The Difference between the Right and the Left Is a Fundamental Disagreement Concerning an EMPIRICAL Question about the Existence of Individual Human MENTAL Differences

This brings me to the topic of “Left ” and “Right.”

The difference between the Right and the Left, as Paul Gottfried has often noted, is a fundamental disagreement concerning an empirical question. The Right recognizes, as a matter of fact, the existence of individual human differences and diversities and accepts them as natural, whereas the Left denies the existence of such differences and diversities or tries to explain them away and in any case regards them as something unnatural that must be rectified to establish a natural state of human equality.

The Right recognizes the existence of individual human differences not just with regard to the physical location and make-up of the human environment and of the individual human body (its height, strength, weight, age, gender, skin- hair- or eye-colour, facial features, etc., etc.). More importantly, the Right also recognizes the existence of differences in the mental make-up of people, i.e., in their cognitive abilities, talents, psychological dispositions, and motivations. It recognizes the existence of bright and dull, smart and dumb, short- and far-sighted, busy and lazy, aggressive and peaceful, docile and inventive, impulsive and patient, scrupulous and careless people, etc., etc. The Right recognizes that these mental differences, resulting from the interaction of the physical environment and the physical human body, are the results of both environmental and physiological and biological factors. The Right further recognizes that people are tied together (or separated) both physically in geographical space and emotionally by blood (biological commonalities and relationships), by language and religion, as well as by customs and traditions. Moreover, the Right not merely recognizes the existence of these differences and diversities. It realizes also that the outcome of input-differences will again be different and result in people with much or little property, in rich and poor, and in people of high or low social status, rank, influence or authority. And it accepts these different outcomes of different inputs as normal and natural.

The Left on the other hand is convinced of the fundamental equality of man, that all men are “created equal.” It does not deny the patently obvious, of course: that there are environmental and physiological differences, i.e., that some people live in the mountains and others on the seaside, or that some men are tall and others short, some white and others black, some male and others female, etc. But the Left does deny the existence of mental differences or, insofar as these are too apparent to be entirely denied, it tries to explain them away as “accidental.” That is, the Left either explains such differences as solely environmentally determined, such that a change in environmental circumstances (moving a person from the mountains to the seaside and vice versa, for instance, or giving each person identical pre- and post-natal attention) would produce an equal outcome, and it denies that these differences are caused (also) by some — comparatively intractable — biological factors. Or else, in those cases where it cannot be denied that biological factors play a causal role in determining success or failure in life (money and fame), such as when a 5 foot tall man cannot win an Olympic gold medal in the 100 meter dash or a fat and ugly girl cannot become Miss Universe, the Left considers these differences as pure luck and the resulting outcome of individual success or failure as undeserved. In any case, whether caused by advantageous or disadvantageous environmental circumstances or biological attributes, all observable individual human differences are to be equalized. And where this cannot be done literally, as we cannot move mountains and seas or make a tall man short or a black man white, the Left insists that the undeservedly “lucky” must compensate the “unlucky” so that every person will be accorded an “equal station in life,” in correspondence with the natural equality of all men.

With this short characterization of the Right and the Left I return to the subject of libertarianism. Is libertarian theory compatible with the worldview of the Right? And: Is libertarianism compatible with leftist views?

--Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Getting Libertarianism Right (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2018), 26-28.

Max Stirner Has Been Called the Father of Anarchism and the Only Writer to develop Fully the Implications of a Total Rejection of External Authority

James Huneker relates the following incident:

One hot August afternoon in the year 1896 at Bayreuth, I was standing in the Marktplatz when a member of the Wagner Theater pointed out to me a house opposite, at the corner of the Maximilian-strasse, and said: "Do you see that house with the double gables? A man was born there whose name will be green when Jean Paul and Richard Wagner are forgotten." It was too large a draught upon my credulity, so I asked the name. "Max Stirner," he replied. 

Thus far, Huneker's informant has proved to be a poor prophet. The philosophy of Max Stirner has been largely ignored since its creation over one hundred years ago. One commentator asserts that "scholars are mostly content to recollect him, if they recollect him at all, by his associations, the tacit assumption being that it is only through these associations that he has any historical significance or contemporary interest."

 Stirner has, indeed, important associations in abundance. He was a student of Hegel, the most extreme member of the school of Young Hegelians who turned their master's method against his conclusions. He then turned his dialectic against his fellow Young Hegelians and became embroiled in controversy with them; one of these was Karl Marx. His associations include membership in several other important intellectual traditions. He has been called "a key figure" in German nineteenth-century romantic individualism, "the one in a line including Goethe, Wagner, and Nietzsche who went the furthest in exploring a philosophy of the glorification of the ego in the context of political and socio-economic ideas." There is little evidence of a direct influence of Stirner upon Nietzsche, but many striking anticipations of Nietzschean ideas can be found in Stirner: "cleric" and "herd" morality, the "moralizing of ethically neutral words," the death of God, the will to power. There are also many anticipations of Freudian concepts in Stirner, among them projection and unconscious motivation, libidinal repression, and the egoistic character of all human acts. He has also been regarded as a precursor of existentialism.

