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== WWII Revisionism ==


* [https://mises.org/library/review-origins-second-world-war Review of The Origins of the Second World War]
* [https://mises.org/library/revisionism-our-time Revisionism for Our Time]
* [https://mises.org/library/revisionism-our-time Revisionism for Our Time]
* [https://mises.org/library/review-origins-second-world-war Review of The Origins of the Second World War]


= See also =
= See also =

Revision as of 08:14, 9 January 2023

Rothbard’s foreign policy errors

by François Guillaumat

François Guillaumat is Rothbard’s French translator. For more, see the French version of this page: fr: Murray N. Rothbard and his podcasts on the subject (in French), in particular: Murray Rothbard (3) : Le politicien manqué. For the long-lasting and damaging consequences of theses errors on the libertarian movement, see Kremlintarianism.

Murray Rothbard’s isolationist fallacies

In the same way as in economic theory Murray Rothbard recommended a monetary policy inconsistent both with his own political principles and with the necessities of monetary adjustment, in international politics his thinking was fraught with fallacies, which arose from his attempt to use the philosophical a priori approach beyond the limits of its validity, that is to say in a field of knowledge where, on the contrary, prior historical analysis is absolutely necessary.

We must insist on the fact that the Rothbardians’ principled isolationism is inspired by fallacies and not only by different assessments or a lesser tendency to compromise, because its critics as well as its supporters still mistakenly believe that Rothbard’s isolationism was a direct consequence of his anarcho-capitalist principles, whereas it is not the case: on the contrary, it stems from his inability to apply them seriously to a complex political reality.

The category error of an a priori foreign policy

Indeed international politics, like all politics, but even more than national politics because it deals with two or more states —by definition aggressive and violent, is the domain of the dilemmas, of seeking the lesser evil, where the principles of freedom cannot be applied directly nor with certainty.

On the contrary, we can only identify the policy to be pursued though political intuition, after a thorough analysis of its implications. It requires knowledge and direct experience of the political societies in question, and of their mutual relationships, which obviously cannot be gained by anyone who thinks he can decide everything in advance.

Similarly, the advisability of a policy depends largely on the circumstances, not least because it depends on balances of forces which are constantly changing.

To claim a priori knowledge of the right decision is a guarantee of failure for the policy at hand, whatever it may be.

To try and determine foreign policy a priori is a category error which in turn guarantees the incompetence of those who commit it.

Thus the advisability of a policy must necessarily depend on the circumstances, and any decision made upon it must be the end product of a localized and dated historical study, and not of a general philosophical argument.

A logical consequence of that is that the very concepts of “isolationism” or “interventionism”, or “pacifism” or “warmongering” are meaningless if taken in absolute terms, that is to say, independently of the political circumstances to which the decision applies.

Yet that is precisely what Murray Rothbard did as he tried in For a New Liberty to define isolationism as “the” free-market foreign policy.

As a consequence, anyone who has seriously studied any matter of international politics can only conclude that in those matters Rothbard and the Rothbardians as such regularly ignore relevant facts which run counter to their pre-determined conclusions.

As they generally know only the United States and believe that they can dispense with knowing other governments, they have failed to take the measure of how much more mendacious and criminal those can be, and as a consequence they have more often than not sided with the worst murderers against those who tried to neutralize them, while repeating lies from their propaganda.

The false “exception” of isolationism

The inability to understand politics engendered by this categorical error has inspired its followers a set of secondary fallacies which essentially consist in postulating natural differences between the policies they advocate and those they denounce which are in fact purely imaginary.

The fallacy of borders

The fallacy of borders means to believe that the laws of politics are different once the border has been crossed: Whereas he knows better than anyone that if you do not care about politics, that will not prevent politics from dealing with you, the Rothbardian isolationist believes that, on the other side of the border, things change, and there are no aggressors among foreigners:

“if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone”

Anthropology could suffice to dispel this illusion by refuting its racist underlying assumption that non-Westerners have no power of agency and can only react to the initiatives of the West —who, in the anti-white version of this kind of racism, could be the only ones who ever commit aggression.

Yet, the history of the United States should also have been enough: in the first quarter century of their existence, the United States were attacked by the Barbary pirates, by France, and by England. That is why they spent the rest of the nineteenth century preventively conquering the strategic space outside of their state : that was the “Frontier”.

Now that the conquered territories have been incorporated to it, we forget that they were not part of it and claim that a US “imperialism” was born in the late 19th century; this way of writing history rests on a biased selection of the events and their questionable interpretation, which allows for a suspicion that evidence has been sought exclusively to support pre-determined conclusions.

The verbal analogy of interventionism

Another, simpler fallacy rests on a verbal confusion: Rothbardian isolationism, in order to say that “interventionism” abroad is bound to fail, points to the fact that economic “interventionism” always fails to achieve its purported goals.

Yet, if economic “interventionism” does fail to achieve its purported goals, it achieves by definition at least one of its real objectives, which is to enable the powerful to steal from the weak. As regards its purported goals, economic “interventionism” can only fail because it claims to serve production whereas it is inherently aggressive and aggressive violence is pure destruction —and total destruction to boot, since it involves investments made not in production but in trying to avail oneself of the production of others: those are pseudo-investments, in effect lost for any production.

That, and that alone is true a priori reasoning about “interventionism”: every extension of such reasoning beyond this axiomatic truth, which Rothbard did and Rothbardians do, is fallacious and leads inevitably to error. That is true of the other aspects of economic interventionism, like who its real victims and beneficiaries are, which do depend on the a priori economic laws of fiscal incidence and effective protection, but not independently of the circumstances.

That is obviously also true of “interventionism” abroad, where all that can be known a priori is that gangs of aggressors confront other gangs of aggressors there, so that, logically, the advisability of siding with the ones or the others cannot be determined a priori. And as regards the effectiveness of such intervention, victory, not production, is the ostensible criterion of its success or failure; also, such violence may well serve production to the extent that it assaults criminals, something which the officials of the foreign states are by definition.

