A recent FEC filing submitted late Monday evening shows that author and former New York University professor Michael Rectenwald has filed to run for President of the United States as a Libertarian. He joins a field of over a dozen total candidates.
News of Rectenwald’s filing was spread around social media early Tuesday morning. While he has not yet formally announced, his unprocessed FEC paperwork can be accessed here.
Dr. Rectenwald is an academic scholar known for his commentary on postmodernism, political correctness, and free speech. He gained significant attention for his open critiques of identity politics, social justice activism, and cancel culture, where he often expressed concerns about their impact on intellectual freedom. As a professor of Liberal Studies at NYU, he made headlines in 2018 for inviting social provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to his class. Rectenwald has authored over a dozen books and is a columnist at the Mises Institute.
In addition, Rectenwald’s paperwork shows that Lori Price of Connecticut is serving as his campaign treasurer. Price is the Editor-in-Chief of Citizens For Legitimate Government, an online newsletter originally founded by Rectenwald that dates back to the early 2000s.
Comments here are getting a bit remote from third-party politics.
Communists advocate for the abolition of money, class, and state. Libertarian socialists advocate for the elimination or severe restriction of the state, but they are fine with using money, if that is society’s preference. Communists and libertarian socialists both agree with the occupy-and-use theory of property ownership.
Proudhon was a mutualist, which is one branch of libertarian socialism.
Communists don’t work for the betterment of mankind. They recognized the free-rider problem. They supposedly would work for social credits, getting in value some amount of social credit for whatever they produce.
I honestly can’t figure out how that would work. I asked a communist once. I asked how someone could move to a new area, where the person wasn’t known. How would the people in the new area know whether the immigrant had a store of social credit or was a free rider? The answer was maybe they could keep track of it on phones. How would it have been done in Marx’s day? Don’t know.
I asked how the social credits would be distributed. They said it would be like Facebook likes. If you do something that others find worthwhile, they give you some credit. I asked if there were limits on how much credit someone could give. Because if there was no limit, then it seemed to me that attractive women would be drowning in it, while if it was somehow limited, then it would start to function just like money, except more cumbersome. I never got an answer.
The origins of “libertarian socialism” go back to the middle 1800’s, when the likes of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and other similar political philosophers of that time, noted that in order for the status quos of deeded property to be maintained, particularly property which is not the owner’s residence, required the use of government force. They argued that men have an innate right to all the fruits of their labors, but that given that man does not create land, there is no innate right for a single person to claim ownership of a particular plot, especially when they are not themselves working this land. This contrasts with later arguments made usually always in favor of deeded property rights, by what in contemporary times are people that label themselves as libertarians. I don’t necessarily agree with the “libertarian socialist” arguments, but I think it is important to be aware of them.
Np. it’s pre-World War I European.
As I understand it, “libertarian socialism” is a term used by left-anarchists as another name for their philosophical position. In 1970 at California State University in Northridge, I saw Murray Bookchin describe his goal as “libertarian communism.”
Free market libertarians advocate a social system based on private property and exchange facilitated by a means of exchange – money. State socialists advocate the abolition of the market economy and state management of production and distribution.
Left anarchists and “libertarian socialists” advocate elimination of private property and money, but also oppose state management of production and distribution. Libertarian socialists advocate production by voluntary association of workers; work undertaken not for reward but to maintain the common wealth of society, and distribution by free appropriation.
There is no example of libertarian socialism working on planet earth. Perhaps it is suitable for cloud cuckoo land.
Libertarian socialism is the doctrine, more common in England, that Hayek was exactly and completely wrong. The main threat to freedom, according to libertarian socialism, is not large government but large private wealth. Substantial government regulation of the abuses of private wealth are then needed to protect liberty.
The existence of this branch of libertarianism is less well known in the United States.
“Socialism” in its narrow text book definition is the collective ownership of a means of production. While in general people are correct in noting socialism as it exists in contemporary societies tends to involve governments and coercion in order to effect it, given the narrow definition there is in fact the possibility of “libertarian socialism” for a variety based on strictly voluntary association, that for this to be possible must also be strictly localized (i.e. if one changes ones mind regarding wanting to associate with it, one must be able to literally able to walk away from it). As such things such as “income sharing” communes (e.g. Twin Oaks Community in Virginia) and employee owned businesses can be considered examples of “socialism” that should be acceptable to libertarians.
Forgive me for suspecting that you wouldn’t know a socialist if one walked up behind you and whacked you across the ass with a bass fiddle.
The News sources listed on Oliver’s page are left wing, some far left. He’s endorsed by libertarian socialists (a group of which still doesn’t make sense to me). Chase Oliver is a socialist.
Chase Oliver has a campaign website @ https://votechaseoliver.com/issues/
No evidence of socialist leanings. There is a commitment to protecting individual choice on abortion and other tough issues, so he is clearly more in favor of freedom than the Mice’s Caucus.
Just randomly denouncing people you disagree with as “socialists” indicates a need to actually read books by Ludwig von Mises, who clearly indicates what socialism is: state control of the means of production – whether owned by the state, or just subject to state direction. So Russia under Putin is closer to socialism than the Libertarian Party activists that some in the M Caucus denounce.
Ted – those claims about Oliver are absolute fiction. What “socialists” do you believe have endorsed Oliver? A reminder that the word “socialism” actually has a narrow textbook definition, it doesn’t mean just anything that social-issue focused reactionaries dislike.
And Oliver absolutely supports freedom of speech and freedom of association, and opposes government mandates for vaccines and masks – whoever is telling you differently is just straight up making shiznit up.
Olivet is endorsed by the socialists. He supports limits on free speech plus mask and vaccine mandates.
Ted – that’s one of the most delusional takes I’ve ever heard. There’s absolutely nothing that Chase Oliver is “socialist” and “authoritarian” on. On the other hand there is most certainly plenty that a nunber of Mises Caucus candidates call for that is, e.g. draconian and expensive attempts at border “security”, government control over medical decisions, calls for increased police brutality against marginalized people (such as Rechtenwald has gone on record advocating for), etc.
Mises really needs a good candidate. The LP will become socialist and authoritarian again if Chase Oliver is the nominee.
A no name that has never won an elected office, who is a fan of Hans Herman Hoppe. Perfect candidate for the Misnamed Caucus to rally behind for sure.
Thanks for this! In the absence of Dave Smith, I’ve wondered if there was an obvious choice for Mises Caucus members to unite around. Normally it would be Josh Smith, but he kind of burned his bridges with them when he resigned as Vice-Chair of the LNC. This looks like a guy that group could get behind.