Same, only in my case it was because I was pretentious.
6 Likes
It’s interesting how similar the extremes on both ends can sound. This could just as well have been said by a communist.
2 Likes
I’m a trifle surprised that Hayek would be willing to endorse something so very similar to the Marxist theories of a dictatorship that will totally evaporate after its economic work is concluded. One would have imagined that he would want something that sounded more different.
3 Likes
Versus the closeted fascists that the rest of them are?
Well, no, that’s unkind. Some of them are merely grossly idealistic/romantic and don’t have two brain cells trained in introspection or analysis to rub together. I remember meeting one (an upper-middle class college white boy) that imagined that he’d end up as the samurai warrior bodyguard of some highly successful businessman–and also had managed to delude himself that he’d never end up violating bushido under orders from his employer.
2 Likes
I’m absolutely not, given how gushing the right wing intellectuals were in their praise for Mussolini (Hayek’s hero Von Mieses is worth noting in that regard).
US style libertarians seem to be fairly explicitly Bolshevik in their tendencies: certainly Atlas Shrugged is about a bolshevik elite and I recently read “the moon is a harsh mistress” by Heinlein. It was about a bolshevik group leading a libertarian revolution.
As an aside I was shocked at how prescient that book was: it seems to describe the racist, sexist, bolshevik libertarians in the tech world now quite accurately.
5 Likes
There is more than one end. You wouldn’t mistake a libertarian-socialist or anarcho-communist for a libertarian capitalist, a Marxist-Leninist or a fascist.
People who want power over other people will seek out that power wherever it is. See the Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1978), now Spiked Magazine.
6 Likes
See also the American Trotskyites who morphed into neoconservatives. When the ideological swing is that extreme the real aspirations become clear. Ideals and values fall to the side, since power and superiority is what they’re really after.
This is why we shouldn’t wave away Mr. “Road to Serfdom” supporting the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Benevolent Free Market Strongman as a case of mere “complacency”.
5 Likes
Let us just hope that the US doesn’t allow itself to interfere in the elections of another country. Because only Russians do that.
4 Likes
[citation needed].
3 Likes
I’d hate to think that Cory was trying to poison the libertarian well because they have sensible arguments against net neutrality.
Really? You must tell us what they are, because the only arguments I have heard are far from sensible and will result in far more powerful monopolies.
5 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
