[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
In case you’ve missed it, my friends David Gordon and Charles Johnson have been debating the left-libertarian basis for opposing Ron Paul’s candidacy. Check out David’s initial post, Charles’ reply, and David’s counter-reply.
I have plenty to say about this exchange, but it’ll have to wait till later, since exam week is starting and I’m pressed for time. So for now I merely link to it.
As journalist John Chamberlain was a prominent figure on the libertarian right, and novelist B. Traven an important writer of the libertarian left, it’s of some interest to see what the former thought of the latter. Hence this excerpt from Chamberlain’s 1935 review of Traven’s novels The Death Ship and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre:
“The Death Ship,” a sea story that came not from a Conradian aristocrat of the deep but from the depths of the forecastle …. was shot through with the corrosive and bitter cynicism that is the surest sign of an underlying affection for a humanity which alternately betrays itself and permits itself to be betrayed. B. Traven is, at heart, a philosophical anarchist; he would approve of Professor Giddings’s definition of the origin of government, as quoted recently by Charles A. Beard: “Government originated with the first successful getaway.” One of the most wryly hilarious parts of “The Death Ship” was a comedy of the man who, after being shunted across border after border, began to doubt his own identity and even his existence. No more devastating arraignment of Red Tape and legal interference with the freedom of personality and movement has ever been written. …
“The Treasure [of the Sierra Madre]” proves to be a philosophical anarchist’s commentary on greed for possessions. … Until they find the gold, Dobbs and Curtin have the cynical wisdom of the uncorrupted underdog, the straight vision of men who, having nothing to defend, no property, no traditional conception of themselves, are not bought by their own money. …
Unlike most thrillers, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” has its social and political inferences. … When the Indians and mestizos of the story turn bandit … Traven always manages to have a character on hand with a deep sense of poetic justice to point the moral …. that a man who has been taught to expect violence and injustice will not scruple to use his opponent’s choice of weapons.
Underneath it all there beats the outraged heart of a man who cannot believe the evidence of his senses that the human race is only human when it can afford to be. B. Traven’s sense of outrage, which is rigidly controlled in the interests of formal story-telling, is what gives “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” its fine moral power.
(John Chamberlain, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, 11 June 1935.)
Is Chamberlain making a pun on “betrays … betrayed … B. Traven” in the first paragraph?
For some interesting debate on the respective merits of Ron Paul versus None of the Above as libertarian choices in the current presidential campaign, see here and here.
As for those favouring yet a different direction, a third option is available:
Here’s a cool idea: someone should print up a pocket version of Lysander Spooner’s No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority modeled on the Cato Institute’s ubiquitous pocket Constitution.
I could swear that I’d linked to these two marvelous lefty anti-authoritarian short stories before, but I can’t find any reference to them on my website, so maybe not.
The first, a brief La Boétiean fable titled “The Actor and the King,” is by the enigmatic German anarcho-individualist novelist B. Traven a.k.a. Ret Marut (1890?-1969), best known today as the author of The Treasure of Sierra Madre and the Jungle novels. The second, variously titled “A King’s Lesson” and “An Old Story Retold,” is by the English art designer, fantasy novelist, and libertarian communist William Morris (1834-1896), best known today for News from Nowhere and The Wood Beyond the World. Enjoy!
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
The Mises Institute has posted a PDF of a 1945 issue of American Affairs featuring articles by, inter alia, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Garet Garrett, and Isabel Paterson. I’ve posted an HTML version of the Paterson piece, a book review, on the Molinari Institute site (not because it’s an especially interesting piece, but because hey, it’s Paterson). I’ve also posted a 1900 review of a book about French semi-anarchist Charles Dunoyer. (Check out the delightful put-down in the last paragraph.)
