How Murray Rothbard Single-Handedly Brought Down the Saigon Government with Malice Aforethought
by Joseph R. Stromberg
by Joseph R. Stromberg
by Joseph R. Stromberg
A Hardy Weed
As the current US foreign policy adventure drags on, it seems as good a time as any to address a recurring charge brought against Murray Rothbard by sundry libertarians (sic), Randians, near-Neo-Conservatives, and other worthies. Strictly speaking, the complaint is not that Rothbard, alone and unaided, brought down the Saigon Government in 1975; even Rothbard’s enemies do not go quite that far. The complaint seems to be that Rothbard “cheered” when that government fell, proving that he was “pro-communist,” had a bad attitude about these things, was crazy and immoral, etc.
To get a proper handle on this apparently controversial subject, it is best to begin with Rothbard’s writings on the deaths of states.
I. Deaths of States
Rothbard the “Pro-Communist”
In 1975, Murray Rothbard penned two essays on the fall of the Saigon government, a government largely invented, bankrolled, and sustained by the United States. This invention was part of the American project of incorporating Southeast Asia into a kind of US-directed “Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” [1] The US had of course objected, in the 1930s, to the Japanese version of such a project.
The two articles on the collapse of the Republic of South Vietnam have caused much angst among those conservatives and libertarians who never managed to question any important assumptions about the Cold War. This angst reverberates down the halls of time. Its echo, for some reason, is with us still.
The first essay, “The Death of a State,” appeared in Rothbard’s newsletter, the Libertarian Forum in April 1975. It began on this note:
As the current US foreign policy adventure drags on, it seems as good a time as any to address a recurring charge brought against Murray Rothbard by sundry libertarians (sic), Randians, near-Neo-Conservatives, and other worthies. Strictly speaking, the complaint is not that Rothbard, alone and unaided, brought down the Saigon Government in 1975; even Rothbard’s enemies do not go quite that far. The complaint seems to be that Rothbard “cheered” when that government fell, proving that he was “pro-communist,” had a bad attitude about these things, was crazy and immoral, etc.
To get a proper handle on this apparently controversial subject, it is best to begin with Rothbard’s writings on the deaths of states.
I. Deaths of States
Rothbard the “Pro-Communist”
In 1975, Murray Rothbard penned two essays on the fall of the Saigon government, a government largely invented, bankrolled, and sustained by the United States. This invention was part of the American project of incorporating Southeast Asia into a kind of US-directed “Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” [1] The US had of course objected, in the 1930s, to the Japanese version of such a project.
The two articles on the collapse of the Republic of South Vietnam have caused much angst among those conservatives and libertarians who never managed to question any important assumptions about the Cold War. This angst reverberates down the halls of time. Its echo, for some reason, is with us still.
The first essay, “The Death of a State,” appeared in Rothbard’s newsletter, the Libertarian Forum in April 1975. It began on this note:
What we are seeing these last weeks in Indochina is, for libertarians, a particularly exhilarating experience: the death of a State, or rather two States: Cambodia and South Vietnam. The exhilaration stems from the fact that here is not just another coup d’état, in which the State apparatus remains virtually intact and only a few oligarchs are shuffled at the top. Here is the total and sudden collapse – the smashing – of an entire State apparatus. Its accelerating and rapid disintegration. Of course, the process does not now usher in any sort of libertarian Nirvana, since another bloody State is in the process of taking over. But the disintegration remains, and offers us many instructive lessons. [2]
Thus, at the very outset, Rothbard says in effect, “Yes, another state will replace the one that fell, but the process itself may prove to be interesting and instructive.” The excitement – that which initially draws our interest – has to do with the complete implosion of a state. As for how such an Einsturz might happen, Rothbard writes that Étienne de La Boétie, David Hume, and Ludwig von Mises have long since given the explanation.