The warfare-welfare state

Another variant of the verbal sleight-of-hand about “interventionism”, this time borrowed from the left, and which is also characteristic of the illegitimate use of an a priori approach in matters of history, is the warfare-welfare-state argument: this argument represents as a necessary and universal connection the coincidence between the development of the welfare state and the war observed in the United States during the 1960s. Without even having to explain this historical coincidence, only one counter-example is logically necessary to refute the universality of those claims, and two can already be given: Britain’s evolution towards laissez-faire as it was developing its empire, and conversely, the expansion of the welfare state in Western Europe at the expense of defense since the mid-1960s.

The contradictions inherent in the complexity objection

The confusion over the word “interventionism” sometimes expresses a more subtle argument: that which argues that foreign policy is doomed to failure because society is opaque to those who would change it: that society is too complex and unpredictable for anyone to act effectively upon it.

It is true that international politics is more complex than national politics; and it is therefore also true that one must conclude that political action is even more uncertain and should be more cautious there than in national politics. Yet it remains to be seen what will be called “prudence” in this case, since in those matters, to do nothing is still to do something (see below). And that is why the complexity of international politics is an argument that a Rothbardian can hardly use without contradiction, since it means that it should be studied even more deeply in order to avoid elementary failures, whereas he claims on the contrary, with his a priori defined “libertarian foreign policy”, that such study could be completely dispensed with.

If the “complexity” argument proved that any “intervention” abroad is necessarily doomed to failure, then it would prove the same of any kind of political choice, and first, of any kind of foreign policy whatsoever – including an isolationist one. Again, borders are irrelevant: whoever preaches isolationism expects some effects from it, and those may very well not deliver, especially if such a policy was based on fallacies which inspired a refusal to get seriously informed.

A self-refuting position

Furthermore, if the opaque and unpredictable nature of society necessarily doomed any foreign intervention to failure, that would hardly be less true of all political action, including in national politics. And what do you do when you denounce a foreign policy in the name of the “unknowable and unpredictable” nature of international society, if not politics, “unknowable and unpredictable” according to your own disqualifications? Is it not an obvious practical contradiction to derive policy recommendations from an attempt to disqualify any policy for reasons of principle?

Winners and losers

To establish the fallacious nature of such an argument, let us just recall that in politics, the criterion of success is victory, and there is necessarily a winner and a loser at one time or another. This fact is enough to refute finally the idea that all politics is necessarily doomed to failure by the opaque and unpredictable nature of social reality.

The mere fact that in politics there must be a winner for there to be a loser then refutes the idea that every policy is inevitably doomed to failure because events are inherently unpredictable. In fact, there are policies that win because they were adapted to a complex situation, and therefore, policies that lose because they were not.

If you want to win in politics, you must analyze the situation. And no, indeed, there is no guarantee that a mistake made or an event unforeseen will not change everything, and yes, that is because people are rational and inventive —and, abroad, different. But we know that there will be a winner and a loser, so that you can succeed, but you can also be crushed —even if you do nothing. And we can no less know that, if you purport to define a policy a priori, that is to say, if you think that you can dispense with knowing the circumstances where you intend to implement it, then you are quite sure to be crushed.

How easy it is to be right when you are the one who writes history

For example, nothing is easier than to rewrite history and say that everything would have gone better if the U.S. had not intervened during the First World War: but if it is so easy, it is precisely because we know nothing about what would have happened otherwise.

And anyway you must carefully choose your examples to draw, falsely, general conclusions from that kind of virtual rewritten history.

In order to refute such virtual rewritten history, all that is needed is to use against it the argument of opacity and unpredictability - adding to that, of course, that of absolute ignorance. Which brings us to the last instance of the fallacy of imaginary differences

The myth of innocent politics

Rothbardian isolationism ultimately rests on the utopian premise that certain types of policy choices could be free of the uncertainties and moral responsibilities which are in fact inherent in politics, so that no policy can ever avoid them: We have just concluded that if social complexity and the free will of the players inevitably doomed intervention abroad to failure, that would be equally true of any foreign policy.

It’s time to remember that when you can act, even doing nothing is to act. It is an illusion – of a “precautionary principle” kind- to fantasize that action would have consequences while inaction would have none.

As the example of the Leninist and Hitlerian socialisms, both of which could and should have been nipped in the bud, inaction too has unpredictable and potentially catastrophic consequences on an opaque and dangerous reality.

To refuse to use force against an aggressor when we can do it is to authorize his aggressions

To refuse the use of violence against tyrants under the excuse of "not adding war to war” (Mitterrand, as a de facto accomplice of Serbian aggression) is to let aggressive violence run free, as if we did not accept that violence can —and must —be defensive and restorative, is to confuse libertarianism with pacifism, which is a different political philosophy —so different that, unlike libertarianism, it is a self-contradictory one, since no practical defense of any definition of justice can be based on an equal condemnation of aggressive and defensive violence.

You take political positions in the context of a power struggle

Another aspect of the illusion of innocent politics is the Rothbardians’ idea that they could take political positions without regard to their implications in real political society. Thus, Rothbardians are periodically surprised to be shoved in the same basket as the fanatical “anti-imperialist” advocates of absurdist slavery who, like them, apologize for genocidal tyrants using blatant lies and sophistry, whereas their own blatant lies and sophistry are sometimes a different kind of blatant lies and sophistry.

This surprise comes from their self-inflicted inability to do political analysis. For those for whom such analysis is natural, it is clear that in a conflict there are two camps, and if you denounce one of them you belong to the other ; self-evident that in times of war, those who want their government to quit fighting root for the victory of its enemies. If you fail to understand that, don’t be surprised if others don’t, and draw the consequences.

Conclusion: if you want to do politics, you must accept all its rules and implications

Thus, Murray Rothbard and his successors in foreign policy have criticized certain policies to demand another single one, on behalf of general statements which are quite untrue, notably:

—Their fallacious pretence to define foreign policy a priori, a delusion which guarantees the incompetence of whomever it deceives;

A substantive error which comes with

—The implicit assertion of alleged “differences in nature” between the policies they criticize and their own, “differences” which in reality do not exist.

In anarcho-capitalist terms, international politics by definition deals with complex relationships between criminal gangs. If you pretend to judge them, you must analyze every time the concrete political situation, in order to know which approach happens to be the least harmful, and where, and when.