When Stirner has been considered at all, however, it has usually been as an expounder of anarchism. He has been called "the father of anarchism" and "the only writer to develop fully the implications of a total rejection of external authority."

--Philip Breed Dematteis, Individuality and the Social Organism: The Controversy between Max Stirner and Karl Marx, Men and Movements in  the History and Philosophy of Anarchism (Brooklyn, NY: Revisionist Press, 1976), 1-2.

The Traditional "Dunning School" of Reconstruction Scholarship Has Been Attacked Since the Civil Rights Era by Marxist/Liberal Revisionists Who Label Dunning School Scholars as "Racists"

A great deal of excellent scholarship on Reconstruction was published during the early twentieth century by such historians as Claude Bowers and the Columbia University historian William Archibald Dunning and his cadre of graduate students. The historians James Ford Rhodes and James G. Randall painted a picture of Reconstruction as a vindictive, abusive, corrupt, political racket. Dunning, Rhodes, Bowers, and Randall were Northerners who documented in great detail how the Republican Party—which is to say, the federal government, since the party enjoyed a political monopoly—ignored presidential vetoes and federal court rulings, disenfranchised white Southerners while giving the vote to ex-slaves (who were instructed to vote Republican), formed new state puppet governments run by Republican Party political operatives, and used the power gained from this to plunder the taxpayers of the South for more than a decade after the war ended.

Beginning in the 1930s, and especially since the 1960s, a group of “revisionist” historians have come to the forefront to challenge what has come to be known as the “Dunning School” of Reconstruction scholarship. This group of scholars, which, according to Kenneth M. Stampp, includes “Marxists of various degrees of orthodoxy,” rarely disputes the facts that were set out by the Dunning School. They acknowledge that much of what Dunning's disciples have said about Reconstruction is true. Facts are facts. Relying heavily on Marxian class analysis, however, these revisionists have painted a more “enlightened” picture of the era. (The most prominent contemporary historian of Reconstruction is the Marxist Eric Foner, who calls Reconstruction “America's unfinished revolution.”)

These Marxist and “liberal” revisionists argue that Reconstruction wasn't all that bad compared to, say, what happened after the Japanese invaded Nanking in the 1930s, or the Nazi occupation of Europe, or the deeds of the Russian army in Germany at the end of World War II. After all, Kenneth Stampp has argued, there were not even any mass executions of former Confederates after the war. Southerners were indeed “lucky” in this regard, according to the revisionist view.

Because Dunning and his disciples provided accurate descriptions of the ex-slaves and their role in Southern politics shortly after the war, the Marxist/Liberal revisionists have sought to discredit the Dunning School's views by labeling them as racist. Dunning and his students, for example, questioned the wisdom of immediately extending to uneducated and propertyless ex-slaves the right to vote without first providing at least a couple of years of education for them. The revisionist historians have deemed this “racist.” As Kenneth Stampp remarked, “As ideas about race have changed, historians have become increasingly critical of the Dunning interpretation of Reconstruction.”

But the revisionists create a problem when they use this criterion (allegedly racist attitudes) in judging the credibility of Reconstruction scholarship. Every one of the revisionists virtually deifies Lincoln. The problem here is that Lincoln himself was a white supremacist all his life, a man who didn't believe that the two races should even mingle (see chapter 2). In their work, the Dunning School scholars, by contrast, never made the kinds of racially disparaging remarks that Lincoln did. They never proclaimed the white race to be the “superior” race as Lincoln did; they never advocated shipping all blacks back to Africa or to some other foreign land; and they never pontificated in their writing about the alleged evils of interracial marriage, as Lincoln did.

If the revisionists are to dismiss Dunning's interpretation of Reconstruction on the grounds that he and his students were insensitive to blacks, then to be consistent they should be just as skeptical of what has been written about Lincoln over the past 100 years and even reevaluate much of their own scholarship.

--Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 202-204.

The Connection between Violence and Central Planning Is Still Not Understood; the Tendency of Economists to admire Hitler's Economic Program Is a Case in Point

The same could be said about all forms of central planning. It is wrong to attempt to examine the economic policies of any leviathan state apart from the political violence that characterizes all central planning, whether in Germany, the Soviet Union, or the United States. The controversy highlights the ways in which the connection between violence and central planning is still not understood, not even by the ADL [Anti-Defamation League ]. The tendency of economists to admire Hitler’s economic program is a case in point.

In the 1930s, Hitler was widely viewed as just another protectionist central planner who recognized the supposed failure of the free market and the need for nationally guided economic development. Proto-Keynesian socialist economist Joan Robinson wrote that “Hitler found a cure against unemployment before Keynes was finished explaining it.”

