mere knowledge that they are there makespeople unhappy. In neither case does it seem justified to doit. Now you have also raised the issue of to what extent envyreally plays a role in leftist views. I think to some extent. Idon't say this is the case for everyone on the left, but oftenwhen we dig around and question, we find things that lookvery much like envy.LR: Do you think that in your own case in the early 60's, ifyou searched your soul, some of your motivations couldhave been traced to a feeling of envy?Nozick: I can't remember, really. I don't know. I think ofmyself as generally unenvious. That is, I don't walk aroundwishing that other people did not have what I don't have; althoughI did sometimes walk around wishing I had whatthose other people had.IR: To make individual freedom work-in all its dimensions,from freedom of personal behavior to economic freedom-itseems to me that a certain level of tolerance ofothers, and the ways that they are different from us, is reqUired.Do you have a theory of tolerance? And in whatsocial framework would you expect tolerance to beflOUrishing?Nozick: Idon'thave a theory of tolerance. I think of myselfas being relatively tolerant, but that may just mean that I amtolerant of some things that other people are not tolerant of.I know there are people in the libertarian movement that arereally quite intolerant. I mean by that that I think of them asbigots. And certainly, in their personal behavior, they havethe perfect right to exercise their intolerant preferences: in-December 1977

vite only certaIn sorts of people into their homes and notothers, choose the books of only some people and notothers and, well ... whatever. Are you suggesting that for alibertarian society to work, those libertarians really have to bemore tolerant: that we can't have people being intoleranttowards other ethnic groups for example? I don't want to beintolerant myself in that way, but I would hope that a libertariansociety would work even if the people were intolerant.LR: Well, once we had a free society I think that intoleranceoften would lead to legislation that tends to become inhibitingof freedom.Nozick: I see. You think intolerance won't be tolerated andso we will get non-libertarian legislation to stamp out intolerance.Well, I would be willing to participate, I suppose,in some boycotts of certain sorts of intolerance. Look, Iwouldn't favor legislation at all, but I would be willing to considervoluntary means to raise the costs of intolerance tosome people. I suppose that would include not having allthe friendly relationships with certain sorts of people whoare very intolerant towards others in a way that I disapprovedof. I think people have the right to be very intoleranttowards others, but also that I have the right to disagree withthem and not associate with them for that reason.LR: How many libertarians are there at Harvard?Nozick: Among the faculty, I don't know that I could nameanother hard core libertarian. There are people who arefriendly to the free market, but who are not against paternalisticinterferences with certain liberties, and others againstthis but not in favor of free markets and private property. Idon't know of any other flaming libertarian on the wholefaculty.1R: Since your book came out have you had any problemsat Harvard?Nozick: I'm not aware of strong negative sanctions againstme. I wasn't hired originally because people knew I was alibertarian, and thought that's what they needed in the philosophydepartment. I was hired on the basis of the sorts ofthings that I had written and purely intellectual grounds. Idon't think my colleagues have ever regretted hiring me andI am well treated by the university. I'm not aware of otherpeople who are against me because I was a libertarian, althoughno doubt there were all sorts of dinners and partiesand things that I didn't get invited to by various people.Some students expressed a strong feeling about thiS. I hadbeen at Harvard as an Assistant Professor in the mid-sixtiesand then came back in 1969 as a Full Professor. That wasimmediately after the student uprisings, building takeovers,and so on, at Harvard the previous spring. When I arrived inthe fall of 1969, there was a philosophy course listed in thecatalog entitled "Capitalism." And the course descriptionwas "a moral examination of capitalism." Of course, formost students, then, it would be taken for granted that amoral examination would be a moral condemnation ofcapitalism. But that's not what I intended. We were going toread critics of capitalism. But we were also planning to readdefenses of capitalism, and I was going to construct some ofmy own in the lectures. Some of the graduate students inthe philosophy department knew what ideas I held, and theyweren't very happy about a course being taught in thedepartment defending those ideas. Now it was true thatthere was another course in the department on Marxism bysomeone who was then a member of the Maoist ProgressiveLabor Party and students did not object to that. But stillsome students objected to my giving a lecture course oncapitalism. I remember early in the fall (I guess I wasscheduled to give the course in the spring term), a graduatestudent came to me at a departmental reception we had,and said, "We don't know if you're going to be allowed togive this course." I said "What do you mean, not allowed togive this course?" He said, "Well, we know what ideas youhold. We just don't know whether you will be allowed to givethe course." And I said, "If you come and disrupt my course,I'm going to beat the shit out of you!" And the student wastaken aback and said, "But you are taking all this very personally."And I said, "What do you mean, personally? Youare threatening to disrupt my course! you can do otherthings; you can stand outside the room and hand outleaflets. You can ask students not to register for my course.But if you come into my classroom while I am lecturing andLibertarian Review15

disrupt the class, then I take that very personally." In fact, atsome point later in the term, this student and some otherssaid they were going to make up leaflets and hand them outoutside of my classroom. I said, "That's fine; that would bereally exciting." Then they didn't get around to doing it, andso I prodded them, "Where are the leaflets? I was countingon something special happening with the leaflets." But itturned out that it was a lot of trouble to write up a leaflet, toget them run off on a mimeograph machine, and so theynever got around to doing it. Thus I never had the privilegeof being "leafleted" at Harvard. It seemed to me that sort ofantagonism only lasted for a very short period of time anddiminished fast. There was no longer any strong personalanimosity after that. Maybe it was the general toning downof things in the country in the early 70's, and I just benefitedfrom the de-radicalization of the university.LR: Let me ask you a question about the issue of academicfreedom. Several well-known academicians have gone toChile in the last few years supposedly to advise its government.In their opinion, they were within the boundaries ofacademic freedom. However, the left has very muchcriticized them. What was your feeling about that?Nozick: I haven't looked into it in great detail, although Ihave heard the stories about some Chicago professors. Ithink I myself would refuse to do it; or I would feel that if Iwent down there to offer them certain sorts of advice, Iwould have to make it a special point (and not just perfunctorily)to criticize and argue against the things I objected to. Idon't know if even that would be enough. But if I decidedthat great benefit could be produced by my going downthere, I would feel I had to do all I could to shift the view.Now I don't know that any of the people from Chicagomade big pests of themselves when they went down thereabout other sorts of things that they weren't asked' adviceabout. I myself could not bring myself to go and just offertechnical advice, even if that would increase freedom withinthe economy, and all that, without talking about other issuesas well.LR: You then feel an obligation that if you were in that position,to be outspoken about, say, the abuse of police powerand the practice of torture?Nozick: Yes. But I also don't like to be associated withthings that I disapprove of. One of the ways in which I am affectedis with regard to financial support. Many academicsreceive money from the government in one way or another:from the National Endowment for the Humanities, from theNational Science Foundation, from tax-supported funds. Ihave refused to accept any of that money. I'm not saYingthat everyone in academic life should do so. There was atime when I tried to work out good reasons for my taking it.You know, after all, I'm being taxed and here's a way of gettingsome of it back. I could use it for good purposes, whileother people would use it for bad things. But it just didn'tadd up. I get a good salary at a good university. Maybe otheracademics should be taking government money, buJ I don'tthink I should.Now the National Endowment for the Humanities keptcalling me up and wanted to push money on me. It was avery weird and strange thing, and I don't know why they especiallywanted to do it. I just kept refusing it. They asked meto serve on some of the committees dispensing money, andI refused though it's there that one can channel money topeople who are doing good work, or what you think is goodwork, but I wanted no part of it. I had similar contacts withthe Smithsonian also. At some point Ijust had to say, "Look,here's why I don't want to do it." At first, I was really trYing tospare their feelings. I didn't want unpleasant conversations.And finally I just said, "I morally disapprove of your wholething for the following reasons, and don't call me againbecause I'm not going to accept it, and I don't want any of itor any part of it." And there was sort of a stunned silence atthe other end. I do not know if anyone had ever refused thismoney before. Actually, there's one other occasion when Iwent to great lengths-lengths that may now seem a little excessive,but it was part of the same issue. After my book appeared,. Columbia University was holding a special universityseminar which is attended only by faculty members atColumbia and some others around New York City. They invitedme to give a talk and a paper on political philosophyfor a free. They had this government money to spend, and16December 1977

they were required to show that there was reading materialthat had been sent to everyone who had attended. I thought,all right, I won't accept the fee, but they could use thatmoney and buy copies ofmy book and not give me money.To assure that I wasn't receiving any money, I arranged withmy publisher to allow them to buy this number of copies ofthe book at a low price so that I wouldn't receive anyroyalties for it. To be sure, I liked the idea of all these peoplearound New York City getting copies of my book, andmaybe reading it, but I thought that was a way of cuttingmyself off from this money. And it had a certain effect,because I remember dUring a break some of the people whohad known that I wasn't accepting this money came up andwanted to talk about it. So there is a way that libertarians canshow how much they really do care about their ideas andideals by making certain personal sacrifices in order to live inaccordance with their principles-in the same way thatsome people, especially the civil rights workers during the60's and so on, were willing to run the risk of being beatenup and so on to convince others that they were not just talking.If libertarians showed that they are willing to lose financiallyin order to adhere to libertarian ideas, then other peoplewould become interested and want to hear more aboutit. Ifan idea if powerful enough to get you to give up money,they want to hear about it. So I recommend to some libertariansthat they do this in some public way.1R: Your last answer brings up an interesting issue: the linkbetween individual freedom and morality. It would seemthat the less individual freedom there is, the less there is apossibility for a moral existence. That is, a moral life requiresa possibility of free choice.Nozick: Yes, but, look, how do we as libertarians feel aboutthis? I want there to be certain penalties for doing certainsorts of things. I don't want people to be free to violateliberty. Now, somebody can come along and say, "Well, thatreduces the opportunity for morality because their choice isreduced. They're not free to violate my liberty, so they can'tmorally choose not to violate it." But that's the way I want it.I don't want them to be allowed to violate my liberty. And ifthey are not able to make a moral choice to violate it or notto violate it, then that's all right. Actually, even if there is alaw, I suppose whether they are acting morally or not dependson why they are doing what they're doing. And it maybe hard to disentangle. But, right now there is a law againstmurder, and neither of us, as we're holding this conversation,is murdering the other. Now if the reason·that we arenot murdering is because of the law, then we are not actingmorally. But if the major reason is some other reason, forexample that we think people have a right not to bemurdered, then we are acting morally. It depends on whatour reasons are for our behavior. The existence of the lawdoesn't stop us from behaving morally. We are now behav-.ing morally in not murdering each other because we havemoral reasons for not doing it. We are not refraining frommurder solely because of the penalty. So I do not accept theview that the legal penalties and restrictions on freedom ofcertain sorts make it impossible for people to act morally.LR: As an economist, I am particularly concerned withrestrictions on economic freedom and their consequencesfor a moral existence. If we take your example in whichgovernment holds out the money carrot, and this becomesthe most important source of income for educators, sinceprivate sources are drying up because of the unfair competitionby government in education, then an educator is putinto a position where he is in essence committing an immoralact by accepting money that was forcefully taken fromothers. Would you agree? Let us assume we are talkingabout a young instructor at a small poor private college,rather than a recognized scholar from a well endowedeastern university who has easy access to private grants.Nozick: Yes, if the only way he can support himself at someintellectually exciting project is by accepting governmentmoney, I don't feel that I am in a position to tell him not todo it. It's just that none of the cases I thought of fit me, unfortunately(or fortunately!). So it didn't add up with melegitimately. But, yes, if you think {as I do} that it would bebetter not to take it, then various government actions makeit harder for people to act in a moral way. And that's a costof the activities that is not usually taken account of.LR: Let us shift gears a little bit here. You have seen theIncredible Bread Machine film, haven't you? What did youthink of it?Nozick: Yes, I have seen it, and Ithought it was a very effectivefilm.lR: What is your opinion of the effectiveness of film as amedium to spread ideas about the free society? Do youthink it is a good alternative for putting Robert Nozick on thelecture circuit?Nozick: I think films can be extremely effective. TheIncredible Bread Machine is an excellent example. Film isbecoming more and more important, not just as aneducational thing, but even in the intellectual world. I mean,I notice now that many young people who, when I wasyoung myself, would have wanted to become poets ornovelists, now want to make films. I'm not sure I can saywhy, but making films has become the mode of intellectualexpression of the young generation. As a matter of fact, itwould be very nice to have some people in the film industryfriendly to libertarian ideas. I don't mean just educationalfilms, but films for general audiences that are entertaining. Idon't see why libertarian ideas shouldn't be in there in thesame way that leftist ideas are in films.LIbertarian Review17

