Betrayal of the Old Right, Lecture 1

The Old Right

The Old Right

• Rothbard is using “old right” in a very distinctive sense. It does not mean the same as conservative in the European sense.

• In the European sense, the right or conservatives were supporters of monarchy and aristocracy. The term “right” came in from the seating in the French National Assembly in the French Revolution

Old Right Continued

• Those who sat on the right supported the king. The term “right” designates opponents of the French Revolution.

• Rothbard was not an opponent of the French Revolution. He supported the French Revolution as a movement for freedom against monarchical absolutism.

More Old Right

• This raises a problem for Rothbard. He supports the Old Right; the Old Right aren’t rightists in the European sense, and Rothbard isn’t a rightist in that sense either.

• Why then does he call the group the Old Right? To answer this, we have to examine some of the people in the Old Right.

Albert Jay Nock

• Rothbard meant by the Old Right libertarians or individualists.

• One of the most important of the people he had in mind was Albert Jay Nock.During the 1920s, he edited the Freeman, an individualist magazine.

• Nock was a literary figure and was noted for his fine style. He published famous authors of the time, such as Bertrand Russell and Lewis Mumford.

More Nock

• Nock was a follower of the German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer. Nock discussed Oppenheimer’s theory of the state in Our Enemy the State.

• Both Oppenheimer and Nock were Georgists, i.e., followers of Henry George. They thought that society owns land in common. Nock’s leading disciple, Frank Chodorov, was also a Georgist. He influenced Rothbard.

Nock on the State

• Oppenheimer and Nock argued that the state was predatory. People could get what they wanted by production and peaceful exchange with others. This was the economic means. Alternatively, they could use force to seize it from others. If done in an organized way by a monopoly group, this was the political means.

Nock on American Government

• Nock was a strong supporter of Thomas Jefferson. He wrote a biography of Jefferson.

• Nock applied his theory of the state to the U.S. Constitution. Like Charles Beard, he viewed the Constitution as designed to help certain economic groups.

• Nock was a libertarian but opposed to big business, which he viewed as allied with the government predators.

Nock and the Right

• So far, we haven’t been able to connect Nock to anything on the right.

• One way he was conservative in a conventional sense is that he believed in a natural aristocracy.

• Higher education wasn’t for everybody. A “Remnant” would bring about political change.

H.L. Mencken

• Another key figure of the Old Right was H. L. Mencken. He was the leading literary critic in America in the 1920s and 1930s.

• Like Nock, he was a strong opponent of state interference with individual liberty. Prohibition was an especial target of his.

Mencken’s Style

• Mencken had a very humorous style and could be a devastating critic. He said lawyers

• “are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizen has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow . . . we’d all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.”

Mencken on Democracy

• Mencken was unsympathetic to democracy. He thought that most people were stupid. The masses could easily be manipulated.

• He derived his philosophical views from Nietzsche, whom he translated.

• Like Nock, he was an opponent of Big Business. He made fun of Harding and Coolidge.

Opposition to War

• We now turn to the single issue most important to this course. It separates the Old Right from both the National Review conservatives and the neoconservatives.

• This is opposition to war. There was an opposition movement to the Spanish-American War. This was the Anti-Imperialist League. It was largely composed of conservative, laissez-faire Democrats.

Opposition to War Continued

• The anti-war movement really took off after America entered WWI in 1917.

• Wilson had campaigned in 1916 on the slogan “he kept us out of war”. His pro-English interpretation of American neutral rights made US entry into the war virtually inevitable.

The American Left and the War

• Many people in the American left supported Wilson’s entry into the war. Many Progressives favored government control of the economy. They realized that the war would give them an opportunity to put new government programs into operation.

• In doing this, they cooperated with certain elements in Big Business. Some of the measures established in WWI were revived in FDR’s New Deal. Herbert Hoover was a leading business Progressive.

American Left Continued

• Among the most important leftists who supported the war was the philosopher John Dewey. He thought war was an opportunity for planning.

• This led to a break with his former follower, Randolph Bourne. He called war “the health of the state.”

• Another supporter of the war was Herbert Croly. He favored the ‘new nationalism” and favored Hamilton over Jefferson. He founded The New Republic.

Anti-War Leftists

• Not all of the left supported Wilson’s war policies. Some progressives, such as “Fighting Bob” La Follette of Wisconsin, opposed Wilson’s unneutral conduct.

• Another Progressive, Senator George Norris attacked America’s entry into the conflict as “war upon the command of gold.”

The Old Right and WWI

• The Old Right allied with these Progressives. Nock wrote The Myth of a Guilty Nation, opposing the view that Germany was exclusively responsible for WWI.

• Francis Neilson, an associate of Nock, wrote How Diplomats Make War. He had been a member of the British Parliament.

The Revisionist Movement

• After WWI, the Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was pressured to sign by a blockade, said that Germany bore sole responsibility for the war. This was Article 231 of the treaty.

• Historians who questioned this were called revisionists.

Revisionists Continued

• The relevance of the revisionist movement to the Old Right is that as a result of their activities, it became popular to see American entry into the war as a mistake.

• This led to a popular movement to return to the traditional American policy of non-involvement in European power politics.

More Revisionists

• The revisionists challenged the war guilt thesis on two grounds. First, it was false that Germany bore exclusive responsibility for the onset of war in 1914.

• Sidney Fay was probably the most important historian who argued this thesis. Harry Elmer Barnes also wrote a popular book on war origins. He allied with the Old Right and was a friend of Mencken. He later became friends with Rothbard

Revisionists on American Entry into WWI

• The revisionists also criticized Wilson’s policies. Here the most important figure was Charles C. Tansill, who wrote America Goes to War (1938).

• He emphasized that Wilson allowed Britain to violate America’s rights as a neutral power, while being severe with Germany. His interpretation became the dominant one in the 1930s.

Making the Revisionists Popular

• Barnes played the most important part in making the revisionist movement popular.

• He was a very prominent newspaper columnist. • Mencken’s American Mercury made the

revisionist position popular among American intellectuals.

• Senator Gerald Nye held hearing in the 1930s that brought out the role of financial interests and munitions makers in leading to American entry into the war. This differed somewhat from Tansill.