The True History of Libertarianism in America: A Phony Ideology to Promote a Corporate Agenda

[applegrove]

The True History of Libertarianism in America: A Phony Ideology to Promote a Corporate Agenda

by Mark Ames / NSFWCORP at AlterNet

http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda

"SNIP..............................


Milton Friedman. In his early days, before millions were spent on burnishing his reputation, Friedman worked as a business lobby shill, a propagandist who would say whatever he was paid to say. That's the story we need to revisit to get to the bottom of the modern American libertarian "movement," to see what it's really all about. We need to take a trip back to the post-war years, and to the largely forgotten Buchanan Committee hearings on illegal lobbying activities, led by a pro-labor Democrat from Pennsylvania, Frank Buchanan.

What the Buchanan Committee discovered was that in 1946, Milton Friedman and his U Chicago cohort George Stigler arranged an under-the-table deal with a Washington lobbying executive to pump out covert propaganda for the national real estate lobby in exchange for a hefty payout, the terms of which were never meant to be released to the public. They also discovered that a lobbying outfit which is today credited by libertarians as the movement’s first think-tank — the Foundation for Economic Education — was itself a big business PR project backed by the largest corporations and lobbying fronts in the country.

It starts just after the end of World War Two, when America’s industrial and financial giants, fattened up from war profits, established a new lobbying front group called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) that focused on promoting a new pro-business ideology—which it called “libertarianism”— to supplement other business lobbying groups which focused on specific policies and legislation.

The FEE is generally regarded as “the first libertarian think-tank” as Reason’s Brian Doherty calls it in his book “Radicals For Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement” (2007). As the Buchanan Committee discovered, the Foundation for Economic Education was the best-funded conservative lobbying outfit ever known up to that time, sponsored by a Who’s Who of US industry in 1946.


.............................SNIP"

[gopiscrap]

1. Yup no kidding

[octoberlib]

2. Interesting.nt

[applegrove]

3. I did not know Milton Friedman's background.

[dmr]

4. This is an interesting article

Hopefully this thread won't get lost in GD; maybe you could cross post this in the Good Reads Forum for greater exposure.

Back to reading the article. Thanks for posting it. :hi"

[applegrove]

5. Okay. Will do.

[HumansAndResources]

6. Great Piece - And There Is More ...

A DU post fills in more of the formation of the Fake-Freedom Libertarians.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1989989

And let's not forget, Hayek tutored none other than then-student David Rockefeller in economics.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
I can just hear the dialogue: "Ah, yes, it all makes sense now - I have billions of dollars and "the free (sic) market" justifies this.

Take away Elite-Control over Land and Resources (which are the product of no one's labor), and we Really Could have a Free Market in which everyone could participate as Free Persons - but that's not what the Libertarians are selling. As long as we must buy our raw materials from "the rich" and rent a place to be allowed to exist and trade from "the rich" - there is no "freedom" in the equation - except for "the rich."

[MrScorpio]

7. Bravo. nt

[Mojorabbit]

8. marking to read later! nt

[Scurrilous]

9. K & R