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Political thought grounded in Milton, Locke, Mill and the Enlightenment;

At different eras also called liberal, socialism …… ? w:Liberatatianism: Traditionally, libertarianism was a term for a form of left-wing politics; such left-libertarian ideologies seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production, or else to restrict their purview or effects, in favor of common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property as a barrier to freedom and liberty. In the United States, modern right-libertarian ideologies, such as minarchism and anarcho-capitalism, co-opted the term in the mid-20th century to instead advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights, such as in land, infrastructure, and natural resources.


Libertarian Bibliography edit

On Wikisource edit


Libertarian thinkers edit



ten-books-every-libertarian-should-read edit

There are, of course, others that might displace one or more of these in some people's top ten. Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal";Democracy in America – Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835


Books on the Libertarian Timeline (AI Libertarian category) edit

On Doing the Right Thing, and Other Essays, 1928 The Book of Journeyman, 1930; The Theory of Education in the United States, 1932; Our Enemy, the State, 1935; Memoirs of a Superfluous Man


Essential Books on the Libertarian Worldview edit

There are books that every libertarian should read and books every libertarian has read, but those circles don’t perfectly overlap. Here are 13 diverse book recommendations for well-rounded thinkers.

Economic Sophisms – Author:Frederic Bastiat

The great French liberal and economist Frederic Bastiat is best known for his pamphlet The Law — a scathing indictment of the threat that socialism poses to justice and the rule of law. But he produced another great work in Economic Sophisms, a collection of essays meticulously exposing and ridiculing the economic fallacies committed by his fellow deputies in the French National Assembly.

Sophisms includes his satirical “Petition From the Manufacturers of Candles, Tapers, Lanterns…and Generally of Everything Connected with Lighting” to the French legislature, asking for the government to blot out unfair foreign competition from a cheaper source of light — the sun.

Ahead of his time in many fields, he ruthlessly demolished fallacious arguments for protectionism, socialism, and redistribution with wit, humor, and incisive analysis.

Basic Economics + Applied Economics – Author:Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics is one of the clearest introductions to the economic way of thinking and how it can be applied to a vast number of real world problems. Don’t be intimidated by its brick-like dimensions — it’s written with common sense and plain English. It’s highly readable and easy to digest in pieces, if you don’t finish it off in one sitting. If you get to the end and want more, don’t worry — you can continue “thinking beyond stage one” with Sowell’s Applied Economics.

Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure – Author:Randy Simmons

Public Choice is the most important branch of economics for understanding how and why governments work the way they do. Public Choice is essentially the science of political skepticism: using economic analysis to examine how the incentives of democracy guide the decision making of politicians, bureaucrats, voters, and special interests.

Randy Simmons’ Beyond Politics is the best and most accessible survey of Public Choice, explaining in clear and concrete terms just what things government cannot do — and what the consequences are when it tries to do them anyway.

The Problem of Political Authority – Author:Michael Huemer

In this text, philosopher Michael Huemer exposes the shaky foundations of the most basic premises of government. Carefully tracing the implications of basic moral tenets that nearly everyone accepts, Huemer shows that the authority of the state is a chimera: there is no way to get from the ethical rules that govern how individuals should treat each other to a system that empowers a few people — “the state” — with the privileged moral position to issue coercive commands, while imposing on everyone else the moral duty to obey them. Huemer throws down the gauntlet and challenges the very notion of political authority — and with it, the special standard to which government actions are held.

The Myth of the Rational Voter – Author:Bryan Caplan

The biggest reason why democracies choose bad policies is not selfishness, corruption, or lobbyists — it’s the voters themselves. Bryan Caplan documents the overwhelming empirical evidence that voters are not just ignorant about the most basic aspects of law, government, and economics, but they are also actively irrational in their preferences. In other words, voters are not just wrong but passionately and systematically wrong.

Worse, Caplan shows that these problems are inherent to the democratic system: voters have no incentive to be rational, well-informed, or coolheaded, and politicians have every reason to stoke prejudice and exploit voters’ ignorance. Limiting the scope of democratic power is the only sure way to limit the damage irrational voters can do.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments – Author:Adam Smith

Everyone knows Adam Smith’s magisterial work The Wealth of Nations, but his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, is essential for laying the ethical, psychological, and sociological groundwork for his later work in economics and philosophy. Today, Adam Smith is frequently demonized as the patron saint of greed and selfishness, but Moral Sentiments shows that Smith had a nuanced and deep understanding of human nature, our drives for virtue and vice, and the spirit and sympathies that help human beings thrive.

