Rothbard On The Worhip Of Savages...

[stonebuddha]

Though written several decades ago, this is one of the best essays I've read from Rothbard. Sounds just like something Galt or Francisco might say...

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1607

[Dagny]

Great essay! It's very true what it says about anthropologists mostly being from the left. I'm currently taking an anthropology class and my professor keeps ranting about how other civilizations/cultures were just as good as the western one...that we shouldn't be so ethnocentric...and has even gone a step further by literally telling us to vote for Kerry in the election! The only good thing I can say about her is that she forbids the word God in her classroom.

[Fred Weiss]

Though written several decades ago, this is one of the best essays I've read from Rothbard.  Sounds just like something Galt or Francisco might say...

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1607

Of course, because he blatantly steals ideas from Ayn Rand (note the date of the piece) - without however acknowledging it.

Fred Weiss

[stonebuddha]

I have no doubt Rand inspired/influenced Rothbard, just like Adam Smith, John Locke, Aristotle, et al influenced both.

But that article wasn't about Rothbard's influences, it was a direct response to Karl Polanyi’s "The Great Transformation". Should Rothbard have just written the following? :

"See Ayn Rand's argument on all this. Philosophy starts and ends with her, therefore I have nothing of value to add whatsoever."

Unless it was pure plagiarism, there's nothing wrong with integrating whatever one learns from whatever sources and making it into your own.

[DavidV]

Of course, because he blatantly steals ideas from Ayn Rand (note the date of the piece) - without however acknowledging it.

Fred Weiss

For an unpublished private memo, the article gives a fantastic defense of capitalism. In regards to plagiarism, the essay was written in 1961 - 10 years before “The Anti-Industrial Revolution.” One can fault Rothbard for being dishonest about his influences, but he certainly had many original and significant ideas of his own.

[Fred Weiss]

For an unpublished private memo, the article gives a fantastic defense of capitalism.  In regards to plagiarism, the essay was written in 1961 - 10 years before “The Anti-Industrial Revolution.”  One can fault Rothbard for being dishonest about his influences, but he certainly had many original and significant ideas of his own.

It was written after Atlas and after many private discussions he had with Ayn Rand. Is it really necessary for me to cite the specific passages in the piece which are virtually verbatim from AR - without him offering a single cite or acknowledgement.

I was responding to the original comment that it sounds like something that Galt or Francisco could have said. Well, it does because they did.

Fred Weiss

[Charlotte Corday]

Of course, because he blatantly steals ideas from Ayn Rand (note the date of the piece) - without however acknowledging it.

Fred, borrowing ideas (without attribution) is too serious a charge to make without supporting evidence. If the allegation is that one of Rothbard's ideas is unique to Rand and no other, then some proof would be in order.

[Fred Weiss]

Fred, borrowing ideas (without attribution) is too serious a charge to make without supporting evidence.  If the allegation is that one of Rothbard's ideas is unique to Rand and no other, then some proof would be in order.

I'll just quote two passages from Rothbard.

Here's the first:

"Second, it is implicitly and even explicitly assumed that the way primitive tribes act is more "natural," is somehow more appropriate to man than the "artifices" of civilization...This basic idea is fundamentally and radically anti-human, because it denies the basic facts about human nature and the way human beings must necessarily operate. Animals are born with "instincts"; these instincts are, in essence, sense-determined responses. Animals do not possess a free will, rational consciousness; hence, they can only adapt, in sensory fashion, to their environment. Man, on the other hand, can alter his given environment by use of his reason and his free will.

Man is born a tabula rasa; he must learn and learn how to choose the ends that are proper for him, and the means which he must adopt to attain them. All this must be done by his reason."

This is virtually verbatim from Galt's Speech. I assume you don't need the citations.

