View source for Karl Hess

{{Short description|American journalist, writer and libertarian (1923–1994)}}
{{about|the American author|the painter|Karl Hess (painter)|the scientist|Karl Hess (scientist)}}
{{Infobox person
| honorific_prefix   =
| name               = Karl Hess<!-- include middle initial, if not specified in birth_name -->
| honorific_suffix   =
| native_name        =
| native_name_lang   =
| image              = Photo----Karl-Hess-in-Middle-and-Timothy-Leary-on-the-left-1981-FOF-Con (cropped).jpg
| image_size         =
| alt                =
| caption            = Hess at [[The Future of Freedom Conference]] in 1981
| birth_name         = Carl Hess III
| birth_date         = May 25, 1923
| birth_place        = [[Washington, D.C.]]
| death_date         = {{Death date and age|1994|04|22|1923|05|25}}
| death_place        = [[Charlottesville, VA]]
| death_cause        =
| nationality        = American
| other_names        =
| citizenship        =
| education          =
| alma_mater         =
| occupation         = {{flatlist|
* Speechwriter
* author
* welder
}}
| years_active       = 1940–1994
| employer           = [[Mutual Broadcasting System]], ''[[The Washington Daily News]]'', ''[[Newsweek]]'', [[American Enterprise Institute]], [[The Libertarian Forum]]
| organization       =
| known_for          =
| notable_works      =
| style              =
| party              = [[United States Libertarian Party|Libertarian Party]]
| movement           =
| opponents          =
| spouse             = Therese (second wife)
| partner            = <!-- unmarried life partner; use ''Name (1950–present)'' -->
| children           = Karl Hess, IV
| parents            =
| relatives          =
| awards             =
| signature          =
| website            = <!-- {{URL|Example.com}} -->
| footnotes          =
}}
{{Libertarianism US|intellectuals}}
'''Karl Hess''' (born '''Carl Hess III'''; May 25, 1923 – April 22, 1994) was an American [[speechwriter]] and author. He was also a [[Political philosophy|political philosopher]], [[Editing|editor]], [[welder]], [[motorcycle racer]], [[tax resister]], and [[Libertarianism in the United States|libertarian]] activist. His career included stints on the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] [[Right-wing politics|right]] and the [[New Left]] before embracing a mix of [[left-libertarianism]] and [[laissez-faire]] [[anarcho-capitalism]], a term which is attested earliest in his 1969 essay "The Death of Politics".<ref>Hess, Karl (March 1969). [http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/dop.html ''The Death of Politics'']. Original publisher: ''[[Playboy]]''. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190802164945/http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/dop.html |date=2019-08-02 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url= https://c4ss.org/content/39997|title= Karl Hess on Anarcho-Capitalism|last= Johnson|first= Charles|date= 28 August 2015|website= Center for a Stateless Society|access-date= 9 October 2023|quote= In fact, the earliest documented, printed use of the word "anarcho-capitalism" that I can find ... actually comes neither from Wollstein nor from Rothbard, but from Karl Hess's manifesto "The Death of Politics," which was published in ''Playboy'' in March, 1969.}}</ref> Later in life, he summed up his role in the economy by remarking "I am by occupation a free marketer (crafts and ideas, woodworking, welding, and writing)."{{sfn|Hess|1999}} His views were similar to those of [[Samuel Edward Konkin III]].

