[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.
Mr. Bailie Explains.
To the Editor of Liberty:
It would be injudicious on my part to enter into a controversy on questions arising out of the articles now appearing in Liberty while they are still running. In the present instance your somewhat premature criticisms call for a word of explanation. If I were attacking merely the “man of straw” theories so kindly formulated for me by the editor, or again if I could accept them as qualified and defended by him, the present section of my articles would never have been written. Why have I failed to clearly state the iron law that I attack? Because in chapter 2 I intended nothing more than preliminary hints as to the position I meant to take, having, before it was printed, completed the parts that attempt to grapple in a direct and systematic manner with the fallacies indicated in that chapter. I admit that by introducing the views I meant to set forth before I had reached the proper place for their full discussion I committed an error which has laid me open to the editorial lash.
That the iron law of wages and the wage-fund theory are but two sides of the same thing is a point on which I can readily agree with the editor, and I believe my remarks in the article in question indicate that idea. When he hears the case I shall put forward, and when the arguments I deem necessary to establish it are before the readers of Liberty, I hope to come to an understanding with the editor, though I do not anticipate an acceptance of my position by him. This will be when the present section is completed.
Francis A. Walker no more than Henry George can be credited with demolishing the wage-fund theory, for all that either has said was already put forth in English by Thornton. For erroneous estimates of Walker’s discoveries I am not responsible.
My second-hand and unreliable information about Josiah Warren’s notions of value were obtained from “Equitable Commerce” by that estimable pioneer as well as from Andrews’s exposition of Warren’s ideas in “Science of Society.” Warren’s theory of value is at bottom the same as Marx’s, and both thinkers were undoubtedly aware that an hour of one man’s labor is not equivalent to an hour of every other man’s. I disagree with both, but not because I overlook the latter point. The inadequacy of Warren’s economics and of Marx’s analysis of capital will be dealt with in their place in the series.
The editor’s criticisms of previous articles seemed to me to arise out of a difference in our ethical points of view that are not fundamental to the central principles of Anarchism, nor were they on a question of economics, so that readers could judge for themselves without further explanation from me or the danger of misconception on essential questions. Fraternally yours, Wm. Bailie.
[I await with interest the development of Mr. Bailie’s conception and criticism of the iron law of wages and the wage-fund theory. Meanwhile I think I did well to call attention to the defect which he admits. Doubtless some of the readers of the instalment which I criticised will never see the clearer and fuller statement which Mr. Bailie promises us. His defence of his misrepresentation of Warren is worthless. He tells us that Warren was “undoubtedly aware that an hour of one man’s labor is not equivalent to an hour of every other man’s.” Does he mean by this that Warren held this view privately, but did not express it in his writings? If he means this, I deny it, and am ready to prove Mr. Bailie in error by quotations. Or does Mr. Bailie mean to admit that Warren upheld this view in his writings? If so, why, did Mr. Bailie in his previous article represent him as holding another and different view? His defence against my criticism is a contradiction of himself without a confession. I shall give my best consideration to Mr. Bailie’s coming demonstration of “the inadequacy of Warren’s economics,” but he must not misstate Warren’s economics unless he desires to be called to account. — Editor Liberty.]
Press Opinions of “Instead of a Book.”
Under the heading, “The Logic of Liberty,” the St. Louie “Republic,” the leading Democratic daily of the West, gives the post of honor in its book review department to the following article on “Instead of a Book.” The longer extracts made by the reviewer are here omitted, the omissions being indicated by periods.
Nearly twelve years ago Mr. Benjamin R. Tucker began the publication in Boston of a small fortnightly journal called Liberty. Of all titles that have been chosen for periodicals, none has been more true and appropriate, the little eight-page sheet edited by Mr. Tucker, which has found favor with a select few thinkers in every quarter of the globe, being a consistent foe of Authority, dealing it trenchant blows on every side with a logic that is so clear and incisive that it pleases the reader while confounding his preconceptions. For its motto Liberty has three lines from a poem by John Hay, which read:
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.
