Political Theory

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Inquisitor — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:21:45 GMT

Locking the thread - if anyone has further suggestions, feel free to PM me.

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Geoffrey Allan Plauché — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:54:10 GMT

For Veatch, there is also his book Human Rights: Fact or Fancy? And I think his essay "Natural Law: Dead or Alive?" is online somewhere.

For Rasmussen and Den Uyl, there is also their book Liberalism Defended.

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Inquisitor — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:34:24 GMT

Danny, my list is incomplete still (and will be for a long time.) Thanks for the recommendations though. I will add them in later, and link them.

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Donny with an A — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 06:47:22 GMT

I'll do you one better. Here's a short list that'll teach you the basics of libertarianism over the course of a summer without needing to quit your day job. If you're familiar with everything here, there shouldn't be any conversation you'll be completely in the dark about. Austrian economics, of course, is an entirely different matter, but I'll leave that to others.

John Stuart Mill: On Liberty (It shouldn't be surprising to hear that this is probably my favorite book in political philosophy. It's rough, imprecise, and ultimately isn't completely successful, but it provides a lot of the intuitive punch for pursuing the philosophy of libertarianism, and gives shape to a lot of intuitions that are critical for studying it.) - 200 pages or so.

Ludwig von Mises: The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (Philosophically, it's not so interesting, but the kind of case it makes for libertarianism is fundamentally different from the kinds made in the others, and so it's definitely important. Mises' passion is contagious, and the more outward-looking nature of his discussion is worth thinking about. Ultimately, this too fails to provide a definitive argument, but I still think it's an indespensible part of the process of developing one's intuitions.) - a little over 100 pages.

John Harsanyi: "Does Reason Tell Us What Moral Code to Follow and, Indeed, to Follow Any Moral Code at All?" (This essay is another one of my favorites. It builds on the same sort of thinking as Mises, and should be kept in mind when reading Nozick. It finally starts to move into more technical ground, and offers one kind of philosophical framework for thinking about morality and justice. It will contrast sharply with Nozick's account, but it raises some questions that can feed endless contemplation.) - I think around 15 pages?

Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (This is probably the most important book in libertarian philosophy, period, and represents a complete change of direction from Harsanyi's sort of thinking. Though many libertarians disagree with Nozick's justification of the minimal state, the ideas Nozick presents are invaluable and widely used. Anyone talking about libertarianism without having read this is doing himself and others a profound disservice.) - somewhere between 300 and 350 pages, I think.

Judith Jarvis Thomson: Rights, Restitution, & Risk (Read chapters 4 and 5; they're excellent and add a lot to what Nozick said. Thomson's approach to moral philosophy is excellent, and these chapters get right to the meat of what are probably the biggest questions in libertarianism.) - I think 30 pages or so.

If you read all of this, and really think about it, you'll instantly be at a level above that of almost any non-academic philosopher. I promise.

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

JAlanKatz — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:47:08 GMT

Here's my suggestion, if anyone wants to tackle it: To create a good reading list which can be done in one summer (for a college kid or a teacher.) In other words, not "where would you start?" and not "what do I ever need to read?" but something in between, a good overall coverage from which to begin a lifetime of study. I have some ideas, and if I ever get some free time (after the race) I will make my own list.

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Niccolò — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:43:51 GMT

Donny with an A:
It's funny...most of the books and essays I would have thought to recommend are conspicuously absent from your list. Specifically, those which require one to refine what it means to be a libertarian, and how libertarianism differs from other views, aren't really there. Glad to see that at least Nozick made the cut! But with that in mind, I'll offer my own reading list:
1. John Stuart Mill: On Liberty

WHOA! Dan, I did not see that one coming.

