All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and now we're going to continue on, I think a little bit with one of those themes we were discussing with Lou Rockwell just now, uh, with our next guest, Gary Chartier, uh, from Riverside, California.
He's an associate professor of law and business ethics at La Sierra university and calls himself a left wing market anarchist.
His blog is at liberallaw.blogspot.com and his book is called the conscious of an anarchist.
Welcome to the show, Gary.
How are you doing?
Great, Scott.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I'm very happy to talk to you.
So, um, libertarianism is the rich white man's anarchy.
Uh, if, if you're for market anarchy, then you think that all poor and disadvantaged people should die in the streets and how come you hate everybody so much, why are you so far to the right of Dick Cheney?
Yeah, that is a familiar story.
It's a, it's definitely a piece of rhetoric we hear all the time.
And, uh, I guess what I, and, uh, some of my friends at the center for a stable society keep trying to emphasize is that the state is not the source of protection for vulnerable people, uh, against economic elites.
The state is the principal tool of economic elites that's used to extract wealth from ordinary people and redistribute it upward.
Okay.
But well, forget the ordinary people.
Cause the politicians always say middle-class this and middle-class that.
What about people who are barely making it at all or aren't making it at all?
Well, the state does a hell of a lot to make and keep them poor.
It denies them opportunities to smart and start small businesses.
It denies them opportunities to seek alternatives to, uh, to low wage employment, uh, by raising the cost of, uh, uh, starting businesses, raising the cost of maintaining them through business license fees, through occupational licensure and all range of other things that definitely don't work to their advantage.
So now, uh, you and Roderick Long and, um, my next guest actually, Sheldon Richmond, you guys don't like the word capitalism and you don't like the idea that libertarian, you know, as people try to spin it all the time, of course, that libertarianism is a right-wing conservative phenomenon at all.
And in fact, you guys really kind of fight with the more right-wing libertarians sometimes, no?
Yeah, that is sometimes true.
And I don't want to get sidetracked, I guess, uh, via a conversation about, uh, uh, the meaning of the word capitalism.
But I do really think that, uh, the history shows that the state is the ally of the corporate elite and it's definitely not, uh, the friend of those who are trying to, uh, escape from, uh, from economic pressure, rather it's, it's really a source of, uh, problems, both for middle class and for working class and, uh, and poor people.
And, uh, we'd like to highlight that.
Uh, we frankly think that the rhetoric that's used, uh, very often to defend free markets, uh, tends to, uh, turn very often into rhetoric that's, uh, really defending the corporate status quo.
And, uh, we'd like to challenge that.
Yeah.
You know, uh, Brian Doherty's book on the history of libertarianism was called radicals for capitalism, not conservatives for getting high.
Absolutely.
It's a great book.
And, but I mean, that, that part of it tells a lot of the story.
And of course, um, I've been, uh, I always do promote, uh, because of course it's anti-war radio.
So a lot of my audience is, uh, you know, more left leaning.
And so I always try to recommend, uh, Rothbard's essay from what?
1965 or something, uh, left and right, the prospects for liberty, where he defines libertarianism as all the way to the left, that's where individualist anarchy and property rights and pure enlightenment ism, uh, in practice exists and that to him, any move towards socialism or what we now call just regular liberalism in America is really, um, moving to the right that's conservatism, that's, uh, you know, the middle of the road to fascism.
Absolutely.
I think, uh, the, uh, message has to get out repeatedly that while on the statist left may genuinely think, I don't want to pretend to gauge their motives that they're sticking up for the interests of middle-class and working class and poor people, uh, very often what they're doing is playing into the, and those who want to use the state to redistribute wealth upward, uh, through privilege.
And, uh, uh, really, uh, that, uh, that statist, uh, statist left movement is in a kind of unfortunate, uh, awkward middle ground where it's using, uh, very often the rhetoric of freedom, uh, but using that rhetoric to support, uh, support moves that are, uh, uh, very much opposed to the underlying goals that it claims to endorse.
Well, now, you know, I can only play devil's advocate so well, cause I'm not a liberal, you know, modern day definition of a liberal, but, um, I think probably they would say that the natural state of capitalism in a law's high fare system is that wealth is transferred up and up and up.
And if you don't use the government to, you know, progressive taxation, et cetera, to force some of that money to redistribute it down, uh, you know, demand side economics and all that Barack Obama is going to take good care of you kind of economics that the only other alternative to that is this ridiculous trickle down theory.
Where if only the billionaires or even richer billionaires, then finally, maybe we'll get a raise someday or something like that.
Now you don't believe that, do you?
No, I sure don't.
I think in fact, the evidence is that the billionaires are precisely the folks who need very often the help of the government.