What were those economic policies? He suspended the gold standard, embarked on huge public works programs like Autobahns, protected industry from foreign competition, expanded credit, instituted jobs programs, bullied the private sector on prices and production decisions, vastly expanded the military, enforced capital controls, instituted family planning, penalized smoking, brought about national health care and unemployment insurance, imposed education standards, and eventually ran huge deficits. The Nazi interventionist program was essential to the regime’s rejection of the market economy and its embrace of socialism in one country.

Such programs remain widely praised today, even given their failures. They are features of every “capitalist” democracy.

--Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., The Left, the Right, and the State (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008), 106.

Many Scotsmen Had Been Drawn into the Scheme of William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of England, for Colonizing the Isthmus of Darien (Panama); It Failed Miserably and Created the Utmost Distress in Scotland

In the summer of 1700 John Law returned to his native land of Scotland, where he found a condition of affairs in which he thought to develop his growing financial ideas. In Scotland, as in England and throughout Europe, a spirit of gambling and speculation had been induced by the uncertainties of a long war, by the disturbances to trade which made some wealthy overnight and reduced others to poverty, by the inflated demand for war materials, by the depreciation of the currency that had been practiced not alone in France but elsewhere, by the sudden rise of banks, and by the discovery of the joint-stock mechanism.

A great many Scotsmen had been drawn into the scheme of William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, for colonizing the Isthmus of Darien. This scheme was the Scottish Company of Africa and India. It had failed miserably and had created the utmost distress in Scotland, where the shares had been avidly taken up. Paper money issued by the company and profusely distributed in competition with bills of the Bank of Scotland had impaired the position of the bank. Conditions were heartbreaking. Manufacturers were no longer exporting their goods; land rents were not being paid; money was leaving the country; and two hundred thousand poor were crying out for bread.

--Elgin Groseclose, Money and Man: A Survey of Monetary Experience, 4th ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 122-123.

Having Sparked the First International Stock-Market Boom, John Law Had Also Sparked the First International Bust

In an ironic reversal of the concept of the philosopher’s stone (the substance by which it was believed gold could be made from base metal), he founded the first national bank of issue in France that made money from paper on a previously unknown scale to revive the ailing economy. He formed the most powerful conglomerate the world had yet seen—the Mississippi Company—and encouraged unprecedented numbers of private investors to dabble in its shares. Once initial hesitation had been banished, investors from England, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Switzerland stampeded to Paris to play the markets, and share prices rose from 150 livres to 10,000 in a matter of months. In comparison, the best bull markets of the twentieth century, between 1990 and 1999, when the Dow Jones rose by 380 percent and the Nasdaq by 790 percent, seem paltry. Law sparked the world’s first major stock-market boom, in which so many made such vast fortunes that the word “millionaire” was coined to describe them. Almost overnight he had become rich beyond expectation, a heroic figure, fêted throughout Europe, and promoted in recognition of his achievement to the position of France’s financial controller—the most powerful public position in the world’s most powerful nation.

Pioneers, so they say, usually end up with arrows in their backs. In Law’s case, enemies, inexperience, greed, and destiny conspired against his unconventional genius. The idea that money could be made from speculation rather than drudgery was printed indelibly on the popular consciousness. But having made their fortunes, many began to look for alternative investments, or to feel that paper was no long-term substitute for more traditional, tangible assets. When speculators began to cash in shares and withdraw paper funds to buy estates, jewels, or gold, or to speculate in other escalating foreign share markets, Law, hampered by jealous rivals, was unable to hold back the tide and the stock plummeted as rapidly as it had risen. People who rushed to the bank to convert paper back into coin found insufficient reserves and were left holding an asset that had become virtually worthless.

Over half a million people, equivalent to two-thirds of the entire population of the city of London at the time, claimed to have lost out as a result of John Law. Having sparked the first international stock-market boom, he had also sparked the first international bust. As loudly as he had been lauded a financial savior months earlier, he was branded a knave and ignobly demoted. Sadder, wiser, immeasurably poorer, he spent the rest of his life unsuccessfully trying to convince the world of his integrity, and that the idea behind his schemes was sound. His fall cast long shadows. It was eighty years before France dared again to try to introduce paper money to its economy. For years afterward history judged Law harshly. In the story of money, the chapter on his life embodies the perils of paper, the monumental significance of his economic foresight largely negated by his ultimate failure.

--Janet Gleeson, introduction to Millionaire: The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), e-book.

John Law's Contention that to Create Money Is to Create Wealth Was Vigorously Rejected by All His Contemporaries

The failure of John Law's unfortunate attempt to establish a bank of issue in France dominated the ideas of the eighteenth century about credit. His contention that to create money is to create wealth was vigorously rejected by all his contemporaries. The efforts made in the course of the century by so many writers, including Smith, Hume and Turgot, to reduce the role of money in the national economy to nothing or to insignificance, were directed against Law rather than against mercantilist ideas about money, which had already worn thin. Had not Law announced that an increase in the quantity of money was the only way of stimulating the national economy?