Simply put, “no matter how bloody or despotic any State may be, it rests for its existence in the long-run (and not-so-long run) on the consent of the majority of its subjects….” This consent may be “passive resignation, but the important thing is that it rests on the willingness of the masses to obey the orders and the commands of the State apparatus” up to the point, where we see “a sudden and infectious decision of the masses to say: Enough! We’ve had it; we quit.” [3]
So it was with ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam – “trained for decades by American commanders, armed to the teeth by the United States” – which, in the end, just quit. Rothbard noted that the South Vietnamese government “had no real roots in popular support…. Hence its supporters were mainly only the recipients of American largesse.” Further:
Simply put, “no matter how bloody or despotic any State may be, it rests for its existence in the long-run (and not-so-long run) on the consent of the majority of its subjects….” This consent may be “passive resignation, but the important thing is that it rests on the willingness of the masses to obey the orders and the commands of the State apparatus” up to the point, where we see “a sudden and infectious decision of the masses to say: Enough! We’ve had it; we quit.” [3]
So it was with ARVN, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam – “trained for decades by American commanders, armed to the teeth by the United States” – which, in the end, just quit. Rothbard noted that the South Vietnamese government “had no real roots in popular support…. Hence its supporters were mainly only the recipients of American largesse.” Further:
A corollary lesson of the collapse, then, is the long-run impossibility for an imperialist-dominated regime to survive, when opposed by guerrilla warfare backed by the great majority of the population. And this despite the enormous advantage in firepower and in modern weaponry that the imperialist power, and its puppets, initially enjoy.
Rothbard concluded:
Imperialism, then, cannot win; and we have learned this lesson after the Johnson-Nixon regimes managed to murder a million or more Vietnamese, North and South, along with over 50,000 American soldiers. All that blood and treasure just to postpone the inevitable! [4]
(I shall refrain from making a comparison with any current events, given the unpredictability involved – i.e., whether or not any current resistance is “backed by the great majority of the population.”)
Rothbard also observed that “it comes with ill grace indeed” for US spokesmen to lament the looming “bloodbath,” should the communists prevail. “Vietnamization” had been an abject failure, as had US interference in Cambodia. The Ford administration – clinging to the wreckage of the war in Indo-China, was “the true legatee of the Nixon administration,” but at least it had given up “the budding Cowboy police state at home.” [5]
If Rothbard’s first essay provoked consternation in some libertarian circles, the second must have increased it.
Rothbard’s second salvo, also entitled “The Death of a State,” appeared in Reason Magazine, July 1975. He repeated his theme that state collapse in Indo-China was “exhilarating” and elaborated his interest in it as process. With every mathematically inclined political scientist and international relations scholar in the world (then and now) ransacking history for “case studies” to “test” their dreaded “robust” [6] hypotheses and propositions, we might well think that Rothbard could be allowed to look at events in the light of some generalizations drawn from political history (but apparently not).
Rothbard wrote:
Rothbard also observed that “it comes with ill grace indeed” for US spokesmen to lament the looming “bloodbath,” should the communists prevail. “Vietnamization” had been an abject failure, as had US interference in Cambodia. The Ford administration – clinging to the wreckage of the war in Indo-China, was “the true legatee of the Nixon administration,” but at least it had given up “the budding Cowboy police state at home.” [5]
If Rothbard’s first essay provoked consternation in some libertarian circles, the second must have increased it.
Rothbard’s second salvo, also entitled “The Death of a State,” appeared in Reason Magazine, July 1975. He repeated his theme that state collapse in Indo-China was “exhilarating” and elaborated his interest in it as process. With every mathematically inclined political scientist and international relations scholar in the world (then and now) ransacking history for “case studies” to “test” their dreaded “robust” [6] hypotheses and propositions, we might well think that Rothbard could be allowed to look at events in the light of some generalizations drawn from political history (but apparently not).