If we look at the history of, um, American political economy during the past, say 120 years, what we see is that competition at the end of the 19th century was dramatically undermining, uh, profit margins.
Uh, competition was intense and stiff, and it wasn't enabling, uh, the wealthy and well-connected to do better and better.
So what did they do?
They went to the government to demand assistance in promoting, uh, what were in fact, deliberately anti-competitive measures, uh, that, uh, safeguard their profits and therefore screwed consumers.
Uh, the, uh, the consumer is not, uh, uh, not waiting for, uh, it shouldn't be waiting for the assistance of, uh, the corporate state, uh, to assist them, the evidence for American history is the corporate state, uh, is, uh, precisely there to screw the consumer to redistribute wealth into pockets of the well-connected.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
I think that the constitution was a right-wing fascist counter-revolution backlash.
Uh, you know, this reactionary effort, they use the Shays' Rebellion, which was their 9-11 excuse of the day to ram through their Patriot Act.
And to empower basically the people who were already the richest at the expense of everybody else.
Completely agree.
And, you know, it's hard to swallow that kind of thing when you're new to it.
Cause I remember, uh, you know, it was hard for me.
I had to, uh, I, I was a cold war revisionist and then I was a world war one revisionist.
It was really hard for me to get over my indoctrination into the glories of world war two and, and, and pretty hard.
Well, not quite as hard, but still pretty hard for me to get over all my indoctrination of the glories of the civil war too, and the greatness of all this nationalism.
I mean, after all, I mean, the, the way, roughly paraphrasing my seventh grade teacher, it's a democracy and the people have decided along the way that, you know, these other ways of doing it didn't work.
And so they made it this way on purpose.
So what do you have to complain about?
You're nobody's really smarter than the collective wisdom of all these people in their votes over all these years.
This is the way it's supposed to be Gary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I definitely heard that story, a story for a long time, Scott.
I guess I just think, uh, the evidence suggests and the arguments show that when theoretically democratic political structures are employed to make decisions, their primary purpose is to mask the fact that, uh, uh, to give, uh, legitimacy to, uh, the mischief of the elite.
And, uh, so what we notice in American politics is we have putatively democratic elections and the people supposed to decide, and what happens instead is that we shift between various factions of the war party, uh, various factions of the economic elite, uh, one takes over the public gets tired of that.
If the public were to, uh, really start to notice what was going on, uh, that might create some legitimacy problems for the establishment.
So what happens of course, is we shift in somebody from the other faction and, uh, and tweedle dumb and tweedle D just keep, uh, uh, keep their ridiculous dance going.
Uh, well, it really is like Robert Higgs ratchet effect too, where even when somebody is elected to come in specifically, the mandate is to undo what the last guy did.
They never do.
Absolutely not.
I mean, you know, I'm sorry.
We're gonna have to hold it right there, Gary, and take this break.
Uh, but we'll be right back with Gary Chartier.
He's a professor in Southern California and he's the author of the book conscience of a con of an anarchist.
I'm sorry.
I almost called you a conservative there.
That would have been all right.
All right.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm talking with Gary Chartier, author of conscience of an anarchist and a self-described left.
Libertarian market anarchist.
Um, but so, uh, what defines the left is opposition to property rights.
I forget where, what we were talking about before the break.
So I'm picking up here.
Um, uh, property is theft.
You're keeping things from everyone else.
You're the aggressor, not me trying to take it from you.
How do you like that?
Well, you know, I think, I think that all that's just, it's just a piece of silly rhetoric.
Finally, I think that property rights can be tremendous sources of empowerment for those who have them and for those who trade with those who have them.
The question is, are they fundamentally just are the, are the acquisitions of people engaged in fundamentally just we're looking at a society right now in which tremendous quantities of property are in people's hands because of transfers by the state from everything from a eminent domain to engrossment in colonial era times, uh, that, uh, have resulted in their transfer to a well connected elite.
You know, we think about the fact, for instance, that, uh, uh, the continental Congress simply handed George Washington a couple of hundred thousand acres, uh, after the revolutionary war simply drew lines on a map and said, general, this is yours.
Uh, the official story was that most of this was supposed to go to, uh, the, uh, uh, soldiers in the revolutionary army.
But in fact, 80,000 of those acres, I believe went straight to Washington himself and, uh, most of the others were handed out to, uh, uh, people who were, uh, his cronies, people who had been, uh, yeah, on his staff during the war and so forth.
So it's easy when you look at the distribution of property, the results from that kind of development, uh, to think, uh, wow, the problem is property.
But no, the problem is the political, uh, distribution of property, uh, to well-connected elite.
Similarly, think about the way in which, uh, the military industrial complex siphons tax money, uh, from ordinary people's pockets into, uh, those companies that, uh, are responsible for death and destruction around the world.
