IN A MIRROR DARKLY: MARXISM AND LIBERTARIANISM (AND ALT-RIGHTISM)

by Michael Enoch

If you are like me and you have spent more time than is probably healthy in libertarian political and intellectual circles you have probably taken note of various irritating and often ironic trends peculiar to the milieu. One such trend is the tendency of libertarian activists and fellow travelers to be converts from the left. They didn’t start as libertarians and they likely will not die libertarians. Some people stay libertarian for their entire political lives, but considering the intellectual dead end of libertarian ethical constructs like the NAP, these types inevitably become pedantic, tedious bores that perseverate on the same dumbed down talking points while hawking cheap, kitschy merchandise to the latest class of noobs as they roll in. Most libertarians came to the  movement  from some other radical community. They are usually more than happy to share the story of their ideological journey into the light if you ask them nicely. Most of these stories, mine included, start with Marxism.

This may surprise some people, but it really should not. Just because the two ideologies seem to be polar opposites in terms of doctrine and goals does not mean they do not attract essentially the same personality types. I have rarely met a libertarian that claims to have never been involved with the radical left at any point in his life. This actually makes perfect sense. I would be surprised if it were any other way. You may shake your head and come back with the rather cliched claim that libertarianism is the political expression of individualism, capitalism and freedom while Marxism is the intellectual grandfather of tyranny, totalitarian socialism and collectivism. What gives? Are not these two ideologies in direct opposition to each other? Sure they are. In theory they are bitterly opposed. But that is exactly why there is so much crossover.

Marxism and Libertarianism are essentially perverted mirror images of each other. Both are uncompromising, totalitarian, utopian and reject the status quo as morally intolerable according to their own esoteric philosophical constructs. These qualities are more likely to be attractive to a certain type of person than any particular point of dogma. Utopian idealogues are going to be attracted to revolutionary ideologies regardless of what turn out to be in reality rather minor differences in doctrine. It’s really just a matter of who gets to them first. Given the leftist nature of our culture, it will likely be the Marxists that make first contact.

My early life in radical politics started with a brief stint in Chomsky style left-anarchism, though even as a naive young fool I could see how ridiculous and unworkable that was. I soon moved on from that and got involved in sectarian Marxism. I was initially attracted to this genre because of their convincing pretense of intellectualism combined with facile one size fits all answers to every social issue. These tiny radical Marxist parties usually have no more than 10 members and no chance at ever being the revolutionary vanguard. Yet they endlessly bicker with each other over arcane points of doctrine and the proper interpretation of various texts by the great masters of old. Pay no attention to the direct parallels with religion here. They are just coincidental and mean nothing. Really.

I felt compelled to ragequit this leftist bizarro world when one Saturday afternoon I found myself in a run down YMCA in Brooklyn with a group of middle-aged Jewish public school teachers. They were discussing what the party line should be on radical Islam. On the one hand they found it to be a repugnant ideology, but on the other hand the Muslims were more effective at fighting US imperialism than any current socialist alternatives. And they were all taking it dead seriously as if it was anything other than a circle fap of epic proportions. I realized I had gone beyond full retard. An overwhelming sense of loathing washed over me like an awesome wave. The people I was around suddenly seemed twisted and horrible. A revelatory religious experience is the closest thing I can compare this experience to. I quietly got up, walked out and never had contact with any of those people again. I sometimes wonder how much thought they put in to the question of my abrupt disappearance. I suspect not much. Such desertions are no doubt commonplace for these sorts of groups.

But I did not just leave the radical leftist world, I actively embraced the direct opposite. And I did so precisely because it was, or rather it seemed to be, the direct opposite. I had already known of Rothbard, Mises and Rand as the hated enemy. I had been instructed by one “comrade” to not read such material because it was dangerous. So I got my hands on as much Rothbard as I could and went through it like madman. I tore through Mises’s tome “Socialism” in about a week. And every one of those words rang true like was written in my soul. The world seemed suddenly so fresh and new where before it had been dreary and oppressive. Before every social interaction was another example of exploitation or hierarchy. There was hidden evil everywhere, and only myself and a few enlightened others could see it. Libertarianism was nothing like this. At first.

But of course the emotional high I was riding from the break with the left wore off. I started meeting the exact same kinds of people in the libertarian milieu that I encountered in the Marxist world. They tended to be younger and were therefore slightly less depressing, but many of them were well on their way to being the guy that holds meetings in the run down YMCA in Brooklyn and wears an out of style tweed jacket that smells vaguely of mothballs. I soon found that many libertarians still embraced the notion of human equality. In the libertarian world you see, we are all special individuals, but we are also morally equal. Every individual could be a successful businessperson if not for the state and regulations. I know this and I am qualified to comment on this topic because of my experience selling hemp jewelry on craigslist and spending the proceeds on meth and high quality streaming porn.

The same old narratives of oppression came back, just with the cast of characters shifted around a bit to suit a slightly different set of prejudices. The world really was the same dreary place after all. Oppression really was everywhere, it was just coming from a different direction. In this new world the workers are exploiting the capitalists rather than vice versa. Everyone really is equal, but in this narrative equality is never realized because of the state rather than corporations. Or maybe it really is corporations after all. Eh, whatever works. The evil rich unfairly rely on government protection and subsidy, unlike in the Marxist world where of course the evil rich unfairly rely on government protection and subsidy. Oops. Looks like Marx beat you to that one bro. Libertarianism essentially takes all the basic assumptions of the radical leftist narrative and inverts the role of good guys and bad guys. Nothing new under the sun.