[Unedited]
“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty!
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;
And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”
John Hay.
On Picket Duty.
I am really sorry to have made so true a man as Henry D. Lloyd a target for the abuse of the Chicago “Inter-Ocean” (see article in another column), but he must take the consequences of his mistaken policy. Of course the assertion of the “Inter-Ocean” that the invitation to me was extended in ignorance of the fact that I am an Anarchist is utterly without foundation. To be sure, in my letter of declination, I myself, in addressing Mr. Lloyd officially, was bound to assume such ignorance on his part, as nothing else would be consistent the official policy of excluding Anarchists. But as a matter of fact I knew perfectly well that I was known as an Anarchist, not only by Mr. Lloyd, but by nearly all the other members of the committee. About this matter, however, I expect to have more to say hereafter. I am looking for interesting developments in connection with the invitations extended by the World’s Congress Auxiliary.
I had no sooner received a copy of “Instead of a Book” from the binder’s hands than I discovered in it a typographical error which made me tear my hair. On the eighty-fifth page of the volume the reader will find this remarkable statement: “It is undeniable that the most important freedoms, those without which all other freedoms are of little or no avail, — the freedom of banking and the freedom to take possession of unoccupied land, — exist now here in the civilized world.” Would it were true! Had it been, there would have been no occasion to publish “Instead of a Book.” Unfortunately it is false, and this false statement is put into my mouth by a fool of a printer, against whose idiocy I am powerless. By changing the word nowhere into the words now here he has exactly reversed the statement that I made. There is no excuse for the egregious blunder. Plain reprint “copy” was furnished; therefore no such error as this ought to have appeared, and it did not appear in the page-proof furnished to me. I have spent a thousand dollars in the publication of a book the purpose of which was to prove that the absence of freedom of banking and freedom of the land is the principal cause of existing social evils, and yet the book declares that these freedoms now exist! I presume that a week hence I shall have recovered my equanimity and a portion of my good nature, but at the hour of going to press the most charitable hope within my breast is that John Gutenberg, the accredited inventor of the accursed art of printing, is now writhing in the flames of hell, and that the dolt, his disciple, whose helpless victim I am, may go speedily to join him there.
Problems of Anarchism.
Property.
7. — Collectivism. The Facts Speak.
We are unable to go back to a time in which the property idea did not in some degree exist. For not only do the lowest types of man exhibit a keen sense of ownership, but sub-human animals also show distinct consciousness of it. And that the conception of property has throughout the various stages of civilization grown in an individualist direction is still more certain. In an earlier chapter it was pointed out that with human progress personal possession becomes ever more absolute and inviolable. Collectivists may attempt to refute these facts by pointing to the apparent growth of public property and industrial functions as evidence of the decline of the idea of personal property. This line of argument has been dealt with, and its invalidity front the viewpoint of sociological and economic science made sufficiently clear. We may now consider some broad and well-established truths which will leave no tang: room for doubt as to the soundness of the position we occupy. A comparison between the individual organism and the social organism has shown us that the tendency to supplant private by public activity, or voluntary industrial organization by compulsory collective organization, must inevitably be in the nature of a reversion, a social retrogression. And a study of the leading facts of social phenomena will render the same truth still more conclusive.
Let us compare different races and unlike social structures. Setting aside the savage and the barbarous, it is a mere truism that the more advanced the race the more complete do we find the development of individual property. The Russian peasantry still continue, in one form or another, the property customs of that early phase of social growth, the Village Community. Land till recently was held in common, but is fast giving place to the system of individual property. The methods of cultivation are still those belonging to the communal form. But the American agriculturist, with an intensely individualized system of property, is vastly ahead of the communal peasants, both in his individualistic methods of cultivation and in material well-being. In many parts of Germany and central Europe the peasants also follow the communal land system, but they are ages behind the average British farmer, not to speak of the American, whose methods are based on the clearest recognition of private property and enterprise.
