Libertarians From The United States

"To harm another human releases your inner beast, allowing him to devour you in an orgy of hate. It will lead to a frenzy of butchery and bloodshed. And it will enslave your soul until a larger beast feasts on your corruptible flesh."

"The truth will always be innately painful,… Like dry, crusty bread, it can be hard to swallow. But mankind has an affinity for evil. ’Tis a distemper that burrows deep under the skin like an abscess. We all wish to make slaves of others: one man over another, one clan over another, one kingdom over another. Never ending, never ceasing. A world of battle to conquer one’s fellow man before he conquers you."

"Primitive men kill with wooden clubs. We have finely tempered steel and lead shot. No difference. Killing is killing, cruelty is cruelty, aggression is aggression. Man’s weapons have improved, but not his disposition. This is the beast that we must all fight. No man must rule over another for any reason whatsoever."

"Italian Fascist theories of corporatism arose out of revolutionary and national syndicalism that often paralleled the activities of the trade unions, craft guilds and professional societies. Mussolini acknowledged Fascism’s socialist roots and influences. Among those whom he acknowledged as influencing Fascism were French Marxist Georges Sorel and French Revolutionary Unionist Hubert Lagardelle. Moreover, Mussolini was a union man: he decreed mandatory unionism for all Italian workers. It is true that Mussolini banned strikes, but Lenin had done the same in the Soviet Union."

"After the bourgeoisie, middle class, and merchants instigated the French Revolution and sat on the left side of the aisle in opposition to the authoritarians, their legacy was ignored. The Socialist and nationalist intelligentsia sought to consciously bury the memory of original left-wing middle-class history and sitting arrangements. They mercilessly co-opted the left-wing label from the bourgeoisie revolutionary ‘Free Left,’ and denounced anyone who opposed their social revolution as reactionary or right-wing. These usurpers not only stole the left-wing designation from the bourgeoisie insurgents, but also absconded with their revolutionary ancestry. English historian William Doyle acknowledged this historical thievery, writing that after the French Revolution, the socialists were able to ‘appropriate the left-wing label and… lay exclusive claim to the revolutionary heritage.’"

"Your father reminded me of Lord Oliver Cromwell some fifty years ago in London. Lord Cromwell spoke of liberty. He fought the king to free England of tyranny. But after Lord Cromwell’s Ironsides had defeated the monarch, he turned ruthless. It was as if the monarchy had never been destroyed. Indeed, nothing had changed."

"Hitler had allied with the Communist Party of Germany against the Social Democrats in support of a workers’ wage dispute. In that labor dispute, Hitler’s ‘brownshirts’ and red-flag-waving communists marched side by side through the streets of Berlin and damaged any buses whose drivers had failed to participate in the worker’s strike. Alongside the communists, Nazis ripped up tram lines, stood together, ‘shouted in unison,’ and ‘rattled their collecting tins’ to get donations for their strike funds in support of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO) for the communists and National Socialist Factory Cell Organization (NSBO) for the Nazis."

"Because of Hitler’s penchant for nationalistic Social Democracy and Marxian revolutionary violence, Nazism could be easily identified as a militant Social Democratic movement."

"One could argue that Lenin’s politics were the first modern-day version of fascism and state-corporatism."

"Marxists have always displayed a doctrinaire and opinionated mindset of moral superiority. To Marxists and Leninists, the unaligned, such as Social Democrats, German Nazis, Italian Fascists, or any other deviant political organization, were branded as adversaries and were repeatedly accused of lining up with other right-wing teammates. According to this logic, if one did not get pre-approved by the monolithic praxis of the Communist Party in Russia, due to a different interpretation of socialism, one had to be subjected to charges of blasphemy, betrayal or counter-revolutionary activities. This lack of Marxist-Leninist certification has driven many faithful socialists into the ranks of heretical or adversarial socialist movements. In this sense, these heretical deviants might be better classified as ‘socialist-lite,’ ‘moderate socialists,’ or as economist Murray Rothbard dubbed fascists and Nazis, ‘right-wing socialists.’"

