Why Liberals Hate Conspiracy Theories

by Gary North

I wrote an article on Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard. I argued  that one of the reasons why tenured Austrian School economists want to distance  themselves from him, is his writings on conspiracies  in American history.

English: Rothbard and his wife (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rothbard was quite clear about his commitment to apply Austrian economics’ theories of human action to the topic of conspiracies. He wrote this defense  of the conspiracy view of history in 1977. He began with a description of  the knee-jerk reaction of Establishment intellectuals.

Anytime that a hard-nosed analysis is put forth of who our rulers are, of how  their political and economic interests interlock, it is invariably denounced by  Establishment liberals and conservatives (and even by many libertarians) as a “conspiracy theory of history,” “paranoid,” “economic determinist,” and even “Marxist.” These smear labels are applied across the board, even though such  realistic analyses can be, and have been, made from any and all parts of the  economic spectrum, from the John Birch Society to the Communist Party. The most  common label is “conspiracy theorist,” almost always leveled as a hostile  epithet rather than adopted by the “conspiracy theorist” himself.

THE HISTORICAL GUILD

This brings up the issue of the academic guild. Every guild has rules and  regulations. It has above all a system of screening. The guild screens out  people who do not hold to the standards enforced by the guild. The guild  attempts to define its own practices as the only true practices that are  acceptable to the guild, and which should be acceptable by society. Any  practitioner who deviates from the standards announced by the guild, and above  all, systematically enforced by the guild is automatically defined as some sort  of deviant. The representatives of the guild warn the public not to accept the  conclusions, practices, or presuppositions of anyone, and especially any rival  group, that dares to call into question the conclusions, practices, and  presuppositions of the guild.

The guild dismisses all suggestions that it is operating in terms of  self-interest. It assures the public that it only has the interests of the  public at heart. It is pursuing its goals in order to defend the public from  unscrupulous operators who seek to defraud the public. For this reason, and only  for this reason, the guild insists that it is necessary for the government to  intervene and prevent those who offer opposing opinions, practices, and above  all, lower prices. The public needs protection from charlatans, the guild  insists, and in order to help the public, the guild calls upon politicians and  bureaucrats to establish rules, which means rules written by the guild, to  restrict entry into the field of study or operations presently dominated by the  guild.

The guild seeks to define legitimate practices, presuppositions, and concepts  in terms of the prevailing standards of the guild. It is this definition of  legitimacy which is central to the promotion of the guild’s interests. The guild  must deflect all criticism of the guild that is based on a careful study of  cause-and-effect with respect to the economic results of the guild’s recommended  political measures. Anyone who follows the money, from the effects of the  regulations back to the bank accounts of the members of the guild, is dismissed  as a conspiracy theorist. He is dismissed as a Marxist, or someone who was  opposed to the protection of the general public. The guild insists that its  adherence to its own standards of operation has nothing to do with the increased  income generated by the guild, and by the decreased income generated by the  guild’s competitors.

Virtually all modern political legislation, as well as virtually all  standards adopted by government bureaucracies to enforce the laws, are the  result of special-interest pressures brought to bear on politicians and  bureaucracies by members of guilds. Almost all of modern economic life is based  on guilds, as surely as urban economic life in the year 1200 was based on  guilds. They are not called guilds today. They are called special interests.  Special interests are groups of producers whose special interest is specifically  their own personal self-interest.

ECONOMIC SELF-INTEREST

One of the strange aspects of modern historiography and academic social  science is this. The phrase “special interest group” is widely accepted, but the  phrase “conspiracy history” is one of contempt. From an economic standpoint, a  special-interest group lobbies politicians to get laws passed that restrict new  entrants into the field which is presently dominated by the particular  special-interest group. This is widely recognized as being basic to modern  political life, and academicians have no doubts about following the money back  to a capitalistic special-interest group: a corporation, a trade association, or  a cartel. In other words, they follow the money when the money leads back to a  specific group of capitalists. This tradition goes back to Adam Smith in the  wealth of nations. It is a long-established tradition.

When the trail of money leads to well-known Establishment organizations, such  as the Council on Foreign Relations or the Trilateral Commission, or worse, to  the Federal Reserve System, the academic historian draws the line. “Thus far,  and no farther.” He ceases to follow the money. It is legitimate, he says, to  follow the money back to organizations whose sole purpose is making money. These  are the bad guys. But it is illegitimate to continue following the money when it  leads to nonprofit government advisory organizations made up of the prominent  people in business, academia, the media, and the highest levels of national  government.

(To read the rest of the article, click the link.) Continue  Reading on www.garynorth.com

Related articles

• Rothbard Is the Victor (lewrockwell.com)
• Tenured Austrian Economists vs. Murray Rothbard (sgtreport.com)
• John Cook: Conspiracy Theorists Respond to Evidence They’re Conspiracy Theorists With More Conspiracy Theories (huffingtonpost.com)

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