Jeff Riggenbach on Joan Kennedy Taylor

[9thdoctor]

There’s a surprising (to me) anecdote in JR’s latest program. 14 minutes in. It’s a bio-piece on Joan Kennedy Taylor, one of the early NBI people. She edited a magazine in the mid-60’s called Persuasion, endorsed by Rand in The Objectivist. When asked what to call the political philosophy of Objectivism, Rand’s answer to JKT was libertarianism. I gather that JR’s source for this is the Duncan Scott interviews (which I haven’t seen), but what I want to know is how explicitly was the libertarian label used in the magazine, if anyone has copies, and if an illustrated rebuttal of the crap on the ARI website, where they use Rand’s early 70’s anti-libertarian statements alongside some Peter Schwartz drivel, can be put together online. If she was in favor in the 60’s, then opposed in the 70’s, who’s to say what her position on say, the Cato or LvM Institutes would be today? I’ve witnessed Randroidian reflexive spewing of anathemas at the mere label libertarian, so I regard Schwartz’s Libertarianism article as the mid-80’s equivalent of PARC, a steaming shit sandwich of an in-group test that you were expected to swallow, and couldn’t avoid, or even agree to disagree on. And such bad writing, to boot.

http://mises.org/media/5654

[Jerry Biggers]

There’s a surprising (to me) anecdote in JR’s latest program. 14 minutes in. It’s a bio-piece on Joan Kennedy Taylor, one of the early NBI people. She edited a magazine in the mid-60’s called Persuasion, endorsed by Rand in The Objectivist. When asked what to call the political philosophy of Objectivism, Rand’s answer to JKT was libertarianism. I gather that JR’s source for this is the Duncan Scott interviews (which I haven’t seen), but what I want to know is how explicitly was the libertarian label used in the magazine, if anyone has copies, and if an illustrated rebuttal of the crap on the ARI website, where they use Rand’s early 70’s anti-libertarian statements alongside some Peter Schwartz drivel, can be put together online. If she was in favor in the 60’s, then opposed in the 70’s, who’s to say what her position on say, the Cato or LvM Institutes would be today? I’ve witnessed Randroidian reflexive spewing of anathemas at the mere label libertarian, so I regard Schwartz’s Libertarianism article as the mid-80’s equivalent of PARC, a steaming shit sandwich of an in-group test that you were expected to swallow, and couldn’t avoid, or even agree to disagree on. And such bad writing, to boot.

http://mises.org/media/5654

I believe I still have a full set of Persuasion back copies. However, I have not referenced them for a long time! I'll take a look to see if there are any uses of the term libertarianism in the magazine, and I will let you know.

[jriggenbach]

There's a surprising (to me) anecdote in JR's latest program. 14 minutes in. It's a bio-piece on Joan Kennedy Taylor, one of the early NBI people. She edited a magazine in the mid-60's called Persuasion, endorsed by Rand in The Objectivist. When asked what to call the political philosophy of Objectivism, Rand's answer to JKT was libertarianism. I gather that JR's source for this is the Duncan Scott interviews (which I haven't seen), but what I want to know is how explicitly was the libertarian label used in the magazine, if anyone has copies, and if an illustrated rebuttal of the crap on the ARI website, where they use Rand's early 70's anti-libertarian statements alongside some Peter Schwartz drivel, can be put together online. If she was in favor in the 60's, then opposed in the 70's, who's to say what her position on say, the Cato or LvM Institutes would be today? I've witnessed Randroidian reflexive spewing of anathemas at the mere label libertarian, so I regard Schwartz's Libertarianism article as the mid-80's equivalent of PARC, a steaming shit sandwich of an in-group test that you were expected to swallow, and couldn't avoid, or even agree to disagree on. And such bad writing, to boot.

http://mises.org/media/5654

Actually I have two sources for Joan's recollections of Rand's use of the term "libertarianism." One is an unpublished, undated manuscript called "Memories of Ayn Rand" which I found among Joan's papers a couple of years ago at the Hoover Institution Archive at Stanford. An accompanying note in Joan's hand indicates that this piece was written for a small-circulation, vaguely Georgist quarterly called Fragments, probably in 1980 or 1981, but later "withdrawn" (no reason specified) and never published. My other source is an interview Joan gave to the Objectivist magazine Full Context. It ran in the October 1993 issue.

On Rand's apparent change of heart regarding libertarianism, at the time of the conversation with Joan, in 1964, the organized libertarian movement was very tiny by the standards we are accustomed to today. Andrew J. Galambos was offering courses in libertarianism at his Free Enterprise Institute in Los Angeles. Robert LeFevre was doing the same at his Freedom School near Colorado Springs. Leonard Read was operating the Foundation for Economic Education in New York and popularizing the works of Frederic Bastiat among high school students. The Institute for Humane Studies, which had just opened its doors in 1961, was working to popularize the libertarian idea among college students. The Volcker Fund was subsidizing what little libertarian scholarship was to be found back then, enabling the publication of a number of important books, including Rothbard's Man, Economy & State and America's Great Depression and Henry Hazlitt's The Failure of the New Economics: An Analysis of the Keynesian Fallacies. These were the people who used the term "libertarian" to describe themselves in the America of 1964. Their numbers were few. Rand commanded a larger audience than all the rest of them combined, particularly among the college-age.