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Donny with an A — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:25:05 GMT

It's funny...most of the books and essays I would have thought to recommend are conspicuously absent from your list. Specifically, those which require one to refine what it means to be a libertarian, and how libertarianism differs from other views, aren't really there. Glad to see that at least Nozick made the cut! But with that in mind, I'll offer my own reading list:

John Stuart Mill: On Liberty

Ludwig von Mises: The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

John Locke: On Civil Government (the "second treatise")

Robert Nozick: Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Judith Jarvis Thomson: Rights, Restitution, & Risk

Joel Feinberg: Social Philosophy

Freidrich August von Hayek: "The Use of Knowledge in Society"

Henry Hazlitt: Economics in One Lesson

Ronald Coase: "The Problem of Social Cost"

Garrett Hardin: "The Tragedy of the Commons"

Dan Hausman and Michael McPherson: Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy

Lionel Robbins: "Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility: A Comment"

John Harsanyi: "Does Reason Tell Us What Moral Code to Follow and, Indeed, to Follow Any Moral Code at All?"

G. A. Cohen: Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality

Michael Otsuka: Libertarianism Without Inequality

Becky Mansfield: "Privatization: Property and the Remaking of Nature-Society Relations"

Randall Holcombe: "Common Property in Anarcho-Capitalism"

Roy Cordato: "Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: They're Not the Same"

Peter Hill: "Market-Based Environmentalism and the Free Market: Substitutes or Compliments?"

Mark Pennington: "Liberty, Markets, and Environmental Values: A Hayekian Defense of Free-Market Environmentalism"

David Roodman: "Another Take on Free-Market Environmentalism: A Friendly Critique"

Walter Block (ed): Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation (especially Murray Rothbard's "Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution")

Gerald Sauer: "Imposed Risk Controversies: A Critical Analysis"

Douglas Lackey: "Taking Risk Seriously"

Kristian Skagen Ekeli: "Environmental Risk, Uncertainty, and Intergenerational Ethics"

Kenneth Templeton, Jr. (ed): The Politicization of Society

William Graham Sumner: What Social Classes Owe to Each Other

David Beito, Peter Gordon, and Alexander Tabarrok (eds): The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society

The order of these selections was intentional, and I think anyone who hasn't read these books and essays would benefit immensely from reading all of them. They represent a broad array of different viewpoints; not all of them are even written by libertarians. But the ideas contained in each of them have been critical to my understanding libertarianism as a philosophical position, and not just as an opinion. I don't agree with most of them, but they've all helped me understand my own views a lot better. I'm sure there are a lot of things that absolutely should be on that list, but aren't, and for that I apologize; I'm only 21. Most obviously, Rawls isn't on the list because I haven't actually read his books (A Theory of Justice and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, specifically, would probably be on the list if I had read them). But the things on this list are, I think, the most important libertarian-themed books I've ever read (believe it or not, most of what I've read didn't make the list), and hopefully that counts for something.

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Niccolò — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:14:22 GMT

PIN PRZ

Re: Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Inquisitor — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:26:49 GMT

Some additional works I wanted to add (the original list most consipicuously does not include works on minarchism, for obvious reasons):

Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia

Jan Lester, Escaping From Leviathan

David Gordon, Resurrecting Marx

Richard Garner, Response to the Anarchist FAQ

Stephan Kinsella, How We Come to Own Ourselves

Causation and Aggression

Against Intellectual Property

A Libertarian Theory of Contracts: Title Transfer, Binding Promises, and Inalienability

In Defense of the Corporation

Defending Argumentation Ethics: Reply to Murphy and Callahan

Roderick Long, Reason and Value: Aristotle vs Rand

Anarchism vs Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a free country?

Foundations of Libertarian Ethics

Philosophy Seminar with Roderick Long

Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty (3 vols)

The Road to Serfdom

Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property

A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism

Democracy - the God that Failed

Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Atlas Shrugged

The Fountainhead

Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism

David Kelley, A Life of One's Own

The Logical Structure of Objectivism

Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics

Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelean Defence of the Liberal Order

In Defense of Natural End Ethics: A Rejoinder to O'Neil and Osterfeld

Douglas Rasmussen, A groundwork for rights: Man's Natural end

Douglas Den Uyl, In Defense of Natural End Ethics

Joseph Salerno, Ludwig von Mises as Social Rationalist

James Otterson, Actual ethics

Henry Veatch, Rational Man: A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelean Ethics

For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory

Geoffrey Allen Plauche, On the Social Contract and the Persistence of Anarchy

Aristotelian-Liberal Autonomy (Working Paper)