Liberty is still published, and growing in favor with thinkers, and its success is the more remarkable because it is one of the very few periodicals which seek no commercial notices or puffs, and has been steadily ignored by the public press. Books have been inspired by it, other journals of like aim have been called into being in the United States, England, France, Germany, and the Antipodes, yet the general public knows it not. The subject it discusses, however, is probably the most interesting and vital that ever arose or can arise, — the tendency and future form of the social organism. The writer has not seen a recent number of Liberty, but all who, like him, have admired its vigorous and telling arguments, while perhaps differing from its conclusions, will welcome this partial collection from its pages of Mr. Tucker’s writings, in a neat volume, consecutively paged, and very well indexed, and will look upon it, in spite of its author’s modest deprecation, as a fairly complete text-book of “Philosophical Anarchism.”
If we are not there already, we must soon come to the parting of the ways leading either to the government control of industry, known as State Socialism, or, by the overthrow of the giant monopolies, to a system of society which will so extend natural opportunities, thereby equalizing wealth, that many if not all the present functions of the State may be safely and better left to individual effort. In other words, we are tending, in an accelerating degree, either toward the Bellamy ideal, or toward the logical ideal of Josiah Warren, Pierre J. Proudhon, and Michael Bakounine. Public opinion will force a choice between the swallowing up of all lesser monopolies in one monster monopoly, — State control, — and the entire abolition of Privilege and Authority, the result of the latter being a social organization in which voluntary association and fair competition will be the chief factors.
It is to call attention to the evils and dangers of that species of Socialism which is becoming so popular as a proposed remedy for monopoly and all other social wrongs, and to the opposite and incalculable benefits of extending individual liberty, that Mr. Tucker has devoted his efforts in Liberty and in the book before us.
The work opens with an essay, “State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein They Differ,” which the editor of the “North American Review” accepted in 1886, and paid for, after volunteering the statement that “it was the ablest article that he had received during his editorship of the ‘Review,’” but did not publish. Even a resume of this and a few examples of Mr. Tucker’s reasoning would extend this article to great length, and a very brief outline must suffice. . . .
It is unnecessary to specify what State Socialism is. We have it all around us — in the Post Office, the Agricultural Department, Weather Bureau, Coast Survey, Lighthouse Service, General Land Office, Patent Office, Census Office, Interstate Commerce Commission, Department of Labor, Fish Commission, etc., etc., in the Federal government, and in Municipal Lighting, Water, Sanitary, and other City works, whose extent and efficiency is yearly increasing. In the Federal Blue Book for 1892, without counting the numerous public works involved in carrying on the “government” of the District of Columbia, there are no less than thirty distinct industries specified, not one of which would be done by a government which was strictly one of external and internal defence alone, and every one of which is essentially Socialistic. Thus it is easy to see that Mr. Tucker’s statement that the State Socialist’s remedy for monopolies is Monopoly is entirely accurate.
This tendency of government, says Mr. Tucker, will certainly culminate in such abominations as a State code of morals, a State religion, a State school of medicine, a State school of hygiene, a State nursery for children; “and finally, a State family, with an attempt at stirpiculture, or scientific breeding, in which no man and woman will be allowed to have children if the State prohibits them, and no man and woman can refuse to have children if the State orders them. Thus will Authority achieve its acme and Monopoly be carried to its highest power.”
This is the goal of Marxism, or State Socialism, to which Warren and Proudhon oppose the doctrine that “all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished” — which is philosophic Anarchism, or the system of no-rule; Liberty as opposed to Authority. The first and greatest invasive act of the State, which vitiates every other action, according to Proudhon and his school, is compulsory taxation. This it is proposed to change for voluntary taxation, first crippling the invasive State by an extended and continuous refusal to pay compulsory taxes. Other objects the Anarchists of this school have in view are free or mutual banking, which, they claim, would reduce interest by competition to a point where it would just pay the banker for his labor; voluntary association for defence, abolition of government land titles, occupancy and use to be the only claim recognized; abolition of patents, tariffs, government coinage of money, etc. “Competition everywhere and always.” No monopoly in anything whatever. “Mind your own business” the only law. . . .