--Charles Rist, History of Monetary and Credit Theory from John Law to the Present Day, trans. Jane Degras (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966), 43.

The Massachusetts Legislature Implied an Immunity of the Colonies from Parliamentary Taxation because of the Magna Carta, the Laws of Nature and of Nations, the Voice of Universal Reason, and God

The Massachusetts legislature promptly organized two committees, each dominated by their Boston members. One committee, headed by James Otis, instructed Massachusetts' London agent to urge repeal of the American Revenue Act, and wavered between a principled denial of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, and a call for reduction in the molasses tax to a penny a gallon. The Massachusetts House sent this protest along with an essay by the great leader of the Boston liberals, the lawyer James Otis, Jr. The essay, "The State of the Rights of the Colonies," implied an immunity of the colonies from parliamentary taxation, and grounded its argument not only on the Magna Carta but also on common law and on "The laws of Nature and of Nations, the Voice of Universal Reason, and of God." The other House committee sent a circular letter at the end of June to the other colonies, urging a united colonial protest.

--Murray N. Rothbard, Advance to Revolution, 1760-1775, vol. 3 of Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2011), 812-813.

Murray Rothbard on the Prince of Proto-Keynesian Money Cranks, John Law, Who Concocted a Paper Money System Backed Mystically by the Land of Scotland

William Potter, however, proved to be only preparation for the locus classicus of inflationism, the prince of proto-Keynesian money cranks, both theorist and activist, John Law of Lauriston (1671-1729). Son of James Law, a wealthy Scottish goldsmith and banker, John was born and grew up in Edinburgh, proceeding to squander his father's substantial inheritance on gambling and fast living. Convicted of killing a love rival in a duel in London in 1694, Law bribed his way out of prison and escaped to the Continent. After a decade in Europe pondering monetary problems, Law returned in 1703 to Scotland, where he was not subject to arrest. There, Law concentrated on developing and publishing his monetary theory cum scheme, which he presented to the Scottish Parliament in 1705, publishing the memorandum the same year in his famous or infamous tract, Money and Trade Considered, with a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money (Edinburgh, 1705). The Scottish Parliament considered but turned down his scheme; the following year, the advent of the union of Scotland with England forced Law to flee to the Continent once more, since he was still wanted by English law under the old murder charge.

Karl Marx, in a sense, should have been proud of the way John Law 'unified theory and practice' in his proposal. On the one hand, Law was the theorist, arguing for a central land bank to issue inconvertible paper money, or rather, paper money 'backed' mystically by the land of the nation. As a crucial part of his proposal, the grateful nation - in this case Scotland - was supposed to appoint Law himself, the expert and theoretician, in charge of putting this inflationist central bank scheme into effect.

--Murray N. Rothbard, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, vol. 1 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), 328-329.

Senator John Taylor Believed that States' Rights Were a Tool for Opposing Mercantilism, Subsidies to Corporations Cause an Ocean of Extravagance and Central Banks Cause Economic Gangrene

Perhaps no one more clearly stated the link between states’ rights and opposition to mercantilism than John Taylor, a contemporary of Jefferson’s and a U.S. senator from Virginia. In his book Tyranny Unmasked, Taylor articulated his deep mistrust of Hamilton and what historian F. Thornton Miller calls the “advocates of mercantilist economics.” As Miller writes in his introduction to the 1992 republication of Tyranny Unmasked, Taylor believed that states’ rights were an indispensable tool for opposing mercantilist policies. Indeed, Taylor wrote in his book that British mercantilism was “undoubtedly the best [example] which has ever appeared for extracting money from the people; and commercial restrictions, both upon foreign and domestick commerce, are its most effectual means for accomplishing this object. No equal mode of enriching the party of government, and impoverishing the party of the people, has ever been discovered.” He denounced “protectionist duties, bounties, exclusive privileges, and heavy taxation”—essentially the Hamiltonian/Federalist agenda—as a recipe for economic depression; argued that taxpayer subsidies to corporations would lead to “an ocean of extravagance” that would impoverish the taxpayers; and stated that a government-run central bank would create “economic gangrene.” Taylor “opposed government intervention in the economy and wanted a natural economy, a free market system,” writes Miller, and he also believed that “assertive state rights were necessary to preserve liberty,” particularly economic liberty.

--Thomas J. DiLorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 74-75.