Nozick: I don't know. I mean, I never thought of sports as alibertarian activity. And Ijust have to think some. It is certainlyan interesting question to raise.LR: Are you implying that the film industry today is leaningtowards leftist views?Nozick: Well, I really don't know where it leans in general. Isuppose it's certainly more oriented towards leftist ideasthan towards libertarian ones.IR: What about television? Do you think that T.V. programming,maybe due to the heavy regulation of this industry,has a leftist or welfare state slant?Nozlck: I don't know. One area which I think doesn't is certainsports programs. I think sports is one of the realms onT.V. in which the viewers really value individual excellence;they don't want mediocrity, they don't want everybody to bethe same, and they don't mind stars.LR: So there is no egalitarianism in sports.Nozick: That's right. We don't mind great stars, and we loveto watch people who excel at things. Maybe we could findsome libertarian athletic heroes who will come forth andcomment on why people like to watch excellence in sportsand don't feel resentful and envious. I think I'm a prettygood ball player as ordinary people go, but certainly nothingclose to anyone profeSSional. But when I go watch professionalsports, which I do more now because my children arenow old enough to be intersted in going to see profeSSionalsports, I take great pleasure in it. I don't sit there, eventhough I can't do what those athletes are doing, and think,"Oh, how awful, I can't do it, I wish they couldn't do it." It'sone of the pleasures of life to see other people excelling.IR: Can you explain why we accept excellence in sports butnot, say, in economic accomplishments? Have we been conditionedin some way?1R: We also accept great personal wealth among politiciansand film stars. But very many of these personalities advocatemore government and more egalitarianism.Nozick: Yes, I know. Guilt!-They enjoy their wealth in aguilty manner. I think if they feel guilty about it, let them giveit away. I guess I find it especially offensive that they bothhave it, and feel guilty about it, and prattle about redistribution.Before, I said I really don't resent any people havingwealth. But there was a time some years ago when Ithoughtone should follow Nelson Rockefeller around at his politicalspeeches where he was calling for various sorts of legislationthat would lead to redistribution, and really heckle himseriously, or at least raise questions in the question period,about why he wasn't giving away his vast personal fortuneandalso tell him we would listen to him only after he gavesome of it away. Let him come down to the average income,or even to say $40,000 a year, and then we would listen tohim talk about helping the poor. But there he is, with thatenormous fortune. It's not that I begrudge the enormous fortune.What I do not like is his keeping the enormous fortuneand going around talking in a holier-than-thou fashionabout how the poor have to be helped. That I do resent.1R: Speculation about the future course of our societycovers the spectrum from a possibility of a peaceful anddemocratic change all the way to a revolutionary upheaval.Do you think that it will take a revolution, a violent revolution,in order to establish a freer society; or do you see agradual approach possible, and, if so, are there any signs ofpositive change you would point to?Nozlck: Well, I don't know what signs I would point to thatwould support the gradual approach theory, but I also don'tsee any signs of a possibly effective violent revolution tocreate the free society. It seems to me quite unlikely that ifthere were a violent revolution in the United States now, orin the near future, it would be to create a free society. And ifthere was sufficient support for free society to give it even achance in a violent revolution, then it would have a goodchance of success even through the democratic processesthat we now have. I say that in full realization of all the stumblingblocks to achieving a freer society by democraticprocesses. Special interest groups are a particular hurdle tothe progress towards a freer society. But I don't think that Ihave any special qualifications for predicting the future. Idon't mean to dodge the question. It's just that I don't think Ihave anything especially interesting or illuminating to sayabout how to get there from here. I would hope other peoplewould be better at this than I.LR: Thank you very much, Professor Nozick.18December 1911

BACH In PRinT:22 mastereconomistsleave Heynesnaked andshiveringWhile the Keynesian system is a tissue offallacies, it is a mistake to dismiss it brusquely,as many conservative economists have done,as nonsense. It is nonsense, in the last resort;but failure to deal with its fallacies in detailand in depth has left the field of ideas open forKeynesianism to conquer. Now, at long last,we have ... the ammunition to slay the enemy.Ubertarian ReviewSAUE $9.95For a generation after it appeared in 1936,'Lord Keynes's General Theory of Emplovment,Interest and Money was Holy Writ fornlost economists. Yet it evoked olajorcriticisms-many of them, however, buriedin learned journals. Henry Hazlitt gatherednearly two dozen of them in 1960 for thisimportant book. Together they conlprise themost impressive refutation of Keynes everassembled in book form.The contributors read like an honor roll ofExcerpts from a review byMurra~' N. Rothbard in National Rel'ie»' free-market economists:Mr. Hazlitt has dug deep to unearth long-forgotten or even unknown Ludwig von Mises Arthur F. BurnsF. A. Hayek Wilhelm Roepkecriticisms of Keynes, published over the years since the General TheoryJacques RueffJoseph Stagg Lawrenceappeared in 1936. As isolated essays or journal articles, they could be, and L. Albert Hahn John H. Williamswere, dismissed during the Keynesian hullabaloo. Bu~, put together, Jacob VinerGaret GarrettMelchior Palyi Etienne Mantouxthey form an impressive and many-sided scholarly criticism of Keynes, onFrank H. Knight Franco Modiglianivarying levels of political interest and technical difficulty.... Jean Baptiste Say Philip CortneyBenjamin J. Anderson R. Gordon WassonHazlitt also earns our gratitude by including the long out-of-print W. H. Hutt David McCord Wrightpresentations of Say's Law of Markets by J. B. Say and John Stuart Mill; John Stuart Mill Henry HazlittMill and Say of course antedated Keynes byfor these nineteenth-century demonstrations that there can be no suchthing as general "overproduction" or "underconsumption" on afree market are as fresh and valid today as they were a century and a halfago. The Sisyphean feat of Hazlitt and the other authors in pulverizingand clearing away the Keynesian rubble opens the way for a returnto Say's Law and to those economists, like Ludwig von Mises, who havebrilliantly built upon that law as a solid foundation.a century. Mr. Hazlitt includes them becausethey constitute "a refutation in advance" ofthe General Theory.Out of print for years, this collection includesa number of important essays otherwisehard or inlpossible to find in English.1-- CONSERVATIVE U11 BOOKCLUB - --,165 Huguenot Street, New Rochelle, N.Y. 10801I Please send FREE The Critics of Keynesian Economics and accept my membership in the Conservative BookClub-the only book club for political conservatives. I agree to buy 3 books from among the. more than I150 to be offered in the next 15 months, after which I may resign at any time. Membership entities me toI a free SUbscription to the Club Bulletin, which brims wi~h ~ews of interest t.o. con~ervatl.ves. I a.m e.llglblereligion, economics, conservative ideas, Communism, history, etc. If I want the mon.thly Selection I doI nothing; it will come automatically about one month later. If I don't. want ~he Selection, or I prefer ~neof the Alternates, I merely inform you on the handy form always provided ..1 II De offered a new Selection every 24 days-15 times a year. If due to late mail delivery I get a SelectIOn without haVing had 10 daysI to decide if I want it, I may return it at Club expense lR 112 Ito bUy Club books at discounts of 20% to 50% ~Ius sh.IPplng-books on politiCS, Investing, socla~ Issues, II NAMEADDRESSI CITY/STATEI [] I don't care to join the Club but I enclose $9.95. Please send The Critics of Keynesian Economi~ IL-: ~a~-~e~~eZIPI----------------.-J19

THEBAKKE CASEBy Joan Kennedy TaylorAmerican public opinion is in an uproar over thelaw suit that Allan Bakke has brought againstthe medical school of the University of Californiaat Davis. The question of whetheraffirmative action is an appropriate redress for past injusticeor is actually reverse discrimination is a question which hasbeen distressing many members of the intellectual establishmentfor several years. It is now erupting into the open.Mr. Bakke, an engineer of Norwegian descent, decidedat the age of 32 that he wanted to enter medical school andapplied to several of them. The University of Californiamedical school at Davis turned him down twice, although itadmitted applicants who got lower scores on the admissionstests. This happened because Davis has a two-track admissionssystem-one set of standards (regular application) foradmission to 84 places in· the freshman class, and anotherset of standards for 16 places, which are reserved for'disadvantaged, minority students,' none of whom are white.As a matter of fact, 272 whites applied for these specialplaces between 1971 and 1974, and none were admitted.At the same time, according to an article by Nathan Lewin inthe October 1 issue of The New Republic, "Case recordsshow that of 500 students admitted over five years, 49'minority persons' entered through the 'regular applicants'process." In other words, members of certain minoritygroups (black, Asian and Hispanic) were admitted to theregular program if they qualified, and were considered againunder the special program if they did not, thus in effect giv-ing them a double chance to be admitted.Bakke took the University of California to court for thispractice, claiming that his right to equal protection of thelaws, as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to theConstitution, had been violated. The Supreme Court ofCalifornia agreed with him, and the University of Californiaappealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.In his article on the Bakke case in the Village Voice (onOctober 17) Nat Hentoff tells us that "Some 10 civil rightsgroups ... strongly urged the University of California not to20December 1977