Rothbard wrote:
The process by which these states [South Vietnam and Cambodia] have crumpled vindicates once again the insights of the theorists of mass guerrilla warfare, from libertarians such as Charles Lee in the late 18th century to the elaborations of modern Communist theoreticians… that, after a slow, patient protracted struggle, in which the guerrilla armies (backed by the populace) whittle and wear down the massively superior fire power of the State armies (generally backed by other, imperial governments), the final blow occurs in which the State dissolves and disintegrates with remarkable speed. [7]
Again, Rothbard notes that “in Vietnam and Cambodia, one State has been immediately displaced by another – not surprisingly, since the communist-led insurgents are scarcely anarchists or libertarians. But States exist everywhere; there is nothing remarkable in that. What is inspiring is to actually see the final and swift disintegration of a State.”
Those who want to quibble about the words “exhilarating,” “inspiring,” and “rejoicing” might want to answer whether or not the continuance of a state, at the price being then exacted by the RVN and US, could be so described.
Again, Rothbard observes that a state that forfeits “majority support” will fall: “In the end, the ARVN army simply laid down their arms and fled, ignoring the orders of their hierarchical chain of commanders, from the President down to the non-coms.”
Now Rothbard expressed another forbidden thought, noting that “the body blow that these events have delivered to U.S. imperialism” was a “cause for libertarian rejoicing.” It was a blow to the idea that “the United States has the moral duty, and the permanent power, to install, prop up, and rule governments and peoples throughout the world.” Given this blow, a rebirth of non-intervention seemed more than possible.
Hence the “rejoicing.”
After all, Americans “were sick and tired of our long and losing intervention in Vietnam” in a “continuation of the American policy of imperialism – the Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon-Ford policy – that was responsible for pushing Indochina into the arms of communism.” The US accomplished that feat by “bolstering and then replacing French imperialism; by propping up unpopular and corrupt dictatorial regimes in the name of ‘freedom’; by suppressing peasant property and returning it to the imperially-created feudal landlords,” and so on. Further, “it was precisely the idiotic CIA-directed right-wing coup against the popular neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk that has now led to the Communist regime there.”
Free Enterprise in South Vietnam
In passing, I wish to note an article that appeared in the Miami Herald on South Vietnamese inflation remedies in late 1971:
Those who want to quibble about the words “exhilarating,” “inspiring,” and “rejoicing” might want to answer whether or not the continuance of a state, at the price being then exacted by the RVN and US, could be so described.
Again, Rothbard observes that a state that forfeits “majority support” will fall: “In the end, the ARVN army simply laid down their arms and fled, ignoring the orders of their hierarchical chain of commanders, from the President down to the non-coms.”
Now Rothbard expressed another forbidden thought, noting that “the body blow that these events have delivered to U.S. imperialism” was a “cause for libertarian rejoicing.” It was a blow to the idea that “the United States has the moral duty, and the permanent power, to install, prop up, and rule governments and peoples throughout the world.” Given this blow, a rebirth of non-intervention seemed more than possible.
Hence the “rejoicing.”
After all, Americans “were sick and tired of our long and losing intervention in Vietnam” in a “continuation of the American policy of imperialism – the Truman-Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon-Ford policy – that was responsible for pushing Indochina into the arms of communism.” The US accomplished that feat by “bolstering and then replacing French imperialism; by propping up unpopular and corrupt dictatorial regimes in the name of ‘freedom’; by suppressing peasant property and returning it to the imperially-created feudal landlords,” and so on. Further, “it was precisely the idiotic CIA-directed right-wing coup against the popular neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk that has now led to the Communist regime there.”