The particular hostility that Rothbardians harbor towards the so-called neo-conservatives on foreign policy, —while the objectivists, whom they do not attack so much, are only different because they are much less expert and much more ruthless (verbally)—shows that there is jealousy in this hostility ; yet if those “neo-conservatives” have influence while the Rothbardians have none, that is also because, on the basis of false reasoning, they have failed to engage in any serious study of international politics.

The failed politician

Murray Rothbard’s political commitments do not reflect, as we have seen, a sense of political advisability as sharp as most of his reasonings were in political philosophy and economics. They reflect instead the quandaries of the philosopher who would apply his principles of justice to a complex and changing political society, where most players are only trying to violate such rules of justice.

Incompetent in domestic politics

Thus, Murray Rothbard failed to give real weight to the U.S. Libertarian Party which he had helped create. Seeking to influence policy without compromising his principles, he finally found himself taking political positions which were not only fluctuating but put him at odds with the “camps” that could come to power. During the Vietnam War, he was seen cozying up to the communist and defeatist left which caused the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975, with the 3 million murders which ensued. After Reagan, who he thought was an “idiot”, had won the Cold War, his dislike for the actually eligible candidates led him to contribute to the victory of the left by supporting the diversionary candidate Ross Perot in 1992, and then support the right-wing socialist (the increasingly out-of-touch protectionist) Patrick Buchanan. At the end of his life, he spent less time denouncing the worst enemies of freedom than his own potential allies in the political arena, because those make realistic assessments of political situations and have accepted that, in order to exercise influence, you should hold a definite position, and one consistent with belonging to a camp.

Harmful in foreign policy

His positions on foreign policy also reflected his philosophical errors in that field. Murray Rothbard could have acknowledged his own incompetence, as he did not read any foreign language and was afraid of flying. Instead, having adopted Senator Taft’s isolationist stance through an accident of history, and believing that he could directly apply his own principles, he argued for an a priori definition of a libertarian foreign policy as “non-interventionist”.

Armed with this categorical error, knowing better than anyone the depravity of his own government and unable to assess the extent of the others’, he never ceased denouncing the foreign policy of the United States only, occasionally supporting the worst tyrannies and repeating their propaganda lies.

Some of his successors still follow him on this path, less the genius and the care for accuracy. Devoid of any influence, they seek to attract attention by making outrageous statements in support of some genocidal murderer, provided he is the enemy of the United States: they are visibly content with the illusion of existence which some of the commentators who count on the right bestow upon them when, on occasion, they condescend to denounce them.

Rothbard’s history errors

by Paul Marks [1]

The late Murray Newton Rothbard was a profound economist and a historian of economic thought (although I do not share his anarchism - or “anarchocapitalism”), but he was NOT a good GENERAL historian - and neither are those who follow him, such as Tom Woods. They are very good on both the history of economic thought and economic history (two different things), but they are NOT good on general history.

The American Civil War was not a dispute about trade policy - if one looks at the words of Jefferson Davis (and other Confederate leaders) in the run up to 1861 (not after 1865) it is clear that their concern was slavery - not Free Trade. The First World War was not the fault of the Western Allies (indeed the Imperial German Declaration of War upon France was a tissue of lies). President Woodrow Wilson (vile man though he was) was not engaged in a conspiracy to drag the United States into war - indeed he resisted pressure to enter the war for years, in spite of Imperial German attacks on American ships and attacks (bombings and shootings) INSIDE the United States. The Second World War was not the fault of the Western Allies - there was no American and British “drive to war” against Nazi Germany in the 1930s, motivated by envy of its trade deals (as the late Professor Rothbard falsely claims in his history of American money and banking). The Cold War was not the fault of the United States - the Soviet Union was an aggressive Marxist power which most certainly (not did not) wish to spread Marxism over the world by violence. And, no, the various conflicts in the Middle East in the 20th and 21st centuries were and are not the fault of the Jews.

Why was Professor Rothbard, and those who followed him, so bad at general history when they were so good at both the history of economic thought and economic history (again two different things). Some have alleged that Murray Rothbard (like other people of Jewish origins) was trying (at least at some level in his mind) to “kill the Jew in himself” - but that would only explain his attitude to the 2nd World War and to the conflicts in the Middle East - it would not explain his false account of other historical matters. I think the answer is simpler one - Professor Rothbard (and those that followed him in general history) correctly believed that the “establishment line” on both the history of economic thought and economic history was horribly wrong (which it is), but he jumped to the conclusion that because mainstream historians are horribly wrong about both the history of economic thought and economic history, they must also be wrong about EVERYTHING ELSE. The American Civil War, both World Wars, the Cold War, conflicts in the Middle East - and-so-on, and that the reverse of what mainstream historians said must be true (about everything).

Therefore Professor Rothbard went looking for the writings dissenting historians - and he found them. People such as Charles Beard (the American Constitution as a conspiracy of the rich against ordinary people), Gabriel Kolko (the American Progressive era, President Theodore Roosevelt and co - being a “Triumph of Conservatism” with the American government under T. Roosevelt and others being the puppets of Big Business), Harry Elmer Barnes (both World Wars being aggression against Germany - not aggression by Germany), and the various “Revisionist” historians of the Cold War and the conflicts in the Middle East. That these dissenting historians were normally radical COLLECTIVISTS (of ether the socialist or National Socialist type) did not seem to matter to Professor Rothbard (or to those that followed him) - these historians were against the “establishment line” (mainstream historians) so they must-be-correct. And, perhaps the most important point, the central belief of both Professor Rothbard and those who followed him, was and is, that the governments in Washington D.C. and London are-always-wrong (and in economic policy there is something to be said for this view) - but then Professor Rothbard, and those who followed him in general history, jump to the conclusion that those who opposed “Uncle Sam” must-be-in-the-right. This led to the irony of the anarchist Murray Newton Rothbard being a de facto ally of some of the worst regimes and terrorist groups in history.

