In “Shaming the Official Antiwar Movement,” John Walsh writes,

The libertarian view of the state is strikingly similar to Marx’s — a coercive apparatus in the hands of an economic, exploitive elite. I made that point to Higgs and was surprised that he agreed. His contention is that Marxists have a pretty sound view of the state but a lousy outlook on economics. Libertarian and Marxist thought appear to have some common ground running all the way back to the 16th century writings of La Boetie.

(via Ender)

I’m sure I should be more supportive of the kind of outreach that Higgs and others were doing at the FFF conference, but I find this idea that Marxists might just be economically illiterate would-be libertarians troublesome, to say the least. My problem with Marxism isn’t economic; it’s ethical.

The other problem, which irritates the heck out of me, is the suggestion that libertarians and Marxists have “common ground” in our intellectual roots. That is only true to the extent that Karl Marx took radical liberal class-conflict theory and perverted it into his doctrine of economic exploitation. It is the height of perversity to claim that the twisting of individualist theory into something collectivist and coercive gives the twisted result “common ground” with the source.