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the principle of economic freedom, according to whichno one can have a the principle of economic freedom, according to whichno one can have a

the principle of economic freedom, according to whichno one can have a - PDF document

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the principle of economic freedom, according to whichno one can have a - PPT Presentation

It is part of the intellectual consensus of the present daythat racialism ID: 408990

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the principle of economic freedom, according to whichno one can have a right to force any individuals or or-ganisations to participate in any economic transactionsagainst their will, since no one can have a right to anything which can only be secured at someone elses ex-pense. In fact, in a free market economy, any law whichprevents firms from refusing to hire workers for reasonsunconnected with the workers ability to do the job inquestion (or which prevents shops, pubs or other estab-lishments from refusing to serve customers for equallyillogical reasons) is totally superfluous, since any busi-ness which adopts such a policy must inevitably losetrade to those of its competitors which choose not to ig-nore such valuable opportunities for making money, andtherefore it must cease to discriminate in order to main-tain its position in the market. As the experience of Jewsand Orientals in the USA has shown clearly, racial dis-crimination can never prevent any group of people fromraising their living standards in the long run if free mar-ket conditions prevail. If a persons race is indeed irrele-vant to his ability to do a particular job, then laws againstracial discrimination are unnecessary. On the other hand,if race is relevant, then such laws impose an unfairburden on employers by forcing them to incur the ex-pense of hiring unsuitable workers.The reason why race has acquired the status of a taboosubject in rcent years, and why so many people havecome to accept the need for special laws against racial-ism, is not hard to discern. The National Socialist mas-sacre of millions of Jews during the Second World Warwas undoubtedly one of the greatest crimes against hu-manity that the world has ever known. However, weshould not allow our entirely justified horror at theenormity of the Nazis actions to blind us to the true na-ture of their crimes and the real reasons for their guilt.Granted that the Nazis attempted genocide of the Jewswas one of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind,and that it was an atrocity motivated by racialism, it doesnot follow logically that it was an atrocity because it wasmotivated by racialism. If Hitler had murdered millionsof innocent people who had been chosen for some reasonother than their racial origins, would that have been anyless heinous an atrocity? The present century has alsowitnessed one other major instance of mass murder,namely Stalins purges in the USSR, which according tosome authorities, may have been responsible for manymore deaths than Hitlers massacre of the Jews. WereStalins crimes against humanity any less grave than Hit-lers because he did not chose his victims according totheir race? It is true that Stalins purges have never re-ceived quite the same condemnation as the crimes of theNazis, because the USSR emerged on the winning side inthe Second World War, and because Marxism is still re-garded as a perfectly respectable ideology by large sec-tions of the intelligentsia throughout the Western world.But they nevertheless serve as a good illustration, thatracially motivated oppression is not necessarily worsethan any other conceivable form of oppression.The only rational argument which has ever been put for-ward to justify treating racialism as something special isthat used by the South African black nationalist leaderAlbert Luthuli, who is quoted by Peter Hain in Don’tPlay With Apartheid (George Allen and Unwin, London,1971) as follows:Do not deceive yourself into thinking that racialismis just another tyranny. Like political tyranny, or re-ligious tyranny. I know many men who havechanged their religion, and many who have changedtheir politics. But I know of no man who has everchanged his race. And that is the way to Armaged-don. For racialism is the only absolute tyranny.The flaw in Luthulis argument is that it confuses theease of committing a crime with its moral gravity. It isperfectly true that people can change their political or re-ligious beliefs, but that is not the point. Why should theyhave to? A government which embarks on a policy ofracial persecution may have an easier task in identifyingits victims, and they may find it harder to evade the gov-ernments clutches. But the difficulty of committing acrime is not normally accepted as a mitigating circum-stance in courts of law. It is more difficult to burgle ahouse if it is equipped with electronic alarms and has analsatian dog on guard, or to mug a man if he has takenkarate lessons, but that does not make the crime any lessserious once it has been committed. The seriousness of acrime depends solely on how much harm it does to thevictim. In fact, some black African rulers who have heldpower in recent years such as Amin in Uganda, Bo-kassa in the Central African Republic, Mengistu in Ethio-pia and Nguema in Equatorial Guinea have been guilty ofcrimes against human rights far surpassing anything seenin South Africa by any conceivable standards. These dic-tators although, they were never subjected to the sameopprobrium as the South African regime by the Westernworlds intelligentsia succeeded in murdering manytimes as many innocent people, even though their victimswere not chosen because of their race and therefore, ac-cording to Luthulis argument, had more chance of escap-ing. Were these tyrannies any less absolute than that inSouth Africa? It is undoubtedly true that South Africahas an undemocratic government which systematicallyviolates human rights, but so, unfortunately, do the ma-jority of countries in the world today, the rest of Africanot excepted. Surely it is only logical and humane thatall oppressive governments should be judged by the samestandards.The libertarian position on racialism is that a racialist actshould only be illegal if it is also a coercive act. Vi-olence is a coercive act, but hatred is not, and neither isthe withholding of economic cooperation. Any kind ofunmerited hatred or prejudice is an evil, but it is a matterof private morality rather than the kind of evil againstwhich the law should be invoked. In a libertarian legalsystem, all illegal racialist acts would still be equally il-legal if they were not motivated by racialism, and there-fore no special anti-racialist laws would exist. It is part of the intellectual consensus of the present daythat racialism — by which I mean any dislike of, orprejudice against, the members of particular racialgroups, or any belief that they should be accorded infer-ior treatment — is a uniquely iniquitous social phenom-enon which must be kept in check by a special system oflaws designed solely for that particular purpose. This be-lief has received the official sanction of the United Na-tions in two international treaties, as follows: ISSN 0267-7083 ISBN 0 948317 63 Xwww.libertarian.co.uk email: admin@libertarian.co.ukDirector: Dr Chris R. TameEditorial Director: Brian MicklethwaitWebmaster: Dr Sean Gabb RACIALISMAND THE LAW RODERICK MOORE