"Socialism seeks to abolish capitalism outright, while fascism gives the appearance of a market-based economy, even though it relies heavily on the central planning of all economic activities."

"It appears that Hitler’s involvement with the communist-run Bavarian Soviet Republic (Bayerische Räterepublik in German) demonstrates some type of commitment to communism. After all, Hitler held an elected position during the red Räterepublik government that was under the complete control of the Communist Party of Germany. He did not flee or resign his position."

"Mussolini found much of John Maynard Keynes’s economic theories consistent with fascism."

"Every man creates his own private hell,… Brutal men believe they may challenge the mighty, and when they fall, they become embittered or befriend a shallow grave."

"To affix the poisonous label of ‘ fascism’ to Communism, depicting them under the same collective brotherhood, would have irrevocably damaged the status of socialism… To acknowledge a strong ideological and political link to Mussolini and Hitler would forever expose socialists and Marxists to their historical collaboration with fascist atrocities, racism, and genocide. Not only would socialists be seen as accomplices to some of the most horrific crimes in history, but also communists would also face similar scrutiny over their own atrocities, that racked up over 148 million citizens murdered in the 20th century."

"Furthermore, Hitler’s outward views had to endure a left-wing socialist perspective by the mere fact of the political makeup of the soldiers in Hitler’s unit, which ranged from moderate left to radical left; there were almost no conservative or monarchist elements within Hitler’s barracks. The struggle in the barracks oscillated between the moderate left Social Democrats and the radical left of the diehard Marxist revolutionaries, not between left-wing and right-wing ideology. The figures are stunning: more than 90 percent of these soldiers had voted for moderate or radical leftists in the January 1919 Bavarian elections in Hitler’s unit."

"Marxism had a lot to offer Hitler. Largely saddled with an unmovable, single-mindedness, hardcore Marxism allowed proponents to see themselves as noble crusaders saving humankind. Here too, Hitler could identify with such closed-mindedness, political messianism, and authoritarian tactics that licensed him to see himself as the savior of the world. A lover of the power of politics, Hitler’s hidebound views pushed him into the unshaded world of white and black antipodes, a battleground where you were either with him or undoubtedly against him, leaving no luxury of neutrality. Such exacting standards of political absolutism likely blinded him to other alternatives, or at least to the possibility of subjective objectivity that would allow the people to freely display their own diversity of opinions."

"I would have turned my mother into the authorities had they promised enough goodies. But then again, the authorities often failed to deliver the promised goods. The liars were always lying."

"Although Karl Marx… confided that he derived many of his philosophical ideas from the French utopian socialist movement, he also knew that he was adopting an ideological movement rife with xenophobia. Anti-Semitism was so profuse in the French socialist community that historian Zosa Szajkowski concluded in an exhaustive study that he ‘could not find a single word on behalf of Jews in the whole of French socialist literature from 1820 to 1920.’"

"Hitlerian socialism… was a form of socialism that resembled a combination of utopian socialism and the socialist market economy found in communist China."

"Considering their propensity for using street violence to shut down opponents, Hitler and his SA Stormtroopers might be considered as the ultimate social justice warriors of their era. From the very start, Hitler made it plain that social justice was an important attribute to a healthy state. In one of his 1920 speeches, Hitler proclaimed to thousands of Nazi party followers: ‘[W]e do not believe that there could ever exist a state with lasting inner health if it is not built on internal social justice…’"

"After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Goebbels framed the war between capitalist England and socialist Germany with this observation: ‘England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people’s state.’"

"Since most of Italy’s industry was state-owned, Italian Fascism could be described as a watered-down version of Marxism, a throwback to Bernstein revisionism––in essence, a sort of Marxist-lite knockoff."

"Despite the fact that three-fourths of Italy’s economic sector was owned by the government by the mid-1930s, most scholars routinely ignored Italian Fascism’s slide into pure Soviet-style socialism, a concentration of state ownership so large that it was only eclipsed by Stalin’s Soviet Union. The conventional definition of socialism is described as a social and economic system characterized by ‘public ownership’ of the ‘means of production.’ On the other hand, fascism is often explained as a social and economic system characterized by ‘public control’ over the ‘agents of production.’ But Mussolini’s regime eventually morphed into Fascist socialism as its means of production was placed under public ownership."