In China the regulative functions of government reach a point at present unknown in any State in western Europe; in Russia the authorities are so anxious for the welfare of the individual that almost every motion from the cradle to the grave becomes a subject of their constant solicitude; and in Germany the functions exercised by State officials, and their minute and unlimited interference with the private life of each citizen, seem incredible, as they would be unbearable, to an Englishman or an American. These characteristics are simply extensions of the same principle which the paternalistic legislation of England and the United States is rapidly following, and in which social reformers like those referred to find so much encouragement. Yet I doubt whether the most enthusiastic paternalist, even Mr. Webb himself, is prepared to claim that the diffused autocracy of China, the brutal, regulative despotism of Russia, or the iron-bound, martial régime of Germany produces a higher type of society than the more capitalistic, individualistic, and unregulated English and American democracies. Moreover, the present fashion of historical research in the economic field has made trite the facts relating to the legal and authoritative regulation of industry and commerce, and the direction and restriction of each individual’s daily life, before the days of modern capitalism. Individualism — that is, personal freedom — had a back seat in past times, and private property was by no means secure. Still, if the Fabian view of the social organism is correct, the temporary revival of the same spirit in the handiwork of latter-day lawmakers is direct evidence of the evolution of society into Socialism.
Has the social organism, then, in its metamorphosis from mediævalism into capitalism, been retrograding? The answer to this question compels us either to give up entirely the theory of social evolution and ignore sociological facts, or to met aside the Fabian interpretation of it the latter course will prove the better choice. In any case an application of the principles of social evolution which modern collectivists profess to accept unmistakably demonstrates that every step in the direction of compulsory collectivism or governmental control of property is reactionary and against the ultimate welfare of the race.
These reformers unceasingly enlarge on the blessings of the moderate amount of municipal Socialism already accomplished. Here the Nationalists find the monopolistic post-office an institution worthy of unbounded admiration and beyond the power of private enterprise to attain. The readers of Liberty, who have sonic little opportunity to judge, will doubtless sustain this view. In England we have Mr. Webb and others depicting the glories of aldermanic Socialism and flippantly admitting that it is made possible only by the creation of a gigantic and ever-increasing public debt, upon which a few years ago an annual tribute of over fifty million dollars was paid in the form of interest. Local rates are everywhere, says our Fabian author, in consequence rapidly rising. Now what more does the capitalist want than a safe opening for investment where there is the minimum of risk and a steady return? He would probably on an average receive less and be obliged to perform more service in return if he had himself to find employment in the open market for his capital. But the growth of this form of collectivism is no evidence at all that private property or enterprise is disappearing before public control. Yet it is the very point which our Fabian reformers are endeavoring to prove. On the contrary, it is the intensifying and perpetuation of the existing unjust system of property that is being effected. It does not strike even the first blow at the most rapacious of all foes to property and to the property producer. That foe is usury. Such advocates are the true “bourgeois” reformers. Society would still remain organized on a system of status. There would be three classes; first, the interest-takers, or bondholders, comprising all the existing capitalists; second, the bureaucracy, the “entrepreneurs,” — managers, law-makers, and go-betweens, the nominal rulers; third, there would still be the mass of the people sustaining by their labor all three classes.
This conclusion remains unshaken till the Socialist reformers have demonstrated how to abolish interest and rent, which, they imagine, can be gradually confiscated by mere legislative enactment, — an economic fallacy.
Some of the effects of municipalization which are least noted by critics of collectivism will now be in order. In the English cities where the authorities maintain a close monopoly of the gaslight supply, electric lighting on an extensive scale is entirely unknown. Why? Because private enterprise in all such cases is debarred, legally, from entering into competition with the authorities. Their permission must be obtained before attempting to perform a service as private citizens for the public. Hence there is the spectacle of the people’s representatives in the name and on behalf of the public refusing to allow an industry to exist which can live only by performing a service the people require and demand. Would it not, if allowed, at once enter into competition with the Socialistic article, diminish the profits the public make out of themselves, and finally, perhaps, abolish the effete system altogether? Have not the practical Socialists of the city councils reason to be jealous of the would-be innovators? The latest methods in rapid transit in the cities are for kindred reasons barred out. Municipalities in one way or another control the existing systems; either as in Huddersfield owning and operating it, or as in Manchester possessing the tracks which they rent to the company that operates, or finally and more generally, as in the latter city and elsewhere, the members of the municipality individually as stockholders have financial interests at stake. The control or interference in any way by the city authorities results everywhere in establishing a monopoly, private or public, which resists improvement, neglects the people’s convenience, and, when they complain, defies them. Wm. Bailie.
“In abolishing rent and interest, the last vestiges of old-time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke the sword of the executioner, the seal of the magistrate, the club of the policeman, the gunge of the exciseman, the erasing-knife of the department clerk, all those insignia of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.” — Proudhon.