Moral Legislation and Democracy: The Devlin-Hart-Dworkin Debate Revisited

Chris M. Sciabarra, Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

Larry Eshelman, Ludwig von Mises on Principle

Pascal Salin, Liberalisme

H. L. A Hart, Are there any natural rights?

John Hasnas, The Obviousness of anarchy

Benjamin Barros, Property and Freedom

Mises Institute Media Resources (esp. seminars; good for those who don't like or don't have the time for reading)

The following homepages are also worthwhile visiting:

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Stephan Kinsella (publications)

Roderick Long

Geoffrey A. Plauche (publications)

Kevin Carson

Alliance of the Libertarian Left

Molinary Institute

Ludwig von Mises Institute

Libertarian political philosophy reading list

Inquisitor — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:15:22 GMT

Well, I was going to compile a list myself, but most helpfully an extensive one already exists here. I'll just replicate it. I'll add some additional works anyway in a separate post, and highlight those which I think are of great importance. I'll leave the thread unlocked for a while should anyone have suggestions or comments.

Agorism.info

Against Politics

Albert Loan’s Institutional Bases of the Spontaneous Order: Surety and Assurance

Alfred Cuzán’s Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy? (PDF file)

Anarchism.net

Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography

Anthony de Jasay’s The State

Arthur Silber’s I Accuse: To Those Who Pave the Way for the New Fascism

Anti-State.com

Birgir Runolfsson Solvason’s Institutional Evolution in the Icelandic Commonwealth (PDF file)

Birgir Runolfsson Solvason’s Ordered Anarchy, State, and Rent-Seeking: The Icelandic Commonwealth, 930-1262
[Note: whenever links in this piece don’t work change www.hag.hi.is to www.hi.is]

Bob Black’s The Libertarian as Conservative

Bob Murphy’s Private Law

Bob Murphy’s Insuring Chaos Theory

Bob Murphy’s Minerva

Bob Murphy’s But Wouldn’t Warlords Take Over?

Boston Anarchist Drinking Brigade

Brad Edmonds’ Why Government Must Be Abolished

Brad Edmonds’ Why Abolishing Government Would Not Bring Chaos

Brad Edmonds’ How to Abolish Government

Brad Edmonds’ Abolishing Government Improves the Roads

Brad Edmonds’ How to Persuade Others to Abolish Government

Brad Edmonds’ Government Will Be Abolished

Brad Edmonds’ Why the Public Puts Up With Abusive Cops

Bruce Benson’s The Enterprise of Customary Law

Bruce Benson’s Customary Law With Private Means of Resolving Disputes (PDF file)

Bruce Benson’s Enforcement of Private Property Rights in Primitive Societies (PDF file)

Bruce Benson’s Guns for Protection and Other Private-Sector Responses to Crime (PDF file)

Bruce Benson’s Reciprocal Exchange as the Basis for Recognition of Law (PDF file)

Bruno Leoni’s Freedom and the Law

Bruno Leoni’s Law and Politics

Bryan Caplan’s Anarchist Theory FAQ

Bryan Caplan’s articles on anarchist economics

Bryan Caplan’s articles on anarchist political theory

Bryan Caplan and Ed Stringham’s Networks, Anarcho-Capitalism, and the Paradox of Cooperation (PDF file)

Butler Shaffer’s What Is Anarchy?

Center for a Stateless Society

Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s Government and the Railroads During World War I: Political Capitalism and the Death of Enterprise

Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s Labor History Revisionism: A Libertarian Analysis of the Pullman Strike

Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s Understanding the Global Crisis: Reclaiming Rand’s Radical Legacy

Daniel C. Burton’s Libertarian Anarchism (PDF file)

David Friedman’s Anarchy and Efficient Law

David Friedman’s Police, Courts, and Laws – on the Market

David Friedman’s Do We Need a Government?

