My Mother Is A Fish

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature by Murray N. Rothbard

“Since their methodology and their goals deny the very structure of humanity and of the universe, the egalitarians are profoundly antihuman; and, therefore, their ideology and their activities may be set down as profoundly evil as well.”

So concludes, in part, Murray N. Rothbard's essay, “Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature.” I offer, in the following, some reactions to the essay, in the spirit of learning what I have yet to know about a subject with which I feel I am on shaky ground. (I note also that I may decide to post this without sufficient regard for the fact that it may be incoherent, as well it might become, for I am tired and somewhat vague in the mind.)

In general, I agree with Rothbard's assessment. Yet, some part of me wants to chastise myself for this concurrence: Am I hopelessly backward and antifeminist (given the application of his arguments to the subject of sex)? I would reply that I do not think so, and that feminism can be set on non-egalitarian grounds. “All men are created equal” before their creator and judge, it may be said, without asserting a biological truth—only a legal (both human and eternal law) one. But, perhaps I am wrong.

Rothbard writes, on the subject of one victim group, women, and the extent to which women's liberationists must look to culture as a malignant cause of society's inequalities, irrespective of arguable biological causes: “For the women's liberationists can hardly deny the fact that every culture and civilization in history, from the simplest to the most complex, has been dominated by males.” My first response is to ask whether this is true. If we look simply at the record of historical innovations, I don't doubt that this is true. But why can't it be true that the women play an approximately equally large role in the behind-the-scenes work that goes on in propagating and supporting culture? I must ask, however, of myself, why I feel the need to rebut the assertion; to say what Rothbard says is not to claim a moral superiority of men.

My second response, still, is to ask whether this matters.... Society in most cases has been dominated by a state, and yet this empirical record would not deter Rothbard from asserting that biologically, man may live with and indeed may flourish best without the State. [Further remarks omitted on excuse of tarredness.]

Next point: the contingent value of the egalitarian ideal on the existence of a statist society. Herbert Simons, economist, kicked off much of the Rothbard essay in writing, for example: “The case for drastic progression in taxation must be rested on the case against inequality – on the ethical or aesthetic judgment that the prevailing distribution of wealth and income reveals a degree (and/or kind) of inequality which is distinctly evil or unlovely.” Isn't this a true ethical and aesthetic judgment in some cases? That is, when the prevailing distribution of wealth and income reflects the intervention of the State in the lives of productive persons, and the progression in taxation is borne by the power elite, predominantly or exclusively?

Next: Is Rothbard attacking a straw man? Do egalitarians deny quite so much of biological difference as he suggests? Or rather, do their arguments logically come down to this denial of biological difference? [Remarks limited for being tarred.]

An interesting quote that I'm too tired to get a full grasp on: “Herrnstein concludes that any political attempts to provide environmental equality for all citizens will only intensify the degree of socioeconomic differences caused by genetic variability.”

That is all.