I decided to read For a New Liberty. What did I discover? Reading this text, http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp#p263, I refer to pp.269-290.
I come upon Rothbard using Marxist terminology: so-called "exploitation". And Guerilla warfare, human bombs, etc. is a libertarian idea? And Rothbard adds, "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"? What was that?! And this discussion goes on and on, all in a decidedly pro-communist direction.
Interventionism is interventionism; and Roosevelt, Johnson, and et al contributed nothing except interventionism to the United States domestic and foreign policy (and Roosevelt even hushed up the discovery of what the Soviets did at Katyn).
However, saying the Germans, Japanese, and Soviets were relatively less-interventionist, and all the guerilla fractions in the world (who are avowed Socialists and name buildings and streets today after "Martyr" bandits who shoot civilians and blow up buses, and kill "exploiting capitalist Westerners") are relatively more Libertarian than Western Socialists is an insult to Libertarians. I can see why Reisman criticized this book in his 1990 textbook.
What happened in fact?
The Soviets gobbled up republics (i.e. Russia has about half the population of the Soviet Union; the rest are in republics), and engaged in propaganda (leading to total nonsense in Germany and Austria, and the United States).
The German Liberals didn't exist. The Historical School, which was basically socialist became national socialist, or left the country and became Soviet sympathizers ("you've got to pick sides" as said Stalin and Hitler, as if these were the two sides). Mises showed that the Germans were more thoroughly interventionist than the Soviets: the Soviets fixed production of goods, and the Nazis fixed the production of goods and people.
What few people know is that the Japanese Liberals got purged by socialists and the farm-war-anti-commerce-ascetic-brand of socialists (the military) by 1910-1920. Liberals of the Bastiat school, such as Tsuda, Nishi, Shigenobu, et al, were gone by then, and the remainder became emulators of Germany. Liberalism only remained in private universities. The countryside swayed from Marxism to Nationalism and the Ascetics won. Even Shigenobu was forced to make political concessions to bushido-ascetics and protectionist socialists during his prime-ministership back at the turn of the century. And it went downhill from there (as opposed to the 1870-1900 years).
The Middle East and Africa became highly protectionist after the collapse of the Colonial powers. They emulated the protectionism of the former colonial powers after independence (read Ghannian economist George Ayittey's textbook Indigenous African Institutions and Africa in Chaos, for a great deal of particular information, for instance in the 50 or so African territories). They became highly interventionism and Marxist oriented (maxims like "profit is the Western concept; any man who engages in commerce without paying prohibitive taxes is to be shot" were popular in Africa and the Middle-East). (Also a good book to read, on how the so-called "East" fell down economically relative to the so-called "West" 1600-1900, even if only for the bibliography is David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations; although Landes references Schumpeterian and Abbott Usher interpretation, not necessarily Austrian theory, he is at least a good historian.)
The US responded in an interventionist manner; true. But to tell a Russian, a Chinese, and a Japanese, that their respective country was less interventionist...
Why did Rothbard ditch a truly marginalist (antiviolence) understanding in favor of decidedly Marxist nonsense whenever he talked about Foreign Policy and the so-called "West"? Was he just angered by United States involvement in Vietnam in the 1970's to write such nonsense? I find this very strange.
(Just so you know, we the Soviet intellectuals were all personally of the opinion that US backing of anticommunists was better nothing, i.e. than letting the "our" communist allies take over. Even Vysotsky wrote a couple of rather seditious songs about China and another about Egypt, our "allies", back then. There is nothing to praise the US response, but the Soviet backing of modern butchers like Nasser was nothing to brag about and had nothing peaceful about it at all.)
It's not only ETA. A large portion of guerrilla movements fund their programs through extortion, or they are funded by governments which tax (such as the PLO). Guerrilla can sometimes used interchangeable with mafias. My point was simply to raise the issue. I think that there seems to be a belief that many guerrilla groups are somehow pure, and they fight against the tyranny of the State—in most cases, I believe, this is not true, they operate similar to a State in the areas they can threaten with the use of force and most of their time their objective is to set up a new State under their own leadership (i.e. ETA, FARC, Iraqi insurgents, Afghan insurgents, et cetera).
That said, I am not arguing that this somehow makes it the State justified, or anything within that nature. My only concern was the following:
And Guerilla warfare, human bombs, etc. is a libertarian idea?