This book, published in 1759, was vastly ahead of its time in many fields, foreshadowing later developments in social science, moral philosophy, and social psychology. But it is also packed with deep and practical insights for any student of human nature. If you find Smith a little too daunting on the first attempt, Russ Roberts’ How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life is a short and friendly introduction to some of the insights in Moral Sentiments.

The God of the Machine – Author:Isabel Paterson

First published in 1943, The God of the Machine was one of four books that emerged in the depths of World War II — along with Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom — that launched the modern libertarian movement and helped turn the intellectual tide against collectivism.

At a time when socialism and fascism were conquering whole continents, Paterson set out a defense of individualism, the free market, and limited government that remains powerful and timely to this day. By tracing the role of individual freedom in the rise and fall of civilizations, the book re-centered the discussion of human history on its true subject: the individual.

No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority – Author:Lysander Spooner

Legal theorist Lysander Spooner wrote this devastating critique of the U.S. Constitution in 1867. It remains one of the most thoughtful and hard-hitting criticisms of the American government and federal power. Spooner illustrates why the Constitution can carry no binding authority as a “contract” among “we the people.” At most, he argued, it could only bind and apply to the people who were actually alive at the time of its adoption, and then only to those who explicitly consented to its adoption. Therefore, breaking away from the union of states is “no treason.”

No Treason is also one of the most quotable individualist anarchist works. Any anarchist worth his or her salt knows by heart Spooner’s concise indictment of the Constitution: “But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Radicals for Capitalism – Author:Brian Doherty

Radicals for Capitalism is a weighty tome, summarizing centuries of classical liberal and libertarian history in one book. Reason magazine senior editor Brian Doherty goes to great lengths to capture the varying influences and factions within the broader libertarian movement. This book is an essential part of any collection on American political history, and friends of liberty will find a lot to learn and enjoy in its eyewitness histories and firsthand accounts of the motley crew that created and compose the modern American libertarian movement.

Democracy in America – Author:Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States to study prisons for the French government, but he ended up making his most important contributions by studying America’s free society in action. De Toqueville toured the country for nine months, observing how U.S. political, economic, religious, and social institutions worked together to foster human cooperation, and how that process of cooperation led to a thriving social order.

As Daniel J. D’Amico explains, “America’s early and rapid rate of economic development and its functioning social order resulted from a life spring of vibrant civil society. Families, clubs, churches, and various community groups provided early Americans with diverse opportunities to practice the art of association.”

The text, first published in 1835, endures as an influential and insightful account of American society and culture — it has been called the best book ever written about America — but more importantly, it describes the principles underlying social order itself. “In democratic countries the science of association is the mother science,” De Tocqueville wrote, “the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one.”

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – Author:Robert Heinlein

This novel explores a futuristic society in which a lunar colony revolts against rule from Earth. It is widely regarded as one of the best science fiction novels of all time, but its compelling portrait of a dystopian future and discussion of libertarian ideas make it an essential part of a libertarian bookshelf. Characters in the book range in their politics from self-proclaimed anarchist to would-be authoritarian, and the novel touches on libertarian themes such as spontaneous order, natural law, and individualism. Harsh Mistress would go on to win various awards, including the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Author:Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“The days rolled by in the camp — they were over before you could say ‘knife.’ But the years, they never rolled by; they never moved by a second.”

In this short novel, Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn lays out — in brutal detail — an ordinary day in the life of one prisoner held in Stalin’s Siberian gulags: the bitter cold, the pervasive hunger, the savage punishments, the powerlessness, despair, and fear. Solzhenitsyn himself spent ten years in the gulag for insulting Stalin, and his own personal experience sharpens the story with heartbreaking detail. Tens of millions were churned through the gulags and slave labor camps in the Soviet Union; more than one million people would die there. Ivan Denisovich helps to humanize an ocean of terror and human suffering that all too easily blurs into a pile of statistics.

