This report was originally published in The Atlantis News Vol. III, No. 6, September 19, 1969, pp. 1-2, 4. I changed the headline from, "Large Attendance at Libertarian Conference." After the fiasco described in this report, libertarian scholars conferences were organized with attendance by invitation only.
The stated purposes of the conference were to radicalize the right-wing libertarians, to convince the left-wing activists there that the Rothbardian libertarians were on their side, and to provide anarcho-libertarian analyses of recent historical events.
The quality of the formal presentations was extremely high, and they were enthusiastically received by the predominantly libertarian audience. Controversy developed, however, when Karl Hess praised the Black Panthers in his brilliant and provocative address Saturday night. Sunday afternoon, more controversy resulted when Dr. Rothbard criticized the Panthers, and student activist Wilson Clark Jr. retorted that right-wing libertarians don’t take action against the state but only engage in theoretical rhetoric. Clark went on to say that only the left-wing people confront the state, and while the Leftists are heroically risking life and limb fighting the state the right-wing libertarians are worried about the theoretical purity of those protesting oppression. This precipitated a heated debate among the right-wing libertarians about the private property status of universities in America, during which every possible position on the subject was shouted out angrily as tempers rose and the assemblage polarized and splintered into several factions, each denouncing the others. Wilson Clark regained the microphone briefly to point out that this is just the sort of thing he was referring to.
Clark brought into light a very important issue for libertarians. The left-wing radicals seem to be able to work together despite wide differences in philosophy, while the libertarian Right can’t seem to stop arguing with itself long enough to do anything. The left-wing complains that the rightists are not really radicals: they don’t seem to regard the state as the enemy and, in fact, are more concerned with fighting alien ideologies than with abolishing the state. The reason for this impotence, they claim, is that many of them got their libertarianism via Ayn Rand who refuses to give her moral sanction to any person or group that disagrees with any of her positions. Accordingly, the people must first be made disciples before they can be condoned. This attitude restricts the influence of the Randian movement to the handful of true believers it comprises. Rothbard feels that there will probably never be enough like-minded people of any one ideological stripe to overthrow the ruling class. He feels that a coalition between right-wing libertarians and left-wing activists is the only hope. In order for such a coalition to come into being, it is necessary to radicalize some of the right-wing libertarians so they will acclaim action against the state regardless of who takes it. The radicalized Right (ex-Right) libertarians will then be able to provide the left-wing activists with correct theoretical justifications for their opposition to governmental policies. This, in turn, will endear the ex-Right libertarians to the activists and strengthen their libertarian impulses.
As Dr. Rothbard pointed out in his talk Sunday afternoon, this does not mean the libertarians should uncritically endorse everything the Left does, nor that they should engage in "left-wing adventurism." Such things as "liberating" parks and public buildings may be justified by the homesteading principle, but they may still be foolhardy. This point seemed to be validated Sunday when those libertarians who participated in the peaceful attempt to "liberate" Ft. Dix got tear-gassed. The important final panel discussion of the Libertarian Conference--"What is to be done?"--was aborted as a result of the Ft. Dix caper, which led to rumors of an imminent FBI raid.
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