Because the State Can Legally Take Wealth from Its Citizens, Politicians Can Become Skilled Extortion Artists, Little Different from the Mafia

American politicians are fond of making speeches about how they would supposedly enact policies to help “the economy,” meaning capitalism, but in reality they are capitalism’s worst enemies. The reality is that most politicians, especially at the federal level, view businesses as cash cows to be plundered for the benefit of their own political careers. This phenomenon was explained at great length in a 1997 book by Northwestern University law professor Fred S. McChesney entitled Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion. In this Harvard University Press book Professor McChesney explains that not all government regulation is special-interest legislation, although there is certainly enough of that. Rather, his analysis focuses on how members of Congress often propose onerous legislation that would harm individual businesses or even entire industries and then sit back and wait to be bribed to withdraw or vote against the antibusiness legislation. “Because the state can legally take wealth from its citizens,” McChesney writes, “politicians can extort from private parties payments not to expropriate private wealth.” In other words, many American politicians are skilled extortion artists, little different from the Mafia. McChesney shows how this “political extortion” works. Corporations are pressured into making campaign “contributions” to politicians, paying them for speaking appearances, throwing lavish parties for them, taking them (and their spouses or dates) on all-expenses-paid trips to exotic resorts, giving jobs to their friends and relatives, and various other forms of thinly veiled extortion payments. Rather than paying attention to the process or producing better and cheaper products and services, American businesses are forced to devote considerable time and money to the game of political extortion.

--Thomas J. DiLorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004), 230-231.

It Is Said that History Repeats Itself. One Can Say the Same about Economists. John Law of Mississippi Bubble Fame Returns Two Hundred Years Later as John Maynard Keynes

Ironically, it is due to a Keynesian economic policy and its monetary apparatus, i.e., that of expanding the supply of money to increase economic activity, that speculative price bubbles and manias are engendered. This was exemplified by John Law, whose system (driven by a huge increase in the supply of money) created the Mississippi Bubble in France. Law, who preceded Keynes by two hundred years, held many of the same views as Keynes. As Charles Rist explains:

It is said that history repeats itself. One can say the same thing about economists. At the present time there is a writer whose ideas have been repeated since Keynes, without ever being cited by name. He is called John Law. I would be curious to know how many, among the Anglo-Saxon authors who have found again, all by themselves, his principal arguments, have taken the trouble to read him.

--Douglas E. French, Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), 3.

Jacob Schiff, Head of Kuhn, Loeb, & Co., Gave a Speech in 1906 that Began the Push for a European-Style Central Bank; the Crisis Atmosphere of 1907 Assisted Greatly in Creating the Conditions Leading to the Fed's Creation

The ostensible impetus for the creation of the Federal Reserve was the banking panic of 1907, but the drive, as mentioned, began long before. Jacob Schiff, head of Kuhn, Loeb, & Co., gave a speech in 1906 that actually began the push for a European-style central bank. He explained that the "country needed money to prevent the next crisis." He worked with his partner Paul Moritz Warburg and Frank A. Vanderlip of the National City Bank of New York to create a new commission that would deliver a report to the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1906. It called for a "central bank of issue under the control of the government." They began to work within other organizations to push the agenda, winning over the American Banking Association and many important players in government.

Once the groundwork was laid, the crisis atmosphere of 1907 assisted greatly in creating the conditions that led to the founding of the Fed. It was a brief contraction, but during it many banks suspended specie payments, that is, they stopped paying out gold to depositors until the crisis passed. This led to a consolidation of opinion in favor of a general guarantor of all deposits.

--Ron Paul, End the Fed (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009), 20-21.

Morgan's Activities in 1895-1896 in Selling U.S. Gold Bonds in Europe Were Based on His Alliance with the House of Rothschild; These Activities Added to His Reputation as a Rescuer of Governments

The power of J. P. Morgan and Co. was based initially on its ability to sell railroad stocks and bonds in the English and European markets. European investors placed $2.4 billion in the United States during 1880-1895, and owned a total of $4.5 billion in government and nongovernment bonds and shares in 1914. Morgan's activities in 1895-1896 in selling U.S. gold bonds in Europe were based on  his alliance with the House of Rothschild; these activities added to Morgan's reputation as a rescuer of governments. That reputation was often the key to his power, and it lasted long after the power was greatly diluted. Morgan and a few large bankers saved the New York Clearing House in 1893, and, seemingly, the United States' financial standing only a few years later. Accomplishments of this  magnitude enhance one's reputation indeed!

--Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916 (New York: The Free Press, 1977), 142.

The "Structural-Functional" Approach to the Origins of the Federal Reserve System Was Perfected in the Early 1960s by Robert Wiebe and Gabriel Kolko

Kolko comes to rather different conclusions in The Triumph of Conservatism. He argues that the corporate consolidation movement of 1898-1904 utterly failed to rationalize industry or restrict market entry and that diffusion and decentralization in banking "seriously undercut New York's financial supremacy." From these premises he interprets the establishment of the Federal Reserve as the handiwork of New York bankers who could not secure dominance in  their sphere of enterprise without resource to governmental regulation and supervision. The setting and the cast are, then, borrowed from Wiebe, but the drama's central characters are no longer "secondary groups" remaking a national, corporate-industrial economy in their regional or functional image. Smaller businessmen and their collective agencies retain a causative role in Kolko's scenario, but they are positioned offstage; meanwhile, onstage, big businessmen steal the show. In the process, Kolko argues, these magnates did in fact fundamentally alter the relationship between government and society to conserve their profits.