Then:
Guerilla warfare is good in the sense that it does not necessitate taxation and doesn't involve drafts.
Guerrilla groups, most of the time, do necessitate taxation (whether they are being funded by third party governments or they are extorting local populations and businesses), and many times do involve drafts (and not only that, but use force to disincentivize freedom of will, or the ability for non-guerrilla fighters to do as they please [like barter with Israelis, in the case of many Palestinians who are found dead for working with the Israelis]).
For the most part, guerrilla forces (at least in the modern sense) are not libertarian in nature.
Let us consider the phrase: A State is brought down by an idea. Is this a valid statement?
A State brought down by what idea? Do you really think communists are moved by ideas? Liberals are moved by defense of property. Communists are moved by want of pillage. Pillage is not an idea. Rothbard does not say it is, but then says "Communism" is the motive of some of these revolutions.
But "Its got nothing to do with reading and words" is a popular saying in Russia even in Russia today. Brezhnev even bragged how he never read Karl Marx.
The framework works on a local level, often, yes; but on purely personal relationships.
People are not moved by ideas, but by self-interest. The vicious ideas like communism are as Mises wrote many times, backed purely by personal considerations off the page. Guerilla warfare is aimed, first and foremost at killing opponents within a populace. Partisans is a different term, if that is what Rothbard wanted to say (but didn't say). Partisans are not guerillas in the modern sense of that word because the guerillas are an actual fraction aiming at control against anyone, whereas partisans are aiming to recover their own property: partisans don't engage civilians to any large extent.
The problem is that Rothbard did mean in that instance Guerillas, not partisans, because he was talking unconditionally about any group which fights a state without a formal army. Often, that does not preclude attacking civilians.
He did not put in the conditional that this group have backing other than because it wants to steal property belonging to other people and if it targets civilians. Is it really surprising that dreams of robbery can inspire a populace, especially which has not capitalistic basis previously, to overthrow a state? This motive is often the same as that in any totalitarian state hierarchy: so it cannot be said to be the success of people against the state. It is wannabe-bandits fighting real-bandits.
African socialist states, as Ayittey had pointed out in those books I listed, provide the most obvious examples in the last forty years (all in the Soviet method, according to Ayittey). The "guerillas" who hide amongst the populace an organized group that wants to replace the former guerilla bandit who is now the head of state. But two sided robbery cannot continue forever, and we see a new guerilla force rising up as Rothbard predicted. But it is to be understood not in the sense that he meant it. When a populace rises up to fight a state, it is not always to "fight the state"; it is often a populace rising up to vent their anger at general chaos, and no army can withstand that because the army draws from society and the society has just disintegrated. But this is nothing amazing, and follows from logic. This is not a society rising up of its own accord to defeat a superior-armed oppressor.This is an end of that society.
Only when society rises up in the sense of defending property, like the American revolutionaries, can it defeat a superior-armed state army and fit the bill of defeating the state. In order to defeat anyone you have to live. A so-called "society" where guerillas target civilians is no longer a living society. It ceased being a society when division of labour was dropped in favour of violence within the society. In Iraq, do you really think it is just religious violence? Religious violence does not cause people to say: "I like your house. Thank god you are not my brother. Now, face the wall." Then the house is claimed by the attacker.)
Only a liberal uprising can be considered the "success" of a society against a state. Everything else is not an uprising; it is the death frenzy of an unhappy group of people. If the state collapses, in the former case, then it is something of interest. If the state collapses, in the latter case, and is reestablished by the biggest bandit, then it is nothing surprising or noteworthy.
(Most of this position comes from Etienne Balazs great essays on Peasant Revolutions in China over the period of all the dynasties, which fits the pattern like a glove: over-taxation, or oppression, and that with a crumbling infrastructure causes a death frenzy among the populace. The state is destroyed, but so is society. Often the pillage commences under a banner redistribution of property [which as a motive predates Western Communism being introduced to China]. No one bothers to make sense of anything. Then a bandit comes along and starts the next dynasty. The last is as he was often called in China, "emperor" Mao Zedong. I suggest everyone to read Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy.)
thelion:People are not moved by ideas, but by self-interest.
people must be understood through the lense of teleology, that is by considering their ideas, motives, values, choices...
their self-interest can not be separated from the idea that they have about what is in their self-interest.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
That objection does not follow.
