Rothbard wrong again

In addition to international politics, another field Rothbard would better have stayed out of: movies. Criticizing Martin Scorsese, one of my favourite movie directors, Rothbard may have the excuse of not having seen his more explicitly libertarian movies like Gangs of New York or Aviator, but his erroneous comments still need some reply.

Rothbard comments on The Godfather and Goodfellas

Contrast the ways in which Godfather and GoodFellas handle a common theme: the attempt of the leading Don to keep away from traffic in drugs, and the destruction wrought by succumbing to the temptation. In Godfather, one Mafia leader of the old school clearly and eloquently rejects traffic in drugs as immoral, in contrast to other venerable goods and services, such as liquor, gambling and "loan sharking." "Leave drugs to the animals — the niggers — they have no souls," he admonished. (All right, I never said that the Mafiosi were racially enlightened.) Here is a powerful and dramatic theme of keeping the old Mafia moral code as against the temptation of making a great deal of money in a technologically innovative field.

So, since when is entering into a technologically innovative field bad from a libertarian perspective? According to Rothbard, The Godfather mafia is good because they keep away from a market for irrational and racist reasons?

But how in contrast does GoodFellas handle this conflict? Don Cicero simply orders his gang to stay out of drugs, pointing only to the stiff sentences the Feds were handing out. And whereas in Godfather, everyone knows that disobedience to the Don will bring swift retribution, Conway, Hill and the other wiseguys disobey Don Cicero and nothing happens to them. What kind of Don is that?

What is so admirable about a Don that asks for blind obedience, and who probably kills anyone who doesn't follow his orders? (Actually, in the movie Don Cicero does punish Hill for not obeying him, by not helping him when he needs money, maybe even planning to kill him. But Rothbard's comment seems to imply that he didn't kill him, but should have.)

In contrast to the reasons given in Godfather, Don Cicero gives a very rational reason for not selling drugs, and turns out to have been right, since that is how Hill gets arrested. Notice here the libertarian message that Rothbard entirely missed: the gang is indeed criminal, agressing and killing people, stealing money. And what happens to them? Nothing! The state couldn't care less. The first time Hill gets arrested, it's for selling cigarets (in the real story it was actually for other reasons, but my comments are focusing on the movie). The first time the gang gets in real trouble is because a guy they beat up turned out to have some family at the FBI. So, kill, steal, as long as you don't harm anyone close to the State, the State doens't care. But of course, that was still a real crime, so they didn't get that much jail for it. As mentioned above, when Hill does get into real trouble with the state, is only once he has become an honest drug merchant.

So, the movie perfectly illustrates a libertarian theory of police action: its priorites are entirely opposite to that of honest people.

As for The Godfather, while an excellent movie indeed, it does not depict simple entrepreneurs, as Rothbard would suggest:

The key to The Godfathers and to success in the Mafia genre is the realization and dramatic portrayal of the fact that the Mafia, although leading a life outside the law, is, at its best, simply entrepreneurs and businessmen supplying the consumers with goods and services of which they have been unaccountably deprived by a Puritan WASP culture.

The Godfather himself, in The Godfather II, starts his gangster career by stealing and murdering. The fact that the Mafia does some legitimate business doesn't mean that all of its business is legitimate. The gangsters don't choose their endeavours according to libertarian principles, but choose rationally considering their high time preferences.

While these movies do indeed allow for a libertarian interpretation (or, at least, can serve to illustrate libertarian insights) it might be a little more subtler than supposing gangsters good and state bad, and then considering that The Godfather shows that (which it does not) and thus is a good movie, while Goodfellas doesn't show that, and thus is a bad movie.

2006-01-02