The appearance in the editorial column of articles over other signatures than the editor’s initial indicates that the editor approves their central purpose and general tenor, though he does not hold himself responsible for every phrase or word. But the appearance in other parts of the paper of articles by the same or other writers by no means indicates that he disapproves them in any respect, such disposition of them being governed largely by motives of convenience.
The Lucky Three.
Below is given the result of the third award of books under Liberty’s plan of giving away three books a week:
J. A. Caldwell, Iowa Falls, Iowa. — “Instead of a Book,” by Benj. R. Tucker.
W. G. Scott, 204 Clinton St., Cincinnati, O. — “Prairie Folks,” by Hamlin Garland.
Miss Helen Serrill, 911 Cherry St., Philadelphia, Pa. — “Convent Life of George Sand.”
On receiving from the foregoing successful applicants orders to forward their respective books, the books will be promptly sent, provided the publisher’s list price does not exceed $1.00.
Directions.
Liberty gives away three books every week to persons selected at random, whether subscribers or not. Any person whomsoever may compete. The applicant should write his or her name and address plainly on a postal card, stating whether Mr., Mrs. or Miss, and, below the address, the title of the book wanted (the applicant may choose any book desired, provided the retail price does not exceed $1.00), with author, publisher, and price if known. This postal card should then be addressed and mailed to Liberty, Box 1812, New York City. Each applicant may, if he chooses, send any number of cards; and he may name the same book on each card, or be may name different books. But no person will receive more than one book In one week. All applicants, however, whether successful or unsuccessful, are entitled to put In fresh applications each week, being thus allowed fifty-two trials a year. All the postal cards, as they are received, will, at the end of each week, be placed in a receptacle, and three of them selected by lot. Each of the three persons thus selected must then, in order to receive the book post-paid, make formal application to Liberty by mall. On receipt of such application, the book will be promptly forwarded. The names and addresses of the successful applicants, with names of the books awarded, will be announced in Liberty weekly. It is at the option of each applicant to specify, Instead of a book costing $1.00, a subscription to Liberty for one year, costing $2.00 and carrying with it the privilege of buying books, periodicals, and stationery at whole-sale prices.
Liberty and Order.
In the February number of “Personal Rights” (the new name of our able London contemporary known until lately as the “Personal Rights Journal”) the editor, Mr. J. H. Levy, devotes an article to the consideration of my recent criticisms of certain positions of his. He not only attempts to repel my charge of inconsistency against him, made à propos of his remarks on the relation of freedom and order, but takes occasion to explain his neglect of an earlier and much more fundamental criticism of mine, and towards the end assumes the offensive and seeks to convict Mr. Tucker and myself of superficiality and inconsistency. I shall deal with Mr. Levy’s points in the order in which I find them, first asking him, however, why he referred to my last criticism as “the Anarchistic Indictment of Individualism,” this being the caption of his article. My criticism was virtually simply a charge of inconsistency, and was by no means even an indictment of the Individualistic position, much less a presentation of the indictment of Individualism.
“In Liberty of the 21st ult.,” writes Mr. Levy, “he [the reader’s “humble servant” who writes these lines] very politely insinuates an accusation of neglect on our part of a recent criticism of his. . . . We recollect this. It contained a number of small quotations from our columns, the accuracy, fairness, and relevancy of which we were unable to verify, as they were unaccompanied by reference notes. The editor of Liberty is one of the fairest of controversialists; but we must protest against his allowance of this practice. It is not proper treatment either of the readers of Liberty or of the persons criticised in its columns. From our reading of Mr. Yarros’s article, we came to the conclusion that it was a mere réchauffée of an old complaint of his, to which we had amply replied at the time If we were mistaken in this, we can only plead that the fault was not ours. We deny Mr. Yarros’s right to set us the task of wading through our columns in futile search after minute unspecified quotations.”
