Tuesday, August 15, 2017

On the Nature of Radical Intellectual Revolution and the Young

Murray Rothbard, cadre leader
At the post, A Plea to My Fellow Libertarians: Please Throw Donald Trump Under the Bus, in a comment, FormerLibertarian mocks my call for libertarians to dump Trump as a tactical method to attract students:
I also think trying to blame a very small number of Libertarian Trump supporters for Libertarianism dying is amusing, but do it for the college kids !
But Former just doesn't understand the nature of early stage intellectual revolution.

As Murray Rothbard wrote in his unpublished strategy paper, written in the late 1970s:
Hopefully, then, the cadre begins as a tiny few and then grows in quantity and impact.
The libertarian movement has grown dramatically since Rothbard wrote those words when he was unquestionably the leader of the "tiny few" then part of the cadre. He took us far.

It should be noted, however, that from his paper, there are still many lessons for us to learn in terms of strategy. Rothbard singled out students as a target for growth as part of what he called the "pyramid of ideology"  with the "major task of the cadre, then is to try to get as many people as high up the pyramid as possible" :
[Y]oung people are likely to be the most energetic activists of a radical movement, while the student sub-set of the young are likely to be drawn to the radical ideology.
It is a grave error to discount an attempt to reach the young.

Rothbard continued by warning about the inexperience and extreme volatility of youth, and a solution:
Perhaps one way for a movement to attain the advanatges of youth without being hobbled by the disadvantages is to seek a body of members who are mostly young, but whose leaders are a bit older, say in their thirties, and who can leaven youthful enthusiasm with stability and experience. In short, degrees of youthfulness should be considered rather than"the young" as a monolithic age.
To be sure, this is a long battle and if you don't enjoy the battle for the battle itself, you should probably spend your time watching ESPN, because there is going to be no great final victory for Liberty in the short-run.

But for those who enjoy the skirmishes and the battles and destroying inferior intellectual thinking, the struggle for liberty is the grand field of battle, where we are a few against many, but our weapons are our freedom principles and our superior minds.

 -RW

1 comment:

  1. ─ But Former[Libertarian] just doesn't understand the nature of early stage intellectual revolution.─

    Nor much of anything, for that matter. Besides this, who the hell wants to advertise their feelings about freedom by using a nickname that has the same meaning as NewAuthoritarian?

    ReplyDelete