Anarchists do not propose to altogether abolish the police officer, but only that those who desire his protection should pay for him and those who wish to be their own defenders should invest their money in guns instead. Of course, the average reader will assert that this would relegate society to the condition which exists in the Indian Territory or the Mexican border. Anarchists, however, claim that as the State, “as the chief invader of person and property, is the cause of substantially all the crime and misery that exist — itself the most gigantic criminal extant — manufacturing criminals much faster than it punishes them,” when it no longer existed in compulsory form, the conditions of life would be so vastly improved, and wealth and opportunity so greatly diffused, that invasion by individuals would practically cease.
Of course, the only solution of the whole problem must be experiment. At present the State Socialists, represented by the labor unions, the Nationalists, Farmers’ Alliance, and Christian Socialists, appear to have the best of it, and so clear-sighted and thorough an Anarchist as John Henry Mackay, poet and novelist, is compelled sadly to admit this. “Socialism,” he concludes in his poetic, passionate last chapter of “The Anarchists; a Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century” — “Socialism was the last general stupidity of mankind. This last station of suffering on the way to liberty had to be passed.”
“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.
Trades-Union “Coercion.”
The decision of the New York Supreme Court in the case of Charles Moran vs. the president of a local assembly of the Knights of Labor is as illogical and unintelligent as most decisions of our courts in cases involving fundamental questions of human right and freedom. Charles Curran was a “scab,” a non-union man, and was employed as engineer of the Miller Brewing Company, Rochester. The Knights of Labor assembly demanded and secured his discharge, and this led to an action for $10,000 damages. The defence set up by the president of the assembly was that no malice was intended toward the plaintiff, but that his discharge was secured in pursuance of a distinct agreement between the assembly and the Brewers’ Association, of which the Miller Brewing Company is a member, that no workman should be employed in the brewery who was not a member of the organization. In sustaining the demurrer of the plaintiff, the judge writing the opinion says that “the sole question presented is whether the defendants in what they did were acting lawfully,” and concludes that the method of coercion employed by the defendant “not only contravenes one of the fundamental principles of our free institutions, but it likewise violates the spirit if not the letter of a statute of this State.” Now an act which violates the letter of the statute is plainly unlawful, but it is not safe to allow our courts to enforce the “spirit” of our statutes, even if the benefit of any reasonable doubt is accorded the defendant. In the present case the benefit of the doubt is given to the plaintiff. What is the statute the spirit, if not the letter, of which the defendant is declared to have violated? The judge refers to the statute which makes it a misdemeanor for an employer to require as a condition of a person’s entering or remaining in his employ that he shall not become a member of any labor organization, and argues as follows: “The object of this enactment was doubtless to prevent what the legislature regarded as an improper interference by employers with the rights of their employees; and if it is made illegal for the former to coerce the latter, it is difficult to see why it should not be equally unlawful for one employee to attempt to influence another’s action by the same means.”
True enough it is that “it is difficult to see why it should not,” but what we are here concerned with is not the acumen or consistency of the legislature, but the actual state of the law. Does the law make illegal such “coercion” as that with which the defendant is charged? Certainly the letter of the law does not. As for its “spirit,” the only safe and sound rule is to interpret a law in favor of the greatest liberty of the individual. The statute just quoted is not sanctioned by the principle of justice; that which it prohibits employers from requiring being something which they have a perfect right to require and which constitutes no infringement of the employees’ freedom at all; hence the interests of society demand that it should be construed, not liberality, but strictly and literally.
However, I am aware that I am proceeding upon a theory which the court does not profess. In saying that the defendant’s course contravenes one of the fundamental principles of our free institutions, the judge implies that the statute whose letter prohibits employers from requiring employees to remain outside of labor organizations, and whose spirit, if not letter, prohibits employees from requiring employers to refuse work to non-union men (or to union men, for that matter), is perfectly consonant with freedom, if not enjoined by it. Indeed this position is plainly assumed by the court in the following passage: “The defendants had a perfect right to unite with this or any other organization, but they have had no right to insist that others should do so; and when they make plaintiff’s refusal to join it a pretext for depriving him of his right to labor, they interfere with his Personal liberty in a manner and to an extent the law will not countenance; and their action, instead of affording a protection to, operates as a restraint upon, honest labor.” Here it is obvious that the judge flatters himself that by deciding against the defendants he emancipates honest labor.
