Jose Rizal’s Libertarian Roots

In commemoration of Philippine national hero Jose Rizal’s 150^th birthday, below is an excerpt of an article depicting Jose Rizal’s libertarian roots.

Michael Gilson-de Lemos narrates: (thanks Michael)

Rizal ( here) remains (here) adopted by Pacific ( here) Libertarians and his interaction with Libertarians of his day is a perennial topic of discussion; and he was a close friend of Francisco Pi y Margall, Liberal first President of Spain's First Republic his predecessor Figueras is more viewed as a caretaker) and an avowed admirer and student of the ideal of Libertarian anarchist communities.

Pi y Margall wrote the classic "Reaction and Revolution" where he diligently sought to work through Proudhonian minimalizing-government anarchism with Iberian realities. Once criticized for being too "purist" on freedom issues, he is said to have replied political convictions are like virginity — once lost, they are not recovered. His program seems similar to budding Liberal welfare statism, until one realizes Spanish law at that time is meant to be suggestive, not directive; and he was if inconsistently working for a Federalism to create choice to community levels as a prelude to anarchist or mutual-agreement communities. For this reason he is ignored by modern collectivist literature, and a real problem to US boosters of the War at the time, for as an elder statesman he was moving the government towards accepting Cuban independence.

Rizal, like many early Latin and Latin-influenced proto-libertarians and Libertarians such as (here) Heberto Padilla, is better understood through his poetry and art. The poetry he wrote before his execution is generally considered by Spanish critics and readers alike as among the most sublime ever written. The point is the Philippines was no bunch of tribal yahoos peeling bananas, but as Ade discovered, something very different.

While as today the US tries to portray what is happening in simplistic terms, Ade helped disclose to the public that there was a complex political ecology being ignored. Remarkably, one of Rizal's friends and inspirers was the fascinating figure of ( here) Ferdinand Blumentritt, from whom he learned it is said of the work of the budding Austrian economists (while aware of the work of the Paris Ultras inspired by such as Molinari, Spanish Libertarians were repelled by the Gallic political horseplay that led to attacks on people such as Walras and ultimately destroyed the French Market economists when the government outflanked their influence by decreeing economics would be taught henceforth in the collectivist dominated University Law departments; they rejected "libertarianism imposed from above") — and who is considered one of the founders of ethnography.

Blumentritt was involved in one of the many proto-Libertarian "Individualist Societies" then extant promoting discussion of non-governmental alternatives and agitating for everything from the vote to freer markets.

Read the rest here

NOTE: Because this article was published in June 2003, some of the attached links have either been relocated or has become inaccessible.