With Closed Minds. With Closed Minds. In May of 1995 the New Union Party arranged a highly successful meeting in Mimmeapolis where we debated the Socialist Worker's Party, Socialist Action and the anarchist group, Love and Rage. Encouraged by the interest generated by the inter-party forum, I sent an invitation to the Libertarian Party of Minnesota to provide a representative to debate a member of the New Union Party. Since the intrinsic value of the open contention of ideas is an often stated principle of libertarian opposition to authoritarianism, I was hopeful that my invitation would be attractive to the Libertarian Party.
History is clear that free minds go hand in hand with free markets.
Mr. Test has cleverly shifted the terms from my original question. If he is suggesting that free markets create free minds, but that the way that we identify free minds is by the economic choices that they make, he is reasoning in a circle, and it would indeed be pointless to debate. What is clear about Mr. Test's platitude is not its historical veracity but the class perspective it exemplifies. That the free market is an economic ideal that produces every personal and social virtue is obvious to those who believe themselves to be the winners of marketplace competition. That political and social values are the progeny of class interest is apparent from a cursory examination of the history of ideas.