[2] I would agree that there is a distinction between historical facts and policy advice. One could make a case for non interventionism (although the neutrality policy of such nations as Sweden and Switzerland did de facto rest on the non neutrality of the United States - in several conflicts). What I believe was harmful about Murray Rothbard, from the point of view of the ordinary student of history (the ordinary person - of whom I am one) is NOT his policy advice - but his distortion of historical facts. For example, one can be reading his history of American money and banking and then read (without warning) that the United States and Britain were engaged in a “drive to war” against innocent Nazi Germany in the 1930s - motivated by envy of its trade deals. Or one can read (in many places in Rothbard’s writings) that the Soviet Union had no desire to spread Marxism by violence to the rest of the world - with such things as the invasion of Finland in 1940 being a minor border dispute. It is such utterly bizarre statements from Rothbard that did such harm to the libertarian cause. The, as long as it serves my noninterventionist position I will say anything - anything-at-all, practice of the late Professor Rothbard. To the ordinary person reading someone saying utterly bizarre things (things that were clearly false) discredits everything else they say - even if, in strict logic, it should not.

Rothbard and the Winter War

Rothbard and Soviet foreign policy

by Tim Starr [3]

After having discussed Rothbard’s misinterpretation of the Winter War, I now turn to his denial that Soviet foreign policy was based upon aggressive military expansion: “First, there is no doubt that the Soviets, along with all other Marxist-Leninists, would like to replace all existing social systems by Communist regimes. But such a sentiment, of course, scarcely implies any sort of realistic threat of attack - just as an ill wish in private life can hardly be grounds for realistic expectation of imminent aggression.” - Rothbard, “For A New Liberty,” p. 282 “Any idea of ”exporting“ communism to other countries on the backs of the Soviet military is totally contradictory to Marxist-Leninist theory.” - ibid, p. 283

“Thus, fortuitously, from a mixture of theoretical and practical grounds of their own, the Soviets arrived early at what libertarians consider to be the only proper and principled foreign policy.” - ibid, pp. 283-284 The most problematic of Rothbard’s above assertions is that exportation of Communism by means of Soviet military might is contrary to Marxist-Leninist theory. Lenin was the primary author of Marxism-Leninism, but this alleged “contradiction” didn’t stop him from authorizing the Red Army to invade Poland in the 1920s, presumably with the intent of Bolshevizing Poland once it was conquered. Lenin also actively supported attempts to overthrow “bourgeois” regimes like those of Germany and Hungary in the aftermath of WWI, albeit by means of domestic insurrection rather than invasion by the Red Army. However, this was because the Red Army was kept plenty busy fighting the Whites, the Greens, and the peasants in the Russian Civil War, not because of any theoretical objection.

While Lenin originated Marxism-Leninism, Stalin was the first to systematically present it in his book, “Foundations of Leninism.” Stalin was also unable to find any theoretical objection to spreading Communism by military might, as proven by the fact that he proceeded to do so as soon as he had favorable international conditions for doing so. His first attempt was in his provision of Comintern, KGB, and Red Army support for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, which led to the Spanish Republican Army being almost entirely under the command of officers who were Soviet puppets. This failed because of an anti-Communist rebellion within the Spanish Republican Army against the Soviet puppets, enabling the Nationalists to win the war. However, Stalin didn’t really care that much about Spain, and he cut off support for the Republicans after he gave up on the hope of a collective security alliance with the West against Germany, and decided on an alliance with Germany to carve up Eastern Europe between himself and Hitler instead. (See “Spain Betrayed,” edited by Ronald Radosh, Mary R. Habeck and Grigory Sevostianov on Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War.)

Upon signing the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, Stalin proceeded to occupy half of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia with the Red Army, and started the process of Sovietizing those countries. In Poland, the Soviets actually mass-murdered people faster than the Nazis did in their half of Poland until the German invasion of Russia in June of 1941. In the aftermath of WWII, all of the countries that had been occupied by the Red Army were Sovietized, with the only exceptions being Austria and Finland. I’ve already discussed why Finland wasn’t Sovietized. Austria wasn’t Sovietized because it had been jointly occupied by the Western Allies as well as the Soviets, the Allies agreed to neutralize Austria, and Austria was small potatoes compared to the rest of occupied Europe. Between 1945 and 1950, countries Sovietized by Stalin while under Soviet military occupation included East Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Yugoslavia was originally Sovietized, until Tito’s split with Stalin over the question of whether to continue supporting the Communists in the Greek Civil War. Stalin wanted that support to stop, because he was too afraid of Western intervention, while Tito wanted it to continue. Stalin also authorized Kim Il-Sung’s invasion of South Korea, and provided military assistance to North Korea in the Korean War, including tanks and Soviet pilots flying Soviet fighter planes.

The fact that Stalin did export Communism with the T-34 tanks and the rest of the might of the Red Army in the aftermath of WWII makes it rather irrelevant whether such aggressive military expansion was contrary to the official ideology of the Soviet Union, even if we accept that allegation for the sake of argument. What matters is how the Soviet Union actually behaved, and the Soviet Union manifestly did present a clear and present military threat to other countries wherever it wasn’t clearly opposed by superior military forces.

As for the Soviet Union arriving at what Rothbard considered the “only principled and proper foreign policy” for libertarians, he is referring to Khruschev’s policy of “peaceful coexistence.” That policy was the exception to the rule for the Soviet Union, and was largely the result of the Soviet Union facing a USA and its allies in NATO and SEATO that was determined to oppose Soviet aggression with overwhelming military might. It also didn’t last very long, as Khruschev was soon ousted by the hard-liners in the Politburo and replaced by Brezhnev, who decided upon a policy of defending every existing Communist regime and adding new ones to the fold by covertly supporting revolutionary “national liberation” movements in the Third World. Cuba and Vietnam were the first field tests of this strategy, and between 1975 and 1980 about a dozen countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia fell to the Commies, until the election of Ronald Reagan, another Cold War hawk who went further than his predecessors by not only supporting containment of the Soviets but active rollback of Soviet puppet regimes as well, such as in Nicaragua, Cambodia, Angola, Afghanistan, etc.