David Friedman’s Law as a Private Good: A Response to Tyler Cowen on the Economics of Anarchy

David Gordon’s The Trouble With Democracy

David Gordon’s Review of George Smith (PDF file)

David Osterfeld’s Anarchism and the Public Goods Issue (PDF file)

David Osterfeld’s Internal Inconsistencies in Arguments for Government (PDF file)

Economic Government Group

Dead Anarchists Edward Stringham’s Market-Chosen Law (PDF file)

Eric Frank Russell’s The Great Explosion

Eric Knauer’s Response to Robert Bidinotto on the Contradiction in Anarchism

Explorations in the Public Choice Theory of Government

François-René Rideau’s Du droit de porter les armes – la liberté individuelle d’organiser sa propre defense

Fredric C. Young’s Nozick and the Individualist Anarchist (PDF file)

Free Life Index

Free-Market Alternatives to the State

Gael J. Campan’s Does Justice Qualify As An Economic Good? (PDF file)

Gene Callahan’s We Need the State – Otherwise, Something Bad Might Happen!

George H. Smith’s In Defense of Rational Anarchism

George H. Smith’s Justice Entrepreneurship in a Free Market (PDF file)

George H. Smith’s Justice Entrepreneurship Revisited (PDF file)

Gerard Casey’s Reflections on Legal Polycentrism (PDF file)

Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s The Private Production of Defense (PDF file)

Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis (PDF file)

Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State

Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s The Idea of a Private Law Society

Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s Myth of National Defense (large PDF file)

Individualist Anarchist Resources

Individualist Anarchist Society

James Boyd’s From Far Right to Far Left – and Farther – with Karl Hess

James Dale Davidson’s Note on Anarchy, State, and Utopia (PDF file)

James J. Martin’s Business and the New Deal

James Redford’s Jesus Is An Anarchist (PDF file)

Jan Narveson’s Is Government A Mistake?

Jarret Wollstein’s Society Without Coercion (PDF)

Jeremy Weiland’s Two Sides of the Skeptic’s Coin

Journal of Libertarian Studies

Joe Peacott’s Individualism Reconsidered

Joe Peacott’s An Overview of Individualist Anarchist Thought (PDF file)

John D. Sneed’s Order Without Law: Where Will Anarchists Keep the Madmen? (PDF file) (another version, non-PDF)

John Hasnas’ Myth of the Rule of Law

John Hasnas’ Reflections on the Minimal State

John T. Sanders’ The Free-Market Model vs. Government (PDF file)

Joseph R. Peden’s Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law (PDF file)

Joseph Stromberg’s Political Economy of Liberal Corporativism

Joseph Stromberg’s The Role of State Monopoly Capitalism in the American Empire (PDF file)

Joseph Stromberg’s English Enclosures and Soviet Collectivization

Karl T. Fielding’s The Role of Personal Justice in Anarcho-Capitalism (PDF file)

Karl T. Fielding’s Stateless Society: French on Rothbard (PDF file)

Karl T. Fielding’s Nonexcludability and Government Financing of Public Goods (PDF file)

Karl Hess’s The Death of Politics

Ken Knudson’s Critique of Anarchist Communism

Kevin A. Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy

Kevin A. Carson’s Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital: A Mutualist Synthesis

Kevin A. Carson’s Libertarian Forum: A Resource for UnCapitalists?

Left & Right

Leonard Brewster’s The Impossibility of the State? (PDF file)

Leslie Siddeley’s The Rise and Fall of Fraternal Insurance Organizations

Lew Rockwell’s How States Fall and Liberty Triumphs

Lew Rockwell’s The National Defense Myth

Lew Rockwell’s Working Around Leviathan

Lex Liberatis Privately Produced Law

Libertarian Forum

The Libertarian Nation Foundation’s journal Formulations

Links Worth A Look

Linda and Morris Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty (partial)

Linda and Morris Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty (complete – PDF)

Literature of Liberty

Lysander Spooner

Mary Ruwart’s Healing Our World

Memory Hole

Michael S. Rozeff’s An Economic Analysis of Power

Michael S. Rozeff’s How the Power to Tax Destroys

Michael S. Rozeff LRC Archives

Movement of the Libertarian Left

Murray Rothbard’s Anatomy of the State

Murray Rothbard’s Defense Services on the Free Market

Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty

Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty

Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State / Power and Market

Murray Rothbard’s Pennsylvania’s Anarchist Experiment: 1681-1690

Murray Rothbard’s Nations By Consent: Decomposing the Nation-State (PDF file)

Murray Rothbard’s Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State (PDF file)

Murray Rothbard’s Origins of the Welfare State in America

Mutualist.org

Nicholas Dykes’ Mrs. Logic and the Law: A Critique of Ayn Rand’s View of Government

Panarchy.org

Patrick Tinsley’s Private Police: A Note (PDF file)

Peter Vallentyne’s Libertarianism

Rampart Journal

Randy Barnett’s “Pursuing Justice in a Free Society,” Parts One and Two

Randy Barnett’s Whither Anarchy? Has Nozick Justified the State? (PDF file)

Richard Wall’s Who’s Afraid of Noam Chomsky?