Free Enterprise in South Vietnam
In passing, I wish to note an article that appeared in the Miami Herald on South Vietnamese inflation remedies in late 1971:
The South Vietnamese government announced Friday that it is imposing price controls to curb rises that followed devaluation of the piaster.The government also announced that it would start strict implementation of a seldom-used 1965 law providing penalties ranging from 10 years in jail to death for spreading rumors harmful to the national economy or seeking to increase the cost of living.The death penalty will be applied only in extreme cases of hoarding for profit or causing very harmful rumors, such as that currency devaluation is imminent, a government spokesman said.Prices of some commodities shot up this week, largely because of speculation and hoarding, after Economic Minister Pham Kim Ngoc announced on Monday that the piaster would be devalued 45 to 55 percent as part of an economic reform package. [8]
So, on the face of it, “harmful rumors” about coming devaluations would have been true, and from this we may conclude that the Saigon government, like any other despotic state, wanted to be able to tax the people via inflation, repress the inevitably rising prices by controls, and arrest and possibly kill anyone who mentioned it out loud.
In this regard, the Saigon sideshow was acting in the tradition of Chiang Kai-shek – Chinese despot and Cold War hero to the interventionist right wing (they weren’t called “the China Lobby” for nothing!). Under the economic “management” of Chiang and his close relatives, who made up the core of the Nationalist Government, prices in China rose by a factor of 2,167 between 1937 and 1945. As Joyce and Gabriel Kolko put it, “In the end, the soldiers would not or could not fight, and much of the government bureaucracy was forced into graft and corruption. Translated into social and political terms, Chiang mobilized vital potential support for the Communists and melted the possible resistance to them.” [9]
Between 1965 and 1970, the Saigon government managed to inflate by 604%. This was not quite up to Chiang’s standards, but it did erode the confidence of bureaucrats, soldiers, and pretty much everyone else. [10]
State Building in South Vietnam
The key, however, is that had the Saigon government really been “up to it,” it would have effectively turned itself into a rather totalitarian regime in pursuit, no doubt, of some rather fictitious liberty to be realized after it succeeded. But I jest, since the Saigonistas were no more about liberty than the communists were, in the end, about equality. But at the time, if I may be so rude as to mention it, a program of quasi-totalitarian state-building was precisely what high-toned US Cold War liberals, social engineers, and counterinsurgency experts were urging upon the scattered attention of the Saigon state. [11]
Consider what the soft, “winning hearts and minds” school of US counterinsurgency theorists had in mind for South Vietnam, as summarized by D. Michael Shafer: “rapid incorporation of the vulnerable inhabitants of the periphery into the center,” brought about by “physical control of territory and populace; penetration of authority throughout the country; and promotion of economic and social development.” And of course these goals entailed “relocation of people to defended villages” – that is, to the so-called strategic hamlets.
Further, in the eyes of US planners, it was necessary for South Vietnam to “address distributional, racial, and communal problems and remove corrupt or abusive officials.” Along with these reforms, should come general “increases in the quantity of government.” By carrying out their own social revolution, assisted by US advice and superabundant firepower, the Saigon crew would win the wavering people over, by really giving them “the benefits only promised by the insurgents.” [12] (This last point was an especially tall order to the extent that one of the “benefits” sought was precisely to be rid of the Saigon regime.)
The soft school erred, Shafer continues, in “assuming that leaders’ interests are the same as the national interest.” Don’t we all! Thus they overlooked “the possibility that for certain elites the aim of fighting is to defend power and privilege,” and consequently, the commitment of these elites to reform might be a bit limited. Under such circumstances, “increasing the government’s security may decrease that of the population,” driving them into the arms of the insurgents.