appeal. When the university insisted on going ahead, 22civil-rights organizations petitioned the Supreme Court notto grant an appeal. The case was weak, the record was weak,the university's intentions were suspect. The Supreme Courtsaid it would hear the case." 'At that point, we had not choice but to support the university,says an ACLU official. 'Since then, we've had to fightas hard as we can with what little we have.' "One hundred and forty-six groups have filed friend-ofthe-courtbriefs in the Bakke case. This is the largest numberin history. Everyone agrees that it is not a strong case, but itsdecision may affect countless numbers of Americans. ANewsweek article of September 26 said: "Federally enforcedequal-opportunity regulations touch the livelihood of at least25 million American" workers from steel mills to corporateboardrooms. They affect admissions procedures forhundreds of colleges and professional schools." The governmenthas submitted a brief signed not by the SolicitorGeneral, which is customary, but by Attorney General GriffinBell, underscoring its importance to the Carter Administration.An appendix to the Government's brief lists fifteen majorgovernment programs which might have to be changed ifBakke wins his case.. On the other hand, says an article inthe New York Times of October 16, "if the university winsthe case, it could mean an expansion of the government'sefforts to improve the lot of blacks and others by requiringbusinesses, colleges and other institutions to accept fixedstandards for employment and admissions." Fixed standards,of course, means numerical quotas.BEFORE THE COURTOn October 12, the Supreme Court heard arguments fromArchibald Cox, representing the University of California,Reynold H. Colvin, representing Allan Bakke, and SolictorGeneral Wade H. McCree, Jr., representing the UnitedStates as a friend of the court. Each of the opposing lawyerswas given 45 minutes to speak, arid the Solicitor Generalhad 15 minutes. Mr. Cox argued first, saying that althoughhe felt there was a danger that numerically based programsto help minorities "will give rise to some notion of groupentitlement to numbers, regardless either of the ability of theindividual or of ... [his or her] potential contribution tosociety," the important reality for the Court to consider isthat "there is no racially blind method of selection which willenroll today more than a trickle of minority students in thenation's colleges and professions."The Solicitor General presented oral arguments in favorof a brief which has been the subject of a great deal ofcontroversy, as it has been widely reported that a great dealof political pressure had been put on him by officials in theCarter administration to write a "political" statement stronglysupporting affirmative action. Mr. McCree, who is. himselfblack, presented arguments in favor of using race as onecriterion for admission to government programs, butcriticized numerical quotas and separate admissionsprocedures. The written brief urges the Supreme Court tosend the case back to California for reconsideration, but inhis oral arguments the Solicitor General "did not press thisrequest," according to the New York Times.Which side exerted the most pressure on the governmentdepends on who you read: Stephen Arons in SaturdayReview says: "A glimpse into the politics of Carter's decisioncomes from the experience of one cabinet member who attemptedto get the administration to support the university'sposition. On March 18 of this year, Secretary of Health,Education "and Welfare Joseph Califano told a New YorkTimes interviewer that his personal experience indicatedthat affirmative action was a successful tool for bringingqualified minority persons and women into government,private employment, and the schools that qualify people forsuch work. The follOwing week, President Carter was barragedwith letters from 44 nationally known educators, includingSidney Hook, Nathan Glazer, and Bruno Bettelheim.On April 1 Califano recanted, claiming error in advocatingthe use of quotas."But according to articles in Newsweek and the VillageVoice, the "well-orchestrated attack" on the Justice Departmentcame from leaders of the Congressional BlackCaucus, the NAACP, and administration officials committedto affirmative action.ODD POLITICAL ALIGNMENTSIt is clear that there are some powerful guns on both sides.Such periodicals as The New Republic, Saturday Review,The Nation, The New York Review of Books, National Review,The Atlantic, The Village Voice and Newsweek have allhad cover articles about the case. The AFL-CIO is split downthe middle about it; the American Federation of Teachershas a brief supporting Allan Bakke and five other unionshave signed a brief supporting the University of California.Huey Newton, the former Black Panther Party leader, hascome out strongly on the side of Allan Bakke; the NAACP ison the opposite side. The American Civil Liberties Unionsupports the University; the Anti-Defamation League ofB'nai Brith has filed a brief on the other side. The NewRepublic calls the government brief "a shoddy politicaldocument," and ran an article calling "race Certification"the logical next step." The November Atlantic, on the otherhand, has McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation,saying "the question presented is whether anyeducational institution whose admissions are selective mayconsider the race of any person as an affirmative element inqualification for entry. What is directly threatened is thenationwide effort to open our most selective educationalinstitutions to more than token numbers of those who arenot white."Although opposition to affirmative action has been considereda conservative position, the liberal New RepublicLibertarian Review21

and Village Voice are strongly opposing "reverse discrimination"with cogent arguments, while the conservativeNational Review ran on October 28 a favorable review of a1975 book by Archibald Cox, the University of California attorney,called The Courts vs. Self-Government The reviewer,Paul Connolly, says the book analyzes the only previouscase in which reverse discrimination was charged, the1974 DeFunis case, in terms of judicial restraint, suggestingthat the constitutional principle was unclear and so "thepeople, not the courts, should debate and legislate a decision."He quotes Cox as saying that it is better for theSupreme Court to "permit the state educational authoritiesto form. their several individual judgments concerning thebalance of educational and social advantage than to denythem freedom to attempt conscious remedies for past racialdiscrimination by the dominant whites." This, says Connolly,is an incisive definition of "the problems and concerns whichwill likely· be expressed in the Bakke hearing."Meanwhile, Marco DeFunis (whose suit against theseparate admissions policy for whites and minorities at theUniversity of Washington Law School was declared moot bythe Supreme Court because a state court had ordered thathe be admitted, and by the time the case reached the Courthe was about to graduate) is the author of the brief supportingBakke filed by Young Americans for Freedom. Theconservatives seem to be as split over the issues in the caseas are the liberals.JEWISH INTELLECTUALS AND QUOTASThe split among liberals seems to result in large part fromthe uneasiness that many liberal Jewish intellectuals have alwaysfelt about quotas, and the conflict which they feelbetween this and their role as leaders of the civil rights movement.In an article in The New Republic of October 15thcalled "The War Inside the Jews," Leonard Fein writes:American Jews have been worrying about affirmative action eversince its inception, for fear that somewhere in the inundation ofnews that was sure to follow, the dread word "quota" would appear....When Lyndon. Johnson said, back in 1965, that "we seek notjust ... equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact andequality as a result," organized Jewish response was enthusiastic inits endorsement. Back then, the enemy was still Bull Connor andthe redneck bigots. Those few Jews who hesitated, who were inclinedto wonder how an open society committed to the merit systemcould insure "equality as a result," were drowned out by themassed chorus singing "We Shall Overcome," and hoping. Now, adozen years later, any Jew who sides with the University of Californiain Bakke can find himself quite isolated from his coreligionists.Every Jewish organization that has filed an amicus briefin Bakke has come down on Allan Bakke's side, against theUniversity of California, against the 'use of race in the decisionmakingprocess of governmental agencies.' The American JewishCongress and American Jewish Committee (together with others)have filed a joint amicus brief asserting that the introduction ofracial quotas into public policies is "factually, educationally and ,psychologically unsound, legally and constitutionally erroneousand profoundly damaging to the fabric of American society."In short, a clear and uninhibited consensus apparently hasemerged among American Jews, and it is a consensus quite contraryto the spirit of inspiring alliance between Jews and other excludedminorities that came so sadly unglued in the late 1960's.Jews, like blacks, have come to see the Bakke case as absolutelycritical to the future of their groups and of the nation. But they seeit very differently.What are seen to be the issues? There is a strong argumentin favor of individual rights to be made on Bakke'sside, and it is being made by many of the liberals in the case.It is argued that rights belong to the individual, not thegroup; that the Constitution requires that state action becolor-blind; that preferring. disadvantaged members ofminority groups for admission to professional schools is ofdubious value to them as well as to everyone else, because itcasts doubt on the value of the degree that they may earn.Most strongly it is argued that we cannot make up for pastdiscrimination against one group by discriminating in thepresent against another. Probably lurking in the back ofmany people's minds is the fact that affirmative action ispressed on behalf of women as well as of blacks-if any sortof vaguely representative numerical quota is upheld by theSupreme Court, what argument can be given against futureproposals to have women represented in various professionsaccording to their presence in the population? Are lawschools 9nd medical schools to be required to enroll a majorityof female students? Will there be a call for 53 percentof Congress to be women, in order to accurately reflect theirpopulation distribution?On the other hand, it is argued that we must do somethingto recruit into profeSSional schools qualified and highlymotivated members of minorities that have been discriminatedagainst, even if they do not do as well as others ontests. Such tests, it is argued, are very poor predictors offuture success or failure in any event; studies such as BaneshHoffman's The Tyranny of Testing show us that theypenalize the exceptionally brilliant as much or more than thedull or uninformed. Why not have flexible standards for admissionto profeSSional schools which include many factors,including race?This seems to be one of the cases in which the federalgovernment is determined to expand its power no matterwhat. If Mr. Bakke wins his case, not only will state-rununiversities no longer be able to implement this kind ofaffirmative action program but, it is feared, neither Willprivate universities.PRWATE UNIVERSITIES AND GOVERNMENTPOWERColumbia, Harvard, and Stanford Universities have all filedbriefs supporting the University of California's program, presumablyfeeling that their own affirmative action programsare threatened. The brief of the Association of AmericanLaw Schools says if profeSSional schools "must forgo any22December 1977

consideration of race in making admissions decision," it willlead to "substantially all-white law schools."A possible rebuttal to this line of reasoning is containedin a New York Times article of October 25. It points out thatproblems have arisen when minority students with poor recordshave been admitted to law schools under a doublestandardadmissions policy, and says: "One result of thisdouble standard is that black graduates tend to fail the barexaminations at much higher rates than whites." It quotes ayoung black lawyer as saYing, "if you graduated from certainuniversities in certain years, your degree is suspect."tn any case, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteesequal protection in cases of action by the state. Why areprivate universities running scared? The answer is implied ina statement by Mr. Lawrence, who says in his article,"Medical students are among the most highly subsidized stu·dents in the nation, and the· present economies of medicaleducation make it impossible to provide an opportunity toeveryone who is qualified. The real issue, then, is how thisscarce resource should be allocated." (emphasis added)The real issue, in short, is that so much federal moneyseems to be going into higher education that it is all, publicand private, becoming an arm of the state. The Office· forCivil Rights (an agency of HEW) is already forcing the NewYork City school system to require black and Hispanicteachers to pick their new school assignments from one box,and white teachers, from another, under the threat of withholdingmillions of dollars of federal aid. Programs for universityfunding can be similarly affected.THE CWIL RIGHTS ACTAnd the Supreme Court seems to be leaning in the directionof deciding the Bakke case in terms of the Civil Rights Act,rather than on the constitutional issue. This is called a "narrow"decision, because the Civil Rights Act affects everyonewho engages in interstate commerce, while the FourteenthAmendment restricts the actions of those who can be shownto be acting as agents of government. Bakke's attorney listedthree grounds for the suit: the Equal Protection Clause ofthe Fourteenth Amendment, the "privileges and immunities"section of the California Constitution, and Title VI, 42U.S. Code 2000(d), which is the Civil Rights Act of 1964.On October 17th the Court ordered: "Each party to thiscause is directed to file within 30 days a supplemental briefdiscussing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as it appliesto this case."The Supreme Court of California affirmed a lower courtdecision that found the University of California had violatedboth Title VI and the Fourteenth Amendment ... but in affirmingthe decision, it ruled only on the constitutional question.Title VI says, "No person in the United States shall onthe ground of race, color, or national origin, be excludedfrom participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be sub-jected to discrimination under any program or activityreceiving federal financial assistance." Now that the U.S.Supreme Court has indicated an interest in deciding thecase on the basis of this legislation, we can perhaps look forwardto additional government programs to police the wayin which federal funds are used to implement federally mandatedaffirmative action. As Professor Herbert J. Gans ofColumbia University said to U. S. News and World Report,"A more egalitarian society inevitably requires more governmentregulation."Albert Shanker, President of the United Federation ofTeachers, has put it even more pessimistically. "The goal ofthe Washington bureaucrats," he wrote, "is not an integratedsociety but a totalitarian one."It looks as if whoever wins the Bakke case, it is the individualAmerican citizen, whatever his or her group, who isgoing to be the loser. But there may be a glimmer of hopeon the horizon.FEDERAL FUNDS AND AFFIRMATIVEACTIONIn sharp contrast to the attention being paid by the media tothe Bakke case is the routine journalistic speculation thathas greeted the announcement by medical school aftermedical school that it will give up federal funds rather thanallow government dictation of admissions policy in anotherarea. At stake is a different kind of quota: "departmentregulations that would set quotas for admission ofAmerican-born transfer students from medical schools outsidethe United States," as it was put in a brief account in theNew York Times.In a television news interview in late October, a spokesmanfor Northwestern University announced that it was thethirty-sixth medical school to turn down HEW's tuition assistancefunds rather than allow "a federal bureaucracy (to)select our students for us.""It is time," he said, "to get off the wagon."A late November New York Times story said that it isonly fourteen medical schools that are resisting and $11 million·that is at stake. No one seems to be taking notice of theconnection: that social policy as perceived in Washington isbeing forced as a standard on more and more Americaninstitutions. This trend is of course not limited to medicalschools.The Bakke issue seems clouded to many because it is aperfectly reasonable goal that we have more minority doctors,and no private institution should be barred from institutingany program it wishes to achieve such a goal. Aswas brought out in the questioning of Mr. Colvin by theSupreme Court, there is no "right of admission" to amedical school. Similarly, it may seem desirable to somemedical school's faculty to encourage transfers from medicalschools abroad. This does not imply that it is equallycontinued on page 26Libertarian Review23