==Early life==
Hess was born in [[Washington, D.C.]],<ref>{{cite web|url=https://mises.org/mises-daily/karl-hess-and-death-politics|title=Karl Hess and the Death of Politics|last=Riggenbach|first=Jeff|publisher=mises.org|date=May 23, 2010|access-date=27 May 2024}}</ref> and moved to the [[Philippines]] as a child. His parents were of German and Spanish ancestry. When his mother discovered his father's marital infidelity, she divorced her wealthy husband and returned (with Karl) to Washington. She refused [[alimony]] or child support and took a job as a telephone operator, raising her son in very modest circumstances.{{sfn|Hess|1999}}

Karl's mother encouraged curiosity and direct learning. She often insisted that Karl figure things out for himself, or increase his knowledge through reading. Karl, believing (as his mother did) that [[public education]] was a waste of time, rarely attended school; to evade [[truancy]] officers, he registered at every elementary school in town and gradually withdrew from each one, making it impossible for the authorities to know exactly where he was supposed to be. He had developed great reverence for libraries; this became very basic to his personal philosophy, and in his autobiography he wrote: "Literacy is the basic tool in the workshop of the entire world."{{sfn|Hess|1999}}

As a young person, Karl played tennis, learned marksmanship, and pursued fencing. Later on he learned gunsmithing. He officially dropped out at 15 and went to work for the [[Mutual Broadcasting System]] as a newswriter at the invitation of Walter Compton, a Mutual news commentator who resided in the building where Mrs. Hess operated the switchboard. Hess continued to work in the news media, and by age 18 was assistant city editor of ''[[The Washington Daily News]]''.{{sfn|Hess|1999}}

Early during the Second World War, Hess enlisted in the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] in 1942. He was discharged when they discovered he had contracted [[malaria]] in the Philippines.{{sfn|Hess|1999}}

He was later an editor for ''[[Newsweek]]'' and ''The Fisherman.'' He worked as a staff writer, and sometimes as a freelancer, for a number of anti-Communist periodicals. In the 1950s he worked for the Champion Papers and Fibre Company. He was dismayed that people in the management portion of the corporate world seemed more interested in personal advancement than in doing good work. At Champion his bosses encouraged him to get involved in [[Conservatism in the United States|conservative]] politics for the company's benefit. In doing so he met [[Arizona]] [[United States Senate|Senator]] [[Barry Goldwater]] and many other prominent Republicans, thus beginning the GOP epoch of his life.{{sfn|Hess|1999}}

In his book ''Dear America,'' Hess wrote that he became an [[atheism|atheist]] because his temporary job as a coroner's assistant when he was 15 left him convinced that people were simply flesh-and-blood beings with no afterlife. Consequently, he stopped attending church (he had been a devout [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]]). Years later, while on leave from Champion and working for the [[American Enterprise Institute]] (AEI), he resumed attending church because virtually all of his AEI colleagues did so. His return merely reinforced his atheism; on one Sunday morning, while enduring a service as his young son sat on his lap, Hess became disgusted with himself for exposing his child to an institution he himself had rejected.

==Political activities==
Hess was the primary author of the Republican Party's 1960 and 1964 [[Party platform|platforms]]. In the lead-up to the 1964 presidential election, Hess worked closely with [[Barry Goldwater]]. He came to view Goldwater as a man of sterling character, a conservative holding a number of significant libertarian convictions. Hess worked as a speechwriter, and explored [[ideology]] and [[politics]]. He was widely considered to be the author of the renowned Goldwater line, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue," but revealed that he had encountered it in a letter from [[Abraham Lincoln|Lincoln]] historian [[Harry Jaffa]] and later learned it was a paraphrase of a passage from [[Cicero]].{{sfn|Hess|1999|pp=168–70}} He later called this his "[[Cold Warrior]]" phase.

Following the [[1964 United States presidential election|1964 presidential campaign]] in which [[Lyndon Johnson]] trounced Goldwater, Hess became disillusioned with traditional politics and became more radical. Hess and others on the losing team had found themselves outsiders within the national Republican party because of their support of the controversial Goldwater. Hess felt that he had been purged by the Republicans and he departed from involvement with grand-scale politics altogether.

In 1965 Hess took up motorcycle riding. His need to occasionally repair his motorcycles led to his interest in welding (which he learned at Bell Vocational School, in 1967). Welding skills gave him something he could trade upon. Initially, he set up a commercial partnership, with a fellow Bell graduate, doing on-site industrial welding. Eventually, his skill led to an involvement with welded-metal sculpture.