“Peaceful coexistence” was Khruschev’s euphemism for keeping the ill-gotten gains of Soviet military conquests in Eastern Europe and elsewhere - millions of slaves, massive amounts of raw materials, agricultural produce, industrial equipment, and territory. Letting tyrannical conquerors keep their slaves & booty isn’t “peace,” it’s a permanent state of war between the tyrants & their subjects. This is hardly the “only principled and proper foreign policy” for libertarians, since libertarians are opposed to tyranny, aggression, slavery, mass-theft and mass-murder. It may be the best policy option in a particular situation, but a policy of containing or rolling back such tyranny and slavery could also be the best policy, too. Determining which of these options is best requires a thorough examination of the empirical facts of the situation. It can’t be answered by resort to a priori theory, nor by starting with your conclusions, looking for evidence that fits your conclusions, and ignoring or explaining away all evidence contrary to your conclusions. Unfortunately, this latter strategy appears to have been the one Rothbard used, to the detriment of his own scholarly integrity, and the credibility of his followers. Hopefully, those who’ve bought into his denial of Soviet aggressiveness will reconsider their agreement with him, have a look at the evidence against it, and make a more informed judgement.

Rothbard's Cold War Revisionism, continued

by Tim Starr

While I have criticized Rothbard's take on the Cold War before (https://www.facebook.com/notes/tim-starr/rothbard-finland-and-soviet-russia/10150684718077899), I have just recently come across this old article of Rothbard's, written in reply to Dr. John Hospers when Hospers ran for President of the United States of America as the first candidate of the Libertarian Party:

https://mises.org/library/soviet-bogeyman

Needless to say, I side with Hospers against Rothbard. However, Rothbard makes so many blatantly false claims in it that I thought it worthwhile to go through them. Almost all of them were demonstrably false at the time Rothbard wrote the article. Some additional evidence of their falsehood has come out since then, which I will mention when relevant:

"Since the time of Lenin and his magnificent (from a libertarian, pro-peace point of view) conclusion of the “appeasement” Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, the Soviet Union, vis-à-vis the other Great Powers, has consistently pursued a policy of what they have long termed “peaceful coexistence,”..."

Actually, Lenin sent his henchman Karl Radek to Germany to support the Spartacist Revolt in 1919 as well as subsequent attempts at violent revolution in Berlin and Munich. These were supported directly by the Russian communist party, operating out of the Russian embassies in Germany. Russia supplied the revolutionaries with weapons, propaganda leaflets, and moral support. The same thing happened with Bela Kun in Hungary, who also tried to export the revolution to Slovakia. You can read more about this here:

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/museum/his1h.htm

After these failed, operational control of further efforts to export violent communist revolution was transferred from the Bolshevik Party to the Comintern, which remained in operation for decades. Bolshevik Russia also tried to invade Poland in the 1920s, only to be beaten by the forces of Marshal Pilsudski. Later on, Stalin tried to take over Spain by supporting the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, before annexing the Baltics without opposition and unsuccessfully invading Finland in 1940 as part of the alliance between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany known as the "Hitler-Stalin Pact."

Soviet Russia began sponsoring national liberation revolutions all around the world in the 1960s under Brezhnev, having successfully field-tested that strategy in Cuba. Then the Soviets repeated it in Indochina, breaking US containment of Communism. This led to the fall of about a dozen countries around the world to violent revolution - Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam, East Timor, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, etc. The Soviets followed this up with sponsorship of terrorist and guerilla groups in many other countries around the world to try to do the same.

"The Soviet policy has always been the defensive one of hanging on to what they have and waiting for the supposedly inevitable Marxian revolutions in the other countries of the world."

No, Soviet policy has almost always consisted of trying to start revolutions in the rest of the world and help them succeed, settling for terrorism and insurrection to destabilize regimes when outright victory eluded their grasp. The sole exception to this was Stalin's "Socialism in one country" policy, which only lasted as long as Stalin needed it to distinguish himself from Trotsky until Trotsky was safely purged and exiled, soon after to be murdered by one of Stalin's assassins. This policy had obviously been abandoned in practice, if not in theory, by the time of Stalin's intervention in the Spanish Civil War. It was only maintained thereafter as an obvious Soviet lie.

"Russia (any Russia, not just Soviet Russia) was a grievous loser from the settlements imposed by World War I (Brest-Litovisk, Versailles). Any German, Russian, or Austrian regime would have been “revisionist” after the war, i.e., would have sought the restoration of the huge chunk of territory torn from them by the victorious powers."

Yes, tyrannical regimes who've lost their power would like it back. So what? This is about as relevant as the desire of ex-slavemasters to get their slaves back after losing them in the American Civil War. The fact that tyrants have such evil motives does nothing to make it justifiable, permissible, or acceptable for them to act on them in furtherance of such goals. It just means that they're engaged in a criminal conspiracy against people whom they've no right to rule.

Furthermore, there were losers in WWI who did NOT try to get back their lost territory by forcible reconquest afterwards, such as Austria and Turkey. Similarly, there are plenty of losers in other wars who do not try to reconquer their lost territory, such as Germany after WWII. Britain did not try to regain any of its lost American colonies after the War of 1812.

"...the Soviets did very little about this hankering; certainly they made no move whatsoever to make war to get the territories back."

Except for invading Poland, as I've already mentioned, then later annexing the Baltics and invading Finland. Since Rothbard provides excuses for those later, I'll reserve further comments until then.

"The Hitler-Stalin pact, much reviled by the uncomprehending Western press, actually made excellent sense for both major “revisionist” post-Versailles powers, Germany and Russia. For the essence of that pact was the commonality of revisionist interests by both powers: from that pact, Germany got its lost territories back (plus an extra chunk of ethnically Polish Poland), and Russia peacefully re-acquired its old territories, with the exception of Finland."

What "makes sense" to tyrannical power-lusters remains irrelevant. Rothbard diminishes the scale of the German invasion of Poland by calling it "an extra chunk" and calling it "ethnically Polish," as if that land had previously belonged to Germany but just happened to have Poles living on it. Actually, it was roughly half of all Poland, almost all of which had never been part of Germany before. Danzig had been a German city, but the Polish Corridor between Germany and Danzig had always been Polish, never belonging to Germany before. Poland had been part of the Tsarist Empire before WWI, not Germany.