AYN RAND AT··RANDOMBy Bennett CerfFrom AT RANDOM by Bennett CerfCopyright © 1977 by Random House, Inc.Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.Generally, editors find a publishing firm withwhich they and their authors are comfortable,. and stay with it for the rest of their working bves.Hiram Haydn was an exception. At the beginningof 1955 Hiram came to Random House as editor inchief. He had been at Crown Publishers before becomingthe New York editor of Babbs-Merrill, the Indianapolis firm,and I began hearing about his professional skill. I knew hewas the editor of The American Scholar, the Phi Beta Kappamagazine, was teaching a writing course at the New School,and had· under his wing a number of coming new writers, includingWilliam Styron. He had also written several bookshimself. When I heard that he was unhappy at Babbs-Merrill,we got in touch with him and signed him up.I admired Hiram-a wonderful fellow, although very exasperatingin some ways. He had a great passion for firstnovels that other people thought were terrible. There was noway to convince him he was wrong, because he loved tohelp young writers-especially girls. The time he wasted withyoung women whose books were obviously destined to sell9'18 copies! There was nothing we could do about it. He trulyhad us buffaloed!Hi":lm had been with us for about four years when wenegotiated a .new employment contract With him-somethingunusual for use, but he insisted on having one. Atabout that time I went to Jamaica in February, 1959, withMoss and Kitty Hart for vacation. When I came back Donaldtold me that Hiram wanted us to tear up his contract. I said,"What are you talking about?" He said, "Pat Knopf has hada fight with his father, and Pat and Mike Bessie and Hiramwant to start a new publishing house." When Hiram·came into discuss the matter, he said, quite logically, "You canunderstand this, Bennett. It's not that I'm leaving you to goto some other publisher, but that I want to go in for myself.You did it. You wanted to have your own firm." We had noalternative, sowe tore up the contract-reluctantly, becauseduring the four years he was at Random House he broughtus a number of authors we were very happy to have andwho remained with us after he left.AYNRANDThe first of these was Ayn Rand, whose The Fountainheadhad been published by Babbs-Merrill while Hiram wasthere. I had never met Ayn Rand, but I had heard of her philosophy,which I found absolutely horrifying. The Fountainheadis an absorbing story, nonetheless. She was verydubious about coming to Random House, she told Hiram,because her sycophants had told her that we were way overon the left and that she didn't belong with us. But this ratherintrigued her-being published by a liberalhol.lse ratherthan one where she would ordinarily be expected to go.Furthermore, she had heard about me--one of the extra24December 1917

dividends you get from being known. She had lunch withHiram, Donald and me at the Ambassador Hotel, nowunfortunately torn down, and asked us a lot of questions. Ifound myself liking her, though I had not expected to.She had piercing eyes that seem to look right throughyou and a wonderful way of pinning you to the wall. Youcan't make any loose statements to Ayn Rand; she hops onyou and says, "Let us examine your premises," I am likely toshoot off my mouth occasionally and make statements that Idon't quite mean or can't quite prove, and Ayn, again andagain, would nail me. We liked each other; that's the answer.She asked me an infinite number of questions. Later on,after she came to Random House, she showed me a chartshe had kept. She had visited about fifteen publishers, andwhen she got home she rated them on all the things theyhad said. I didn't realize, of course, that I was being examinedthis way, but I came out very high because I hadbeen absolutely honest with her. I had said, "I find yourpolitical philosophy abhorrent." Nobody else had dared tellher.this. I said, "If we publish you, Miss Rand, nobody is goingto try to censor you. You write anything you please, infiction at least, and we'll publish it, whether or not we approve."She was just finishing Atlas Shrugged, and by the timewe published it, we had an enormous advance sale. It washer first novel since The Fountainhead, and we printed ahundred thousand copies, knowing there would be tremendousinterest in it. Then the reviews came out. The criticswere hostile, as they always were to Ayn Rand, and the salewas badly crimped for a while. We thought it was going to bea failure, but the fact of the matter is: the book has gone onand on and on, through many printings, even in spite of itsavailability in paperback. Incidentally, the reprint madehistory. Atlas Shruggedwas very long, and there was no possibilityAyn would cut it. So for the first time its publisher,New American Library, dared to price a mass-market paperbackabove fifty cents-they priced it at ninety-five.At any rate, Ayn and I became good friends. What Iloved to do was trot her out for people who sneered at us forpublishing her. She would invariably charm them. For instance,Clifton Fadiman, who had snorted at the idea of ourpublishing Ayn Rand, sat talking with her until about three inthe morning. George Axelrod, author of The.Seven YearItch, toward the end of a long, long evening at Ayn's, disappearedwith her into another room and we couldn't get himto go home. Later he said, "She knows me better after fivehours than my analyst does after five years."Ayn is a remarkable woman, but in my opinion, she wasnot helped by her sycophants. She's like a movie queen withher retinue, or a prizefight champion who's followed by abunch of hangers-on, or a big crooner and his worshippers.They all come to need this adulation. These people tell hershe's a genius and agree with everything she says, and shegrows more and more opinionated 'as she goes along. YouAyn Randcan't argue with Ayn Rand. She's so clever at it, she makes afool out of you. Any time I start arguing with her, she'd trickme into making some crazy statement and then demolishme.ATIAS SHRUGGEDPhoto by Phyllis Cerf WagnerBut for some reason or another, Ayn liked me. She toldme that one of the characters she put into Atlas Shruggednear the end was inspired by me. She was determined tosave me, 'as she called it, because I was a very nice personwith a very good brain that I was wasting on all the worthlesscauses I believed in. She was trying to convert me to her wayof thinking; she didn't have a prayer, of course, but I did liketo hear her expound her cockeyed philosophy.A very peculiar thing happened early in our relationship-thefirst time Phyllis met her, Ayn came to our houseand said to Phyllis for openers, "We have met before." Phyllissaid, "Oh, Miss Rand, you must be mistaken." Ayn Randsaid, "We have met before." Phyllis said, "It's impossible. Icertainly would remember if I had met you." Ayn said, "No.You wouldn't. Do you remember when you were a babystarlet at RKO in the movies?" Phyllis said, "Yes." Ayn said,"I was working in the costume department there at twentyfivedollars a week, and I handed you several of your cos-Libertarian Review 25

tumes." Incredible, but true.Ayn's a very simple and modest woman. We were onour way to lunch in Radio City once, and as we passed oneof those junk shops with all kinds of statues and knickknacks,she saw a little blue bracelet in the window, and likea twelve-year-old girl, Ayn said, "Isn't that a beautifulbracelet!" So I went in and bought it for her. It cost exactlyone dollar, but she was· as happy as a child.~he's so brilliant at expounding her theories! When sheappeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, hehad planned to have her on for only a few moments, but heended by throwing out the rest of the program and even askingher to come back. He said that the mail he got from thatshow. was enormous. People react violently to her iconoclasticstatements. She's entirely against any religion. Shethinks that strong, utterly selfish people should prevail, andthat, in reality, two percent of the population is supportingthe other ninety-eight percent. She says, "That's all wrong.The two percent should really be the gods instead of beingreviled by the people they are supporting. Charity and all ofthis public welfare is the bunk." Atlas Shrugged is a storyabout capitalists who finally go on strike. They leave the industriesto labor and say, "All right, you run them." Thenatural result, according to Ayn, is that everything goespromptly to hell. There's a lot in what she says.Ayn believed that the critics were out to get her, and theyreally did tear her books apart. She wanted me to havereviewers fired or go to the Times and complain about them.I said, "I can't. If they gave your bookto another critic, you'dget the same kind of review, Ayn. Whether you like it or not,most people don't agree with your ideas and it's your ideasthey're attacking."Anyway, she began doing a series of articles for amagazine she and one of her disciples publish-The Objectivist.Ayn collected them to be done in book form, and I saidwe were happy to have a new book by her, but when somebodyat Random House read the manuscript-which I certainlywasn't going to do-'"-and found that one of the essayslikened John F. Kennedy to Hitler, saying that theirspeeches and objectives were basically the same, I read thepiece and absolutely hit the roof. I called her and said wewere not going to publish any book that claimed Hitler andJack Kennedy were alike. Ayn charged in and reminded methat I had said when she came to us that we would publishanything she wrote. I reminder her that I had said fiction. Isaid, "You can say anything you want in a novel, but thissomething I didn't foresee. All we ask is that you leave thisone essay out."Ayn was enraged. But as I said, arguing with her was likerunning your head against a stone wall. I remember whenAtlas Shrugged was being edited by Hiram Haydn. Thehero, John Galt, makes a speech that lasts about thirty-eightpages. All that he says in it has been said 'over and overalready in the book, but Hiram couldn't get her to cut aword. I very angrily said to him, "You're some editor. Sendher in to me. I'll fix it in no time." So when Ayn came in andsat down, looking at me with those piercing eyes, I said,"Ayn, nobody's going to read that. You've said it all three orfour times before, and it's thirty-odd pages long. You've gotto cut it." She looked at me calmly and said, "Would you cutthe Bible?" So I gave up.At any rate, dUring our final meeting about the book ofessays, she wouldn't stop harangUing. I kept telling her,"Ayn, I've got to go home.' (It was about six 0'clock andPhyllis and I were giving a dinner party that night.) As we leftthe building Ayn was still repeating that I had promised her Iwouldn't ever change her copy. I finally got into a taxicab,and she was still standing there on the sidewalk, talking.Finally she gave her ultimatum, "You're going to print everyword I've written-or I won't let you publish the book." Isaid, "That's that. Get yourself another publisher." I was adamantabout it. Imagine putting our imprint on such a book!Well, some other publisher took it. I must say, I don't thinkanybody ever read· those essays. I never heard one word ofcriticism, and I never even saw a review of the book. WhenKennedy was assassinated that fall, I wrote Ayn to ask if shedidn't agree now that she was wrong. She didn't agree at all.She said the assassination had nothing to do with what shehad to say. It didn't change her opinion one iota.I liked her and still do. I miss her. I thought she was oneof the most interesting authors we've ever had. Many peoplewho disapproved of a lot of the books we publish worshippedAyn Rand; and wherever I go lectUring, somebodyis sure to pop up and say, with adoration, "Tell me aboutAyn Rand." When she gave a talk at Harvard, the hall wasfull of students who came to hoot but stayed to applaud.They weren't convinced by her but they were impressed byher sincerity. This is a brilliant woman.THE BAKKE CASEcontinued from page 23desirable to have such policies set for political reasons, bygovernment officials.Also compounding the issue is the fact that the Universityof California is an arm of the state and therefore requiredby the Fourteenth Amendment (as private universitiesshould not be) to deal with people in a "raciallyneutral" manner, regardless of the social consequences.What can be done? Fourteen courageous medicalschools provide an answer. Let private universities refusefederal tuition goals and institute whatever racial policiesthey want. If they can do it over foreign transfers, they candb it over minorities.Bakke should win his case, and private universitiesshould open their eyes to the high price they pay for federalassistance.Our institutions are in danger of becoming hooked onthe most insidious narcotic of all-federal money. It is, indeed,time to get off the wagon.26December 1977