Without undertaking a defence of Mr. Tucker’s action in allowing the practice condemned by Mr. Levy, I may say that, while it is true that I generally omit to give reference notes in quoting from books or articles, I deny that my “practice” has ever resulted in unfairness either to the reader addressed or the writer criticised. Reference notes require time, patience, and access to the matter referred to; while I frequently find myself reduced to the necessity of working with only one of the requirements satisfied — with a stock of patience. I have to depend on my retentive faculty, which is fortunately not treacherous. Mr. Levy, however, so exaggerates his grievance that I am convinced he does not “recollect” the criticism he so freely characterizes. There is no justification for his statements that the article contained a number of small quotations, and minute unspecified quotations. There was but one “minute quotation” from his columns in my article, — namely, the formula “no force save against force.” Can there be any question as to the fairness and relevancy of such a “quotation” in a discussion of the central contention of Individualism? As to its accuracy, if Mr. Levy really doubts the fact that he has editorially explicitly proclaimed the above formula as the precise expression of the Individualist position, I am ready to incur the expense and trouble of satisfying him on the point. Beyond this single “unspecified minute quotation,” there was merely a reference to his “tacit admission” that compulsory taxation “cannot be logically deduced from the law of equal freedom, but must be acquiesced in as an exception” to that law. No reference notes are needed to prove the accuracy, relevance, and fairness of this. Mr. Levy understands his own position and knows whether it involves such an admission or not. Specified quotations can easily be dispensed with here. It only remains to add that the criticism was not a réchaufée of an old complaint previously disposed of, and that a rejoinder to it did not necessitate any search after minute unspecified quotations. I shall not ask Mr. Levy to revert to that criticism and give it his attention; but an easy way occurs to me now by which the main point may be finally settled. Mr. Levy is doubtless familiar with Mr. Spencer’s “Justice,” and he may not have forgotten (seeing that he remembers less important efforts of mine) my review of it in Liberty, in which I proved that Mr. Spencer’s defence of compulsory taxation and compulsory military service was plainly inconsonant with his formula of equal freedom. I would have Mr. Levy tell me whether be concurs in the charge of inconsistency and illogicality against Spencer, — whether he shares my feeling that Spencer’s conclusion on this subject is lame and impotent in view of his premises and general method of deducing men’s rights (in the Spencerian sense). As an Anarchist, I am anxious to secure assent to the proposition that it is impossible to deduce compulsory coöperation for defence from the law of equal freedom as expressed in the Spencerian formula.
But to proceed to the main point in this controversy. Mr. Levy advises me to dismiss the notion that, in his strictures upon Lord Kimberley, he consciously or unconsciously reasoned from Anarchistic premises. My allegation that that was the case he declares to be “merely the blind assertion of a man who has not learned to realize the position occupied by those with whom he is contending.” I assure Mr. Levy that he is mistaken in this. His position I thoroughly comprehend, as perfectly as I do my own. Let us see, then, how Mr. Levy reconciles the conclusion which I claimed to be essentially Anarchistic with his Individualist postulates. In the first place, Mr. Levy points out that his “supposition that ‘a government has done its possible in the direction of freedom,’ so far from being Anarchistic, is utterly irreconcilable with Anarchism, the fundamental assertion of whisk is that government can do nothing for freedom.” I have no exception to make to this argument, but it is certainly irrelevant. I never alleged that the supposition referred to indicated conscious or unconscious acceptance of Anarchistic premises. I spoke of the impression produced by the analysis and criticism of Lord Kimberley’s proposition as a whole, not of any distant and separate supposition or affirmation. In the second place, Mr. Levy finds that in the speech which I put in Lord Kimberley’s mouth order is taken, not as a coördinate end with liberty, but as instrumental to that end. “Could there be a more dismal failure?” cries Mr. Levy. “In the very speech concocted for our discomfiture, with an unheard-of meaning assigned to order for the very purpose of begging the question at issue, our critic is compelled to give it, not a place beside freedom as one of two ultimate aims of government, as did Lord Kimberley, but to speak of it as the ‘essential condition,’ the ‘condition precedent,’ of liberty, which therefore stands out as the sole political end.” That I assigned an unheard-of (in the literal sense) meaning to “order,” I grant, but I did so, not for the purpose of begging the question at issue, but simply for the purpose of showing that, from the Individualist point of view, it is not necessarily nonsensical to speak of coupling order with liberty. The important consideration is that, unlike Anarchists, Individualists are not satisfied with absence of aggression, or equal freedom. Perhaps it is more correct to say that absence of aggression, equal freedom, is more than the Individualists want; they are not only satisfied with less, but absolutely refuse to ask for more than their present programme demands. The meaning I assigned to order is unheard-of, but not absurd; and it needs only to accept the assigned meaning to invest Lord Kimberley’s proposition with significance and value, from the standpoint of Individualism. The same cannot be affirmed of Anarchism. Being satisfied with nothing less than equal freedom, to talk of coupling order with equal freedom is manifestly nonsense, no matter what meaning is assigned to order. As for the objection that, instead of taking order as a coördinate end with liberty, I spoke of it as a condition precedent of liberty, it is by no means clear that Lord Kimberley gave order a place beside freedom as one of two ultimate ends of government. If I am not mistaken, Mr. Levy had contented himself with giving this minute quotation from an address of Lord Kimberley’s: “I suppose there are few, if there are any, who do not think that a government, to be really successful, must couple order with liberty.” The expression, “couple order with liberty,” is not a very precise one, and it involves no violent assumption to give it my interpretation. The government must couple order with liberty, that is to say, it must levy taxes and compel coöperation for defence (order), while preventing invasion by private individuals and refraining from imposing restrictions not entailed by the need of compulsory coöperation (freedom). Now, according to Individualist philosophy, “order” in this sense is a condition precedent of freedom; without compulsory coöperation, we are told, maximum freedom is impossible. But, so far as the government in its practical work is concerned, “order” and “freedom” may properly be said to constitute its two ultimate ends. What the government does is one thing; why it does what it does is another thing. The government has, practically, two ends: it has to secure maximum freedom, and to provide for compulsory coöperation — couple order with freedom. The government has to punish aggressors, and also to compel inoffensive citizens to join victims of aggression in putting down aggressors. Here we have two ends, two distinct kinds of duties. It cannot rationally be alleged that one and the same social principle covers both cases.
