The Anaconda Plan

 “Democracy in Chains - the Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America,” by Nancy MacLean, 2017

This is a look into the origins of U.S. libertarianism.  It arose when MacLean, a reporter, got access to the unguarded and disorganized papers of one of the invisible founders of libertarianism, James McGill Buchanan, on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.  Her investigation showed that libertarianism's origins lie in a defense of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, legally summed up as 'states rights.'  Demands that were raised in the 1850s are similar to now, especially from the South, the Republican Party, the Koch Network and the libertarian tech bros of Silicon Valley.  It's not to say that neoliberal ideas are absent from the Democrats – they are not – but the libertarians are the ideological 'fountainhead.'  Her main point is that the plan is not to use fascism and overt violence, but to gradually take over various institutions and return the U.S. to some primitive, late 1800s robber-baron version of itself – prior to the New Deal, the Warren Court, Keynes and the Johnson/Nixon reforms.  I've called this 'the Anaconda Plan.'  It is succeeding. 

Buchanan, through his contacts with billionaires and ideologues like Hayek, the Mont Perlin Society and the Chicago School, developed a right-wing 'political economy' that directly opposed anything provided by the federal government, counties or cities, in favor of state government.  This means promoting 'right to work' laws, privatizing education, restricting voting and getting rid of federal govt. programs like unemployment, social security, welfare, Medicare and taxes, among others.  Buchanan's inspiration and forerunner was South Carolinian John C. Calhoun, the vicious slaver, planter, Confederate, segregationist, governor and senator.  MacLean reminds us that the Confederacy was based on a state's right to allow any form of property, including slaves.  That is why neo-Confederates call it 'the War Between the States.'  Buchanan's first Virginia proposal to privatize all Virginia schools was submitted during the fight against desegregation after the 1954 Supreme Court “Brown v. Bd. Of Education” ruling.  One rural county in Virginia closed all public schools for years rather than capitulate to the federal government.  As you can see, his program is not about 'individual choice.'  The overturning of 'Roe v. Wade' was also done on the basis of 'states rights.'

No Democracy

Buchanan's libertarian political economics department at the U. of Virginia initiated by the university's Chancellor in 1956 was partly funded by the private Volcker Fund.  As is now familiar, conservative billionaires and millionaires provide cash for these ideological efforts, even in state schools. The State of Virginia during the 1950s was the 'polite' form of segregation, mostly eschewing the lynching and KKK terror of the deep South in favor of rich white segregationists controlling nearly every aspect of law, business and state government under the leadership of senator Harry Byrd.  Buchanan's 'intellectual' tactics fit right in. His attitude to labor: castigating union leaders, the unemployed, retirees and those on welfare or any government program as 'parasites.'

MacLean notes that not all federal government is under the libertarian axe, just everything that does not 'steal' from or 'oppress' the rich like taxes, or socialize what could be private.  In 1964 Goldwater was their mouthpiece and his ideas were so unpopular he lost in a landslide.  As Ayn Rand and the John Birchers said in defense of Goldwater, the essential issue was 'capitalism versus socialism.'  This is still the main line of thought almost 60 years later.

Libertarians realize their program will never be popular, so they aim at decimating any form of bourgeois democracy in favor of capital and the market. Libertarians understand that majorities tend to tax and regulate, if not outright socialize wealthy or corporate private property.  The majority of workers support programs that support them, or at least they should.  So getting rid of democracy is the long game, as authoritarianism is preferred for capital's 'excellent' functioning.  Buchanan put it this way in his book The Limits of Liberty:  “Despotism may be the only organizational alternative to the political structure that we observe.”  One of his co-thinkers suggested:  “Restriction of the franchise to property owners, educated classes, employed persons or some such group.”  There’s some originalism for you!  

Private capital wants to directly control the courts, educational institutions, workplaces, media, land, elections and the government without organized opposition.  Their plan is to turn bourgeois democracy into an authoritarian variant.  Bars on felons, gerrymandering, cutting polling places, ID laws, maintaining the Senate, Electoral College and life-time Supreme Court appointments are at the top of their present list. Claiming an election is erroneous without evidence is typical. But these are just starters. Some also lean to martial law, theocracy or a new ‘Caesar.’ Buchanan's goal was anarcho-capitalism, no matter how it is done.  This guy got a Nobel in 1986 for this deceptively named 'public choice theory.'  That theory was for "a limited franchise and elite control.'

