And free market anarchists like Tucker, who also identified themselves as "libertarian socialists," saw the state as the central, defining characteristic of capitalist exploitation (and all other forms of exploitation). Exploitation, defined as the use of force to enable one person to live off another's labor, was the central function of the state, and was impossible without it. For Tucker, "free market capitalism" was an oxymoron.
It's interesting you refer to Leninism, Social Democracy, and Fabianism as allied phenomena--because in fact, they all reflect the rise of the "New Class" of professionals and planners, who began to take over the labor and socialist movement in the late nineteenth century. In fact, Nazism itself was prefigured in many ways (including extreme antisemitism, eugenics, etc.) in Fabian thought. Socialism in the U.S. persisted, though, as a largely self-organized, working class movement until WWI. It was at that point that the "progressives" and Crolyites in the Wilson administration, under the pretext of war hysteria and the Red Scare, liquidated most of the genuine working class left. Before WWI, the main electoral support for the Socialist Party was among Oklahoma oil workers, Montana miners, Milwaukee brewery workers, etc. After WWI, "socialism's" main demographic base was either academia or yuppie hog heavens like Burlington, Vt. >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >I suspect that Von Mises' insight refer more to the brands of socialism >popular in his era, such as communism, social democracy (Austria, France, >Germany), Labour Party socialism (Britain), and of course Nazism, rather >than to all socialisms throughout modern history. As Elizabeth Tamedly >points out in _Socialism and International Trade_, most forms of socialism >historically have not advocated an abolition of private property. Most >have >advocated some mixture of private property and government control. If you >want to argue that the more the government control, the less the substance >of >private property ownership, I'd certainly agree, noting that there's >something of a spectrum of government control, with communism on one >extreme. > Not all government control is created equal (thankfully). > >David Levenstam _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
