Liberty’s Library

Liberty: Origins Edition

Benjamin Tucker: Liberty Whole Volume One, Issues 1–26: Liberty, Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order, was an individualist anarchist periodical edited and published by Benjamin Tucker from 1881 to 1908. Liberty Whole Volume One includes every single article from the issues 1–26 of the first volume.

Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty: Instead Of a Book, By Men Too Modest To Write One: Instead Of a Book, By Men Too Modest To Write One is a selection of articles from the first volume of Liberty edited by Lukas Nikodym and Tomas Nikodym with a foreword by Lawrence W. Reed.

Sample Issues of Liberty: A free man is one who enjoys the use of his reason and his faculties; who is neither blinded by passion, not hindered or driven by oppression, not deceived by erroneous opinions.

Liberty: Legacy Edition

An Electronic Edition of Leonard E. Read’s Library: “The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society’s legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.” — Leonard E. Read, I, Pencil

I’ll Have Pancakes: The first short story by the members of the MiceEatCheese.co collective.

The Freeman Archive: Every issue of FEE’s The Freeman published since 1970 in ePub and Mobi for your Kindle readers and other mobile devices. Have fun. Or don’t. It’s just an announcement.

Ludwig von Mises Institut Cz & Sk Library: Library of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Cz & Sk in ePub and Mobi formats for your Kindle and other mobile devices.



Friends of Liberty

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.

Against Intellectual Property: Would a libertarian society recognize patents as legitimate? What about copyright? In Against Intellectual Property, Stephan Kinsella, a patent attorney of many years’ experience, offers his response to these questions. Kinsella is altogether opposed to intellectual property, and he explains his position in this brief but wide-ranging book.

Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo: The state makes a mess of everything it touches, argues Jeffrey Tucker in Bourbon for Breakfast. Perhaps the biggest mess it makes is in our minds. Its pervasive interventions in every sector affect the functioning of society in so many ways, we are likely to intellectually adapt rather than fight. Tucker proposes another path: see how the state has distorted daily life, rethink how things would work without the state, and fight against the intervention in every way that is permitted.

How to Start Your Own Country: Can you really start your own country? Erwin Strauss shows you five different methods for doing just that, as well as everything you need to know about sovereignty, national defense, diplomacy, raising revenue and recruiting settlers. Erwin Strauss speaks at the Second Annual Seasteading Conference (2009) on all of the practicalities involved in setting up one’s own free sovereign territory. “Seasteading is about establishing something above board, highly visible, to inspire other people to help it grow.”

The Production of Security: The initial article of the young Molinari, here translated for the first time as “The Production of Security,” was the first presentation anywhere in human history of what is now called “anarcho-capitalism” or “free market anarchism.” While an ardent individualist, Molinari did not base the brunt of his argument on a moral opposition to the State. Instead, he grounded his argument on free-market, laissez-faire economics, and proceeded logically to ask the question: If the free market can and should supply all other goods and services, why not also the services of protection?

Are We Good Enough for Liberty?: If you do not govern yourself, you will be governed. — Lawrence W. Reed

The Art of Being Free: “The world spins on ideas and ideologies. Although it has received ‘bad press’ in the last century, an ideology is nothing more than a clearly defined set of ideas that express an integrated worldview. As such, the worth of any particular ideology depends upon how closely it corresponds with reality and how successfully it answers the basic questions of individuals within society: for example, ‘What is justice?’” — Wendy McElroy

Defending the Undefendable:Defending the Undefendable performs the service of highlighting, the fullest and starkest terms, the essential nature of the productive services performed by all people in the free market. By taking the most extreme examples and showing how the Smithian principles work even in these cases, the book does far more to demonstrate the workability and morality of the free market than a dozen sober tomes on more respectable industries and activities. By testing and proving the extreme cases, Walter Block all the more illustrates and vindicates the theory.” — Murray N. Rothbard



Library of the Month

Walter Block: “It is no contradiction to oppose the criminalization of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, etc., while at the same time declaring that such behavior is immoral and unethical.”

Defending the UndefendableDefending the Undefendable performs the service of highlighting, the fullest and starkest terms, the essential nature of the productive services performed by all people in the free market. By taking the most extreme examples and showing how the Smithian principles work even in these cases, the book does far more to demonstrate the workability and morality of the free market than a dozen sober tomes on more respectable industries and activities. By testing and proving the extreme cases, he all the more illustrates and vindicates the theory.” — Murray N. Rothbard

The Privatization of Roads and Highways The Mises Institute is pleased to introduce Walter Block’s remarkable new treatise on private roads, a 494-page book that will cause you to rethink the whole of the way modern transportation networks operate. It is bold, innovative, radical, compelling, and shows how free-market economic theory is the clarifying lens through which to see the failures of the state and see the alternative that is consistent with human liberty.

Building Blocks for Liberty “Yes, Walter Block is provocative. He is an admitted anarcho-capitalist, and his signature treatise is called Defending the Undefendable. But readers who spend time with his prose discover that there is far more to the Blockian method than simply breaking taboos. He is provocative not just because of his conclusions but also because he is relentlessly logical, unfailingly truthful, and unusually sincere. He wants answers to the most vexing human problems—whether they are small or large—and he is going to pursue that truth as far as human reasoning can take him.” — Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The Case for Discrimination “Every age offers its own version of a false moral code. Just as Tom Sawyer thought that he was surely evil for being tempted to free a slave, we too live with incredible illusions about right and wrong as it applies to the civic realm. A firm principle of our age is that we must never discriminate. With Professor Block’s book, however, we are encouraged to be free at last.” — Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Toward a Libertarian Society I hope this book causes you to think, and question how society can function successfully without a monolithic state riding roughshod over us. It would give me great pleasure if this helped in some small way to promote our beloved philosophy, libertarianism.


Archive

Walter Block

Auberon Herbert

Ron Paul

Carl Menger

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Max Stirner

Frederic Bastiat

Lysander Spooner