Richmond Under Lockdown

Rick Tompkins’ Libertarian Class Theory: How the Political Class Exploits the Economic Class

Robert H. Chappell’s Anarchy Revisited: The Public Education Dilemma (PDF file)

Robert Higgs’ The Political Economy of Fear

Robert LeFevre’s The Nature of Man and His Government

Roger Bissell’s Reslving the Government Issue

Roger Bissell’s More on the Government Controversy

Roy A. Childs’ Objectivism and the State

Roy A. Childs’ The Invisible Hand Strikes Back (PDF file)

Roy A. Childs’ Big Business and the Rise of American Statism

Roy Halliday’s Enforceable Rights: A Libertarian Theory of Justice

Samuel E. Konkin III’s Interview

Samuel E. Konkin III’s The New Libertarian Manifesto

Samuel E. Konkin III and Wally Conger’s Building a New Libertarian Movement

Sheldon Richman’s The Goal Is Freedom: For Equality; Against Privilege

Sheldon Richman’s Full Context (PDF file)

Spencer Heath blog

Stefan Molyneux’s The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives

Stefan Molyneux’s Disproving the State

Stefan Molyneux’s Life Without Government

Stefan Molyneux’s Inviting Freedom: Releasing Everyone’s “:Inner Libertarian”

Stefan Molyneux’s Market Anarchism: Are You Guys Crazy?

Stephan Kinsella’s What It Means To Be An Anarcho-Capitalist

Steven A. Peterson’s Moral Development and Critiques of Anarchism (PDF file)

Tatiana Nenova and Tim Harford’s Anarchy and Invention (PDF file)

Terry Anderson and P. J. Hill’s An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West (PDF file)

The Onion’s Americans Don’t Want a Country

Tom Bell’s Polycentric Law

Tom Bell’s Privately Produced Law (PDF file)

Tom Palmer’s Do We Need a Government? (PDF file)

Virgil Storr’s Defining Anarchy as Rock-n-Roll

The Voluntaryist

Wally Conger’s What’s Left?

Wally Conger’s Rediscovering Left & Right

Walter E. Grinder and John Hagel III’s Toward a Theory of State Capitalism (PDF file)

Wendy McElroy’s articles on individualist anarchism

Wikipedia article on anarcho-capitalism

Wikipedia article on individualist anarchism

Wikipedia article on mutualism

Wilton Alston’s Where Have All the Black Libertarians Gone?

www.polyarchy.org

Yo Anarchy

Roderick Long's articles:

Libertarian Anarchism: Responses to Ten Objections (HTML, PDF file, MP3 audio file, or Spanish translation – Mises University, 6 August 2004)

Why Objective Law Requires Anarchy
The Absent State?
Anarchism as Constitutionalism: A Reply to Bidinotto, Parts One, Two, and Three
The Great Divorce: A Reply to Machan, Parts One and Two
The Nature of Law, Parts One, Two, Three, and Four
Virtual Cantons: A New Path to Freedom
One Nation, Two Systems: The Doughnut Model
The Decline and Fall of Private Law in Iceland
Privatization, Viking Style: Model or Misfortune?
Anarchy in the U.K.: The English Experience with Private Protection
Defending a Free Nation
The Return of Leviathan: Can We Prevent It?
Rule-following, Praxeology, and Anarchy (PDF file)
Finding the Brake
Just Ignore Them
A Plea for Public Property
A Virtual-Canton Constitution, plus Commentary Parts One, Two, Three, and Four
An Open Letter to the Peace Movement
Equality: The Unknown Ideal
Liberty: The Other Equality (PDF file)