Here's the second:

"Secondly, the primitive’s life is a life of almost constant terror. Terror of the world about him, which he does not and cannot understand, since he has not engaged in any sort of scientific, rational inquiry into its workings. We know what a thunderstorm is, and therefore do not fear it, and can take rational measures against lightning; the savage does not know, and therefore surmises that The God of the Thunder is displeased with him, and that therefore that god must be propitiated with votive offerings and sacrifices (sometimes human sacrifices). Since the savage has no concept of a world knit together by natural law (a concept which employs reason and science) he believes that the world is governed by a whole host of capricious spirits and demons, each of which can only be propitiated—with only partial "success"—by ritual, by magic, and by a priestcraft of witch doctors who specialize in this propitiation. So fearful is the savage that he can do nothing on his own, that his individuality is virtually completely un­developed—because the individual savage makes almost no use of his reason and of his mind. Therefore, virtually everything the savage does is governed by immutable, utterly irrational, taboos or command: by custom.

And this is the fear-ridden, barely-human, creature whom we, people who have used our intellect to "conquer" nature, are being asked to emulate, whom Polanyi extols as being truly "social," and as being happily tree of the "inhuman" despotism of the free market."

Now from Galt's Speech:

"To a savage, the world is a place of unintelligible miracles where anything is possible to inanimate matter and nothing is possible to him. His world is not the unknown, but that irrational horror: the unknowable. He believes that physical objects are endowed with a mysterious volition, moved by causeless, unpredictable whims, while he is a helpless pawn at the mercy of forces beyond his control. He believes that nature is ruled by demons who possess an omnipotent power and that reality is their fluid plaything, where they can turn his bowl of meal into a snake and his wife into a beetle at any moment, where the A he has never discovered can be any non-A they choose, where the only knowledge he possesses is that he must not attempt to know. He can count on nothing, he can only wish, and he spends his life on wishing, on begging his demons to grant him his wishes by the arbitrary power of their will..."

Fred Weiss

[Charlotte Corday]

I'll just quote two passages from Rothbard.

Here's the first:

"Second, it is implicitly and even explicitly assumed that the way primitive tribes act is more "natural," is somehow more appropriate to man than the "artifices" of civilization...This basic idea is fundamentally and radically anti-human, because it denies the basic facts about human nature and the way human beings must necessarily operate. Animals are born with "instincts"; these instincts are, in essence, sense-determined responses. Animals do not possess a free will, rational consciousness; hence, they can only adapt, in sensory fashion, to their environment. Man, on the other hand, can alter his given environment by use of his reason and his free will.”

“Man is born a tabula rasa; he must learn and learn how to choose the ends that are proper for him, and the means which he must adopt to attain them. All this must be done by his reason."

This is virtually verbatim from Galt's Speech. I assume you don't need the citations.

Yes, let’s see the Galt quotation that is allegedly lifted verbatim. As for the content, there are no grounds for believing the ideas employed by Rothbard had sprung fully formed from Rand’s brain in 1957. The argument for free will over instinctual determinism can be traced back to Aristotle. As for the critique of Rousseau’s noble savage (actually it was Dryden who coined the phrase), Voltaire, Hume, J.S. Mill and even Charles Dickens all had contributed to the demolition of the perfect state of nature myth. (Mill described uncivilized people as "pugnacious, dirty, irascible, cowardly and mendacious.") The term “tabula rasa” has been used in philosophical debate since ancient Greece. John Locke, devotes much of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding to how reason develops from a blank slate: “All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:--How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience.”

Here's the second:

"Secondly, the primitive’s life is a life of almost constant terror. Terror of the world about him, which he does not and cannot understand, since he has not engaged in any sort of scientific, rational inquiry into its workings. We know what a thunderstorm is, and therefore do not fear it, and can take rational measures against lightning; the savage does not know, and therefore surmises that The God of the Thunder is displeased with him, and that therefore that god must be propitiated with votive offerings and sacrifices (sometimes human sacrifices). Since the savage has no concept of a world knit together by natural law (a concept which employs reason and science) he believes that the world is governed by a whole host of capricious spirits and demons, each of which can only be propitiated—with only partial "success"—by ritual, by magic, and by a priestcraft of witch doctors who specialize in this propitiation. So fearful is the savage that he can do nothing on his own, that his individuality is virtually completely un­developed—because the individual savage makes almost no use of his reason and of his mind. Therefore, virtually everything the savage does is governed by immutable, utterly irrational, taboos or command: by custom.