And at the same time for fattening the, uh, fattening the wallets of the most well-connected, uh, you know, uh, industry probably in, uh, in the country.
So, uh, it's not property that the issue here, the issue here is how force is used to redistribute wealth upward.
Uh, so property rights then, uh, if they're, uh, understood uncritically might be seen as somehow, uh, safeguarding the results of that, uh, that maldistribution, but in fact, a little property rights system is going to see those people, uh, as thieves and, uh, see them in fact, as agents of the state, uh, not as people, uh, adjust property rights system ought to protect.
Well, you know, in a way it's, uh, and I guess this is why, uh, you and I are both anarchists to have a state at all, basically is communism from each, according to his ability to each, according to his security needs at the absolute minimum, you know, supposedly they claim a monopoly on the right to be the security force.
And, um, all those rich white property owners all have the benefit of forcing poor people to pay for their security guards all day long.
I mean, uh, uh, actual communist has a good point complaining about that.
Doesn't he?
That you don't have to secure their own property.
They could be an absentee landlord for decades and, and the local sheriff will keep squatters off.
Right.
And this is the story, not just of individual property owners.
It's the story of the U S empire, you know, which very often serves to shift the cost of, uh, you know, opening up markets, uh, dealing with piracy, whatever, uh, from business owners onto, uh, onto the American taxpayer, you know, Theodore Roosevelt, a great progressive hero, uh, turns out to be a guy who really, uh, saw military opportunities for military action under every Bush and, uh, very much was interested in using, uh, the U S military to, uh, open up a world, uh, for American dominance, uh, that clearly, uh, was going to be very beneficial to the well-connected businesses of his day.
Uh, and that's a story that gets played out, uh, today, obviously in, uh, uh, the, uh, the world of, uh, Halliburton and, uh, and Blackwater making a bucket loads of money on Iraq.
It's the story of Barack Obama enthusiastically, uh, continue, uh, the, uh, imperialism of his predecessors and in so doing providing a range of benefits to a well-connected American businesses.
Okay.
Now, you know, speaking of Theodore Roosevelt, of course, that was the subject of Barack Obama's speech last week, where he went through the litany.
Uh, we've all heard a million times about how laws, I fair causes all problems and government is the solution to them all.
And of course he's invoking Theodore Roosevelt the whole time and, uh, talking about busting trust, which is pretty funny coming from Barack Obama.
But anyway, um, uh, I'm trying to think of like the most credible point he made probably was about education and how, you know, it used to be only very rich people could afford education and, uh, you know, higher education.
And now you could really be the son or daughter of a couple of people in a real bad situation who have no means whatsoever, and the government can help you go even to grad school and get an advanced specialized degree and advance your own life into six digit, uh, incomes and the advancement of all mankind with the great research you're doing and government is given that helping hand.
And, and Gary would prefer we live in a world where only born millionaires get to go to college.
Well, you know, the story here is complicated, but one thing I'd say is that the involvement of, uh, the government in the higher education business, and this is something that I obviously as a professor benefit from to one degree or another, but the presence of, of government funds here, uh, is not obviously improving, uh, the wellbeing of ordinary people so much as it is shifting money into the higher education industry and frankly, making it easier for credentialism, uh, to, uh, to be an inescapable feature of our lives so that somebody with less education has fewer job opportunities now than he or she once had with the presence of government money in the education industry, uh, expectations regarding credentials go up, the cost of higher education goes up, uh, and, uh, uh, really there are some perverse effects here as such that, uh, the people's opportunities are limited, uh, as a result of this, uh, uh, this government involvement in higher education without self-evidently, uh, uh, you know, dramatically improving, uh, uh, improving everybody's life.
So I, yeah, I'm not convinced that the, uh, the optimistic story there is one that, uh, uh, that I need to buy into.
The fact is people who are qualified and, uh, are, uh, going to be able to make use of their skills, uh, in productive ways, uh, would be able in the state's absence, uh, to get access to loans just as they, uh, as they do now.
Uh, but the difference is, uh, that, uh, you wouldn't have vast subsidies for a lot of unproductive higher educational activity and you wouldn't have subsidies that drove up expectations of people's credentials in ways that limited access to employment rather than expanding it.
Hey, and maybe we wouldn't even have the complete militarization of all scientific research in our society at that.
Well, absolutely.
Uh, I mean, that's what so much federal money is served to do, uh, to co-opt, uh, researchers into the military industrial complex.
And again, I just have to keep beating on that drum.
It's Obama.
It's not just the Republicans.
Right.
All right.
It's Gary Chartier, liberallaw.blogspot.com is his blog.
And the conscience of an anarchist is his book.
You can buy it everywhere.
Thank you so much for your time, Gary.
Appreciate it.
Pleasure to be here.
