Sir Ernest Benn

Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, 2nd Baronet (1875–1954) was a British publisher, writer, and political publicist. He was the first president of The Society of Individualists (founded in 1942), which later merged with the National League for Freedom to become the Society for Individual Freedom. From his conversion to classical liberalism in the mid-1920s until his death in 1954, Benn published books and pamphlets on individualism and the free market. His The Confessions of a Capitalist was originally published in 1925 and was still in print twenty years later after selling a quarter of a million copies.

Articles

The People Who Borrow
Mises Daily Sir Ernest Benn
[Excerpted from chapter 6 of Debt: Private and Public, Good and Bad, 1938] British World War I Propaganda Poster Good debt is, as we have seen, an essential part of our financial foundations; without...
Political Money
Mises Daily Sir Ernest Benn
Our management of money is advocated as a way to save us from the rigors of the natural law, but it would appear that enormous inequality, indeed injustice, may result from these strange modern conceptions of the proper functions of a national treasury.
Rights for Robots
Mises Daily Sir Ernest Benn
I understand that in the United States there are still those who think that the machinery of government can be used as a substitute for personal responsibility on the part of the governed. This idea, as we know only too well in Britain, is the open road to disaster. It changes persons with responsibilities into robots with rights.

Publications

Confessions of a Capitalist
Sir Ernest Benn
From the author: Three things may be said about this book upon which there must, I think, be general agreement, and I mention them to save my critics trouble. The first is that the book is in bad taste, dealing as it does with matters which, by
Debt: Private and Public, Good and Bad
Sir Ernest Benn
From the author: The world would be a dismal place if everyone understood the technicalities of the Money Market. Most people know that they can more or less rely upon £3 a week, £1,000 a year or whatever it may be, and, being wholly ignorant of the
The State, The Enemy
Sir Ernest Benn
From the author: The following pages are concerned with the re-statement of old principles illustrated by examples selected from the happenings of the last forty years. In the Welfare State manufacturing delays contrast strangely with the speed of
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