Rothbard also omits the Soviet invasion of Poland weeks after Germany's, in which the Soviets mass-murdered people faster than Germany at the time. Russia invaded Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, forcibly imposing annexation referenda upon them which were obviously rigged. The Red Army never left the Baltics until the end of the Cold War a half-century later. This is how Soviet Russia "peacefully re-acquired its old territories," as Rothbard says. Mass-murdering Poles faster than the Nazis is hardly peaceful. Rothbard simply airbrushed the Katyn Forest massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets out of history, just like Stalin airbrushed purged Party members out of official photographs.

Rothbard allows for the Soviet invasion of Finland as an "exception," which he tried to justify in the article I debunked before, so no need to repeat all that now. However, this is a good time to bring up the point that the Bolshevik regime had never "owned" Finland before. Field Marshal Mannerheim, the architect of Finland's defenses in the Winter War, had been an officer in the Tsarist Army, and remained loyal to the Tsar's memory even after Finland gained its independence. Furthermore, Finland had never been part of Russia, it had been a separately-owned part of the Tsar's feudal holdings.

"Hitler too, like our conservatives, thought he saw an imminent Russian Threat: and so he decided on what is now called a “preemptive strike.” But of course Hitler, like our American Conservatives, was deluded..."

Actually, there was always some evidence of preparations for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, and we now have a good deal more evidence about this such as in "Stalin's Folly," by Constantine Pleshakov, "Icebreaker," by Victor Suvorov, and "Stalin's Drive to the West," by Richard Raack. After the Soviet invasion of Poland, Stalin was in the process of moving the Red Army into position for an offensive drive to the west. However, those preparations were far from complete by the time Hitler invaded Russia, thus making the threat nowhere near imminent enough to justify any German pre-emptive strike. But the plan was real and the preparations were about two years from completion when the German invasion began. Some of this evidence was available in books that had been published before Rothbard wrote this article, while the ones I've cited are from after the end of the Cold War when archival evidence from the former Soviet regimes became available to Western scholars. Stalin's plan was to let Germany fight France, Britain, and anyone else foolish enough to join them, thereby exhausting themselves. Then, after Germany had "broken the ice," Soviet Russia would sweep in to mop up whomever remained and take over.

"What of Stalin’s “expansion” into Eastern Europe? This expansion was scarcely aggression in any rational sense: it was purely the inevitable consequence of Russia’s rolling back and defeating the German aggressor and his Hungarian and Romanian allies."

Here, Rothbard leaves out such other countries as Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, etc., which can hardly be described as having been Nazi allies. However, the most significant omission remains Poland, which fought against the Nazis right from the start all the way through the war, as best it could. Stalin occupied these countries, promised to hold free elections in them, then proceeded to forcibly Sovietize them despite the fact that none of his puppet parties ever won any democratic elections. As with the Baltics, the Red Army never left any of these countries until the end of the Cold War. Nor is such foreign military occupation the inevitable result of overthrowing an enemy in war. For example, the Russians drove the French back all the way to Paris after Napoleon's invasion of Russia, but France was not occupied by the Russians for the next half-century. France was left pretty much intact and independent after the Peace of Vienna. Soviet Russia actually did withdraw from Austria after WWII, on the condition that Austria be neutralized. This condition was met by the Western Allies and kept for the duration of the Cold War.

"...historians from such opposite ends of the political and ideological spectrum as Gar Alperovitz (in his great work, Atomic Diplomacy) and the late Harry Elmer Barnes, have shown that the very genocidal dropping of the A-bomb on an already vanquished Japan was done largely for the purpose of using atomic diplomacy as a counter in the American-launched Cold War."

Thanks to Japanese military codes that were broken by the US during WWII and declassified after the Cold War, we know for certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that Truman dropped the Bomb on Japan for the sole purpose of ending the war. This has been documented in books like "Downfall" by Richard Frank, who wrote a short version of it that can be read here:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/why-truman-dropped-the-bomb

The best summary of all the current evidence on this that I know of can be found here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml

In sum, Gar Alperovitz twisted, cherry-picked, and misinterpreted evidence in order to reach a conclusion unfavorable to the USA and favorable to the Soviets. His methods were exactly like those described by the former head of the Romanian KGB, Ion Mihai Pacepa, in his book "Disinformation," about how the KGB designed propaganda to deceive and demoralize the West. Furthermore, Alperovitz was a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, and the IPS was a KGB front. By lauding Alperovitz's work like this, Rothbard was credulously falling for and spreading KGB disinformation against the USA which has long since been definitively proven false. Rothbard ought to have known better at the time than to fall for this drivel.

Which brings us to Harry Elmer Barnes, one of Rothbard's favorite historians. Barnes was part of the Wilsonian Progressive movement that hated American democracy and entered WWI with a view towards remaking the world in their own elitist, technocratic vision. Barnes was disillusioned by the fact that WWI didn't turn out the way he wanted to, thus making him ripe for Germany's attempt to enlist foreign historians to absolve themselves of their guilt for starting WWI. To this end, the German Foreign Ministry created its "War Guilt Department," the "kriegschuldreferat," complete with its own "independent" think-tank whose job it was to sanitize the diplomatic archives of the Second Reich to remove anything incriminating Germany for starting WWI. Once this was done, the think-tank invited American scholars like Barnes and Sidney Fay of Harvard to an all-expenses-paid sabbatical to research the question of who started WWI in their archives. The Bolsheviks helped out by publishing Tsarist Russia's secret treaties with France from before WWI, thus making it look like France and Russia started the war, not Germany. Naturally, Barnes and Fay concluded in the books they published on the origins of WWI that Germany didn't start it, with Barnes going so far as to say that it was really started by France and Russia. Germany paid for their books to be translated into German, published in Germany, and made them standard textbooks in the German public schools. Hitler praised Barnes' "Origins of the World War" as one of the few "good" ones on the topic. It was also influential in America, too. I seem to recall that it was read by John F. Kennedy in college, thus influencing his view of how WWI started long before he became President of the USA.