Kolko's conclusions about the relationship between the business community and the various political-economic reforms enacted during the so-called Progressive Era are quite different from Wiebe's. But their divergence on the success of programs advanced by small or "new" businessmen obscures a methodological congruence. Kolko's only innovation in this regard is that he finds a particularly effective set of "larger interests" among a wide assortment of "capitalist blocs."

--James Livingston, introduction to Origins of the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 20.

"Cowboy" Sun Belt Firms Began to Challenge the Eastern Establishment "Yankees" for Political Power after World War II; The "Cowboys" Are Less Inclined to Bail Out Wall Street Banks Who Recklessly Loaned to Communist and Third World Countries

After World War II, the united Rockefeller-Morgan-Kuhn, Loeb Eastern Establishment was not allowed to enjoy its financial and political supremacy unchallenged for long. “Cowboy” Sun Belt firms, maverick oil men and construction men from Texas, Florida, and southern California, began to challenge the Eastern Establishment “Yankees” for political power. While both groups favor the Cold War, the Cowboys are more nationalistic, more hawkish, and less inclined to worry about what our European allies are thinking. They are also much less inclined to bail out the now Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank and other Wall Street banks that loaned recklessly to Third World and Communist countries and expect the U.S. taxpayer—through outright taxes or the printing of U.S. dollars—to pick up the tab.

--Murray N. Rothbard, Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2011), 34.

The Last-Minute Insertion of a Provision into the Glass-Steagall Act by Chase President Winthrop Aldrich Was the Coup de Grâce (Death Blow) for the House of Morgan

A surprise last-minute insertion in the bill was a provision endorsed by Chase president Winthrop Aldrich that forced private banks to choose between deposit and securities businesses. This was the coup de grâce for the House of Morgan. Later Carter Glass told Leffingwell that Aldrich drafted this provision and that Roosevelt foisted it on him. Pecora’s disclosure about the Morgan partners’ avoidance of income taxes made it impossible to delete this provision, so strong was public wrath. Adding to the pressure was Chase’s decision to disband its securities affiliate, whose refugees joined with renegades from the First National Bank of Boston to form First Boston, the first modern American investment bank.

The Glass-Steagall Act took dead aim at the House of Morgan. After all, it was the bank that had most spectacularly fused the two forms of banking. It had, ironically, proved that the two types of services could be successfully combined; Kuhn, Loeb and Lehman Brothers did less deposit business, while National City and Chase had scandal-ridden securities affiliates. The House of Morgan was the active double threat, with its million-dollar corporate balances and blue-ribbon underwriting business.

--Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 375.

Rothbard Draws Attention to Research by Thomas Ferguson, Who Interprets the New Deal as an Anti-Morgan Coup with the Rockefellers Assuming Eastern Establishment Leadership

The Federal Reserve System, as Rothbard makes crystal clear, was the culmination of efforts that  continued throughout the nineteenth century to centralize banking.

By the 1890s, the leading Wall Street bankers were becoming disgruntled with their own creation, the National Banking System. ... [W]hile the banking system was partially  centralized under their leadership, it was not centralized enough.

As he describes the movement to cartelize banking, Rothbard introduces a dominant theme in his interpretation of twentieth-century American history: the struggle of competing groups of bankers for power.

From the 1890s until World War II, much of American political history ... can be  interpreted not so much as “Democrat” versus “Republican” but as the interaction or conflict between the Morgans and their allies on the one hand, and the Rockefeller-Harriman-Kuhn, Loeb alliance on the other.

In the agitation to establish the Fed, the House of Morgan led the way; and Rothbard stresses the importance of the conference held at Jekyll Island, Georgia, in November, 1910, under Morgan control. The entire section of his book The Case Against the Fed that deals with the origin of the Fed shows Rothbard’s incredibly detailed historical knowledge. Though he was too modest to do so, he could had he wished have echoed the boast of Fustel de Coulanges: “It is not I who speak, but history who speaks through me.” Rothbard brings the historical section of the book to a close with a discussion of the Fed’s early years in which the Governor of the New York Fed, Benjamin Strong, guaranteed Morgan control. Only with the coming of the New Deal were the Morgan interests relegated to a lesser role, as the Rockefellers assumed leadership of the Eastern Establishment.  Rothbard draws attention to the research of Thomas Ferguson, who has interpreted the New Deal as an anti-Morgan coup.

--Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto (Auburn, AL: LewRockwell.com, 2014), e-book.