“And this is the fear-ridden, barely-human, creature whom we, people who have used our intellect to "conquer" nature, are being asked to emulate, whom Polanyi extols as being truly "social," and as being happily tree of the "inhuman" despotism of the free market."

Now from Galt's Speech:

"To a savage, the world is a place of unintelligible miracles where anything is possible to inanimate matter and nothing is possible to him. His world is not the unknown, but that irrational horror: the unknowable. He believes that physical objects are endowed with a mysterious volition, moved by causeless, unpredictable whims, while he is a helpless pawn at the mercy of forces beyond his control. He believes that nature is ruled by demons who possess an  omnipotent power and that reality is their fluid plaything, where they can turn his bowl of meal into a snake and his wife into a beetle at any moment, where the A he has never discovered can be any non-A they choose, where the only knowledge he possesses is that he must not attempt to know. He can count on nothing, he can only wish, and he spends his life on wishing, on begging his demons to grant him his wishes by the arbitrary power of their will..."

Both Rand and Rothbard have a predecessor in David Hume, who wrote in Natural History of Religion,

“The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events; and what ideas will naturally be entertained of invisible, unknown powers, while men lie under dismal apprehensions of any kind, may easily be conceived. Every image of vengeance, severity, cruelty, and malice must occur, and must augment the ghastliness and horror which oppresses the amazed religionist. A panic having once seized the mind, the active fancy still farther multiplies the objects of terror; while that profound darkness, or, what is worse, that glimmering light, with which we are environed, represents the spectres of divinity under the most dreadful appearances imaginable. And no idea of perverse wickedness can be framed which those terrified devotees do not readily, without scruple, apply to their deity.”

[Fred Weiss]

Yes, let’s see the Galt quotation that is allegedly lifted verbatim.

I'm not going to be a quote-providing machine for you. If you are not familiar enough with the content of Galt's Speech - or even apparently with the basics of Objectivism -to realize this for yourself, I'm not going to teach it to you.

As for the content, there are no grounds for believing the ideas employed by Rothbard had sprung fully formed from Rand’s brain in 1957.

There can be grounds when he uses those particular words and form which come straight from Galt's Speech.

Fred Weiss

[Charlotte Corday]

I'm not going to be a quote-providing machine for you. If you are not familiar enough with the content of Galt's Speech - or even apparently with the basics of Objectivism -to realize this for yourself, I'm not going to teach it to you.

When Doris Kearns Goodwin was accused of plagiarism, her accusers did not refuse to provide examples of her word theft; they gleefully cited the original side by side with Goodwin’s text. You, Fred, have alleged a theft of ideas, and then ludicrously assert that it’s up to the person who doubts the claim to prove it.

There can be grounds when he uses those particular words and form which come straight from Galt's Speech.

The burden of proof is on you, Fred.

[Fred Weiss]

When Doris Kearns Goodwin was accused of plagiarism, her accusers did not refuse to provide examples of her word theft; they gleefully cited the original side by side with Goodwin’s text.  You, Fred, have alleged a theft of ideas, and then ludicrously assert that it’s up to the person who doubts the claim to prove it.

The burden of proof is on you, Fred.

I don't consider Rothbard important enough to waste the time on - and the proof is readily available to anyone familiar with Galt's Speech, which apparently you are not.

Your Hume quote is sufficient evidence that you are grasping at straws to evade the point. It is so remote in its similarity that one can only assume that you spent days in a desperate quest to find something marginally acceptable. My reaction to it was: if that's the best you can do, you've made my point. The additional irony in quoting Hume is that philosophically he is the prime exponent of the primitivist view of causality, that it is not something we can grasp as a fact of reality (most especially as a product of science), but merely a "habit of mind" with no necessity attached to it.

