In an article written on the St. Louis convention, "Young Authoritarians for 'Freedom'", our anarcho-libertarian comrade, Joseph M. Cobb, former editor of the New Individualist Review, contributes an important insight about the racket inherent in the YAF organization. Speaking with one of the founders and long-time leaders of YAF at the convention, Cobb was surprised to find this leader admitting the following:
The anarchists, he charged, were "ruining everything". Why? Because, Cobb reports, the "National Office of YAF is playing a double game with the older generation of businessmen and politicians, and making it paym--pay in the form of plush offices, high salaries, and expense accounts. From these right-wing moneybags YAF raises a great deal of money for such theocratic programs, beloved of the right-wing, as the "Campaign for Voluntary Prayer" in public schools. But few students would be attracted by such programs, so programs such as the prayer campaign "generated money which was used to cover money-losing projects, bqt ones which the kids dig --such as abolishing the draft." Thus, the YAF leadership obtain money for right-wing causes, but then must use part of the money to attract a mass base of kids, without whom the money would disappear in the long run--thus making YAF a kind of two-way racket. Cobb adds that "YAF is upset because these crazy kids, with their principled opposition to the state, are going to overturn the National Office's carefully balanced financial-ideological system."
Cobb concludes with the important insight that "the only way the National Office people can get away with their programs for fund-raising and semi-reformist free-market-ism is to promote the philosophy of "fusionism" ... Fusionism is a pseudo-philosophy which attempts to reconcile the libertarian anti-statist position with the traditional conservative authoritarianism. The fusionists are almost perfect examples of the Marxist sociology-of-ideas theory: each social class will invent ideas which further its own class interests."
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This article has been reprinted with the kind permission of Mises.org.