All of this unfolded around the same time as his divorce from his first wife. Hess hereafter publicly criticized big business, suburban American hypocrisy and the [[military-industrial complex]]. Though well beyond college age, Hess joined [[Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)|Students for a Democratic Society]], worked with the [[Black Panther Party]] and protested the [[Vietnam War]].{{sfn|Hess|1999}}

After his work on the Goldwater campaign, Hess was audited by the [[Internal Revenue Service]], which he believed was in retaliation for his support of the losing candidate. In response, he sent the IRS a copy of the [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]] with a letter saying that he would never again pay taxes. Hess claimed that the IRS then threatened to put a lien on all of his property and 100% of his future earnings. He was supported financially thereafter by his wife and used [[barter]] to keep himself afloat.<ref>Gross, David (ed.) ''We Won't Pay!: A Tax Resistance Reader'' {{ISBN|1434898253}} pp. 437–441</ref>{{unreliable source?|date=July 2017}}

In 1968, [[Richard Nixon]] was elected president and Barry Goldwater returned to the Senate as [[Arizona]]'s junior senator. Hess, despite now being a member of the New Left, had recently written some speeches for Goldwater and resumed their close personal relationship; he had concluded that American men should not be forced into military service and urged Goldwater to submit legislation abolishing [[conscription]]. Goldwater replied, "Well, let's wait and see what Dick Nixon wants to do about that one." Hess despised Nixon almost as much as he admired Goldwater and could not tolerate the notion that Goldwater would defer to Nixon. Thus ended one of Hess's closest professional associations, and the situation significantly compromised one of his deepest friendships. (Nixon abolished conscription during his presidency, with Goldwater's support.) Incidentally, both Hess and Nixon would die on the same day, April 22, 1994.

Hess began reading American [[anarchism|anarchists]] largely because of the recommendations of his friend [[Murray Rothbard]]. Hess said that upon reading the works of [[Emma Goldman]] he discovered that anarchists believed everything he had hoped the Republican Party would represent, and that Goldman was the source for the best and most essential theories of [[Ayn Rand]] without any of the "crazy [[solipsism]] that Rand was so fond of."<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vKdh2-K-bA | title=Karl Hess compares Emma Goldman and Ayn Rand | website=[[YouTube]] | date=6 July 2011 }}</ref>

From 1969 to 1971, Hess edited ''[[The Libertarian Forum]]'' with Rothbard.

Hess had come to put his focus on the small scale, on community. He said, "Society is: people together making culture." He deemed two of his cardinal social principles to be "opposition to central political authority" and "concern for people as individuals." His rejection of standard American [[party politics]] was reflected in a lecture he gave during which he said, "The Democrats or [[Modern liberalism in the United States|liberals]] think that everybody is stupid and therefore they need somebody... to tell them how to behave themselves. The Republicans think everybody is lazy..."<ref>Halle, Roland; and Ladue, Peter (1980) ''Karl Hess: Toward Liberty.'' Direct Cinema, Ltd. [M16 2824 K]</ref>

In 1969 and 1970, Hess joined with others, including Murray Rothbard, [[Robert LeFevre]], [[Dana Rohrabacher]], [[Samuel Edward Konkin III]], and former [[Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)|Students for a Democratic Society]] (SDS) leader [[Carl Oglesby]] to speak at two "left-right" conferences which brought together activists from both the [[Old Right (United States)|Old Right]] and the [[New Left]] in what was emerging as a nascent [[Libertarianism in the United States|libertarian]] movement.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/19990429142502/http://www.loop.com/~sek3/nl/history.html Libertarian History]</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Raimondo |first=Justin |title=An Enemy of the State |chapter=4}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Carson |first=Kevin |title=The Left-Rothbardians |date=April 2008}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Payne |title=Rothbard's Time on the Left}}</ref>