Fred Weiss

[Charlotte Corday]

I don't consider Rothbard important enough to waste the time on - and the proof is readily available to anyone familiar with Galt's Speech, which apparently you are not.

This is too funny. You don’t consider Rothbard “important enough to waste time on,” but apparently you do have enough time to post five messages on this thread charging him with stealing ideas. In other words, there is enough time to level a serious accusation but not quite enough time to prove it. Now, Fred, if the “proof is readily available,” why not just put an end to the discussion and state exactly what part of Galt’s 33,000-word speech was unscrupulously lifted without credit?

Your Hume quote is sufficient evidence that you are grasping at straws to evade the point. It is so remote in its similarity that one can only assume that you spent days in a desperate quest to find something marginally acceptable. My reaction to it was: if that's the best you can do, you've made my point. The additional irony in quoting Hume is that philosophically he is the prime exponent of the primitivist view of causality, that it is not something we can grasp as a fact of reality (most especially as a product of science), but merely a "habit of mind" with no necessity attached to it.

Then you have completely misunderstood Hume, because the very point that he was making is that primitive man, ignorant of the laws of nature, lives in a constant state of terror of capricious gods. In short, the idea that early man’s fears and irrational superstitions were the product of his ignorance of science is not a concept that was newly minted in 1957 but had been around at least since 1755. The same is true for those other ideas that supposedly originated with the author of Atlas Shrugged: the argument for free will over instinctual determinism, the critique of the perfect state of nature myth, and the “tabula rasa” metaphor.

[argive99]

Look Charlotte, we know you're a Libertarian. You responses are totally predictable; I could write them for you and I don't know you from a hole in the wall. Now remember the forum; this is not the Von Mises Institute or the Llewelyn Rockwell site. Go there and sing the praises of Rothbard or better yet, hang out with Sciabarra, he studied under him. But don't bother us here with that nonsense.

Rothbard was a failed intellectual who was marginally interesting as an economist. That's the end of it.

[Charlotte Corday]

Look Charlotte, we know you're a Libertarian. You responses are totally predictable; I could write them for you and I don't know you from a hole in the wall. Now remember the forum; this is not the Von Mises Institute or the Llewelyn Rockwell site. Go there and sing the praises of Rothbard or better yet, hang out with Sciabarra, he studied under him. But don't bother us here with that nonsense.

Rothbard was a failed intellectual who was marginally interesting as an economist. That's the end of it.

That was a fascinating post, fervent, vigorous, full of ad hominems and providing not a single word in support of of the allegations made by Mr. Weiss.

[argive99]

That was a fascinating post, fervent, vigorous, full of ad hominems and providing not a single word in support of of the allegations made by Mr. Weiss.

That's because Libertarian trolls have been harrasing this forum since its inception. Your assertion that Rand's ideas were nothing new or as you put it "ideas that supposedly originated with the author of Atlas Shrugged" has been the stock claim of Libertarians for the last 50 years. All your specious claims have been refuted on this board countless times. Do a search using 'libertarian' and i'm sure you will see the same ideas debated over and over.

As I said, 'hang out' with Chris Sciabarra and you will find a nice soulmate. You can discuss Hyak, Rothbard, and the "libertarian tradition" till the end of time. Or better yet, go to the SoloHq forum; plenty of like minded libertarians or 'Randians' there for you to play with. But most of us here are tired of the same stale libertarian drivel. Call it an 'ad hominem' all you want, but simply put, you are boring.

[argive99]

Then you have completely misunderstood Hume, because the very point that he was making is that primitive man, ignorant of the laws of nature, lives in a constant state of terror of capricious gods. In short, the idea that early man’s fears and irrational superstitions were the product of his ignorance of science is not a concept that was newly minted in 1957 but had been around at least since 1755. The same is true for those other ideas that supposedly originated with the author of Atlas Shrugged: the argument for free will over instinctual determinism, the critique of the perfect state of nature myth, and the “tabula rasa” metaphor.