If people say they are fighting for "communism," when they behave "venting upon and getting rid of that neighbor with the turned up nose", then their motive is "venting upon and getting rid of that neighbor with the turned up nose". The rest is wordplay. That person I hypothesized has the idea of "getting rid of that neighbor with the turned up nose", not "communism." "Communism" refers to an entirely different thing: it does not involve, so far as it is the motive, "getting rid of that neighbor with the turned up nose", else the motive is not communism.
We cannot separate motive from action according to the motive. We can spot, in this manner, misleading terminology .
As Hoppe explained (but many others figured on their own as well) it is the internally liberal countries which end up pursuing the most externally illiberal policies. Because they have the means to pursue imperial "glory" where internally illiberal countries do not. I don`t see what is controversial here, during the Cold War the USA was the much more aggressive power and killed a couple of times more people in third countries than the USSR did. (Plus Rothbard was writting after Korea and Vietnam but before Afghanistan so the contrast was even greater.)
Jonathan M. F. Catalán: Guerrilla groups, most of the time, do necessitate taxation (whether they are being funded by third party governments or they are extorting local populations and businesses), and many times do involve drafts (and not only that, but use force to disincentivize freedom of will, or the ability for non-guerrilla fighters to do as they please [like barter with Israelis, in the case of many Palestinians who are found dead for working with the Israelis]). For the most part, guerrilla forces (at least in the modern sense) are not libertarian in nature.
They also perpetrate revolutionary terror. For example they will harm family members of people in the security forces.But I think that such acts are not required. I think they are ultimately counter-productive and that those guerrilas who win out, generally do so because they do not engage in terror and coercion to the same extent that the government or the occupier does.
On the contrary those guerrilas who are too violent will be soundly defeated. For example note the backlash against the Salafi fanatics in Iraq.
thelion: When US snipers were in Iraq, each has about a 20-30 kills. The insurgents just run when they see actual military (they asked for snipers and special forces to be recalled in negotiations), and only engage when they have massive numerical superiority. Otherwise, they target civilians (because they don't shoot back, you see). Compare the number military killed by insurgents and civilians killed.
When US snipers were in Iraq, each has about a 20-30 kills. The insurgents just run when they see actual military (they asked for snipers and special forces to be recalled in negotiations), and only engage when they have massive numerical superiority. Otherwise, they target civilians (because they don't shoot back, you see). Compare the number military killed by insurgents and civilians killed.
US snipers in Iraq mainly killed non-combatants. They had permission and instructions to kill anyone carrying a shovel, or a bag. Or anyone handling a cell phone near the troops. Or being out after a curfew. The US military has in Iraq killed some 20,000 guerrilas but over 400,000 non-combatants (mainly vie the use of air power).
"Guerilla warfare" is basically just Sun Tzu tactics.
Jonathan M. F. Catalán: It's not only ETA. A large portion of guerrilla movements fund their programs through extortion, or they are funded by governments which tax (such as the PLO). Guerrilla can sometimes used interchangeable with mafias. My point was simply to raise the issue. I think that there seems to be a belief that many guerrilla groups are somehow pure, and they fight against the tyranny of the State—in most cases, I believe, this is not true, they operate similar to a State in the areas they can threaten with the use of force and most of their time their objective is to set up a new State under their own leadership (i.e. ETA, FARC, Iraqi insurgents, Afghan insurgents, et cetera). That said, I am not arguing that this somehow makes it the State justified, or anything within that nature. My only concern was the following: And Guerilla warfare, human bombs, etc. is a libertarian idea? Then: Guerilla warfare is good in the sense that it does not necessitate taxation and doesn't involve drafts. Guerrilla groups, most of the time, do necessitate taxation (whether they are being funded by third party governments or they are extorting local populations and businesses), and many times do involve drafts (and not only that, but use force to disincentivize freedom of will, or the ability for non-guerrilla fighters to do as they please [like barter with Israelis, in the case of many Palestinians who are found dead for working with the Israelis]). For the most part, guerrilla forces (at least in the modern sense) are not libertarian in nature.
This. I agree entirely.
Some people have responded with war statistics, trying to show how relatively more(!?) libertarian guerilla fractions are. War statistics are, however, often quite full of contradictions and nonsense, and often quite intentionally.
For instance, see Richard Landes's comments on the subject:
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/02/05/statistics-facts-opinions-and-casualties-of-war-reflections-of-a-statistician/
http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2009/12/14/leveling-the-playing-field-an-order-of-ten-both-ways/