Committed to sundry flawed assumptions rooted in the then universally loved modernization theory, the soft school ended with “a prescriptive bent for centralized, paternalistic government.”[13]
Historian Bruce Miroff underscores the connection between modernization theory and counterinsurgency:
In this regard, the Saigon sideshow was acting in the tradition of Chiang Kai-shek – Chinese despot and Cold War hero to the interventionist right wing (they weren’t called “the China Lobby” for nothing!). Under the economic “management” of Chiang and his close relatives, who made up the core of the Nationalist Government, prices in China rose by a factor of 2,167 between 1937 and 1945. As Joyce and Gabriel Kolko put it, “In the end, the soldiers would not or could not fight, and much of the government bureaucracy was forced into graft and corruption. Translated into social and political terms, Chiang mobilized vital potential support for the Communists and melted the possible resistance to them.” [9]
Between 1965 and 1970, the Saigon government managed to inflate by 604%. This was not quite up to Chiang’s standards, but it did erode the confidence of bureaucrats, soldiers, and pretty much everyone else. [10]
State Building in South Vietnam
The key, however, is that had the Saigon government really been “up to it,” it would have effectively turned itself into a rather totalitarian regime in pursuit, no doubt, of some rather fictitious liberty to be realized after it succeeded. But I jest, since the Saigonistas were no more about liberty than the communists were, in the end, about equality. But at the time, if I may be so rude as to mention it, a program of quasi-totalitarian state-building was precisely what high-toned US Cold War liberals, social engineers, and counterinsurgency experts were urging upon the scattered attention of the Saigon state. [11]
Consider what the soft, “winning hearts and minds” school of US counterinsurgency theorists had in mind for South Vietnam, as summarized by D. Michael Shafer: “rapid incorporation of the vulnerable inhabitants of the periphery into the center,” brought about by “physical control of territory and populace; penetration of authority throughout the country; and promotion of economic and social development.” And of course these goals entailed “relocation of people to defended villages” – that is, to the so-called strategic hamlets.
Further, in the eyes of US planners, it was necessary for South Vietnam to “address distributional, racial, and communal problems and remove corrupt or abusive officials.” Along with these reforms, should come general “increases in the quantity of government.” By carrying out their own social revolution, assisted by US advice and superabundant firepower, the Saigon crew would win the wavering people over, by really giving them “the benefits only promised by the insurgents.” [12] (This last point was an especially tall order to the extent that one of the “benefits” sought was precisely to be rid of the Saigon regime.)
The soft school erred, Shafer continues, in “assuming that leaders’ interests are the same as the national interest.” Don’t we all! Thus they overlooked “the possibility that for certain elites the aim of fighting is to defend power and privilege,” and consequently, the commitment of these elites to reform might be a bit limited. Under such circumstances, “increasing the government’s security may decrease that of the population,” driving them into the arms of the insurgents.
Committed to sundry flawed assumptions rooted in the then universally loved modernization theory, the soft school ended with “a prescriptive bent for centralized, paternalistic government.”[13]
Historian Bruce Miroff underscores the connection between modernization theory and counterinsurgency:
Modernization and counterinsurgency were closely interwoven in New Frontier ideology. Walt W. Rostow was a key figure here in establishing the linkage. The Administration’s leading theoretician of economic development and modernization, Rostow was also one of its most fervent proponents of counterinsurgency. He considered counterinsurgency an integral branch of modernization; hence, he told a graduating class of Green Berets at Fort Bragg in 1961: “Your job is to work with understanding with your fellow citizens in the whole creative process of modernization. From our perspective in Washington you take your place side by side with those others who are committed to help fashion independent, modern societies out of the revolutionary process now going forward. I salute you as I would a group of doctors, teachers, economic planners, agricultural experts, civil servants, or those others who are now leading the way in fashioning new nations and societies.” [14]
