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IT USUALLY BEGINS WITH AYN RAND 251
Buffalo. Childs admired Rand but questioned her stance on government
as he gravitated toward an anarchist position. With his letter, sent
to Rand on July 4, 1969, Childs repudiated Objectivism and debuted
as the enfant terrible of anarcho-capitalism. Boldly Childs opened with
a straightforward declaration: “The purpose of this letter is to convert
you to free market anarchism.” Relying heavily on Objectivist concepts
and Randian words and phrases, Childs argued that Rand’s advocacy of
a limited state was contradicted by her own philosophy. Her told her,
“Your political philosophy cannot be maintained without contradiction,
that, in fact, you are advocating the maintenance of an institution—the
state—which is a moral evil.” Beyond offering an ethical critique, Childs
also turned Rand’s terminology against her, arguing that her idea of a
limited government that did not initiate force was a “fl oating abstraction.”
According to Childs, all governments must initiate force to survive
as governments and maintain their monopoly on coercion. And if the
initiation of force was forbidden in both the Objectivist and libertarian
worlds, then the state itself must be opposed. Childs lectured Rand,
“Your approach to the matter is not yet radical, not yet fundamental: it
is the existence of the state itself which must be challenged by the new radicals.
It must be understood that the state is an unnecessary evil.” 10 Rand
was unimpressed by Childs’s logic. Her only response was to cancel his
subscription to The Objectivist.
Although Rand vehemently opposed anarchism, many adherents
insisted that anarchism was a logical outgrowth of Objectivism.
Surveying the student right, the Western World Review observed, “Her
philosophy and ethic appear to be functioning as a campus way station
or half-way house on the road to the anarchism she opposes.” 11 In
many ways, the new vogue for anarchism had the quality of an Oedipal
revolt against Rand. Anarchism was a way to resolve the contradictions
that many found in Rand’s political philosophy. How was it possible
to oppose the initiation of force (a key Randian tenet), yet still defend
a minimal state? R. W. Bradford, later an editor of Liberty magazine,
remembered, “A few were willing to accept her obfuscations on the issue,
but the overwhelming majority were unwilling to evade the problem.
Virtually all these people became anarchists.” 12 To many libertarians
tutored in Rand’s absolutist style of thought, the steps were simple: the
state was bad, so why not abolish it entirely? Childs put it this way: “As
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