Well, perhaps he does “emancipate” honest labor, but the question is whether the emancipation is such as honest labor is entitled to under justice. The anxiety to protect the rights and freedoms of so-called “scabs” is commendable; but the rights of the union men should not be overlooked. The non-union man is entitled to as much freedom — has as many rights — as the union man, no more and no less. In the case under consideration the question is whether the form of indirect coercion of which the defendant is accused contravenes any fundamental-principle of our free institutions. If the fundamental principle alluded to is that of equal liberty (and any other principle cannot be the basis of any free institutions), then the answer must be in the negative. The agreement which the assembly made with the brewers was one which they had a perfect right to make. They had the right to impose the condition they imposed, — to require the brewers to give no employment to any man not a member of their union. Had the brewers declined to accept this condition, the assembly would probably have voted not to work for them. But the brewers accepted the condition, and, when a non-union man was subsequently given employment, the assembly was justified in reminding the brewers of the agreement and demanding the man’s discharge, since in demanding the discharge no threat of violence was made or implied. It is to be presumed that the only result of a refusal of the brewers to discharge the non-union man would have been a strike of the union men, — and a strike is not unlawful. The union men deprived the “scab” of employment, of the right to labor, says the judge. The reply is that they deprived him of employment, but not of the right of labor. He was still free to apply for work, and the employers were still free to engage him, — that is, they were threatened with nothing save the loss of the services of other employees. To assert that a “scab” had a right to be employed by the brewers, and that the assembly had no right to demand his discharge, is to tacitly assert that the assembly had no right to dictate terms to those seeking to engage them and to threaten to strike in case those terms are not complied with after a pretended acceptance of them.
It is impossible to defend the rights of a non-union man as a non-union man, or the rights of a union man as a union man, without falling into error. Lawmakers and judges should inform themselves on the subject of the rights or freedoms of the individual, if they desire to bring their laws and their decisions into correspondence with such rights. V. Y.
The Occupancy and Use Theory.
To the Editor of Liberty:
I thought I had made it clear in my last letter, in No. 267 of Liberty, that I accepted your definition of equal liberty as “equal liberty to control self and the results of self-exertion.” If we can get this without the single tax, I will be content.
But, though you have punched holes in my argument that the man who defends his person abridges no liberty not essentially dependent on his presence, I think it holds a good deal of water yet. He does “prohibit others from occupying the space occupied by his body,” but they have usually no motive for wishing to occupy it unless they want to inconvenience him. In that case his presence furnishes the motive at least, and the liberty would therefore be valueless in his absence. Therefore his presence and self-defence, taken together, deprive others only of a valueless liberty. If he does occupy space which they wish to use for purposes really their own, it is ordinarily only for a moment in passing, and puts them to no inconvenience beyond that of waiting two seconds. It for any length of time he persists in remaining in space which they want for their own purposes, then his position is a fair parallel to that of the occupant of land. I recognized this in my letter, and claimed it as a point on my side, citing as an instance the case of a man who blocks a narrow passage with his body. I should like to know whether, in your opinion, this man violates equal liberty, and, if so, how his case differs in principle from the land occupier’s.
Your proposal to “try freedom [as defined by you] first” seems very fair, but I have two objections to it. In the first place, I do not know what free land is. I do not know what land would be adjudged to be vacant and what to be occupied. I have looked into all the free-land pamphlets within my reach to find out what the distinction should be, in vain. The only ray of light is on page 311 of “Instead of a Book,” where you say that “what the formula will be no one can foresee,” but it is a possible supposition that a municipality might “decide to protect no one in the possession of more than ten acres”; this law, however, being “little more than a suggestion for the guidance of juries.” I cannot enjoy the prospect till it grows clearer. Equal liberty being a single definite principle, it follows that there must in every case be one possible judgment which will agree with equal liberty, and all others must he wrong. Then, if circumstances are capable of classification, there must be a corresponding classification of judgments consonant with equal liberty for those circumstances, which may be embodied in a code of rules, which can be carried as far into detail as the classification of circumstances can be carried. Unless the outlines of such a code are known, the principles which will guide jurymen to the one right decision are unknown; and the only result I can foresee is chaos.