Liberalism Changed from the Individualism of Laissez-Faire to the Social Control of Twentieth-Century Corporate Liberalism

The assumptions behind Schlesinger's evaluation of Social Security are those he revealed years earlier. Writing in his classic The Age of Jackson, Schlesinger noted that "Liberalism in America has been ordinarily the movement of the part of the other sections of society to restrain the power of the business community." This statement assumes that a popular movement, opposed by business, continually arises in America to challenge the one-sided power of large corporate business. But new historical research by a generation of revisionists has all but wiped out this assumption. William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, James Weinstein, and Murray N. Rothbard have argued that liberalism has actually been the ideology of dominant business groups, and that they have in reality favored state intervention to supervise corporate activity. Liberalism changed from the individualism of laissez-faire to the social control of twentieth-century corporate liberalism. Unrestrained ruthless competition from the age of primitive capital accumulation became an anachronism, and the new social and political regulatory measures emanating from the Progressive Era were not so much victories for the people over the interests, as examples of movement for state intervention to supervise corporate activity on behalf of the large corporate interests themselves.

--Ronald Radosh, "The Myth of the New Deal," in A New History of Leviathan: Essays on the Rise of the American Corporate State, ed. Ronald Radosh and Murray N. Rothbard (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1972), 150-151.

The Third World Has Been the Favorite Arena for Applied Marxism, for Revolutions, Coups, or Domination by Marxist Intellectuals

The root of the problem is the Third World, where (a) agriculture is overwhelmingly the most important industry, and (b) the people are not affluent enough, in any crisis, to purchase food from abroad. Hence, to Third World people, agriculture is the most precious activity, and it becomes particularly important that it not be hobbled or discouraged in any way. Yet, wherever there is production, there are also parasitic classes living off the producers. The Third World in our century has been the favorite arena for applied Marxism, for revolutions, coups, or domination by Marxist intellectuals. Whenever such new ruling classes have taken over, and have imposed statist or full socialist rule, the class most looted, exploited, and oppressed has been the major productive class: the farmers or peasantry. Literally tens of millions of the most productive farmers were slaughtered by the Russian and Chinese Communist regimes, and the remainder were forced off their private lands and onto cooperative or state farms, where their productivity plummeted, and food production gravely declined.

--Murray N. Rothbard, "The Politics of Famine," in The Free Market Reader: Essays in the Economics of Liberty, ed. Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. (Burlingame, CA: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988), 224.

International Central Bank Cooperation Is a Euphemism for Coordinated, or Cartelized, Inflation, but the Classical Gold Standard Had No Need for Such Cooperation

Scarcely had Benjamin Strong been appointed when he began to move strongly toward “international central bank cooperation,” a euphemism for coordinated, or cartelized, inflation, since the classical gold standard had no need for such cooperation. In February 1916, Strong sailed to England and worked out an agreement of close collaboration between the New York Fed and the Bank of England, with both central banks maintaining an account with each other, and the Bank of England regularly purchasing sterling bills on account for the New York bank. In his usual high-handed manner, Strong bluntly told the Federal Reserve Board in Washington that he would go ahead with such an agreement with or without board approval; the cowed Federal Reserve Board then finally decided to endorse the scheme. A similar agreement was made with the Bank of France.

--Murray N. Rothbard, A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II, ed. Joseph T. Salerno (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2002), 372.

We Must Explore the Federal Reserve-Bank of England Connection and the Tie That Bound Them Together: The House of Morgan

Why were the British so confident that American prices would rise sufficiently to support their return to gold at the overinflated $4.86? Because of the power of the new United States central bank, the Federal Reserve System, installed in 1914, and because of the close and friendly relationship between the British government, its Bank of England, and the Federal Reserve. The Fed, they were sure, would do what was necessary to help Britain reconstruct the world monetary order.

To understand these expectations, we must explore the Federal Reserve–Bank of England connection, and particularly the crucial tie that bound them together: their mutual relationship with the House of Morgan. The powerful J.P. Morgan and Company took the lead in planning, drafting the legislation, and mobilizing the agitation for the Federal Reserve System that brought the dubious benefits of central banking to the United States in 1914. The purpose of the Federal Reserve was to cartelize the nation’s banking system, and to enable the banks to inflate together, centralizing and economizing reserves, with the Federal Reserve as “lender of last resort.” The Federal Reserve’s new monopoly of note issue took the de facto place of gold as the nation’s currency. Not only were the majority of Federal Reserve Board directors in the Morgan orbit, but the man who was able to become the virtually absolute ruler of the Fed from its inception to his death in 1928, Benjamin Strong, was a man who had spent his entire working life as a leading Morgan banker.

--Murray N. Rothbard, A History of Money and Banking in the United States: The Colonial Era to World War II, ed. Joseph T. Salerno (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2002), 368.