This piece ran at the LearnLiberty Blog


roots-modern-libertarian-ideas edit

Authors edit

  • Adam Smith (16 June 1723 NS (5 June 1723 OS) - 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist, philosopher, and author.
  • Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises ( German: [ˈluːtvɪç fɔn ˈmiːzəs]; 29 September 1881 - 10 October 1973)
  • Friedrich Hayek CH ( German: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈaʊ̯ɡʊst ˈhaɪ̯ɛk]; 8 May 1899 - 23 March 1992)
  • Thomas Paine (or Pain; February 9, 1737 [ O.S. January 29, 1736] - June 8, 1809)
  • John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 - 8 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist and civil servant.
  • John Locke (; 29 August 1632 - 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician,
  • [[Author:Richard Cobden|]Richard Cobden ]
  • Author:James Edwin Thorold Rogers
  • James Madison, Jr., was born on March 16, 1751, (March 5, 1751, Old Style, Julian calendar)
  • Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, Viscount de Tocqueville ( French: [alɛgzi ʃaʁl ɑ̃ʁi kleʁɛl də tɔkvil]; 29 July 1805 -
  • H. L. Mencken
  • Isabel Paterson (January 22, 1886 - January 10, 1961) was a Canadian-American journalist, novelist, political
  • Murray Newton Rothbard (; March 2, 1926 - January 7, 1995) was an American heterodox economist of the Austrian School,
  • Richard Allen Epstein (born April 17, 1943)
  • Mary Wollstonecraft (; 27 April 1759 - 10 September 1797)
  • Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque ( French: ; 25 October 1767 - 8 December 1830
  • William Lloyd Garrison (December 10, 1805 - May 24, 1879)
  • Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
  • William Ellery Channing (1780-1842),
  • Angelina Emily Grimké Weld (February 20, 1805 - October 26, 1879)
  • Sarah Moore Grimké (November 26, 1792 - December 23, 1873)
  • Charles Murray, 1st Earl of Dunmore (1661-1710),
  • Richard Overton (Leveller) (1640-1664),
  • David Hume
  • Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 (April 2, 1743 Old Style, Julian calendar),
  • Immanuel Kant (; German: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl kant]; 22 April 1724 - 12 February 1804)
  • Herbert Spencer
  • Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 - May 14, 1887)
  • Alvin Toffler was born on October 4, 1928, in New York City,
  • Ayn Rand (; born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, Russian: Али́са Зино́вьевна Розенба́ум; February 2 [ O.S. January 20] 1905
  • Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 - January 23, 2002)
  • Michael Polanyi, (11 March 1891 - 22 February 1976)
  • Bastiat was born in Bayonne, Aquitaine, a port town in the south of France on the Bay of Biscay, on 29 June 1801.
  • Bertrand de Jouvenel
  • Milton Friedman
  • Richard Cobden
  • The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States, and the most widely read weekly
  • Jean-Baptiste Say ( French: [ʒãbatist sɛ]; 5 January 1767 - 15 November 1832)
  • Men against the State : the expositors of individualist anarchism in America, 1827-1908

by Martin, James Joseph, ai

  • Economics of Liberty by John Beverley Robinson, 1916 external source
  • Anarchism and Socialism by Georgiĭ Valentinovich Plekhanov, Eleanor Marx Aveling, 1912 external source
  • Anarchism: A Criticism and History of the Anarchist Theory by Ernst Victor Zenker, 1897 external source
  • Essays on catholicism, liberalism and socialism - considered in their fundamental principles by Juan Donoso Cortés, marqués de Valdegamas, 1874 external source
  • The Abolition of the State: An Historical and Critical Sketch of the Parties Advocating Direct by Sigmund Engländer, 1873 external source
  • A Woman's Philosophy of Woman: Or, Woman Affranchised. An Answer to Michelet, Proudhon, Girardin by Jenny P . d'. Héricourt, 1864 external source

Anarchist thinkers edit

  • Anarchism in theory : classics of anarchist thought. William Godwin, the father of anarchism : Enquiry concerning political justice --
  • Max Stirner, individualist anarchism : The ego and his own --
  • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, mutualist anarchism : General idea of the revolution in the nineteenth century --
  • Michael Bakunin, revolutionary anarchism : God and the state ; Statism and anarchy --
  • Peter Kropotkin, anarchist Communism : The conquest of bread --
  • Leo Tolstoy Christianan anarchism : The kingdom of god is within you -- The mind of the anarchist : memoirs and autobiographies. Peter Kropotkin, the "repentant nobleman" : Memoirs of a revolutionist -- Emma Goldman, anarchism and the liberated woman : Living my life -- Alexander Berkman, "Propaganda by the deed" : Prison memoirs of an anarchist -- Rudolf Rocker, the anarchist "melting pot" : The London years -- Anarchism in practice : firsthand descriptions. Josiah Warren, the Cincinnati time store and the modern times colony : Practical details in equitable commerce ; Practical applications of the elementary principles of "true civilization" -- Voline, Nestor Makhno and anarchism in the Russian Revolution : The unknown revolution -- Franz Borkenau, the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War : The Spanish cockpit -- Anarchism today : anarchist themes in the contemporary world. Herbert Read, anarchism and man's freedom : Existentialism, Marxism and anarchism -- Daniel Guérin, workers' self-management of industry : Anarchism -- Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, anarchism and student revolt : Obsolete Communism, the left-wing alternative -- Roel van Duyn, the Kabouters of Holland : Proclamation of the Orange Free State -- Paul and Percival Goodman, restoration of the community : Communitas


Social reformists edit

Publications edit

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