According to US planners (as depicted by Shafer), success in the war demanded “the ability to manage modernization.” The state had to make “hard decisions: to invest, not consume; rationalize administration; root out corruption; attack parochial political groupings, etc.” Further, the planners believed “that more government is better government. But this presupposes the very issues at question… that government and populace share the same goals that will be advanced by greater government capabilities at the grassroots level.” And, worse luck, “improving administrative capacity has often meant greater governmental ability to collect taxes, enforce skewed land tenure arrangements, raise conscripts, etc. In short, improved administrative capacity may mean better enforcement of the status quo.” [15]
Of course, counterinsurgency theory was a general Western fad at the time, resting on a strong record of failure or dubious successes in Algeria, Malaya, Kenya, and elsewhere. The theorists called for “civic action” and “revolutionary war.” Here, the threatened state, or its allies, would use military forces to seize, transform, and carry out the popular revolution in an approved form. The neo-Jacobinism of the project hardly needs underlining. [16]
Of course none of this actually worked all that well and the hearts-and-minds gang were soon out, replaced by the harder-nosed cost/benefit folk of the RAND Corporation type, who focused on how to coerce the Vietnamese laboratory rats into submission along the lines of rational actor models drawn from mathematized neoclassical economics, or behaviorist psychology.[17]
Noam Chomsky quotes one of these writers, Morton Halperin, as follows:
Of course, counterinsurgency theory was a general Western fad at the time, resting on a strong record of failure or dubious successes in Algeria, Malaya, Kenya, and elsewhere. The theorists called for “civic action” and “revolutionary war.” Here, the threatened state, or its allies, would use military forces to seize, transform, and carry out the popular revolution in an approved form. The neo-Jacobinism of the project hardly needs underlining. [16]
Of course none of this actually worked all that well and the hearts-and-minds gang were soon out, replaced by the harder-nosed cost/benefit folk of the RAND Corporation type, who focused on how to coerce the Vietnamese laboratory rats into submission along the lines of rational actor models drawn from mathematized neoclassical economics, or behaviorist psychology.[17]
Noam Chomsky quotes one of these writers, Morton Halperin, as follows:
The events in Vietnam also illustrate the fact that most people tend to be motivated not by abstract appeals, but rather by their perception of the course of action that is most likely to lead to their own personal security and to the satisfaction of their economic, social, and psychological desires. Thus, for example, large-scale American bombing in South Vietnam may have antagonized a number of people; but at the same time it demonstrated to these people that the Vietcong could not guarantee their security as it had been able to do before the bombing…. [18]
Any burglar or home invader could say as much. And one begins to wonder if states are not only “stationary bandits” but also stationary terrorists. This certainly wasn’t going to win any hearts and minds, but for the planners, if those “subjective factors” could not be dealt with “scientifically” and mathematically, they could not be considered at all.
So what were the insurgents doing all this while? Eqbal Ahmad suggests that overall, they were behaving better than the Saigon bureaucrats and soldiers – not a difficult feat, apparently. He writes that support for the guerrillas rested on “moral alienation of the masses from the existing government.” Accordingly, the rebels had to “outadminister” more than “outfight” the government. Thus the guerrillas were working with the “human factor” so invisible to US planners.
Ahmad notes that there are cases like Algeria in which the rebels “lost” militarily but won politically – and this goes straight to the problems of obedience and legitimacy [19] that interested Rothbard.
The National Liberation Front operated by creating parallel hierarchies that displaced official ones. Despite the assumptions of US officials, this was not a case of rule by terror, despite the occasional “conversion or killing of village officials.” Serious and disciplined guerrillas rejected wholesale terrorism and laid “stress on scrupulously ‘correct and just’ behavior toward civilians.” Their “use of terror, therefore, [was] sociologically and psychologically selective.” Thus, “[s]uccessful parallel hierarchies” were “generally based on extant local patterns and experiences….” [20]
Here, the revolutionaries played to what Eric Wolf refers to as the “natural anarchism” of rebelling peasants – that is, the peasant’s instinctive wish to continue his way of life, but without tax collectors, bureaucrats, and feudal landlords. [21] That NLF cadres built up an incipient state in the course of the struggle is consistent with the history of other 20th-century peasant-based revolutions led by Marxists. The NLF had on their side the powerful cement of Vietnamese nationalism, another factor the Americans contrived to miss.
