Goodman, Paul (1911-1972): A Libertarianism.org Guide

Encyclopedia

Paul Goodman (1911-1972) was a social critic, novelist, and poet best known for his 1960 book Growing Up Absurd. Although his political and social thought was not systematic, his writings and activism in opposition to militarism and the Vietnam War, and in favor of a radical decentralism, influenced many libertarians.

Goodman was born in New York and attended City College, where he earned his undergraduate degree. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, eventually earning a Ph.D. in literature. He held numerous visiting professorships during his lifetime, but never received a full-time academic position. Instead, he could be viewed as a quintessential “public intellectual,” churning out a book a year for most of his adult life, writing essays for a wide range of magazines and journals, and maintaining a busy lecture schedule.

In Growing Up Absurd, Goodman attacked the modern educational system, which he argued stifled creativity and pushed young people into professions which they were not interested in pursuing or well-suited to perform. He questioned the growing trend of suburbanization, claiming it led to a poorer and more stagnant intellectual climate. And he argued that many aspects of family life ought to be re-examined. The book is largely a rambling collection of criticisms of American society in the late 1950s. But it struck a chord among many people, young and old, who held an inchoate belief that overthrowing—or at least subverting—widely held social conventions would allow people to live happier, fuller lives.

Goodman’s politics were decidedly individualistic. Indeed, he proudly considered himself an anarchist, arguing that “valuable behavior occurs only by the free and direct response of individuals or voluntary groups to the conditions presented by the historical environment. … [M]ore harm than good results from coercion, top-down direction, central authority, bureaucracy, jails, conscription, states, pre-ordained standardization, excessive planning, etc.”

He was, however, willing to make some exceptions, writing that government power might be permissible in select circumstances and cases:

I, and other anarchists, would except certain states of temporary emergency, if we can be confident that the emergency is temporary. We might except certain logistic arrangements, like ticketing or metric standards or tax-collection, if we can be confident that the administration, the “secretariat,” will not begin to run the show. And we might except certain “natural monopolies,” like epidemic-control, water-supply, etc.

While such concessions would put him at odds with many free-market advocates, Goodman still can rightly be considered a libertarian. He viewed the state with great suspicion, and argued that its powers ought to be tightly controlled.

Goodman was embraced by the New Left in the early 1960s, but many student radicals later viewed him with suspicion if not outright scorn. Goodman, too, became disenchanted with the movement that he had once embraced, arguing that the New Left had become anti-intellectual and collectivistic. Indeed, one of the last books published during his lifetime was subtitled Notes of a Neolithic Conservative.

In addition to his political and literary activities, Goodman was also an advocate of Gestalt Therapy, on which he wrote widely, especially during the 1950s. He died of a heart attack in 1972, at the age of 60.