As part of his effort to unite right and [[left-libertarianism]], Hess would join the SDS as well as the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] (IWW), of which he explained, "We used to have a labor movement in this country, until I.W.W. leaders were killed or imprisoned. You could tell labor unions had become captive when business and government began to praise them. They're destroying the militant black leaders the same way now. If the slaughter continues, before long liberals will be asking, 'What happened to the blacks? Why aren't they militant anymore?{{'"}}<ref>[http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/from_far_right_to_far_left.html ''From Far Right to Far Left– and Farther– With Karl Hess''] by James Boyd: 1970 ''[[The New York Times]]''</ref>

In the 1980s, Hess joined the [[Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian Party]], which had been founded in 1971. He served as editor of its newspaper from 1986 to 1990.

==Adams-Morgan experiment and back-to-the-land==
Hess was an early proponent of the "[[Back-to-the-land movement|back to the land]]" movement, and his focus on self-reliance and small communities happened in part by government mandate. According to a ''Libertarian Party News'' obituary, "When the Internal Revenue Service confiscated all his property and put a 100 percent [[lien]] on all of his future earnings, Hess (who had learned welding at Bell Vocational School) existed on bartering his work for food and goods."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lp.org/lpn/9406-Hess.html |title=LP News Jun 94 – Karl Hess: 1923–1994 |access-date=2003-09-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051115021846/http://www.lp.org/lpn/9406-Hess.html |archive-date=November 15, 2005 }}</ref>{{unreliable source?|date=July 2017}}

Hess's life as a welder put him in rapport with a very large segment of the American population who are manual laborers. He eventually came to the conviction that virtually no one in national politics identified with these people anymore. Hess's revolt against public giantism reflected a distrust toward large-corporate business as well as big government. After Hess had made friends within the New Left and related circles, he began to encounter the young, new-breed [[appropriate technology]] enthusiasts<ref name="Halle, Roland 1980">Halle, Roland; and Ladue, Peter (1980)</ref> (exemplified, by the early 1970s, in the editors and readerships of the ''[[Whole Earth Catalog]]'' and ''[[Mother Earth News]]'').

In the early 1970s, Hess became involved in an experiment with several friends and colleagues to bring self-built and -managed [[technology]] into the direct service of the economic and social life of the (at the time) poor, largely [[African American]] neighborhood of [[Adams-Morgan]] in [[Washington, D.C.]] It was the neighborhood in which Hess had spent his childhood. Afterward, Hess wrote a book entitled ''[[Community Technology]]'' which told the story of this experiment and its results. According to Hess, the residents had a vigorous go at participatory democracy, and the neighborhood seemed for a time like a fertile ground for the growth of community identity and capability.

Much of the technological experimentation Hess and others engaged in there was successful in technical terms (apparatus was built, food raised, [[solar energy]] captured, etc.). For instance, Hess wrote: "In one experiment undertaken by the author and associates, an inner-city basement space, roughly thirty by fifty feet, was sufficient to house plywood tanks in which rainbow trout were produced at a cost of less than a dollar per pound. In a regular production run the total number of fish that can be raised in such a basement area was projected to be five tons per year."<ref>Hess, Karl (1979) ''Community Technology''. New York: Harper & Row, p. 31</ref> He taught courses and lectured on Appropriate Technology and Social Change in this period at the [[Institute for Social Ecology]] in Vermont. Nonetheless, the Adams-Morgan neighborhood, continuing on what he felt was a path of social deterioration and real-estate gentrification, declined to devote itself to expanding on the technology. Hence, in his view, a needy community got little value from the application of viable technology.

