Like the United States, Australia has a libertarian political party. As in the United States it is plagued with dissension and gets very few votes. Once called the Workers party, it is now called the Progress party. Upon its formation it was immediately identified by the press and much of the community as right-wing and indeed “fascist”. Party members and even libertarians who are not party members are also commonly so described. Similar experiences could be related from other parts of the world.

Volume 4, Number 1 (1980)

The differing attitudes of Plato and Rousseau toward specialization and the division of labor color their views on who should formulate policy on political questions. In the theories of each thinker, the observations and evaluations made in such areas of social life as the production and exchange of services and material goods are carried over and applied to politics. In particular, the striking difference in the locus of sovereignty in the utopias of the two authors can be traced, in part, to their different attitudes toward specialization.

Volume 4, Number 1 (1980)

Murray Rothbard, in a paper entitled “The Ethics of Liberty,” argued that the standard for moral goodness is set by man’s nature. Whatever fulfills the nature of a living thing is good, and whatever diminishes the nature of a living thing is bad. When the living thing in question is a human being and when we are speaking of chosen ends, then we are speaking of moral “goods” and “bads.” Rothbard, in almost all respects, endorsed a natural-law doctrine as the groundwork for rights.

When Professor Georges Gurvitch, the highly esteemed occupant of the chair of philosophy at the University of Strasbourg before World War II and the author of a series of brilliant studies in the pluralist philosophy of law, referred to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as the central figure in the development of modern social and judicial philosophy, the basis of his highly flattering judgment was the philosophy of law that serves as the basis of Proudhon’s mutualism, a socio-legal conceptualization that had not only greatly influenced Gurvitch’s own thinking but which had exerted tremend

It will be argued in this paper that the external-benefits and public-goods arguments are incorrect and are due to a failure to consider all or the correct costs involved in the decision on whether the public sector should subsidize or provide the goods in question. The first part of this paper will briefly discuss the benchmark of economic efficiency, Pareto optimality.

Volume 4, Number 1 (1980)

The inflation which seems to have become endemic to much of the world, along with the perception that the prime culprits are the monopolistic issuers of national currencies, has recently led to a novel and striking proposal known as ‘’currency substitution.” The proposal is all the more striking because it bears two of the earmarks of intellectual revolution: simultaneous discovery and similar analytic results.

Volume 4, Number 1 (1980)

One of the most salutary results of the recent revival of scholarly interest in the intellectual traditions of classical liberalism is that F.A. Hayek’s social and political writings have begun to be taken as seriously as they deserve.’ Reasons for this development are not hard to find. By any standards, Hayek must be regarded as among the foremost contemporary exponents of the liberal tradition.

Volume 4, Number 2 (1980)

A generation after his death in 1950, Harold Laski, the eminent political scientist, socialist, and British Labour Party leader, is almost forgotten apart from an occasional monograph analyzing his political theories. Yet he remains significant and, rather paradoxically perhaps, his ideas are important for American libertarian thought.

Volume 4, Number 2 (1980)

Because problems concerning punishment arise at many intellectual levels, there is no one question or set of questions about punishment to be answered. I propose to address what I take to be some of the issues about punishment which are crucial for moral and social philosophy. I shall consider in turn the questions: What is the moral basis for punishment?; By whom is punishment justifiably imposed?; and, What kinds and degrees of punishment are justifiable?

One thing I learned from Professor King’s paper is that he and I are far less in agreement on punishment theory than I had anticipated. It is perhaps fortunate for King that I do not hold with an expectations theory of contract because then I might argue that he deserves to be punished for dashing my expectations. And since, on his very own theory, there is no nonarbitrary way to set any limits on punishment, then Professor King might have to agree that it would be justifiable for me to have him executed.

Volume 4, Number 2 (1980)