University Conflicts

Buchanan resigned from the U. of Virginia in 1967 and went to UCLA.  He had finally been ousted from Virginia due to his intolerance of any view but his own in his 'Virginia School,' the private money of the Volker Fund, along with his promotion of an academically untalented ally. As one academic noted the school's theories never had empirical verification, but that isn't what Buchanan was after.  It was more about constructing a wish-list counter-narrative to federal programs. Buchanan's experience at UCLA in 1968 made him want to turn universities into something akin to a corporation.  He quickly left UCLA to return to Virginia Tech in his beloved South, as he was really a rich farmer's kid from central Tennessee.  He got kicked out of there 10 years later for the same reasons and ended up at George Mason U in northern Virginia.  MacLean goes into detail on the Charles Koch's domination of the economics and law departments there, as corporate cash, led by Koch, flooded into GMU. Koch's money and minions turned it into a political organizing center, not an academic center, which forced even Buchanan to retire.

His university program?  Get rid of tenure, make students customers, raise tuition to stop so many working-class youth from going to college, get rid of liberal arts, privatize and use physical repression when necessary. They are well on their way to these goals.  Other successes: the military and prisons are now partly privatized; Medicare and retirement savings are partly privatized; some govt. welfare services and some national land are; subcontracting of government work, the military and parts of the space program are; some schooling is already privatized through charter schools and 'homeschooling.' I'll bet you can think of more.  Capital is cannibalizing the public sector, not just demanding corporate welfare and low taxes.  This is actually a reflection of its weakness as a profit center.  They also want to disband the postal service, privatize fire departments and roads, close public libraries, privatize federal parks and get rid of any regulation or law that impedes business.  Sound familiar? 

Well, you didn’t think this would all stay at the level of theory did you?  Buchanan was actually the chief architect, not Friedman, of Chilean policies after the 1973 Pinochet dictatorship through a Virginia School acolyte José Piñera, the labor minister.  In Chile retirement was privatized, national unions disbanded, the minimum wage deplored, the Constitution rewritten.  The ‘Constitution of Liberty’ was adopted in 1980 after a bogus election in which opponents had no access to the press, as it was controlled by Pinochet.  This constitution made 'legal' changes almost impossible, on purpose.  Buchanan never mentioned his role in this version of ‘public choice economics’ because he had to hide it.  

The book mentions all the familiar names linked to far-right libertarianism – Buckley, Friedman, Hayek, Koch, Meese, the Cato Institute, the John Birch Society, Stockman, ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, but also many unfamiliar ones.  MacLean claims that this whole movement's goals were through 'stealth' but for anyone who wants to look, they are pretty open.  Koch has been a known factor for years.  MacLean mentions that some ideologues admired Lenin's political skill in creating an organization of professional revolutionaries – cadre – to overthrow the capitalist state. Buchanan's allies at the time – and people like Steve Bannon now - fancy themselves counter-revolutionary cadre battling Democrats and Republican ‘statists,’ who are supposedly the useful idiots of socialism.

MacLean confuses the words revolution and counter-revolution in the text, since she's a left-liberal.  She makes no connection between libertarians and Christian nationalists / Dominionists, fascists or even some anarchists and post-lefty podcasters.  The seizure of the Supreme Court to redefine - or refine - the U.S. Constitution is touched on. What MacLean ignores is that the majority of capital actually needs the federal government, otherwise they would be financially underwater and the subject of mass revolution.  Another thing she ignores is debt.  Libertarians consider federal 'debt' to be anathema in their pursuit of a 'balanced budget,' but no proletarian 'kitchen table' budget is actually without it.  Debt is ubiquitous in personal, government and corporate functioning in a capitalist matrix.  They are not against debt or interest per se, but only govt. debt that helps the majority. Libertarianism is in essence a reactionary fantasy, a vision of Utopian conservatism, but it is also a heavy capitalist ideological weapon in the class war.  That is why Left policy should be no blocks with libertarians on any issue.   

Notes:  A “Unite the Right” rally was held to defend a statue of Robert E. Lee at the U of Virginia in that self-same Charlottesville.  Many were beaten and one anti-racist killed.  Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis was recently renamed Bde Maka Ska (Biday Mahkaska) due to Calhoun's racist legacy.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Marxism versus Libertarianism,” “Rich People Things,” “Who is Ron Paul?” “Crack-Up Capitalism,” “RFK Jr. The Libertarian.”

Red Frog / October 5, 2023