Subsequently, Hess and his wife, Therese, moved to rural [[Opequon Creek]] between [[Martinsburg, West Virginia|Martinsburg]] and [[Kearneysville, West Virginia]], where he set up a welding shop as partial support for his household. He became deeply involved with local affairs there. Hess built an affordable house that relied largely on [[passive solar building design|passive-solar heating]], and took an interest in wind power and all forms of solar energy. The house they built was a 2000 sq. ft. sun-warmed, earth-sheltered structure – constructed mostly using their own labor, and at cost of just $10,000 (mid-1970s dollars). They acquired most of the tools needed for the construction, and the appliances needed for a comfortable modern life, second-hand.{{sfn|Hess|1999}} By the late 1970s, Hess saw solar energy as emblematic of decentralization and nuclear energy as emblematic of central organization.<ref name="Halle, Roland 1980"/>

Hess wrote for a [[Survivalism|survivalist]] newsletter titled ''Personal Survival ("P.S.") Letter,'' which was published from 1977 to 1982. It was first published and edited by [[Mel Tappan]]. In the same time period, Hess authored the book ''A Common Sense Strategy for Survivalists''.

Hess ran a symbolic campaign for [[Governor of West Virginia]] in 1992. When asked by a reporter what his first act would be if elected, he quipped, "I will demand an immediate recount", which echoed the same response given in 1965 when [[William F. Buckley Jr.]] announced his candidacy for [[mayor of New York]].

==Legacy==
In a [[Reuters]] [[op-ed]] piece, in 2012, New Yorker Maureen Tkacik asserted that Karl Hess was the ideological grandfather of the anti-1% movement – making Hess the direct antecedent of thinkers like [[Ron Paul]] and both the [[Tea Party movement]] and the [[Occupy movement]]. She cites the detailed argument Hess, in his libertarian phase, put forward in his book ''Dear America'' to delineate and decry the extreme concentration of power in the hands of a tiny financial and stock-holding elite. Tkacik quotes passages from Hess's book to offer proof that Hess developed the language of the 1% versus the 99% (the former being those whose role, according to Hess, is demonstrably detrimental to the vast majority of Americans).<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120920234843/http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2012/09/20/the-radical-right-wing-roots-of-occupy-wall-street/  Tkacik, Maureen September 20, 2012 "The radical right-wing roots of Occupy Wall Street", access date 2013-03-09 ; published by Reuters, Edition U.S<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>

== Bibliography ==
'''Articles'''
* [https://mises.org/daily/3747 "The Lawless State: A Libertarian View of the Status of Liberty"]. ''National Issues Series of Politics''. Constitutional Alliance. Vol. 4, No. 4 (1969)
* [http://left-liberty.net/?p=427 "Desperate Character"] (1976)

'''Books'''
* ''In a Cause That Will Triumph: The Goldwater Campaign and the Future of Conservatism'' (1967) {{oclc|639505}}
* ''The End of the Draft: The Feasibility of Freedom'' (with Thomas Reeves) (1970) {{ISBN|0394708709}}
* ''Dear America'' (1975) (autobiography/anarchist manifesto) {{ISBN|0688028985}}
* ''Neighborhood Power: The New Localism'' (with David Morris) (1975) {{ISBN|0807008753}}
* ''Community Technology'' (1979) {{ISBN|1559501340}}
* ''A Common Sense Strategy for Survivalists'' (1981) {{oclc|9625419}}
* ''Three Interviews'' (1981) {{oclc|9663274}}
* ''Capitalism for Kids'' (1986) {{ISBN|0942103068}}
* {{wikicite |ref={{harvid|Hess|1999}} |reference=''Mostly on the Edge: An Autobiography'' (edited by Karl Hess, Jr.) (1999) {{ISBN|1573926876}}}}

'''Book reviews'''
* [https://archive.org/download/freemanmay171954p.607/Freeman%20May%2017%2C%201954%29%20p.%20607.pdf "Review of ''The Fabulous Insects'', edited by Charles Neider"]. ''[[The Freeman]]'', May 17, 1954. (p.&nbsp;607)