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A RIGHT-WING REUNION:The 1977 Convention of theYoung Americans for FreedomBy Tom G. PalmerT" ..h,e 1977 national convention of the right-wingyouth organization Young Americans for Freedommet recently in New York City, and in manyways it showed the direction the American rightwing is taking in these days. YAF is not what it was ten yearsago, yet it is still around, and occasionally manages to exertsome influence on the political scene. There are presentlyfar fewer YAFers than during the days of the Vietnam War,when thousands of students were signed up in campaignsagainst the violent excesses of the antiwar left, (even thoughtheir membership is up from 1975, due to the influx of newmembers and funds generated by the emotions of theReagan campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination.)Now, YAF is down to the hard core; probably no morethan 6,000 Americans belong to YAF-a large portion ofthese are non-active or adult associate members-and fewstates have active state organizations. Their major strengthseems to lie mainly in the Northeast (particularly in NewYork), and in the South.The pantheon of present YAF heroes prominentlyfeatures Ronald Reagan, YAF founder and National Revieweditor William Buckley (though even he has strayed fromthe path in his endorsements of decriminalization' of marijuanaand the Panama Canal treaty), South CarolinaSenator Strom Thurmond (presently orchestrating much of,the saber rattling over Panama), North Carolina SenatorJesse Helms, and rabble-rousing rightist Robert K. Dornan, arising star. The issues they like to talk about are the PanamaCanal, Communist slavery, East-West trade, and "free enterprise"(to be distinguished from the "free market"). Theyrepresent a good deal of the mainstay of the Americanright-maintaining a dYing tradition in league with the'thousandsof "little-old-ladies-in-tennis-shoes" who devotedlyskimp on meals so they can send a part of their monthlysocial security check to (check one): stop the canal giveaway;fight the Reds and Pinks who are taking over the campuses;elect Ronald Reagan; alert the public to the menaceof Communist invasion; stop America's moral decline.Approximately 450 delegates (and perhaps 150-200other members) gathered at the Statler Hilton Hotel in NewYork City from August 24th to 28th to prepare resolutions,elect new officers, lay plans for the future, and party. Theywere sporting buttons with such slogans as "Amy CarterSells Pink' Lemonade," "Register Commies-Not Guns,""Don't Ditch Our Canal," and "Speak Softly and Build theB-1." The turn-out was well in excess of their 1975 Chicagoconvention, where they were racked by internal dissension.At that convention, several state delegations were not seatedand nine members of their twenty-five member nationalboard boycotted, thus forfeiting their memberships. Iwent toNew York with another libertarian to set up a table for theYoung Libertarian Alliance, hoping to find some sparks oflibertarian sentiment that might be fanned into flames. Littledid I know how futile our efforts would be.I had once, many years ago, been an active YAFer andwas interested to see where they had gone and what theywere like. My own YAF involvement began while a freshmaninhigh school as chairman of the Edison-Fountain ValleyHigh School chapter in Orange County, California. Up Iclimbed, to chairman of the Orange County YAF Council,vice-chairman of CAL-YAF, treasurer of USC YAF, ExecutiveDirector of CAL-YAF, chairman of a U.S. Senatorialyouth campaign, and potential candidate for the nationalboard, of the nation's largest (read only) explicitly conservativeyouth group. My political baptism in YAF taught me agreat deal and, now that I have put a considerable distancebetween myself and the right, I look back on my experienceswith a certain fondness. My years in the Young Americansfor Freedom, before my switch to libertarianism, gave menumerous insights into the mind of the young conservativeand what makes him tick.'We arrived with a busload of YAFers from VirginiaWednesday afternoon and proceeded to set up out table ofpamphlets, books, banners, and the like. The next five dayswould certainly have to counted among the most depressingand boring of my life. Not only were most of the YAFers uninterestedin the free market, but I would not count the presentcrop among the intellectual cream of American stu-28December 1911

dents, either. Granted, the meeting was held in New York(the bulk of the delegates were New Yorkers), which most ofthe more intelligent YAFers assured me was their intellectual"black hole." The Southern YAFers were by and large betterversed in matters involving thought, but they were far outnumberedin a sea of knee-jerking right-wing New Yorkers.As soon as the table was up, and our flyers neatly arranged,we were accosted by the boisterous and stentorianhuckster lady in the next booth. She promptly attempted tosell us Japanese made "authentic Indian jewelry", buttonsproclaiming "Only a peanut would sell our canal" and"Reagan in '80", and "Official red-neck" tee shirts. The ladyhad set the tone for the next four days. Most of the rightwingerswho walked by would leaf through a flyer or two,espy a paragraph on victimless crimes or some such red flagand then shake their heads as they wandered off, leaving theflyer unread on the table. One bright looking LouisianaYAFer, in response to an invitation to help himself to any ofthe literature, responded that he had heard that some libertarianswere anarchists and, he sputtered, "they should notbe- tolerated in society." "Well," I responded, "no one everhurt himself by reading a flyer." To the contrary, he replied,he "wouldn't want to be corrupted by reading any libertarianliterature."The openly "Neanderthal" striplings were not the worst,however. There are few things I find more irritating than thesmug ideologue who volunteers that he is "basically a libertarian,but..." "But what?," I ask. Queers recruiting ourchildren, the Communists in (pick a country), bomb torrijosinto the Stone Age, militarize (it's the price you pay to live ina "free" society), etc, etc, ad nauseum. (Anita Bryant, whowas invited to address the meeting, declined, but her supporterswere there in force, many of them claiming to be"basically libertarians, but. ..").The average YAFer, grudgingly obligated by his nationalleaders to acknowledge support, for at least some deregulationand opposition to the minimum wage, dropseverything when the chance comes to support militarism.YAFers delight in heated arguments over military strategy (ifonly we had bombed the dikes!), the only outlet for cerebralexercise for many of them; and. one was subjected to onearmchair general after another in seemingly endless succession.How many times did I hear conservatives tell me shrillythat "they would be willing to die for Panama"? "But whatabout those of us who don't share your fervor for things military,"I ask, "would you contradict your position on the draftand call for conscription?" There's the rub. "Conservativesonly oppose conscription during peacetime, but not in timeof war'~ (like with Panama), they state.The speakers were often no better. Some of the lightlyattended panels covered topics like the minimum wage andgovernmental employment policies, but they were nothingcompared to Bob Dornan describing how he and his "littlewoman" pummeled and bloodied a "Communist" with a"Commie" flag who dared to wave it during our nation'scelebration of freedom. Ronald Reagan then proceeded todenounce the canal "giveaway." The right-wing attitude onthis subject might be summed up in the lead quip fromNational Review the following week (which was bandiedabout the convention), "they say the neutron bomb can wipeout tinhorn dictators without damaging canals."I also found out to what extent the new YAFers support"freedom." Free trade with unapproved nations was out, asthat "would allow the Commies to walk right in" (how thisposition was arrived at beats me). A motion to bring to thefloor a resolution calling for decriminalization of "privateusage" of marijuana was overwhelmingly defeated. Themembers of Ian Smith (!) YAF proposed a resolution callingfor recognition of Rhodesia and Transkei, on the groundsthat recognition did not necessarily imply approval of theYAF represents themainstay of theAmerican right,maintaining a dyingtradition.recognized nation's internal policies. But (horrors!) this principlewould require YAFers to call for de facto recognition ofRed China and Albania. The resolution which finally passed,in addition to calling for recognition of and trade with theracist regimes, praised South Africa and Rhodesia for their"unique solutions to their own unique problems"(apartheid), "recognized that white people had settled therebefore any Negro tribes," and claimed that "all of theeconomic and cultural progress was the result of a smallminority (Le. whites) within those nations." Besides callingfor recognition and trade (though clearly selectively applied,this is fully in accord with libertarian non-interventionism),the YAF cadets, in all their puffed-up sanctimoniousness,went on to call for aid to freedom-lOving Rhodesia in fightingoff Communist terrorists. Remember Ronald Reagan in1976 not ruling out commitment of American troops tosouthern Africa?I am reminded by all this of the 1975 Western regionalconvention of YAF which, in its assembled righteousnessand wisdom, called on April 12 for committing 500,000American troops to the defense of freedom-lOVing SouthVietnam. Viet Cong troops occupied Saigon three days later,on April 15. The main bone of contention among the·Western YAFers was whether or not to unleash nuclearweapons against the North Vietnamese people.This is a theme which is echoed throughout the right."Limited nuclear war," one hears, should be kept open as aUbertlJrlan Review29