In response, Ahmad writes, the US unleashed total war, “punitive measures, and widespread, systematic use of torture.” He observes: “these wars are ‘limited’ only in their consequences for the intervening power. For the country and people under assault they are total.” [22]
Let us once more consider what the US sought to do in South Vietnam, namely, to build a state able to “incorporate” the people via “physical control” and effective administration, while carrying on an ersatz, top-down social revolution and making a great forward leap into “centralized, paternalistic government,” with the burgeoning state undertaking “economic and social development”; making “hard decisions” about investment vs. consumption, rationalizing administration, rooting out corruption, and “attack[ing] parochial political groupings”; and serving as the vanguard of forced-draft “urbanization” by bombing the rural population into new living arrangements. [23] One theorist even suggested that the South Vietnamese state substitute itself for “intermediate structures” where those were, lamentably, missing. [24] I leave to one side the obvious problem that if the state supplies the intermediate structures, they no longer seem very intermediate and perhaps another word will be needed for them.
From about 1965 on, American policymakers tried to substitute unrestrained US firepower for the “administrative failure” of the Saigon regime, so as to drive peasants into the “protection” of that regime, and where they could not provide support for the guerrillas. But an ineffective and unpopular regime cannot be bombed into strength and public esteem. So here it is: whichever side won, the people were going to get a stronger state than they were used to; absent the Americans, however, they would not be carpet-bombed. Let us leave to one side for a moment, the moral and subjective factors that seem to have been decisive. That done, even on the American theorists’ own argument, a peasant able to see past next week into some middle term might in fact “rationally calculate” that he would be better off under the NLF.
Between their methodologically narrow definition of rationality and their neoclassical inability to treat (and then distinguish degrees of) time-preference, the US counterinsurgency theorists were thoroughly at sea.
Rothbard v. Chomsky, 1977
It is probably worth mentioning the letters-to-the-editor exchanged between Rothbard and Noam Chomsky in Libertarian Review in December 1977. Rothbard had written a piece in the September issue in which he argued that democratic socialism was a chimera. Any serious attempt to realize socialism would necessarily lead in the direction of totalitarian rule. In a footnote, he chided Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman for their skepticism regarding some chilling statements attributed to Cambodian communist officials. [25]
Chomsky wrote an angry letter to Libertarian Review, saying that Rothbard had misrepresented his and Herman’s position. Rothbard replied in kind, reiterating his point that socialism, if undertaken seriously, required violence, brutality and statism. [26] As a lifelong advocate of a laissez-faire market economy, Rothbard was not about to defend any form of socialism. This exchange of letters took place just when former opponents of US intervention in Southeast Asia, many of them socialists, were debating among themselves whether or not it was “moral” to criticize the successor states in Southeast Asia.
In Rothbard’s view, if the bulk of a country’s people opted for socialism in reaction to feudalism, mercantilism, and foreign domination, that did not give the US government the right to wage a savage imperialist war against them. In any case, Rothbard had long rejected the Cold Warriors’ claim that all movements against the status quo, and against western powers that propped up existing regimes, were somehow parts of a centrally-directed campaign of communist aggression, and that therefore, US intervention anywhere and everywhere constituted a form of “defense.”
Hence, Rothbard had no problem opposing the war and criticizing those who came to power in its aftermath, especially since, absent the war, the outcomes would have been substantially different.
read the rest at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg67.html
So what were the insurgents doing all this while? Eqbal Ahmad suggests that overall, they were behaving better than the Saigon bureaucrats and soldiers – not a difficult feat, apparently. He writes that support for the guerrillas rested on “moral alienation of the masses from the existing government.” Accordingly, the rebels had to “outadminister” more than “outfight” the government. Thus the guerrillas were working with the “human factor” so invisible to US planners.
Ahmad notes that there are cases like Algeria in which the rebels “lost” militarily but won politically – and this goes straight to the problems of obedience and legitimacy [19] that interested Rothbard.