Some Ultrametallists Predict that the Present International Dollar Standard Will Eventually Collapse and a Pure Specie Standard Will Be Reintroduced by Market Forces

A resurgence of interest in the 100 percent specie standard has recently developed in the midst of monetary crises and foreign exchange upheavals in the Western world during the past decade, which have been accompanied by a relatively rapid rise in the free market price of gold and other precious metals. Some ultrametallist economic and financial observers have predicted that the present international dollar standard will eventually result in such high rates of currency debasement that a pure specie standard will, ipso facto, be reintroduced into the monetary system by market forces.

One of the strongest academic advocates favoring a strict 100 percent specie program has been Murray N. Rothbard, professor of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who wrote in favor of a pure gold standard as early as 1962. Rothbard contends that it is the only monetary system that is “compatible with the fullest preservation of the rights of property . . . [and] . . . assures the end of inflation, and with it, the business cycle.” An integral part of Rothbard’s thesis is the Austrian theory of the business cycle, which is interwoven throughout the works of the 100 percent advocates.

--Mark Skousen, Economics of a Pure Gold Standard, 4th ed. (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, 2010), Kindle e-book.

Deductive Economic Theory Was a Mighty Bulwark Against Government Intervention. In Order for Statism to Dominate the Economics Profession It Was Important to Discredit Deductive Theory

Although it is an outworn generalization to say that nineteenth century economists were stalwart champions of laissez faire, it is still true that deductive economic theory proved to be a mighty bulwark against government intervention. For, basically, economic theory showed the harmony and order inherent in the free market, as well as the counterproductive distortions and economic shackles imposed by state intervention. In order for statism to dominate the economics profession, then, it was important to discredit deductive theory. One of the most important ways of doing so was to advance the notion that, to be “genuinely scientific,” economics had to eschew generalization and deductive laws and simply engage in empirical inquiry into the facts of history and historical institutions,  hoping that somehow laws would eventually arise from these detailed investigations.

Thus the German Historical School, which managed to seize control of the economics discipline in Germany, fiercely proclaimed not only its devotion to statism and government control, but also its opposition to the “abstract” deductive laws of political economy. This was the first major group within the economics profession to champion what Ludwig von Mises was later to call “anti-economics.” Gustav Schmoller, the leader of the Historical School, proudly declared that his and his colleagues’ major task at the University of Berlin was to form “the intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern.”

During the 1880s and 1890s bright young graduate students in history and the social sciences went to Germany, the home of the Ph.D. degree, to obtain their doctorates. Almost to a man, they returned to the United States to teach in colleges and in the newly created graduate schools, imbued with the excitement of the “new” economics and political science. It was a “new” social science that lauded the German and Bismarckian development of a powerful welfare-warfare State, a State seemingly above all social classes, that fused the nation into an integrated and allegedly harmonious whole. The new society and polity was to be run by a powerful central government, cartelizing, dictating, arbitrating, and controlling, thereby eliminating competitive laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand and the threat of proletarian socialism on the other. And at or near the head of the new dispensation was to be the new breed of intellectuals, technocrats, and planners, directing, staffing, propagandizing, and “selflessly” promoting the common good while ruling and lording over the rest of society. In short, doing well by doing good. To the new breed of progressive and statist intellectuals in America, this was a heady vision indeed.

--Murray N. Rothbard, War Collectivism: Power, Business, and the Intellectual Class in World War I (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012), e-book.

Goebbels Assured His Audience that Nazism Had Not Simply Used "Socialism" as a Catchphrase to Achieve Power: "Our Socialism Is the Exact Opposite of Marxism"

Speaking before an assembly of the “Young People for German Socialism” in December 1933, Goebbels assured his audience that Nazism had not simply used “socialism” as a catchphrase in order to achieve power: “Socialism is not just an over-and-done-with affair, not just a … parade horse that we rode while fighting for power, and from which we are now going to dismount because we’ve come into power. Socialism is a conviction that the people have to fulfill, that doesn’t have anything to do with bourgeois prejudices.” Making sure that his young audience did not misunderstand the form that Nazi socialism was going to take, Goebbels continued: “Our socialism, as we understand it, is the best of our Prussian inheritance. We inherit it from the Prussian army, from the Prussian civil service.” He went on to link Nazism with the greatness of the German past: “It is the socialism that enabled the great Frederick and his army to withstand seven years of war. It is the socialism that gave a starved and exhausted Prussia, after this seven years of war, the strength to rebuild not only its old but also its new provinces.” This was a socialism, Goebbels continued, that had “something soldierly … about it.” Drawing a connection between socialism, militarism, and the needs of Germany as a nation, Goebbels stated, “What socialism is within the nation, nationalism is to the outside world. The distinction is no longer between classes … but between values.” Goebbels summed up his argument as follows: “Our socialism … is the exact opposite of Marxism.”

--Timothy S. Brown, Weimar Radicals: Nazis and Communists between Authenticity and Performance, Monographs in German History 28 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 132.