policy option in brushfire wars. Herein, we find, lies thesource of their fervent support for right-wing social democratJames Schlesinger, noted proponent of the limitednuclear war viewpoint. Schlesinger openly opposes all of theold goals to which rightists give lip service: limited government,free enterprise, and the rest. But he does· share mostimportant views with YAF: foreign policy adventurism, supportfor the militarized economy of the warfare state, and ageneral penchant for what Harry Elmer Barnes called"globaloney".The convention had its better moments. One or two ofthe inevitable '50s parties were enjoyable and showed aglimmer of the old YAF-while the politics haven't changedmuch, certainly the members were more interesting at onetime. The real high point of the week, however, was savedfor Saturday night. Demonstrating that even wild-eyed warhawkshave a sense of humor, YAF sponsored a roast ofWilliam. Buckley. Among the roasters were Henry Kissinger,60 Minutes host Mike Wallace, American ConservativeUnion luminary Stan Evans, former YAF chairman DavidKeene, National Review publisher Bill Rusher, and Americansfor Democratic Action leading light Allard Lowenstein.The dinner opened with a bit of in-house right-winghumor-Keene's description of a sixty-seven year-old YAFersporting a day-glo orange leisure suit who accosted him inthe lobby with his fears about Kissinger and the CFR. Thiselicited peals of laughter from the group (you really have toknow something of the foibles of the right to appreciate thisanecdote fully), and set the stage for a hilarious tongue-incheek(and well-received) lampooning of the conservativemovement and its Godfather, Bill Buckley.Aside from this good-humored respite, the wholeconvention really drove home to me how far removed therank-and-file of YAF is from any authentic concern withliberty. War, militarism, repression of civil liberties, and outand-outstatism are clothed, not very artfully, under a superficiallyattractive cover of "freedom", "free enterprise", andopposition to oppressive socialism. Indeed, the slogan whichadorned the convention program and was draped behindthe podium boldly declared "Freedom Not Socialism."However, just what that freedom means to most YAFers issomething very different from what one might expect. In effect,theirs is simply socialism under a different name-thewar economy. Everything-lives, freedom, property-mustbe sacrificed to defeat the schemers in the Kremlin. Onesenses, however, that if the Kremlin were still run by AlexanderKerensky or his heirs, a new enemy would be foundand a new crusade launched. In any case, Young Americansfor Freedom and their fellow rightists are not simply ineffectualdefenders of freedom, as they are sometimes perceived.They are, in fact, among its most outspoken opponents.50 PERCEnT RETURnFor years, many investors have been earning a 50percent return on investments, and often much more.How do they do it? By investing in silver, gold,grains and the many other commodities traded on theinternational markets every day. Unfortunately, thefinancial and risk requirements for such ventures havebeen, until now, greater than most people could comfortablyhandle. And the successful investor has almostalways had years of experience in commodities, and the ,time to constantly monitor daily trading activity.But now, with the resources of a company with animpeccable 140-year international business record inworld commodities, SNW Commodities Ltd. gives theinvestor with limited venture capital the opportunity tonet extraordinary gains in commodity futures tradingwith a completely limited risk.The SNW Managed Account program has a performancerecord of consistently high profits. What's more,no SNW Managed Account has ever generated a margincall. Does this mean we can guarantee you will neverreceive a margin call? Yes, it does. We can and we do.In writing. We're that sure ofourprogram.For more information concerning this uniqueinvestment program, simply fill out and mail thefollowing coupon.~NW COMMODITIES LT~05U Northgate Drive, Suite 44';-S9n Rafael, California 94903MEMBERS:INTERNATIONAL COMMODITY CLEARING HOUSENEW YORK COMMODITY EXCHANGE (COMEX)NEW YORK SUGAR AND COFFEE EXCHANGESNEW YORK COCOA EXCHANGEGAFTA SOYBEAN MEAL FUTURES ASSOCIATIONUNITED TERMINAL SUGAR MARKET ASSOCIATIONLONDON COCOA TERMINAL MARKET ASSOCIATIONCOFFEE TERMINAL MARKET ASSOCIATION OF LONDONLONDON WOOL TERMINAL MARKET ASSOCIATIONLONDON G RAIN FUTURES MARKETLONDON RUBBER TERMINAL MARKET ASSOCIATIONALL PARIS COMMODITY EXCHANGES .OFFICES: London Paris Geneva Frankfurt KuwaitPlease send me a free copy of your booklet on"SNW MANAGED ACCOUNTS"Name_AddressCity- State Zip _Home Ph.------Business Ph.~---------------------~-_._-----------~30 December 1977__

The Nationalization of CultureBy John HospersThe Nationalization of Culture:The Development of State Subsidiesto the Arts in Great BritainBy Janet MinihanNew York University Press249 pp., $15This book was originally a doctoral dissertationwritten at Columbia University.Though completed in America, itdeals entirely with the history ofgovernment support of the arts in GreatBritain from 1800 to the present. Eachchapter deals with a decade or ageneration of British history, detailingthe measures (or lack of them) taken bythe British government during thatperiod in support of the various arts.As history, this book has considerableinterest for those who care aboutits subject. But the history seems to bethere always to prove a point, forwhich the entire book is a kind ofapologia: the thesis is that the artsflourish only when they are supportedby State subsidy, and without the helpof the State the arts tend to wither. Thepassage she quotes from the historianEdward Bulwer-Lytton (1833) couldwell be taken as the motto of the book:"If ever the people of this country shallbe convinced that a government shouldbe a providing government and not ayielding one.. .I apprehend that one ofthe first axioms we shall establish willbe this: whatever is meant for thebenefit of the people shall not be left tochance operation, but shall be administeredby the guardians of thenation."According to the author, it was onlyafter the British government sub-sidized music that British music cameinto its own (apparently she is referringto its public performance, not toits creation). Between World Wars Oneand Two, when the British governmentceased to subsidize British films,Britain's film industry fell into declineand gave way to Hollywood (which,she neglects to mention, was not subsidizedby the American government.)Whenever there is a period of artisticdecline in Britain, she hastens to assureis that this is because the Britishgovernment did not sufficiently subsidizethe arts during that time.Bu t this is the old fallacy of posthoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, thereforebecause of this). It is no more convincingthan saying that because I bowto the east every morning before sunrise,and every morning the sun rises,therefore the sun rises because I bow.Government support tapered off andBritish films declined, therefore thedecline must be attributed to lack ofgovernment support. What has to beproven is that if condition A had not existed,then condition B would not havefollowed it; and contrary-to-fact hypotheticalstatements, as every student ofphilosophy knows through grapplingwith them, are notoriously difficult toestablish.What would have happened if theState had not subsidized the arts is, ofcourse, an extremely "iffy" question;no one can claim to know for sure whatwould have happened. But it is at leastplausible to contend that since therehave always been many people in Britainwho were, and are, passionatelydevoted to the arts, some of themUPIMilton Friedman'8 Nobel Lecture, Page 34Photo copyrighted by Jill KrementzTom Wolfe, author of MAUVE GLOVES &MADMEN, CLU1TER & VINE, page 33Libertarian Review31

would have given voluntarily to thesupport of the arts if they had not beenprevented from doing so by Britain'sconfiscatory tax structure. How manygreat artists or promising geniusesmight such men of means have discoveredand 'nurtured if their choiceshad not been closed off by governmentpolicy?Haydn's musical career was sustainedthrough a long creative life byCount Esterhazy, out of the count's privatefortune; can one really be surethat the government committees incharge of subsidizing British art wouldhave recognized the genius of a Haydnas Esterhazy did, and supported him?And if they had, would this have beenbetter than having a private patron?The author, for her part thinks that thegovernment subsidy route is alwaysbetter because private patronagemakes the artist dependent on thepatron's whim: "Patronage, based as itwas on one man's whims and fancies,was no substitute for state encouragement".But even if patrons' choices arewhimsical (which they often are not),can the decisions of government committeesand councils be considered anyless so? Are members of such committeesable to recognize artistic potentialbetter than a Count Esterhazy?Nor is the crucial moral issue everdiscussed or even mentioned: whyshould everyone, including the cornershopkeeper who cares nothing aboutart but whose taxes are raised everytime there is an additional governmentsubsidy, be forced to pay for thetastes of others? Why is it better foreveryone to be forced to support thearts, including those who have no interestin them, than for those who canand wish to, to do it on theirown? Themoral issue of how the use of force· andthreat of force is justified, even for thealleged beneficiary's own good, isnever raised, nor is there any evidencein the text that the author isaware of the problem. She has readextensively in the literature of ideas inBritain, but there is no evidence thatshe has ever read Mill's On Liberty.Nor does the author appear to haveany knowledge of economic reality.Nothing dries up the springs of voluntaryfinancial support as much asgovernment intervention, with conse-quent high taxation, deficit spending,and inflation; but the author never considerswhat might have happened if theBritish taxes had not been so high. Byarguing for even more government supportnow (in a sinking British economy),she is implicitly arguing for stillmore taxation and inflation. Is thiswhat she wants? One cannot say, forshe appears to discern no· connectionbetween these things. For all one readsin this book, she may have the naivebelief that "government money" is likemanna falling from heaven, requiringno sacrifice from anyone. More probablyshe knows that "governmentmoney" must be extracted from everytaxpayer, but belior ann this book, shemay have the naive bent money" is likemanna falling from heaven, requiringno sacrifice from anyone. Moreprobably she knows that "governmentmoney" must be extracted from everytaxpayer, but believes that "it's worthit to make them pay, even if they don'twant it-after all it's for their owngood." She appears to be quite unacquaintedwith any arguments for afree market. It is not that she bringsthem up and tries to refuse them; shesimple never considers any freemarketalternative.Yet every libertarian knows that torequire public financing for one enterpriseafter another is a formula for disaster.Group A wants government supportfor its project, as do groups B, C,and D. While the tax burden is notmaterially increased by A or B alone,the cumulative effect of all of them isruinous. The history of increasedgovernment subsidy to the arts in Britain,which thz autto applauds withundisguised enthusiasm, becomes, asone reads page after page, a history inminiature of what has happened to theBritish economy today. But the author,blind to the most obvious economicfacts, demands more of the same.Though the book is a 1977 publication,she makes no mention at all of Britain'scurrent economic plight, muchless of the reasons for it.Professor Stuart Hampshire, in hisenthusiastic review of the book (NewYork Review of Books, May 13, -1977),takes great pains to argue that aestheticvalues are "objective". But these argumentsare irrelevant to his defense ofthe book's thesis (nor does he show an:>more awareness of economic considerationsthan does the author herself).From the fact, if it is a fact, thataesthetic values are in some senseobjective (which I would be preparedto defend elsewhere), it does not followthat they should be forcibly imposedon others via State intervention.Aesthetic perceptions are like truth: Amay be better than B, or A may be trueand B false, but you cannot convinceothers of this by forcing unwelcomeworks of art down their throats, orindoctrinating them with beliefs, howevertrue, without providing evidencefor them.Besides, even if aesthetic values areobjective, there is no guarantee thatanyone individual, say a member of agovernment committee deciding whicharts or artists to subsidize, correctlyapprehends this objective value in aparticular case. He may choose the"safe" mediocrity, thus increasing thetax load on the real but overlookedgenius. In any case, subsidy does notalways have its intended effect ofsecuring creative endeavor, even on itsrecipient: after Sibelius was subsidizedby the Finnish government, hiscreativity seemed to dry up. Securityoften has strange effects on its recipients.One aspect of the author's treatmentis especially worthy of note. Sheis mainly concerned with the visualarts, especially painting and architecture,though she briefly discussesalso music, film, radio, and television.She does not treat literature at all, exceptfor drama. But literature is thegreat and distinctive art-of Great Britainthrough the ages. The greatestartistic tradition in France is that ofpainting; the greatest artistic traditionin Germany is music; but the sublimeachievement of Britain is its literature,from Chaucer to the present, a longerunbroken tradition of great literary artthan any nation in any known culturehas yet produced. Novels, short stories,essays, poems-more outstanding examplesof each of these genres havecome from Britain than from any othercountry. Yet literature has hardly everbeen supported by the State in Britain;authors, unlike painters and sculptors,have always been "on their own". Is it32December 1977