"Hitler in 1919 took a position in the Communist run Bavarian Soviet Republic, wearing in public a red armband, according to a number of historians including Thomas Weber. And a little later after the Bavarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Hitler claimed to be a ‘social democrat.’"

"A number of socialist theorists reframed the concept of nationalism and asserted that it was an inseparable component of socialism in which to forge a national collectivity. Werner Sombart…, the prominent Marxian historian and Marxist social theorist, who was later drawn to Nazism, argued for a type of social nationalism disposed to a sort of collective and homogeneous group identity, embodied within the Volksgeist (national spirit)"

"A number of die-hard Marxists have confirmed the mirroring of social totalitarian ideologies. Otto Rühle, a German Left communist and one of the founders of Second International, asserted that Bolshevism is a model for Italian Fascism and German National Socialism. In his 1939 article ‘The Struggle against Fascism Begins with the Struggle against Bolshevism,’ Rühle wrote that ‘Fascism is merely a copy of bolshevism,’ and that it was a ‘political and administrative terror system.’"

"Historically, Italian Fascism was founded as a Marxist-leaning party, which some have classified as a form of Fascist-Marxist ideology. From 1914 to at least 1921, Mussolini simultaneously proclaimed himself a Fascist while still adhering to Marxist doctrines and Marxist leaders such as Lenin. In 1914, Mussolini created the Marxist-sounding organization—the Fasci of Revolutionary Action (Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria, FAR). Mussolini’s first Fascist party—the Fascist Revolutionary Party (Partito Fascista Rivoluzionario, PFR)—was founded in 1915. Two years later, Mussolini still considered himself within the Marxist camp, praising the Bolshevik’s 1917 October Revolution, boasting of his camaraderie with Lenin and violent revolution. In the Italian elections of 1919, he publicly compared himself to Lenin, bragging that he was the ‘Lenin of Italy.’"

"In the case of libertarianism, because it opposes fraud and the initiation of force, when pursuing its hereditary linkage to original liberalism it should be classified as standing on the left side of the political divide. Some might respond that legions of capitalists have taken leading roles in authoritarian productions. True, but these so-called capitalists mostly hobnob with politicians and statists, promote rent-seeking, endogenous policies to obtain state-sanctioned monopolies. As the cronies of statists, they are barely a cut above socialism, and have little interest in letting capital and goods move freely and unrestricted between buyer and seller, for whom, in turn, they have little sympathy. They are fastened to government coffers and machinations, and they downplay the value of the dynamics of competition."

"Richard Pipes summed up fascism’s affinity with socialism by arguing that both ‘Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism.’ Sense of community and socialization were important aspects of many 20th century movements and regimes, including the theory of ‘social fascism,’ which was initiated by the Soviet government and the Comintern to stigmatize social democracy as a variant of fascism."

"Noam Chomsky treated his version of the left-right continuum in a similar light, claiming that even Lenin and his Bolshevik allies were actually right-wing extremists because they did not adhere to classical Marxism. Exposing this insight in a 1989 speech, Chomsky said, ‘Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded…by the mainstream Marxists… Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation.’ In that same speech, Chomsky claimed that Lenin was not socialist at all, and had forged an oppressive and anti-worker totalitarian state that could lead many to visualize Lenin as a right-wing fascist."

"Our long-standing standards of capacity to deceive others were being subverted. The virtue of lying had lost its connection to advancing the common good. Noble deceptions were evolving into inferior falsehoods. That our virtuous lies were being distorted to conceal all manner of misdeeds tore at my newly discovered conscience. These lies served only a selected few. That seemed so wrong."

"Despite its vision of a perfect future, Marxism had moved to the dark side, corrupted by authoritarian socialism and debased with dictatorial intolerance. In this sense, Marxism could be regarded as manifesting the moral fortitude of Church while imposing the absolute authority of a monarchy, all garnished under the deceptively disguised trademark of revolutionary socialism."