But that began changing in the late '60s. With the implosion of the Objectivist movement in 1968, thousands of former Students of Objectivism, eager to be a part of some movement for change in the direction of individual freedom, began calling themselves libertarians. Libertarian books began coming out from mainline publishers - Jerome Tuccille's Radical Libertarianism in 1970 and It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand in 1971, Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World in 1973, and Robert Nozick's National Book Award-winning Anarchy, State & Utopia in 1974. Worse yet, the only libertarian idea Rand really objected to - the one she described as the "floating abstraction" of "competing governments" - now had two books from mainline publishers arguing for its merits: David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom and Murray Rothbard's For A New Liberty, both published in 1973. When Rand had first warned against what she regarded as the folly of anarcho-capitalism back in the early 1960s, hardly anyone espoused it. Now, in the 1970s, growing numbers of young people did espouse it, and these young people were calling themselves libertarians. I believe Rand began to think she needed to distance herself from these new "libertarians," whose ideas seemed to her a far cry from those of writers like H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock, who had used the term in the '20s and '30s, and those of Leonard Read and Henry Hazlitt, who had used it in the '40s, '50s, and '60s.

There are back issues of Persuasion in the Joan Kennedy Taylor Papers at the Hoover Institution, where they can only benefit those able and willing to go there to examine them. I am in possession of a nearly complete backfile of the magazine (one issue missing) which was lent to me a few years back by Barbara Branden, so that I could consult it in connection with a book I was writing. I am hoping to work out a deal whereby Barbara would agree to allow these to be scanned before I return them to her and they could be posted online, perhaps by the Mises Institute. I'm confident I can obtain the permission of the copyright holder - Joan's son, Michael Cook - to have pdf files of them put online. Are you reading this, Barbara? Would you care to comment? Or, if you prefer, write to me privately, and we'll discuss the matter. As with almost everything, there's more to the idea than meets the eye.

My recollection from reading through these copies of Persuasion is that the terms "libertarian" and "libertarianism" are not frequently used in their pages, despite Joan's later comments.

JR

Edited December 30, 2010 by Jeff Riggenbach

[jriggenbach]

There's a surprising (to me) anecdote in JR's latest program. 14 minutes in. It's a bio-piece on Joan Kennedy Taylor, one of the early NBI people. She edited a magazine in the mid-60's called Persuasion, endorsed by Rand in The Objectivist. When asked what to call the political philosophy of Objectivism, Rand's answer to JKT was libertarianism. I gather that JR's source for this is the Duncan Scott interviews (which I haven't seen), but what I want to know is how explicitly was the libertarian label used in the magazine, if anyone has copies, and if an illustrated rebuttal of the crap on the ARI website, where they use Rand's early 70's anti-libertarian statements alongside some Peter Schwartz drivel, can be put together online. If she was in favor in the 60's, then opposed in the 70's, who's to say what her position on say, the Cato or LvM Institutes would be today? I've witnessed Randroidian reflexive spewing of anathemas at the mere label libertarian, so I regard Schwartz's Libertarianism article as the mid-80's equivalent of PARC, a steaming shit sandwich of an in-group test that you were expected to swallow, and couldn't avoid, or even agree to disagree on. And such bad writing, to boot.

http://mises.org/media/5654

BTW, it's a minor point, but I think I recall reading Schwartz's execrable article while I was still working for the Libertarian Review in San Francisco, which means it couldn't have been any later than sometime in 1980. The magazine moved to Washington, DC at the beginning of 1981.

JR

[9thdoctor]

Actually I have two sources for Joan's recollections of Rand's use of the term "libertarianism."

BTW I do recall a radio interview with Rand where she speaks of "the so-called libertarians" in a positive way. It must have been from the sixties, she uses the term as though it should be unfamiliar to listeners. I don't remember the name of the program, I probably have it on tape somewhere. She used the term to refer to Mises, Hazlitt etc.

BTW, it's a minor point, but I think I recall reading Schwartz's execrable article while I was still working for the Libertarian Review in San Francisco, which means it couldn't have been any later than sometime in 1980. The magazine moved to Washington, DC at the beginning of 1981.

I don't think so, I feel sure that it came after Rand's death. 1985 is the right year, I believe. It's included in The Voice of Reason, it probably gives the original date there.

[Brant Gaede]

Actually I have two sources for Joan's recollections of Rand's use of the term "libertarianism."

BTW I do recall a radio interview with Rand where she speaks of "the so-called libertarians" in a positive way. It must have been from the sixties, she uses the term as though it should be unfamiliar to listeners. I don't remember the name of the program, I probably have it on tape somewhere. She used the term to refer to Mises, Hazlitt etc.

BTW, it's a minor point, but I think I recall reading Schwartz's execrable article while I was still working for the Libertarian Review in San Francisco, which means it couldn't have been any later than sometime in 1980. The magazine moved to Washington, DC at the beginning of 1981.

I don't think so, I feel sure that it came after Rand's death. 1985 is the right year, I believe. It's included in The Voice of Reason, it probably gives the original date there.

1985 or later in the 80s. The only things "independently" published, I recall, before Rand's death, were the Objectivist Calender, no issue of which I've ever seen, and The Objectivist Forum.

--Brant

[anonrobt]

Actually I have two sources for Joan's recollections of Rand's use of the term "libertarianism."

BTW I do recall a radio interview with Rand where she speaks of "the so-called libertarians" in a positive way. It must have been from the sixties, she uses the term as though it should be unfamiliar to listeners. I don't remember the name of the program, I probably have it on tape somewhere. She used the term to refer to Mises, Hazlitt etc.

BTW, it's a minor point, but I think I recall reading Schwartz's execrable article while I was still working for the Libertarian Review in San Francisco, which means it couldn't have been any later than sometime in 1980. The magazine moved to Washington, DC at the beginning of 1981.

I don't think so, I feel sure that it came after Rand's death. 1985 is the right year, I believe. It's included in The Voice of Reason, it probably gives the original date there.

1985 or later in the 80s. The only things "independently" published, I recall, before Rand's death, were the Objectivist Calender, no issue of which I've ever seen, and The Objectivist Forum.

--Brant

May-June and December, 1985, The Intellectual Activist...