Barnes went on to become ever-more sympathetic to Nazi Germany, ending up in the late 1960s arranging for the English translation and publication of the books of the infamous French Holocuast Denier Paul Rassinier, published by the Holocaust Denial publishing house Noontide Press, owned by the American neo-Nazi Willis Carto. Barnes then gave them glowing reviews in "The American Mercury," which had once been founded by H.L. Mencken but had since been acquired by the aforementioned Carto. A Barnes protege, David Hoggan, wrote a defense of the German invasion of Poland called "The Enforced War," first published in Germany and given awards by neo-Nazi groups there, then later in English. Hoggan actually worked with Rothbard and Gary North at the Volcker Fund in New York City in the 1960s, before coming out later as the anonymous author of "The Myth of the Six Million," a book-length exercise in Holocaust Denial published by Carto's Noontide Press. Hoggan claimed authorship when he sued for royalty payments, which came as a surprise to Carto since Carto had always assumed it to have been written by Barnes.

Hoggan's victim-blaming argument that Poland was at fault for its invasion by Germany was very similar to Rothbard's argument to that effect, raising the question of who got it from whom. More recently, Pat Buchanan has made pretty much the same argument in his book, "The Unnecessary War." Rothbard was also witnessed at a European academic conference in the late 1970s saying that the Allies had made up the Holocaust as ex post facto propaganda to justify their war against Germany by the late founder of the Libertarian Alliance, Chris Tame. The wording was almost exactly the same as Barnes' published views on the Holocaust.

Thus, in the persons of Barnes and Alperovitz, Rothbard credulously swallowed and parroted government propaganda produced by some of the worst totalitarian regimes in human history and their overt sympathizers, and tried to foist it upon the Libertarian movement as a message of freedom.

"As for the Cuban crisis of 1962, there is not a single piece of evidence of any Russian aim to drop missiles on the United States. In fact, the Soviets had plenty of their own missiles..."

At the time, Soviet missiles were Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles, IRBMS. The Soviets didn't yet have any Inter-Continental Ballstic Missiles (ICBMs). They could only deliver nuclear warheads to Western Europe, not the USA. By transporting IRBMs to Cuba, the Soviets instantly transformed them into the functional equivalent of ICBMs, enabling the Soviets to directly nuke the USA for the first time ever. Castro urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear first strike on the USA, which would've gone much further than mere defense of the Soviet-sponsored Cuban Revolution (in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, which at other times Rothbardians hail as an instance of good anti-interventionist US foreign policy). Fortunately, the Russian military officers on the ground in Cuba realized that if they continued escalating things there might actually be a nuclear war between the US & USSR, and they de-escalated on their own initiative. Khruschev backed down, but then got sacked by the Politburo for his cowardice. Brezhnev then embarked upon a great military buildup, both conventional and nuclear, building a blue-water navy & sub fleet, as well as resuming sponsorship of national liberation revolutions around the world as in Indochina. Prior to that China had been in charge of spreading the revolution in Asia, but North Vietnam was soon reunited back with the Soviets as the main sponsor of Hanoi, with China being increasingly sidelined until China allied with the USA against the Soviets and went to war with Hanoi after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia drove out China's client, the Khmer Rouge. Meanwhile, the Soviets used their nuclear deterrent to prevent the US from using its conventional forces to reverse any of the Soviet-sponsored revolutions, until Reagan broke the "rules" by doing so in Grenada in 1983. Coincidentally, 1983 was also the year in which the US and Soviets came closer to nuclear war than at any other time, because the Soviets misinterpreted America's "Able Archer" war games as a cover story for preparation for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, which the Soviets almost decided to pre-empt with a nuclear first strike of their own. This was in large part because the Soviets misunderstood Reagan as a warmonger, just as Rothbard misrepresented America as the aggressor in the Cold War. Thus, Rothbard contributed to the climate of Cold War paranoia about America that nearly led to Russia nuking the USA.

"...the only possible purpose of Khrushchev’s emplacement of missiles in Cuba was to safeguard Cuba against an American attack..."

Since Castro urged Khruschev to nuke America first from Cuba, that was hardly "the only possible purpose" of having Soviet nukes in Cuba.

"...far too much has been made of the importance of Mein Kampf in assessing Hitler’s policies. To say that someone’s actions can be fully explained by a tract, written in very different circumstances a decade or more earlier, is highly simplistic as historical method."

True. However, Hitler wrote a Second Book which wasn't published during his lifetime, but was discovered by the American historian Gerhard Weinberg after the war and has since been published. In it, Hitler makes clear his plans for an eventual final military confrontation with America that was to happen in the 1980s, after Germany had secured the necessary resources for the job in all that east European lebensraum he planned to conquer. This timeline seems to have been adopted by the Soviets after WWII, as KGB defectors told us the Soviets planned to attack the USA in the 1980s as well.

Furthermore, A.J.P. Taylor, whom Rothbard also cites favorably on the origins of WWII, deliberately excluded all evidence from the Nuremburg Tribunals from consideration for his book on the topic. This intentional omission of public and well-established evidence from a book which purported to tell the truth about whether Hitler intended to start WWII is an instance of negligent professional malpractice for a professional academic historian like Taylor. It is the exact opposite of what Revisionist historians claim they do: Revise history in light of new facts that have been brought to light. Instead, Taylor refused to let any newly-exposed facts interfere with his prejudices about who started WWII.

"The announced intentions of all the Marxist-Leninist theoreticians, from Lenin down to the present, are notably different: they call repeatedly and consistently for a policy of peaceful coexistence by Communist countries with the “capitalist” powers."

And, of course, tyrants who hold millions of their subjects in terror, having mass-murdered a good deal of them, would never lie to the rest of the world about their intentions. When such rulers say belligerent things, appeaseniks like Rothbard tell us they don't really mean them and are just engaging in rhetorical speeches for the benefit of their domestic audiences. When these rulers say pacifistic things, these same people tell us that's what the rulers really mean. In fact, judging by Soviet practice, the opposite rule of interpretation applies: When such tyrants talk peace, they're lying.

"...given the black record of American aggression in the Cold War and elsewhere..."

The worst American Cold War ally killed far fewer people than the best Soviet Cold War ally. American "aggression" in the Cold War largely consisted of stopping Soviet revolutions, overthrowing Soviet puppets, going to war against Soviet proxies, imposing sanctions upon the Soviet bloc, and supporting allies who were resisting Soviet expansionism. Almost every dictator the US allied with during the Cold War for the sake of expediency was dumped around the time the Cold War ended, and a democratic regime took its place, especially in the countries where the USA had the most influence.