==Films==
''[[Karl Hess: Toward Liberty]]'' is a [[documentary film]] which won the [[Academy Award]] for best short documentary in 1981, after having previously won a [[Student Academy Awards|Student Academy Award]]. Another documentary prominently featuring Hess is the 1983 film ''[[Anarchism in America (film)|Anarchism in America]]''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://alexpeak.com/art/films/aia/|title=Anarchism in America|work=Alexpeak.com|date=January 15, 1983|accessdate=November 24, 2022}}</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Doherty |first=Brian |author-link= Brian Doherty (journalist)|editor-first=Ronald |editor-last=Hamowy |editor-link=Ronald Hamowy |encyclopedia=The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism |title= Hess, Karl (1923–1994) |url= https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/libertarianism/n136.xml|year=2008 |publisher= [[SAGE Publishing|Sage]]; [[Cato Institute]] |location= Thousand Oaks, CA |doi=10.4135/9781412965811.n136 |isbn= 978-1412965804 |oclc=750831024| lccn = 2008009151 |pages=225–226 |url-access=subscription }}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
* [http://www.karlhessclub.org/ The Karl Hess Club]
* {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051115021846/http://www.lp.org/lpn/9406-Hess.html |date=November 15, 2005 |title=LP News Jun94 – Karl Hess 1923–1994 }}
* {{C-SPAN|11381}}
* [http://www.freedomcircle.com/individual/hess-karl Karl Hess – Freedom Circle]
* [https://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Home-Building/1976-01-01/The-Plowboy-Interview-Karl-Hess.aspx The Plowboy Interview Karl Hess]
* [https://mises.org/mises-daily/death-politics ''The Death of Politics'']: 1969 ''[[Playboy]]'' article by Hess
* {{cite journal|last=Riggenbach|first=Jeff|title=Karl Hess and the Death of Politics |journal=Mises Daily|date=May 13, 2010|url=https://mises.org/daily/4330/Karl-Hess-and-the-Death-of-Politics}}
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140914003141/https://mises.org/daily/5098/Coming-Home ''Coming Home'']: final chapter from Dear America
* [http://left-liberty.net/?p=11 "Why Neighborhoods Must Secede"]: 1972 article by Hess
* [http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/from_far_right_to_far_left.html ''From Far Right to Far Left– and Farther– With Karl Hess''] by James Boyd: 1970 ''[[New York Times]]'' article about Hess
* The Lawless State: A Libertarian View of the Status of Liberty (1969) [https://mises.org/library/lawless-state The Lawless State]

{{Libertarianism}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hess, Karl}}
[[Category:1923 births]]
[[Category:1994 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American newspaper editors]]
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American philosophers]]
[[Category:20th-century anarchists]]
[[Category:20th-century atheists]]
[[Category:American anarchist writers]]
[[Category:American atheists]]
[[Category:American autobiographers]]
[[Category:American economics writers]]
[[Category:American libertarians]]
[[Category:American magazine writers]]
[[Category:American male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:American opinion journalists]]
[[Category:American people of German descent]]
[[Category:American people of Spanish descent]]
[[Category:American political journalists]]
[[Category:American political writers]]
[[Category:American speechwriters]]
[[Category:American tax resisters]]
[[Category:Appropriate technology advocates]]
[[Category:Former Roman Catholics]]
[[Category:Industrial Workers of the World members]]
[[Category:Journalists from Washington, D.C.]]
[[Category:Left-libertarians]]
[[Category:Libertarian theorists]]
[[Category:Members of Students for a Democratic Society]]
[[Category:Military personnel from Washington, D.C.]]
[[Category:20th-century people from Washington, D.C.]]
[[Category:Philosophers from Washington, D.C.]]
[[Category:Philosophers from West Virginia]]
[[Category:Survivalists]]
[[Category:United States Army personnel of World War II]]
[[Category:Washington, D.C., Republicans]]
[[Category:West Virginia Libertarians]]
[[Category:Writers from Washington, D.C.]]
[[Category:20th-century American male journalists]]