The National Liberation Front operated by creating parallel hierarchies that displaced official ones. Despite the assumptions of US officials, this was not a case of rule by terror, despite the occasional “conversion or killing of village officials.” Serious and disciplined guerrillas rejected wholesale terrorism and laid “stress on scrupulously ‘correct and just’ behavior toward civilians.” Their “use of terror, therefore, [was] sociologically and psychologically selective.” Thus, “[s]uccessful parallel hierarchies” were “generally based on extant local patterns and experiences….” [20]
Here, the revolutionaries played to what Eric Wolf refers to as the “natural anarchism” of rebelling peasants – that is, the peasant’s instinctive wish to continue his way of life, but without tax collectors, bureaucrats, and feudal landlords. [21] That NLF cadres built up an incipient state in the course of the struggle is consistent with the history of other 20th-century peasant-based revolutions led by Marxists. The NLF had on their side the powerful cement of Vietnamese nationalism, another factor the Americans contrived to miss.
In response, Ahmad writes, the US unleashed total war, “punitive measures, and widespread, systematic use of torture.” He observes: “these wars are ‘limited’ only in their consequences for the intervening power. For the country and people under assault they are total.” [22]
Let us once more consider what the US sought to do in South Vietnam, namely, to build a state able to “incorporate” the people via “physical control” and effective administration, while carrying on an ersatz, top-down social revolution and making a great forward leap into “centralized, paternalistic government,” with the burgeoning state undertaking “economic and social development”; making “hard decisions” about investment vs. consumption, rationalizing administration, rooting out corruption, and “attack[ing] parochial political groupings”; and serving as the vanguard of forced-draft “urbanization” by bombing the rural population into new living arrangements. [23] One theorist even suggested that the South Vietnamese state substitute itself for “intermediate structures” where those were, lamentably, missing. [24] I leave to one side the obvious problem that if the state supplies the intermediate structures, they no longer seem very intermediate and perhaps another word will be needed for them.
From about 1965 on, American policymakers tried to substitute unrestrained US firepower for the “administrative failure” of the Saigon regime, so as to drive peasants into the “protection” of that regime, and where they could not provide support for the guerrillas. But an ineffective and unpopular regime cannot be bombed into strength and public esteem. So here it is: whichever side won, the people were going to get a stronger state than they were used to; absent the Americans, however, they would not be carpet-bombed. Let us leave to one side for a moment, the moral and subjective factors that seem to have been decisive. That done, even on the American theorists’ own argument, a peasant able to see past next week into some middle term might in fact “rationally calculate” that he would be better off under the NLF.
Between their methodologically narrow definition of rationality and their neoclassical inability to treat (and then distinguish degrees of) time-preference, the US counterinsurgency theorists were thoroughly at sea.
Rothbard v. Chomsky, 1977
It is probably worth mentioning the letters-to-the-editor exchanged between Rothbard and Noam Chomsky in Libertarian Review in December 1977. Rothbard had written a piece in the September issue in which he argued that democratic socialism was a chimera. Any serious attempt to realize socialism would necessarily lead in the direction of totalitarian rule. In a footnote, he chided Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman for their skepticism regarding some chilling statements attributed to Cambodian communist officials. [25]
Chomsky wrote an angry letter to Libertarian Review, saying that Rothbard had misrepresented his and Herman’s position. Rothbard replied in kind, reiterating his point that socialism, if undertaken seriously, required violence, brutality and statism. [26] As a lifelong advocate of a laissez-faire market economy, Rothbard was not about to defend any form of socialism. This exchange of letters took place just when former opponents of US intervention in Southeast Asia, many of them socialists, were debating among themselves whether or not it was “moral” to criticize the successor states in Southeast Asia.
In Rothbard’s view, if the bulk of a country’s people opted for socialism in reaction to feudalism, mercantilism, and foreign domination, that did not give the US government the right to wage a savage imperialist war against them. In any case, Rothbard had long rejected the Cold Warriors’ claim that all movements against the status quo, and against western powers that propped up existing regimes, were somehow parts of a centrally-directed campaign of communist aggression, and that therefore, US intervention anywhere and everywhere constituted a form of “defense.”
Hence, Rothbard had no problem opposing the war and criticizing those who came to power in its aftermath, especially since, absent the war, the outcomes would have been substantially different.
read the rest at
http://www.lewrockwell.com/stromberg/stromberg67.html
The Insomniac Libertarian 