coincidental that she fails to treat themost conspicuous and glaring exceptionto her own thesis?It is true that drama, which is oneform of literature, is supported indirectlyby the State in Britain, throughperformances of it, e.g. by the Old Vic.But the Old Vic specializes in the classics,staging more Shakespeare than allcontemporary dramatists put together.And Shakespeare, the greatest poetand dramatist of them all, never got apenny of State support. Queen ElizabethI, in whose reign Shakespearewrote, not only did not grant governmentsubsidies to dramatists in thegreatest period of drama in the world'shistory, but Elizabeth opened thegovernment treasury to almost nobody-noteven to the adventurers whosailed under the British flag, whoequipped their ships from their owncoffers, not even the colonists whospread the fame of Britain round theThe Mauve Decade RevisitedBy Jeff RiggenbachMauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutterand VineBy Tom WolfeFarrar, Straus and Giroux243 pp., $8.95At one point in his essay on "Pornoviolence"-numbereight in the seriesof twelve "stories, sketches and essays"which makes up this collection-TomWolfe invokes the Romandecadence, specific'ally the gaudy, terriblereign of Marcus Aurelius's sonCommodus, who "became jealous ofthe celebrity of the great gladiators ...took to the arena himself, with hissword, and began dispatching suitablyscreened cripples and hobbled fighters.Audience participation became sopopular that soon various illuminati ofthe Commodus set, various boys andgirls of the year, were out there, suitedup, gaily cutting a sequence of dwarfand feebles down to short ribs." Wolfeinvokes this historical nightmare as animage of what awaits our own culture.And whatever one may think of thatparticular prognostication, one has toworld, not even, to any great extent, themen who fought and conquered theSpanish Armada and ushered in thegreat Elizabethan period of ritishascendancy in trade, commerce, andartistic creativity. (See Rose WilderLane, The Discovery of Freedom, pp.33-4.) Miss Minihan begins herconsiderations with the year 1800; hadshe gone back further, she might havecome to grips with the greatest periodof artistic creativity in Britain's his-,tory, and the conditions of freedom andpersonal initiative that helped bring itinto being. Anyone who is tempted bythe idea that State support is essentialto the flourishing of the arts, shouldponder the great counter-example, theElizabethan age of drama, poetry, andmusic. If the greatest age of creativitywas initiated and" sustained in the absenceof State support, what conclusionshould we draw about the otherages?applaud Wolfe's acuity in picking outthe Roman decadence as the period inwhich to see our own prefigured. Decadence,according to Arthur Symons, ischaracterized in its practitioners by"an intense self-consciousness, a restlesscuriosity in research, an over-subtilizingrefinement upon refinement, aspiritual and moral perversity." Aperiod of decadence is a period inwhich ~stablished rules and conventions,the commonly accepted conceptionsof "how things simply are and arenot done, my dear," in art, in scholarshipand in life, are in disarray. Adecadent period is a period in whichauthority as such is in a state of decay,and individuals are going their ownways, making their own rules, runningtheir own lives. It is a period in whichthe Lifestyle is the magnum opus andprincipal concern of every modernself-so that individuals undertakeself-exploration with a restless, insatiablecuriosity, and form themselvesas they see fit, other people'sspiritual and moral values bedamned-so that every modern individualfollows Oscar Wilde (chief repre- ,sentative, with Arthur Symons, of anotherfamous decadent period, the1890s) in putting only his talent into hiswork, while reserving his genius (aword which means both "greatesttalent" and "distinctive character") forhis life. A decadent period is, in short,a period much like the one we are allliving in.And this is the thrust of Wolfe'slatest book-that the essence of our erais its diversity, the extent to whicheverybody is "doing his own thing." Inhis title essay, he examines the impulseto stylize one's life-the impulseto deck it out with all it needs to become(or, at any rate, to look; as integratedand meaningful as the life of awell-written fictional character-andthe gradual tendency to regard thoseneeds as literal necessities of life. In"The Man Who Always Peaked TooSoon"-a comic strip in the manner ofJules Feiffer (though if the two werecompared with due attention to theirexcellence with such cartoons, Feifferwould probably be said to work in themanner of Tom Wolfe)-he probes theplight of the cultural avant-gardist, theperson who is always ahead of thefashion in Lifestyles.In other pie~es, which might becalled essays in the literary criticism oflife, he explicates the symbolic significance,the meaning, the import, ofvarious Lifestyles and components ofLifestyles, considered in relation tocontemporary urban North Americanculture as a critic might consider imaginarylives in relation to the meaning ofan entire novel: hostage-taking, sexualfreedom, funky chic, advertising, andthe violence (mostly verbal) directed ateach other by drivers and pedestriansin crowded big city streets. In what isprobably the finest performance in thebook and certainly the best commentaryI've seen on the cultural significanceof the Vietnam War, he elaborateson the affinities battle has withsport and chivalry.And in the essay which really sumsup his thesis, "The Me Decade and theThird Great Awakening," Wolfe lays iton the line:The saga of the Me Decade begins with oneof those facts that are so big and so obvious... no one ever comments on them anyLibertarian Review33

more. Namely: the thirty year boom. Wartimespending in the United States in the1940s touched off a boom that has ...pumped money into every class level of thepopulation on a scale without parallel in anycountry in history.Even "in the city of Compton, California,it is possible for a family of fourat the very lowest class level, which isknown in America today as 'on welfare,'to draw an income of $8,000.00 ayear entirely from public sources. Thisis more than British newspaper columnistsand Italian factory foremen make,even allowing for differences in livingcosts.... the word 'proletarian' can nolonger be used in this country with astraight face." By the 1960s, "ordinarypeople in America were breaking offfrom conventional society, from family,neighborhood, and community, andcreating worlds of their own.... Thehippies were merely the most flamboyantexample ... Dope, sex, nudity,costumes and vocabulary became symbolsof defiance of bourgeois life." "...still others decided to go .. ..a11 the way... straight toward what has 'becomethe alchemical dream of the Me Decade.Friedman's Nobel LectureBy Richard EbelingInflation and Unemployment:The New Dimension of PoliticsBy Milton FriedmanInstitute of Economic Affairs36 pp., $2.75A Nobel lecture is usually seen by therecipient as an opportunity to sum uphis life's work and discuss its relevancefor problems facing his disciplineand society in general. MiltonFriedman is no exception to this rule.In this reprint of his 1976 MemorialLecture, Inflation and Unemployment:The New Dimension of Politics,Friedman presents, once again, his"positivist" methodology: sc~entificknowledge, he argues, is obtained bythe formation of a "tentative hypothesis"that is then tested againstempirical data, with the purpose ofweeding out poor theories and leavingthose that successfully produce quantitativepredictions of economic events.The old alchemical dream was changingbase metals into gold. The new alchemicaldream is: changing one's personality-remaking,remodeling, elevating, and polishingone's very self ... and observing,studying, and doti'ng on it. ... This had alwaysbeen an aristocratic luxury, confinedthroughout most of history to the life of thecourts, since only the very wealthiest classeshad the free time and the surplus income todwell upon the sweetest and vainest ofpastimes,When contemporary intellectualsconceive "modern man," Wolfe writes,"the picture is always of a creature uprootedby industrialism, packed togetherin cities with people he doesn'tknow, helpless against massive economicand political shifts ..."But once the dreary little bastards startedgetting money in the 1940s, they did anastonishing thing-they took their moneyand ran! They did something only aristocrats(and intellectuals and artists) weresupposed to do-they discovered andstarted doting on Me! They've created thegreatest age of individualism.in· Americanhistory! All rules are broken!. The prophetsare out of business!But not, thank Wolfe, the cultural critics.Practicing what he preaches, Friedmanconsiders. a number of hypothesesconcerning the relationshipbetween unemployment and inflationand then contrasts them with the "observedfacts." Friedman makes his nowfamous criticism of the Phillips Curvrrhypothesis-that an inverse relationshipexists between the rate of changein prices and unemployment. He arguesthat based on the "facts" a moreconvincing case can be made for theNatural Rate hypothesis--'-that there isa "natural" level of unemploymentdetermined by underlying factors suchas market frictions and institutionalrigidities, towards which the economicsystem gravitates.If the rate of monetary expansion isunanticipated, Friedman states, the initialresponse will be an inducementtowards greater output and employment.But as the market participantscome to anticipate the rate of pricechange, money wages and prices willbe bid up, the stimulus towards greateremployment and output will diminishand the employment rate will return toits "natural" level.He argues, further, that attemptedadjustments to high rates of price-inflationhave brought about a situation inwhich, even in the short-run, unemploymentcannot be reduced by priceincreases, hence "stagflation."Friedman's policy conclusion, ofcourse, is the "monetary rule." If themoney supply increases 20 per cent ayear, this will tend to raise the "pricelevel" by an equivalent amount. Withthis knowledge, wages and prices couldbe accordingly marked up in anticipa- ,tion of the price change and economicdistortions would be minimized.Now, in fact, the relevant decisionsmarket participants must make pertainnot to changes in the "price level"but, instead, relate to the various relativeprices that enter into productionand consumption choices. Monetary increaseshave their peculiar distortiveeffects precisely because they do notaffect all prices simultaneously. Increasesin the money supply enter intothe system as larger cash balances heldby particular individuals. How theyspend their additional money will affectsome prices before others and,therefore, change the relative profitabilityof producing alternative goods inthe market. These .monetarily-inducedchanges in relative prices will distortthe distribution of resources and laboramong sectors of the economy. Employmentopportunities will initially increasein certain types of jobs. But unlessthe monetary expansion is continuedand increased, it \tvill eventuallybecome obvious that these jobs havebeen made profitable through monetarymanipulation, not because of consumerpreferences. At this point in theprocess, workers drawn into these activitieswill face unemployment.What keeps Friedman from seeingthis alternative method of analysis ishis insistence on data that is statisticallymeasurable and observable.But this means his analysis must tendto run in terms of aggregates andaverages that submerge the individualchoices and decision-making that makeup the necessary links in market activity.34December 1977