"...we intervened with troops and weapons to try to crush the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918-20."

No, we didn't. The US military mission to Russia during WWI was for the sole purpose of trying to keep up the fight against Germany, not overthrowing the Bolsheviks. The foreign military force that had the most ability to stop the Bolshevik Revolution was the Czech legion, which was trapped in Russia after the Tsar's downfall, but all it wanted to do was go home. British agent Sidney Reilly tried to launch his own coup d'etat against the Bolsheviks, but that sadly failed, as did British support for the Whites in the Russian Civil War.

"The Russians, indeed, have been anxious to conclude a joint disarmament agreement with the U.S., and have ever since they accepted the American proposal to that effect on May 10, 1955: a proposal which the U.S. itself promptly repudiated and has balked at ever since."

The Soviets never abided by the terms of any arms-limitation treaty they signed. The built far more ICBMs than they were allowed to. When germ warfare and chemical warfare was banned, the Soviets seized upon such weapons as giving them a strategic advantage over the USA and proceeded to develop the most advanced and largest stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in human history. Yeltsin admitted to these after the Cold War, but their destruction in compliance with the relevant treaties has yet to be adequately documented. The Soviets also helped various clients develop biological and chemical weapons, including Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Qadaffi of Libya, and Assad of Syria. The Soviets used chemical weapons in Afghanistan and Yemen, and even since the demise of the Soviet Union Russia has helped Syria use sarin and chlorine gas against rebel forces in the Syrian civil war.

Murray Rothbard’s “For a New Liberty” revisited [4][5]

Happy July. Despite my promise to NV, I failed to post anything celebrating UC’s ninth anniversary. I do plan to get together a Fourth of July post on American Independence Day. In the meantime, in the course of working on a research paper I happened across the Amazon.com reviews of Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty. Most of the reviews are positive, and the ones I read seemed entirely uncritical. The few negative reviews were trashed in the comments section, and frankly weren’t that great, although I think the commenters tended to be rather unfair. So what the heck, I posted my own review of Rothbard’s book, awarding it a measly two stars. The review, posted below with a bit of editing, explains. Enjoy.

2.0 out of 5 stars The good, the bad, and the ugly, July 1, 2013 By C.N. Steele This review is from: For a New Liberty (Paperback) It’s difficult to figure how many stars to award this book, because it entails both the very good and the very bad, and then descends into the very ugly.

The good first: Rothbard’s book is a classic of libertarian thought, and anyone with a serious interest in libertarian ideas should read this at some point. It is well- written in that it is quite readable, very interesting, and in many respects nicely argued. Whether you agree with him or not, Rothbard has very interesting perspectives on many issues and lays out what is a mostly self-consistent system of addressing problems using the free market instead of government. In short, he identifies serious problems with government action in various spheres, and proposes alternative free market/nonstate solutions. His defense of individual liberty is important reading. He takes on supposedly difficult cases for the market, such as provision of education, roads, and police and judicial services. Some of these are quite thought-provoking, and whether one finds them convincing or not, they are certainly worth reading. Rothbard essentially concludes that a stateless society based on anarcho-capitalism would be far superior to any state. This is crucial reading for anyone interested in understanding the anarcho-capitalism variant of libertarianism.

The bad: In some places Rothbard’s analysis is quite shallow, so much so as to almost make him seem silly. He basically ignores the public goods problem in economics, essentially by denying it exists. This is a bad error, since the primary argument for having government at all is based on this. His analysis is entirely inadequate and unconvincing. Similarly, in his discussion of private police and defensive agencies (his solution to replace the state) he responds to the challenge that such agencies would fight among themselves like mafias —his response is to simply assert that they would find it too costly to fight. Well, that’s a nonsensical response. One might as easily make the same argument about states to “prove” that wars never occur. If a profit-maximizing private defensive agency in stateless society decided it could make more by killing off its competitors and stealing their assets, why wouldn’t it? It’s a legitimate and obvious question, and Rothbard has no answer at all.

It gets worse...the ugly: By the time he gets to foreign policy, Rothbard has been on such a jihad against the state, and the U.S. government in particular, that he goes berserk and accuses the United States of being the bad guys in the (then ongoing) Cold War. In the First Edition (1973) he went so far as to attribute to Stalin a libertarian foreign policy, alleging the USSR practiced non-interventionism. When it was pointed out to him that the USSR invaded Finland, Rothbard added to his Second Edition a defense of Stalin’s attack, arguing that Stalin only wanted to reclaim traditionally Russian Karelia and liberate all the Russians supposedly living there. All of that is a-historical nonsense and Rothbard simply invented it. The Soviets planned to capture all of Finland and had even assembled a new Marxist government they hoped to install in Helsinki. The areas Stalin invaded are not “traditionally Russian.” But even if Rothbard’s interpretation were true, how can Rothbard justify on libertarian grounds the bloodiest dictatorship in history attacking a free country in an effort to get “its” land and people back? It makes no sense, but Rothbard’s only concern is to defend his indefensible claim that the United States surpasses the rest of the world in doing evil. Unfortunately for Rothbard, long before the First Edition came out there was ample evidence that the Stalin and other Soviet leaders engaged in interventionism all around the world, often quite bloodily (Katyn Forest anyone?) Rothbard’s “libertarian” defense of Stalin is despicable and intellectually dishonest —and that’s the real problem with this book. Rothbard pretends that he’s doing careful analysis and finds the state wanting while showing that his own anarcho-capitalist system shines. But in fact, no argument is so bad, no intellectual sleight-of-hand too dishonest, if it will get Rothbard to his pre-chosen conclusion.

I appreciate Rothbard’s fierce devotion to individual liberty in this book and there are many interesting ideas, but his willingness to make bad and even dishonest arguments in its defense lead me to conclude two stars. Frederic Bastiat argued “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended,” so by that standard I’m letting Rothbard off easy.

Antisemitism and Holocaust denial

WWII Revisionism

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