Reason from Anarchistic postulates, and it at once appears that the coupling of order with liberty does involve either a tautology or a contradiction. Disorder is aggression; aggression is violation of equal freedom; hence to couple order with freedom, equal freedom, is to couple freedom with itself, I insist that, barring the supposition of government doing its possible in the direction of freedom, Mr. Levy’s reasoning and terminology impress one as Anarchistic. But as Mr. Levy assures us that he still adheres to Individualist premises, we have no alternative but to acquit him of the charge of consciously taking Anarchistic ground. Surely he cannot quarrel with us for suspecting an unconscious gliding into Anarchism.
And now for Mr. Levy’s counter-criticism. He easily understands, he declares, why I winced at his reasoning and why Mr. Tucker approved the “central purpose and general tenor” of my deliverance. “At the head of Liberty appears s motto taken from Proudhon, which asserts that freedom is ‘not the daughter but the mother of order.’ Now we venture to say that this genealogical simile is the cloak of nonsense. . . . It is very characteristic of Proudhon that he is not satisfied with contradicting the assertion of those who maintain that order is the cause of freedom, but must needs reverse their dictum. If our assertion that ‘the coupling of order with liberty means the coupling of liberty with itself’ is ‘keen, sound, profound,’ as Mr. Yarros says it is, then liberty is neither the daughter nor the mother of order, but order itself.” Does the reader now see why I winced at Mr. Levy’s reasoning and why Mr. Tucker concurred in my line of attack? I venture to say he does not. Mr. Levy is a logical and precise thinker, but we have certainly caught him in an incoherence. Instead of explaining my unqualified endorsement of his view of freedom-and-order, he here adduces what seems at first blush an excellent reason for dissenting from him, or at least for preserving silence and diverting the critical reader’s attention from Mr. Levy’s keen, sound, profound reasoning, which reflects so much discredit upon Proudhon. The fact that Liberty’s motto collides with Mr. Levy’s keen and profound reasoning cannot explain our eagerness to agree with Mr. Levy and tacitly repudiate Proudhon; on the contrary, it makes our eagerness very astonishing. To coincide with Mr. Levy and retain the motto is self-stultification. If I had warmly repudiated Mr. Levy’s ideas, it would have been logical to account for my alleged “wincing” and twisting by referring to the motto; but the case being the reverse, the explanation is singularly illogical.
But however this may be, since we have pronounced Mr. Levy’s reasoning on order and liberty keen and profound, it is necessary to explain the retention of the motto, which is, by implication, otherwise than keen and profound. It is true that, strictly speaking, liberty is neither the daughter nor the mother of order, but order itself. Proudhon’s aphorism was not intended for a scientific and precise expression of a truth; it was promulgated as a suggestive and happy, though loose, expression of the right sequence of reform. Order was used in the ordinary sense, and the idea was to suggest that order could be secured through more and more liberty rather than through restriction and espionage. The motto is useful because attractive and thought-provoking; but it is not advanced as an exact formula.* V. Y.