This is a statement only a libertarian would make. Not even a liberal would say something like this. This is why I say you are predictable like a parrot. I wish I had a dime for every time I have read this sentiment from a libertarian. "Rand created nothing new, she borrowed this, this and this from x, y and z, and she was wrong by the way." Actually, over at Dianna Hesiah's site there is a similar discussion going on concerning Sciabarra's JARS journal. One of the posters there had an awesome description of JARS which had me in stitches. It applies perfectly to libertarian types like our Charlotte here so I will provide the link and the quote. This is one of the funniest (and most accurate) thing i've read in a while.

http://www.dianahsieh.com/blog/2004/09/jun...bjectivism.html

click on "noodles" for the comments

"Ah yes, very scholarly work... not surprising that the author, and some of this line of thinking, have already appeared in the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies... Or as it should properly be renamed: The Journal of Why Ayn Rand Was Wrong about Point 'X' and Why My Pet Theory Should be Substituted Instead, or, If She Wasn't Wrong About 'X', It Wasn't Original To Her Because Professor Splifkin Wrote Essentially the Same Thing in a Footnote in the April 1912 Journal of Metaphysics, or, If She Was Both Right and Original, in Fact We Can Trace Her View Back to the Subconscious Influence of Her Russian Roots and Formation, of which She Was Not Aware (Because It Was Subconscious) but Thank God I Came Along to Bring it to Light.

But I guess that might be too unwieldy for a Journal title."

As I said. Priceless. I wish I wrote it myself.

[Charlotte Corday]

This is a statement only a libertarian would make. Not even a liberal would say something like this. This is why I say you are predictable like a parrot. I wish I had a dime for every time I have read this sentiment from a libertarian.  "Rand created nothing new . . .

Very interesting but all beside the point. My first post in this thread was to demand evidence for Fred Weiss’s charge that Rothbard’s private memo on Polyani had stolen ideas from Ayn Rand. In response, Fred offered up a passage from the Rothbard memo and claimed that it was “virtually verbatim from Galt's Speech.” I replied by citing several ancient and modern philosophers who had taken the same positions as Rothbard on primitivism, epistemology and free will. In short, the ideas expressed in “Down With Primitivism: A Thorough Critique of Polanyi” may not have originated with Rothbard, but they did not originate with Rand either.

Now you can employ the ad hominem fallacy and argue all day long with strawmen of your own creation, but the simple fact is that I never said, “Rand created nothing new . . .” etc. Weiss and I were discussing a specific set of ideas which he claimed were stolen from Rand. If you had bothered to read my reply carefully, you should have been able to discern that my contention was not that all of Rand's ideas are second-hand, but rather that the particular set of ideas quoted from the Rothbard essay were a part of the literature of philosophy long before Rand arrived on the scene.

So not only are your two messages vituperative and uncivil, they are also completely irrelevant to the discussion going on.

[Free Capitalist]

I don't think the claim was that Rothbard stole the individual *ideas* from AR, but that he adopted the integration, i.e. the complete worldview without giving her proper credit. Also, the formulations seem similar.

But then again, it's very common to find Objectivist newbies who regurgitate AR's words and phrases without giving proper credit. Or similarly, if I address the concepts of "class struggle", "bourgeoisie", "proletariat", you may or may not know that these words were given modern significance by Karl Marx (though he didn't invent them either). Now am I "stealing" this integrated worldview from him if I just address them, without mentioning Marx anywhere?

For now, it seems like anything other than a verbatim transcript, is not wrong to be mentioned as is, without the author. The context plays a role here too, because if you simply put Galt's Speech in your own words, but without contributing a thought of your own, i.e. still regurgitating someone else's ideas, not expressing properly integrated your own, that is clearly off limits.