Furthermore, I cannot expect juries to agree often unless they are guided by principles generally understood, definite enough to be expressed in words, and minute enough in detail to enable a man of average stupidity to apply them correctly to practical cases. I am not quite certain which will hold the land if the jury is hung, the man claiming to be the original occupant or the alleged trespasser whom be seeks to eject; but, unless we can have a code of fairly definite rules, I should expect possession to be much more than nine points of the law.
I had not thought of the limitation by area till I read “Instead of a Book.” I had guessed that grazing land would be vacant to the agriculturist, agricultural land to the builder, and the sites of houses to the railroad-builder, under certain limitations which I might define. But I do not want to depend on myself, who am avowedly out of sympathy with the idea, for a definition of its meaning. And I cannot even guess at the principle to be applied in some cases. I guess that an Anarchistic jury would decide that Union Square was “occupied,” but that the little private park on Fourteenth Street, a block or two further west, was “vacant for the builder,” unless the owner would throw it open to the public. But I cannot guess on what principle they would base the distinction, unless on some that would sound very queer in Anarchistic ears.
Secondly, I object to the scheme of “free vacant land” as thoroughly and needlessly authoritarian. To say that a man shall not spread his business over more than so much land, or that he shall not use land within a certain territory for certain non-invasive purposes, is a long step on the way toward regulating everybody’s business. It would be the most convenient of weapons for all forms of governmentalism. I am sure there are places where a jury would find the site of a liquor-saloon “vacant” on the ground that it was, in their judgment, used for no purpose useful to anybody. But, even if all jurymen were sincerely devoted to the principle of equal liberty, I hardly know where any government gives human stupidity a wider authority over other people’s business. And the liberty of judgment allowed to juries has nothing to do with this argument; for the authoritarian character of the law does not at all depend upon its uniformity.
Under the single tax, on the contrary, the individual regulates all that. Conceiving the single tax as an auction of land, you have the privilege, for which you cry out in No. 259, of setting your own price on it by making your bid. Your neighbors expect to charge all they can get for waiving their claims to the liberty of using the land. If this charge is more than the land is worth to you, you do not want the land at the terms, and the man whose bid fixed the price gets it. To make up for your disappointment, you set your dividend (minus the directors’ pickings, I admit) of the price obtained for all the land. This dividend may or may not be all that the land you wanted was worth to you, but it is all you can get, and I recommend you to be better content with this arrangement than with one which would keep you out of the same land and pay you nothing for it; especially as now, if you do take and pay for a corner lot on Broadway, and choose to raise pigweeds on it, the single-tax authorities will allow you to follow your taste; whereas, in the other case, you would have been dispossessed as soon as your intention had been manifest half an hour.
To borrow the excellent form of your statement in No. 252, the Anarchists say: “We will protect you in the use of your land so long as it is valuable to you in a way that we understand and appreciate, provided also that you do not try to use more than we think you ought. “The Single Taxers say:” We will protect you in the use of your land, whatever that land may be, so long as you yourself value it so highly that you are willing to pay an auction price for it; but, since we give up an equal claim which we profess to have, we will take from you whatever price competition can force you to pay, as the best equivalent we can get for these claims.” I think “the reader who compares these two positions will need no comment of mine to enable him to decide on which side the maximum of liberty lies, and on which side” the individual control of one’s own business is respected.
As to my being a Prohibitionist, I will show why I am such when we have said all we can about land, if I find you still willing to print my letters. But if the fact that I, a Single Taxer of no known reputation, am a Prohibitionist “goes far” to show that the tendency of the single tax is authoritarian, surely the fact that an overwhelming majority of the recognized single-tax leaders are anti-prohibitionists must go farther to show the contrary. Stephen T. Byington.