This inclination of Friedman'scomes from his "positivist" method.Knowledge in economics, however, isnot obtained by postulating "tentativehypotheses"; these are only necessarywhen the causes of events are unknown.In economics, our knowledge isgained through understanding the logicalchoice process of acting individuals.By downplaying this uniquecharacteristic of the social sciences,Friedman is, in fact, acting in a highlyunscientific manner. A good antidotewould be for Professor Friedman toread Professor Hayek's Nobel Lecture,"The Pretense of Knowledge," reprintedin Full Employment at AnyPrice?, also published by lEA.HENDERSONcontinued from page 9pital case. In this case some womenthrown out of work by the District ofColumbia minimum wage law sued toenjoin enforcement on the grounds thatthe minimum wage violated the dueprocess clause of the Fifth Amendment.The Court overturned'the law ina 5-3 decision and their reasoning isworth repeating:The right to contract about one's affairs ispart of the liberty of the individual protectedby the Fifth Amendment. There is nosuch thing as absolute freedom of contract,but freedom is the rule and restraint is theexception. The statute in question issimplya price-fixing law forbidding two parties tocontract in respect to the price for whichone shall render service to the other.The price fixed by the board has no relationto the capacity and e~lrningpower of theemployee, the number of hours worked, thecharacter of the place or the circumstancesor surroundings involved, but is based solelyonthe presumption of what is necessaryto provide a living for a woman and preserveher health and morals.The law considers the necessities of oneparty only. It ignores the necessities of theemployer by not considering whether theemploye~ is capable of earning the sum. Ifthe police power of a state may justify thefixing of a minimum wage, it may later beinvoked to justify a maximum wage, whichis power widened to a dangerous degree. Touphold individual freedom is not to strikedown the common good, but to further it bythe prevention of arbitrary restraint uponthe liberty of its members.NowAvaIlable:Adam Smith:The Man and His WorksBy E. G. West1776 was a year of momentous events, including publication of The Wealthof Nations-the book that launched the movement for economic liberty.Here is a brisk look at the author of that epic, written for the layman andstudent. Hardcover $6.95, Paperback $1.45.The Wisdom of Adam SmithAdam Smith may have been the first great economist, but he was nodismal scientist. He was instead a man of great philosophical and historicallearning, and his literary style was widely admired. The Wisdom of AdamSmith brings together his most incisive and eloquent observations on subjectsranging from political and economic history to morals, philosophy, art,education, war and the American colonies. Compiled by British scriptwriterand playwright John Haggarty, edited and with an introduction by BenjaminA. Rogge. Hardcover $7.95, Paperback $1.95.The Theory of Moral SentimentsBy Adam SmithAdam Smith's first book will startle those who think capitalists are purelyselfish, for Smith fully understood that liberty must be based in a moralorder. Dr. E. G. West, who writes the introduction, asserts that /lif The Wealthof Nations had never been written, this previous work would have earnedfor him a prominent place in intellectual history." The Theory of MoralSentiments was greeted with rapturous praise in its own day. Smith's friendDavid Hume wrote to him from London soon after the publication, tellinghim that lithe public seem disposed to applaud it extremely./I The /lmob ofliterati," Hume added, IIare beginning to be very loud in its praise."Hardcover $9.95, Softcover $2.95.Llberty~ssLIDer~SlCSWe pay postage on prepaid orders.To order these books, or for a copyof our catalog, write:LibertyPress/LibertyClassies7440 North Shadeland, Dept. F3Indianapolis, Indiana 46250Libertarian Review35

LETIERScontinued from page 2form of hysteria. But from a demonstrationof the dismal performance ofmany intellectuals, one can concludenothing about the subject under discussion.We were careful to point thisout in the article in question.To sort out Rothbard's muddleswould be a lengthy, tedious and unrewardingtask, as this typical exampleillustrates. I hope that the Review willtry to attain somewhat higher intellectualstandards.-Noam Chomsky,Department of Linguistics and Philosophy,Massachusetts Institute of Technology,Cambridge, Massachusetts.Murray Rothbard Replies: ProfessorChomsky's lengthy letter hinges on amisreading of a reference of mine tohis and Herman's article in the Nation.When I wrote that his arti-cle"brusquely dismiss (ed)" "such statements"of Cambodian officials simplybecause they were reported in the Thaipress, the linguist Chomsky triumphantlychanges this to "the statement"and preceeds to refute somethingI never said. In fact, later in hisletter Chomsky admits that he believesthat the basis for Lacouture'scharges "disappears" simply because aThai reporter is quoting a statementmade to him by a Cambodian official.If this is not "brusque dismissal," whatis?Indeed, the Chomsky-Herman articleis itself a fascinating exercise inpropaganda. In addition to dismissingthe Thai reporter, Chomsky and Hermandismiss accounts of Cambodianrefugees as "at best second-hand."Apart from a striking callousnesstoward the victims of terror, onewonders how we can get more firsthandaccounts of a country which hasbeen tightly sealed off from the outsideworld by its rulers. There is alsothe Chomsky-Herman statement thatCambodian executions "have numberedat most.in the thousands", the"at most" striking a piquant note remi- .niscent of Stalinist apologetics of the1930's. At one point, ChomskyHermanseem to admit "much brutal practice."It would be nice to hear from Chomskywhat evidence has convinced him ofbrutal practice in Cambodia. Ofcourse, Chomsky fails to recognize thatthe brutal practice "in working foregalitarian goals" might have hadsomething to do with those very goals.Furthermore, stress on executionsalone ignores the fact that the greatpart of the deaths in Cambodia haveoccurred as a corollary to the "forcedlabor without respite", the deprivations,and the horrors of a populationthrown un'prepared into a rural worldby the terror of the regime. (See R-P.Paringaux, "Evades du Cambodge," LeMonde, Sept. 8-14, 1977).Chomsky-Herman's methods ofreporting may be gauged by theirreference to the interview held byCambodian leader Khieu Samphanwith the Italian weekly FamigliaCristiano. After stating that Samphanconcedes a million deaths during thewar, they assert that "nowhere in itdoes Khieu Samphan suggest that themillion post-war deaths were a resultof official policies... " And yet, the reportof the interview in Barron andPaul's Murder of a Gentle Land says asfollows: the Italian correspondent: "If1 million persons died in the fighting,what happened to the remaining 1 million?"To which Samphan replied: "It'sincred i b Ie how con cerne d youWesterners are about war criminals."But the major problem withChomsky is that, by concentrating onthe minutiae of reporting, Chomsky almostwilfully refuses to sse the forestfor the trees: namely, the reports ofthousands of refugees which reveal theCambodian regime as one of unparallelledbrutality and mass murder.To quibble about precisely how manypeople have been killed is to return tothe old Stalinist quibble about exactlyhow many verifiable Russians havebeen murdered or placed in Gulags, orindeed the equivalent of apologists forthe current Chilean regime quibblingabout the exact number· of Chileanstortured by the government. Furthermore,it is to use that numbers gameaboutnumbers impossible anyway toverify in a tightly closed society-to tryto cast doubt on the reality of the massbrutality itself.Since writing my article, evidenceof the horrors of the Cambodian regimehas continued to pile up andintensigy. We have learned of suchmonstrosities as the systematic murderof sick people (who are, after all,drains upon socialfesources in asocialist country) and the deathpenalty for more than two examples ofdisobeying the authorities. Much ofwhat we have learned comes fromsources (e .g. the For Eastern EconomicReview) which even Chomsky andHerman hail as providing "analyses byhighly qualified specialists who havestudied the full range of evidenceavailable." Thus, we find that, in thenew Cambodia, "The charge of being'old dandruff' is the most dreaded thatcan be thrown at anyone, meaning thatperson suffers from 'memory sickness'or a tendency to dreamof things pastfor which the peanlty can be death."(Donald Wise, "Eradicating the 'OldDandruff' ", Far Eastern Economic Review,Sept. 23, 1977, p. 33. For a widepolitical spectrum of articles withsimilar reports, see Nayan Chanda,"The Pieces Begin to Fit," Far EasternEconomic Review, Oct. 21, 1977;Stephane Groueff, "The Nation asConcentration Camp," National Review,Sept. 2, 1977; Henry Kamm, "RefugeesDepict Cambodia as Grim,Work-Gang Land," New York Times,Oct. 31, 1977; Barry Kramer, "AsianBlood Bath," Wall St. Journal, Oct. 19,1977; "Cambodi(,ln Regime Breaks OfficialSilence," Intercontinental Press,Oct. 17, 1977.)It seems to me that the issue isclear: that no one can qualify as in anysense a libertarian who fails to react inhorror at the Cambodian regime.Another disturbing point aboutChomsky's letter is his total evasion ofthe central thrust of my article, onewhich he brusquely dismisses as "hysteria."That point was to demonstratethat socialism, necessarily denying as itdoes private property in the means ofproduction, must result in a dictatorialand tyrrannical regime. Cambodia, onwhich Chomsky showers exclusiveattention, is but the latest of a chilli!1_garray of twentieth century examples.-MurrayN. Rothbard, CATO Institute,San Francisco, California.36December 1911

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Libertarian Review 39

Announcingthe libertarian movement'sfirst magazine of events.Announcing the new L~bertarianReview.What makes a political movementsuccessful?Many things, of course, but successfulpolitical movements have one thingin common: each has its independent.respected publication devoted to eventsand issues.Now the, libertarian movement hassuch a publication: the new LibertarianReview.The story behind the new LR.Thelibertarian movement desperatelyneeded a publication focused onevents. A magazine that would subjectnational and international developmentsto careful, probing libertariananalysis.The new LR will be precisely that. Itwill be a magazine that consistentlycomes to grips with the key issues ofourtime. A magazine willing tofight for individualliberty.A magazine that servesas a forum for lively debate, thoughtfulcommentary, fresh ideas, and occasionalwhimsy.What you'. find In our pages.Of course, LR will continue to providefirst-rate coverage of the libertarianmovement itself. Our pages willcontain colorful, on-the-scene reportsof its activities, its organizations, itsstrategies and its people.But the new LR will be far more thanjust another "movement" publication.By systematically translating principlesinto'practice, we will bring libertarianismtothe real world, and the real worldto libertarianism.This editorial philosophy, this animatingspirit, is reflected in the issueyou're reading right now. In timely, reievantarticles. In the'columns and de- iGet in on the excitement­partments. In our new format with itssharp, modern graphics.As for coming issues, you can look from the beginning.forward to provocative essays on thesupression of political ideas in Amer- The new LR will soon be in the foreica,the decline of New York City, por- front of the most exciting intellectualnographyand the law, American for- political movement'in two centuries. Aseign policy, the "energy crisis," the the first and only libertarian magazinelibertarian movement and many more. of events, we'll be shaking things upPlus regular columns and features like issue after issue-both inside and out­"Crosscurrents" and "Washington side the libertarian movement.Watch," hard-hitting editorials, and Here's your invitation to get in on thecrisp, in-depth reviews ofbooks and the action-by becoming a charter subarts.scriber to the new Libertarian Review.LR will continue to boast a roster of (Already a subscriber? Then renewcontributors that includes the top now, so you'll be sure not to miss a singnamesof libertarianism. People like gle thought-provoking issue.) SubscribeMurray N. Rothbard, Roger MacBride, now and get 12 monthly issues for SIS.Ralph Raico, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Your satisfaction is guaranteed. If weWalter Grinder and Earl Ravenal and ever let you down, just tell us and we'llmany others.send you a prompt refund for the bal-As always, LR guarantees to aggra- ance ofyour subscription.vate, stimulate and infuriate. It will The new Libertarian Review will beraise questions you've wondered about charting the course of America's sec­'for years-and some you'd never dream ond libertarian revolution. Don't getof considering. It may challenge many left behind. Join us today.of your most firmly held beliefs. But- After all, the debut of the first tiberandthis is a promise-it will never bore tarian magazine of events is somethingyou.ofan event in itself.n.........Io.of'olltlc.ll_I._ric.a, " ...r llIecarl_.-------------------------------• Libertarian Review. Inc.Use this coupon to subscribe or renew./fyou prefer not to cut the page. please supply thefollowing informationon a plain sheet ofpaper. Include your old mailing label ifyou are renewing your subscription.• 200 Park Avenue South, Suite 1707, New York, N.Y. 10003·t···...., .". ; Yes! I want to be in on all the excitement of the libertarian •,ibt·~.'r.h'RRt·'·it·,,· movement's first magazine ofevents. Io Start my subscription (12 monthly issues) to the new LR today. i •~ 0 Renew my present subscription for another 12 monthly issues. •;~.\,.:,. Enclosed is my check or money order for S15. I understand that I :- have the right to cancel my subscription at any time and .receive a$:::=.,................ _- ....,..,. full refund for all undelivered issues. I::::r::'::'.:.-_u Name •~~_I:==-. ~,.' Address I-,-----. City State Zip , 9 I~-------------------------------------'----'------_..I•