From: "Tim Bomgardner" <bomgard@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: The word "Libertarian" was invented by Spanish Anarchists
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1992 13:48:16 -0500

In article <BASHFORD.92Sep10232136@griffy.scripps.edu> bashford@scripps.edu (Don &) writes:
}It seems to me that most of the people running around these days calling
}themselves "Libertarians" (e.g.  Libertarian Party, Self Governors,
}Ayn Rand groupies, etc.) are really just timid and truncated Anarchists.
}They oppose concentrated power in the form of "Big Government" but
}seem blind to the need to oppose concentrated power in the form
}of big business.  They spend their energies railing against taxation
}and some of the Govt's more odious invations of privacy (WoD, etc.)
}but ignore the tyranny of the workplace.  They even seem to have
}fallen in love with the marketplace as if "Man is the measure of
}all things" were replaced by "The market is the measure of all things"
}
}This fits in with something I came across recently in "The Spanish
}Labyrinth" by Gerald Brenen (1943):
}
}     The word "libertarian was invented by Sebastien Faure in 1898,
}     when the great anarchist periodical, _Revista Blanca_, was founded.
}     Since at that time anarchist propaganda was forbidden, some other
}     word had to be used to express the idea.

What complete nonsense.  So a doctor with a scalpel is just a timid or
truncated butcher?  For those of you who don't know (and I doubt there
are very many) anarchy is the total absence of government and law.
Libertarians are the strongest advocates of law that I know of, at least
concerning laws that protect individual rights (as opposed to laws which
confiscate goods from those who can and do produce them, and deliver them
to those who can't or won't).  But this posting goes way beyond simple
ignorance of the misused terms.
 
It is an obscenity to equate political power with economic power.  Politcal
power, the kind exercised by a government, is the power to force obedience
under threat of the expropriation of property, physical injury, and death.
What is economic power?  It is the power to produce and to trade what one
has produced with others.  Economic power can only be
achieved by the voluntary agreement of all those who participate in the
process of production and trade.  (Yes, our government has tremendously
distorted this process.)  This is the essential distinction between freedom
and slavery.  Big business becomes and stays big in only one way: by
offering value in the marketplace.  You are free to offer better values
at a lower price, or not participate at all. 
 
What exactly is the "tyranny of the workplace"?  Is it the tyranny of
having to earn the food you eat and the clothing you wear?  Is it the
tyranny of being paid what you are worth as determined by the uncoerced
judgment of those who need your services?  And what exactly is the
alternative you propose?  If the marketplace doesn't determine your
wages, the only alternative is the government.  Hey, there's an idea--
let the government decide who gets paid what, what and how much of each
item can be produced, where and for how much it should be sold, and what
should be done with the profits.  Hmmm...  Sounds familiar somehow...
 
The only really scary thing about all this is that you are not a small
minority.