National Self-Determination and Individual Liberty

In his book The Essential Rothbard, David Gordon observes that, “Rothbard was no ivory-tower scholar, interested only in academic controversies. Quite the contrary, he combined Austrian economics with a fervent commitment to individual liberty.” One of Rothbard’s important intellectual contributions to defending individual liberty concerns the subject of national self-determination. In his essay “The Nationalities Question,” he depicted national self-determination as “a moral principle and a beacon-light for all nations,” insisting that self-determination is derived from the individual right to self-ownership and “not something to be imposed by outside governmental coercion.” He rejected what he called a “simplistic” view of individual liberty which presumes that national identity is antithetical to individual liberty. He argued that, “In the real world, then, national self-determination is a vitally important matter in which libertarians should properly take sides…nationalism has its disadvantages for liberty; but also has its strengths, and libertarians should try to help tip it in the latter direction.”

Further, Rothbard argued that the ideal of justice, which he saw as essential to the defense of liberty, also applied to the delineation of national boundaries. Nations must be based on consent, and the boundaries between nations should—as far as possible—be just. He argued that, “National boundaries are only just insofar as they are based on voluntary consent and the property rights of their members or citizens.” In his view, it would follow that,

In practice, the way to have such national boundaries as just as possible is to preserve and cherish the right of secession, the right of different regions, groups, or ethnic nationalities to get the blazes out of the larger entity, to set up their own independent nation. Only by boldly asserting the right of secession can the concept of national self-determination be anything more than a sham and a hoax.

As Rothbard saw it, nationalism is tipped in the direction of advancing individual liberty when it is based on the principles of limited government and state rights. It is, therefore, no surprise that Rothbard also robustly defended the Southern tradition which historically championed these political doctrines. For example, John Randolph of Roanoke defended natural rights, individual liberty, and states’ rights, concepts which lie at the heart of the philosophical tradition to which Rothbard referred in his essay “Mr. Bush’s Shooting War”:

I stand with the great John Randolph of Roanoke, who set forth his principles thus:

“Love of peace, hatred of offensive war, jealousy of the state governments toward the general government; a dread of standing armies; a loathing of public debt, taxes, and excises; tenderness for the liberty of the citizen; jealousy, Argus-eyed jealousy, of the patronage of the president.”

Also reflecting these principles, the historian Frank L. Owsley argued in his article “The Irrepressible Conflict” that the doctrine of “State Rights” is essential to the defense of minority interests and individual liberty against the tyranny of the majority. Rothbard aligned with this interpretation of state rights. He argued that the South was right to oppose the centralization of federal power, describing Lincoln’s “unitary nation-state” as “monstrous” and destructive of “individual and local liberties” through, for example,

…the triumph of an all-powerful federal judiciary, Supreme Court, and national army; the overriding of the ancient Anglo-Saxon and libertarian right of habeas corpus by jailing dissidents against the war without trial; the establishment of martial rule; the suppression of freedom of the press; and the largely permanent establishment of conscription, the income tax, the pietist “sin” taxes against liquor and tobacco, the corrupt and cartelizing “partnership of government and industry” constituting massive subsidies to transcontinental railroads, and the protective tariff; the establishment of fiat money inflation through the greenbacks and getting off the gold standard; and the nationalization of the banking system through the national Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864.

Against that background, it is easy to see that Rothbard’s political philosophy does not treat individual liberty as merely a theoretical or abstract concept—it is also rooted in practical reality, in human nature, in how real human beings actually live and coexist with people from different nations. As Gordon observes, “He endeavored to apply the ideas he had developed in his theoretical work to current politics and to bring libertarian views to the attention of the general public.” In “The Nationalities Question,” Rothbard criticized the libertarian view of individual liberty, which often tends to be critical of nationalism, as “simplistic” and even “vulgar” due to its tendency to cling to abstract theories that take no account of the reality of the human condition. He explained:

A typical critique would run as follows: “There is no nation; there are only individuals. The nation is a collectivist and therefore pernicious concept. The concept of ‘national self-determination’ is fallacious, since only the individual has a ‘self.’ Since the nation and the State are both collective concepts, both are pernicious and should be combated.”

Rothbard’s answer to that critique is that “self-determination” is a metaphor and does not literally conceptualize the nation as having a “self” of its own distinct from its individual people. He distinguished between the “nation” and the “state” or “government,” and cautioned against ignoring the reality that individual human beings generally belong—voluntarily or by consent—to a family, a community, a nation.

More seriously, we must not fall into a nihilist trap. While only individuals exist individuals do not exist as isolated and hermetically sealed atoms. Statists traditionally charge libertarians and individualists with being “atomistic individualists,” and the charge, one hopes, has always been incorrect and misconceived.

He, therefore, urged libertarians to “get over simplistic individualism” and acknowledge that individuals are not atomistic but form societies based on “ethnicity and nationality,” reflecting factors such as “culture, values, traditions, religion, and language.” As a strategic matter, he formed alliances with conservative groups who hold to this view of national self-determination even though they do not ground their views doctrinally in Lockean principles of self-ownership. As Gordon explains, this led some libertarians to wonder why Rothbard would forge political alliances with conservatives, most notably through the John Randolph Club which supported the presidential bid mounted by the “America First” conservative Patrick J. Buchanan.

Some professed to find a contradiction in Rothbard’s political activities. He often criticized other libertarians for deviating from the correct “line”; yet he himself sought alliances with divergent groups, both on the Left and the Right. There is in fact no contradiction here: Rothbard held libertarians to a much stricter standard than outsiders. For those within the fold, doctrinal orthodoxy was a must; but alliances with outsiders were another matter. Here tactics were all important, and a general agreement on principles was neither required nor expected.

The case for forging alliances with outsiders who also seek to advance individual liberty, and the doctrine of nations by consent, becomes morally and politically compelling precisely because the ultimate goal is to advance individual liberty.