Frank Chodorov | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Fishel Chodorowsky February 15, 1887 Lower West Side, Manhattan, New York City, United States |
| Died | December 28, 1966(1966-12-28) (aged 79) United States |
| Alma mater | Columbia University (BA) |
| Occupation | Writer |
Frank Chodorov (February 15, 1887 – December 28, 1966) was an American intellectual, author, and member of theOld Right, a group ofclassically liberal thinkers who werenon-interventionist in foreign policy and opposed to both the American entry intoWorld War II and theNew Deal. He was called byRalph Raico "the last of the Old Right greats".[1]
Chodorov is best known for writingThe Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), a book inspired byGeorgistsingle-tax notions which has influenced many laterlibertarian thinkers, includingMurray Rothbard.
Born Fishel Chodorowsky on theLower West Side ofNew York City on February 15, 1887, he was the eleventh child of RussianJewish immigrants. He graduated fromColumbia University in 1907,[2] then worked at a number of jobs around the country. Working in Chicago (1912–17), he readHenry George'sProgress and Poverty.[3] Chodorov wrote that he "read the book several times, and each time I felt myself slipping into a cause."[4] According to Chodorov:
George is the apostle ofindividualism; he teaches theethical basis ofprivate property; he stresses the function ofcapital in an advancing civilization; he emphasizes the greater productivity of voluntary cooperation in afree market economy, the moral degeneration of a people subjected to state direction andsocialistic conformity. His is the philosophy offree enterprise,free trade, free men.[5]
In 1937, Chodorov became director of theHenry George School of Social Science in New York.[6] There, he established (with Will Lissner) and edited a school paper,The Freeman. It published articles byAlbert Jay Nock (founder of an earlier journal also calledThe Freeman), as well as such leading figures of the day asJohn Dewey,George Bernard Shaw,Bertrand Russell,Lincoln Steffens andThorsten Veblen. Chodorov used the magazine to express his antiwar views:
Every day we must repeat to ourselves as a liturgy, the truth that war is caused by the conditions that bring about poverty; that no war is justified; that no war benefits the people; that war is an instrument whereby the haves increase their hold on the have-nots; that war destroys liberty.
With the coming ofWorld War II, such views were no longer tolerated: Chodorov was ousted from the school in 1942. He wrote that "it seemed to me then that the only thing for me to do was to blow my brains out, which I might have done if I had not had Albert Jay Nock by my side."[7] Nock had weathered similar "war fever" duringWorld War I when as editor of the antiwar journalThe Nation, he had seen that magazine banned from the US mails by theWoodrow Wilson administration.[8]
Chodorov published articles in a variety of magazines, includingH.L. Mencken'sAmerican Mercury, theSaturday Evening Post andScribner's. In 1944, he launched a four-page monthly broadsheet calledanalysis, described as "an individualistic publication—the only one of its kind in America."Murray Rothbard called it "one of the best, though undoubtedly the most neglected, of the 'little magazines' that has ever been published in the United States."[9]
Along with Nock's works, Chodorov was influenced byFranz Oppenheimer'sThe State:[10] "between the state and the individual there is always a tug-of-war," wrote Chodorov, "whatever power one acquires must be to the detriment of the other."[11]
In 1954, Chodorov again became editor ofThe Freeman, in its new incarnation, revived under the auspices ofFoundation for Economic Education (FEE). He contributed several articles over the years to itsEssays in Liberty series, beginning with Volume 1 in 1952. He engaged withWilliam F. Buckley andWilli Schlamm on the question of whether individualists should support interventionism to aid people resisting communist aggression. Chodorov continued to advocate nonintervention, but as theCold War continued, he lost influence: the Americanconservative movement came to be a bastion ofinterventionist foreign policy in combating Socialism.
In 1953, Chodorov founded the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), with Buckley as president, becoming the firstnational conservative student organization, reaching 50,000 members by the end of the century. In later years, ISI became extremely influential as a clearinghouse of conservative publications and as a locus of the conservative intellectual movement in America. It later evolved into the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
Chodorov was a major influence on many of those who would go on to lead thelibertarian andconservative movements, including Buckley,M. Stanton Evans,Murray Rothbard, Edmund A. Opitz, andJames J. Martin. Rothbard wrote:
I shall never forget the profound thrill—a thrill of intellectual liberation—that ran through me when I first encountered the name of Frank Chodorov, months before we were to meet in person. As a young graduate student in economics, I had always believed in the free market, and had become increasingly libertarian over the years, but this sentiment was as nothing to the headline that burst forth in the title of a pamphlet that I chanced upon at the university bookstore:Taxation is Robbery, by Frank Chodorov. There it was; simple perhaps, but how many of us, let alone how many professors of the economics of taxation, have ever given utterance to this shattering and demolishing truth?[9]
Chodorov was asecular Jew and gained a greater appreciation for religious thought in later years.[12] He was a fan ofwesterns.[13]
In theNorth American Confederacyalternate history series byL. Neil Smith, in which the United States becomes alibertarian state after a successfulWhiskey Rebellion and the overthrowing and execution ofGeorge Washington by firing squad for treason in 1794, Frank Chodorov was chosen by theContinental Congress to beH. L. Mencken's successor after his death in a duel in 1933. He served as the 20th President of the North American Confederacy from 1933 to 1940. He was succeeded byRose Wilder Lane, who served as the 21st president from 1940 to 1952.
Quotations related toFrank Chodorov at Wikiquote
Works related toFrank Chodorov at Wikisource
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