* I cannot accept Mr. Yarros’s statement that Liberty’s motto is not advanced as an exact formula. I do advance it as such, and am especially proud of the motto as a terse, accurate, and beautiful expression of the central teaching of this journal. Proudhon, in this motto, meant by order, not simply the absence of aggression, but society at its highest in organization and development. He used the word in the positive sense, not the negative merely. Mr. Yarros is right, however, in denying any inconsistency between the motto and his commendation of Mr. Levy’s reasoning. To say that liberty is the mother of order (in the positive sense) does not at all conflict with an endorsement of Mr. Levy’s identification of liberty with order (in the negative sense). — Editor Liberty.
The Trouble Beginning.
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago “Inter-Ocean” of March 5 under the heading, “An Insolent Rejoinder.” It is perhaps needless to say that the “Inter-Ocean” had the prudence not to let its readers see this “insolent rejoinder”:
One of the most impudent things given to print in some time is a so-called letter of declination written by the editor of an Anarchistic publication in New York known as Liberty. Through the ill-advised courtesy of the secretary of the committee on programme and correspondence of the World’s Fair Auxiliary Congress this person was invited to prepare and read a paper on “The Labor Movement from the Individualist Point of View.” The opportunity was seized upon by the editor of Liberty to prepare an insolent rejoinder, in which he attempts to make a virtue of refusing to take part in any ceremonies from participation in which are excluded such rabid enemies of law and order as John Most and his unsavory ilk. He will not come, for-sooth, to any congress that makes “distinction against those who favor propaganda by deed” greater than against those who “carry on their warfare against government solely by educational means and passive resistance.”
The only thing about the matter that is annoying is that any invitation was sent. The editor of Liberty was too greatly magnified by the attention. It would have been an impertinent thing to have had him here as an invited guest, an impertinence gross enough to be effrontery. The World’s Fair has nothing in common with the mouthings and ravings and criminal notions of Anarchists, and the invitation was sent on the theory that the man invited was not an Anarchist. The World’s Fair is to celebrate progress, the development of civilization under the guidance of law and organized society, and certainly should not be a medium for the exploitation of the vicious purposes of those persons professedly inimical to all forms of government.
The editor of Liberty and his class can do no greater service to the World’s Fair than by staying away from it. They will be no more welcome than the thugs, footpads, and lawless miscreants in general who may think to profit by this great event. The misfortune is that there are no means by which to keep them away.
Commended to Our Woman Suffragists.
Madame Séverine, having been nominated by French champions of the ballot for women as a candidate for the chamber of deputies, declines in the following pithy letter:
Madame and Citoyenne:
A thousand thanks for the offer; but there is a mis-understanding; my refusal of 1885 should have saved it.
On the economic ground — that is, the defence of feminine interests and rights in all that is serious and sacred — I am your man! On the political ground, I persist in failing to appreciate the delights of universal suffrage, by whatever sex enjoyed. When the apple is rotten is not the time to bite.
So, too far in the rear as a woman, proud of the sacrificing and maternal rôle which nature has given me, not at all tempted to fall to masculine ambitions, and, moreover, too far advanced as a blue-stocking, and disposed to scoff at the efficacy of the ballot, I feel that I am ripe only for abstention.
Receive, Madame and Citoyenne, my fraternal greeting. Séverine.
Don’t keep Liberty to yourself, share it with others!
Liberty’s Library
Leonard E. Read: Accent On The Right: To Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850), who sought for truth rather than outcome and never witnessed the fruits his labor bore. Obedience to conscience was his first rule; we witness the results.
Leonard E. Read: Anything That’s Peaceful: Many favor peace but not many favor the things that make for peace. — Thomas à Kempis
Leonard E. Read: Awake for Freedom’s Sake: Finally, share with others. Forget about “reforming” them! The more we share, the more we learn. This is in the interest of self and freedom!
Leonard E. Read: Castles in the Air: If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. — Henry David Thoreau
Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State: Political philosophy is dominated by a myth, the myth of the necessity of the state. The state is considered necessary for the provision of many things, but primarily for peace and security. In this provocative book, Gerard Casey argues that social order can be spontaneously generated, that such spontaneous order is the norm in human society and that deviations from the ordered norms can be dealt with without recourse to the coercive power of the state.
Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers: Murray Rothbard: Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) was an economist, historian, philosopher, and legal theoretician. His work was unified by a passionate and resolute commitment to a libertarianism that may be characterized as ‘anarcho-capitalism’ and which implied a belief that even the legal system may be provided privately without the need for a coercive collective authority. Hence, anarcho-capitalists envisage a society where the traditional role of government is wholly subsumed by private, profit-making enterprises and all social relationships are ultimately founded upon consent.