In this latest contribution from Mr. Byington to our discussion on the land question all that is of any force is based on a misapprehension, and the force is lost as soon as the misapprehension is cleared up. The misapprehension is found in Mr. Byington’s erroneous and inexplicable supposition that free vacant land means “that a man shall not use land within a certain territory for certain non-invasive purposes.” I do not know where Mr. Byington got this idea. I have never seen it expressed in any exposition of the free land doctrine. It certainly is no part of the Anarchistic solution of the land question that juries or any other authorities shall prescribe the use to which an occupant shall put his land. As long as the use to which he puts it is non-invasive, he will not be meddled with under Anarchism. If the four corner lots formed by the intersection of the two principal streets of a city were to be used respectively for a bucket-shop, a church, a rum-shop, and a potato patch, an Anarchistic jury would certainly decline to dispossess any one of the four occupants; and, in the case of a hung jury, the occupant, as Mr. Byington surmises, would remain in possession. Mr. Byington’s contrast of the Anarchistic position with that of the Single Taxers seems very favorable to the latter as long as he misrepresents the Anarchistic position in the manner above pointed out. But when the two positions are stated correctly, as I stated them in No. 252, it is clear that the Anarchistic position is the position of liberty, and that the Single Taxers are the meddlers.
Lest it may seem to the reader that the occupant’s right, under equal liberty, to use his land as he chooses is stated in the foregoing paragraph as a thing absolute and inviolable, I will add that no more in the matter of land than in any other matter do I lay down equal liberty as an absolute principle always to be observed. It is easy to conceive of cases where equal liberty must be promptly ignored. If, for instance, a malevolent individual were to go up in a balloon with a load of dynamite bombs, taking with him by force an innocent and unwilling party, and, locating the balloon directly over a city, were to begin raining the bombs upon the inhabitants, it would certainly be proper and necessary for the latter to riddle the balloon with bullets, though thereby they should send to instant death the innocent occupant of the balloon and thus do violence to equal liberty. Similarly, if a man blocks with his body a narrow passage previously unoccupied and unused, although he does not thereby violate equal liberty and should therefore ordinarily be left in possession of the passage, there are nevertheless cases in which it would be absolutely essential to oust him. Salus populi suprema lex. Yet this does not alter the truth that the safety of the people is, generally speaking, best secured by the observance of equal liberty as the necessary basis of society, and that the more we strive for this observance the more universally practicable it becomes.
Therefore, I repeat, let us try liberty before resorting to authority. But Mr. Byington objects to this because, not seeing his way with perfect clearness, he cannot enjoy the prospect. Let him reflect, however, that I, to whom the prospect under the Single Tax is perfectly clear, loathe and abhor it. It is perfectly natural that the unthinking man should side with the party that promises the altogether lovely. But it is surprising that a man of Mr. Byington’s intelligence should refuse to follow the path of freedom because it is admitted that at points the light is dim and that even the goal perhaps is not ideal.
Mr. Byington, in his last paragraph, is guilty of an error in logic. Because his own advocacy of Prohibition is illustrative of the authoritarian tendency of the Single Taxer, he thinks the anti-Prohibition views of his fellow Single Taxers must be illustrative of the opposite. Not at all. The latter fact only shows that the particular authoritarian bee that is buzzing in Mr. Byington’s bonnet is absent from the bonnets of most other Single Taxers. But in its place there is a whole swarm of other bees equally authoritarian. There are a very few Single Taxers whose tendencies are genuinely in the direction of greater liberty, but, taken as a whole, the Single Taxers believe in a vast extension, in some form or other, of the powers and functions of government. T.
The Worst, Rather, Because Irreparable.
[Alexandre Dumas fils.]
Of all stupidities of which a man can be guilty, marriage is that which I would most willingly counsel; it is at least the only one that he cannot repeat every day.
Love and the Locksmith.
[Lippincott’s Magazine.]
“Love laughs at locksmiths.” Truly well may he
Laugh at the lock who holds the magic key!
When Love tries wed-lock, and the key thereof.
Is lost, ’tis then the locksmith laughs at Love.
Clinton Scollard.
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.