"International socialists found it advantageous to hide both Mussolini’s and Hitler’s socialist, labor unionist, Marxist, and atheist pasts. One reason was that Hitler and Mussolini were independent of Moscow’s direct control, and they had the audacity to oppose the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. To pay for their insolence, the Soviets and their minions felt compelled to whitewash the collectivist-socialist ideology and history behind nationalistic socialism, determined to bury Hitler and Mussolini under a falsely inscribed tombstone."

"By June 1919, Mussolini was criticizing Lenin’s handling of the communist revolution in Russia, concerned that he was straying from the tenets of Marxism. Distressed that Lenin was not Marxist enough, Mussolini wrote that his old comrade was ‘the very negation of socialism’ because he had not created a dictatorship of the proletariat or of the socialist party, but only of a few intellectuals who had found the secret of winning power."

"Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness."

"Money and generous benefits can easily alter a person’s political outlook. Ideology follows the money."

"The inherent nature of complexity is to doubt certainty and any pretense to finite and flawless data. Put another way, under uncertainty principles, any attempt by political systems to ‘impose order’ has an equal chance to instead ‘impose disorder.’"

"Government succeeds by failing: the more incompetence, the greater the potential reward in the arena of the public sector."

"The parity pushers fail to see the subtle grays of complexity in all of its tortured and messy manifestations. With swords held high, they ride forth and exploit every possible weapon in the political arsenal. Equality is to be imposed, unevenness and nonlinearity banished to the nether world. Science is politicalized for mass consumption, and natural laws are summarily supplanted by ideological 'correctness.'"

"If an emerging system is born complex, there is neither leeway to abandon it when it fails, nor the means to join another, successful one. Such a system would be caught in an immovable grip, congested at the top, and prevented, by a set of confusing but locked–in precepts, from changing."

"Simplicity in a system tends to increase that system’s efficiency. Because less can go wrong with fewer parts, less will. Complexity in a system tends to increase that system’s inefficiency; the greater the number of variables, the greater the probability of those variables clashing, and in turn, the greater the potential for conflict and disarray. Because more can go wrong, more will. That is why centralized systems are inclined to break down quickly and become enmeshed in greater unintended consequences."

"Decentralized systems are the quintessential patrons of simplicity. They allow complexity to rise to a level at which it is sustainable, and no higher."

"When it comes right down to physical war and bloodshed, governments don’t protect people; people protect governments."

"Complexity has always been difficult to resolve and to understand. Evolutionary biologists were among the first scientists to recognize this problem, when they dug their way toward new theories about evolution. They discovered that matter does not lack purpose."

"Disorder is more exacting, arising when coercion is substituted for coordination—preventing members in a system from determining their own destiny. History is littered with examples of excluded parts rising up to confront those exclusive few who claim they are representing the whole."

"A self–organizing system acts autonomously, as if the interconnecting components had a single mind. And as these components spontaneously march to the beat of their own drummer, they organize, adapt, and evolve toward a greater complexity than one would ever expect by just looking at the parts by themselves."

"Chaos provides order. Chaotic agitation and motion are needed to create overall, repetitive order. This ‘order through fluctuations’ keeps dynamic markets stable and evolutionary processes robust. In essence, chaos is a phase transition that gives spontaneous energy the means to achieve repetitive and structural order."

"Political structures are excessively paternalistic, and to maintain them requires a high level of energy. The massive amounts of energy they consume are unsustainable and invite political meltdowns, bailouts, and fallout. On the other hand, proponents of complexity theory take the paradigm–shattering view that less is more. They understand that, paradoxically enough, the complexity of simplicity is the key to the emergence of systems, repeatable patterns and the social glue that holds community together and creates order. Anyone can make simplicity complicated; it takes a true genius to make the complicated simple."

"To the political elite, statecraft is predicated on the notion that society is theirs to put into some type of hegemonic order. It is immaterial whether this institutionalized order actually helps society or instead puts it into a chokehold that slowly squeezes the air out of life. To the authorities, supremacy is always the primary objective."