[Charlotte Corday]

I don't think the claim was that Rothbard stole the individual *ideas* from AR, but that he adopted the integration, i.e. the complete worldview without giving her proper credit. Also, the formulations seem similar.

But stealing ideas is precisely what Fred Weiss alleges. Here are his words from Post #3: "he blatantly steals ideas from Ayn Rand."

As for Rothbard adopting Rand's "integration, i.e. the complete worldview," I see nothing in Rothbard's memo that would support that conclusion. There is a critique of Rousseauism, but here Rothbard could just as easily have been influenced by Mises as Rand. In Human Action (1949), Mises writes, “The natural condition of man is extreme poverty and insecurity. It is romantic nonsense to lament the passing of the happy days of primitive barbarism.” (p. 165) There is a discussion of man’s capacity for knowledge and the tabula rasa, but very similar views can be found in Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). There is Rothbard’s argument against the anti-intellectualism of those who favor primitivism, yet much of what he says echoes Irving Babbitt and Thomas Macaulay’s criticism of 19th century Romantics. There is the concept of scientific ignorance as the basis for irrational superstition, however this was a truism among Enlightenment thinkers. Rothbard discusses problems with the society of caste and status; Mises in Human Action had dealt with the way the caste system retards human progress. Rothbard defends the Industrial Revolution; so had Mises in Human Action. If anyone appears to have been slighted by not getting enough credit from Rothbard, it would have to be his teacher Ludwig von Mises.

But then again, it's very common to find Objectivist newbies who regurgitate AR's words and phrases without giving proper credit. Or similarly, if I address the concepts of "class struggle", "bourgeoisie", "proletariat", you may or may not know that these words were given modern significance by Karl Marx (though he didn't invent them either). Now am I "stealing" this integrated worldview from him if I just address them, without mentioning Marx anywhere?

For now, it seems like anything other than a verbatim transcript, is not wrong to be mentioned as is, without the author. The context plays a role here too, because if you simply put Galt's Speech in your own words, but without contributing a thought of your own, i.e. still regurgitating someone else's ideas, not expressing properly integrated your own, that is clearly off limits.

Yet there is no indication that Rothbard’s memo was in any sense a regugitation of Rand’s or Galt’s words. As I have already shown, the ideas in Rothbard’s memo that Weiss seems to think are uniquely Rand’s have their provenance in Western philosophy predating Atlas Shrugged.

[Fred Weiss]

This is my last word on the subject.

The original comment that prompted this now ridiculous discussion was: "Though written several decades ago, this is one of the best essays I've read from Rothbard. Sounds just like something Galt or Francisco might say..."

The essence of my response has been that there is a reason why it sounds like something they might have said...because they said it.

The essence of Charlotte's rejoinder has been, "Oh, but so-and-so said this bit and this other guy said that bit and that view on this bit has been around since the 17th Cent. and thus why isn't it possible that Rothbard took all those bits and managed to string them together almost precisely and uncannily just the way they are put together in Galt's Speech all by his little self."

Charlotte, if that's what you want to believe there is obviously nothing I or anyone else can say that can change your mind. Your desperate use of a remotely similar sounding quote from David Hume is evidence of that.

As I said before, I don't think Rothbard is important enough to waste this much time on. You wonder then why we have. Except the only reason we have is because YOU have made an issue of it.

I was reluctant to even add this comment except that I just wanted to put some finality to my participation in this discussion.

You're a very bright lady but you don't know how to stop beating a dead horse.

Fred Weiss

[argive99]

So not only are your two messages vituperative and uncivil, they are also completely irrelevant to the discussion going on.

Well, you've got a nice vocabulary if nothing else.

[Charlotte Corday]

This is my last word on the subject.  . .

You're a very bright lady but you don't know how to stop beating a dead horse.

Fred Weiss

Thank you for your thoughtful and gracious response. It's fine with me if you wish to end the debate here.