1

A Brief History of Libertarianism

Matt Zwolinski
Philosophy, University of San Diego
John Tomasi
Political Science, Brown University

Chapter 1: What is Libertarianism?

Origins of Libertarianism
We think that libertarianism is best understood as a family of political
philosophies rather than a single coherent theory. Like any family, the
libertarian family has different branches, each with unique characteristics. Here
we find a family line that carries the chin of a studious great-uncle. There, a
branch with the dark eyes of a difficult aunt. Elsewhere, we find new lines
begun by young scholars eager to develop versions of libertarianism all their
own.
Imagine that we were asked to design facial-recognition software to
identify all members of the libertarian family (the kind of thing, for example,
that some governmental agency might wish to do). Is there an idea or set of
commitments that might be used to zero a view as libertarian?
The word libertarian is built on the word liberty, so that might seem
a promising place to begin. And that, indeed, is where the word itself
apparently did begin. In its earliest uses in the late 18th century, the term

libertarian referred simply to one who believed in human liberty. But not,
originally, to political or economic liberty. Rather, the libertarian was one who
believed in liberty of the will.1 Libertarians opposed the doctrine of
necessitarianism (what we would now call determinism) and thus believed
that human beings possess the power of free will.
It would not be long, however, before the meaning of the term was
extended from metaphysics to social philosophy. The Oxford English Dictionary
reports the first usage of the word in the sense of an advocate or defender of
liberty (especially in the political or social spheres) to have occurred in
England in 1796.2 A few similar references can be found scattered about the
first half of the 19th century. But for the most part, the term was applied in a
somewhat dismissive way to the views of others rather than as a self-description,
and mostly in the limited context of English debates over the French
Revolution.3
However, as we shall see when we examine the later history of the word,
there is a serious problem in trying to define a political creed in terms of a
fundamental commitment to liberty. After all, saying that a libertarian believes
in liberty is only helpful is we have a common understanding of liberty to fall
back on. And we have never had such a common understanding. Or, rather, we

The Oxford English Dictionary attributes the first usage of the word libertarian to
William Belsham in 1789, who asked in his Essays, Philosophical, Historical, and Literary,
What is the difference between the Libertarian...and the Necessarian? (Third Edition,
November 2010).
2 Lately marched out of the Prison at Bristol, 450 of the French Libertarians, London
Packet 12 February, 1796 (Third Edition, November 2010).
3 Stephan Kinsella, for instance, reports the following 1802 usage in The British Critic:
The authors Latin versesmark him for a furious Libertarian (if we may coin such a
term) and a zealous admirer of France, and her liberty, under Bonaparte, such Liberty!
See The British Critic, volume XX, London, 1802, p. 432. From the authors own search,
this appears to be the earliest use of the term in this sense recorded in Google Books.
1

have never had a common single common understanding. Montesquieu

exaggerated only slightly when he noted that There is no word that admits of
more various significations, and has made more varied impressions on the
human mind, than that of liberty,4 and Lord Acton stretched the truth only a
little more when he claimed that liberty is an idea of which there are two
hundred definitions, and that this wealth of interpretation has caused more
bloodshed than anything, except theology."5 Different persons and sects have
used the word liberty to refer to radically different ideas and so, if all that
libertarian means is an advocateof liberty, we should expect the term to
rapidly degenerate into confusion as it comes to be embraced by disparate
political parties with little in the way of substantive political, moral, or
philosophical commonalities.
And this, in fact, is precisely what we find. Many contemporary
American libertarians, for instance, who are familiar with the term libertarian
only as a reference to individuals like Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, and Murray
Rothbard, will be surprised to learn that their modern label derives from a term
(libertaire) coined and self-applied by a French anarcho-communist.6 For
Joseph Djacque, private property and the state are simply two different ways
in which social relationships became infused with hierarchy and oppression.7 A
consistent defender of liberty, he thus thought, must seek the complete

Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, volume 1, translated by Thomas Nugent (London:
The Colonial Press, 1900), p. 149.
5 Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Inaugural Lecture on the Study of
History, in Lectures on Modern History (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1906), p. 12.
6 Joseph Djacque coined the term in an 1857 letter to the French mutualist anarchist
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, in which he criticized what he regarded as the latters refusal to
support the freedom and rights of women. See his De ltre-humain mle et femelle, May,
1857. (http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/ecrits/lettreapjp.htm). He later went on to
7 The etymological discussion here and in the remainder of this section owes much to
several conversations between Matt Zwolinski and Charles Johnson.
4

abolition of both. Djacque popularized these ideas, and his new label for
them, through his influential anarcho-communist newsletter, Le Libertaire,
which he published out of New York from 1858 to 1861, and the term
libertarian saw a marked increase in use in the English language around this
time.
The term caught on among anarchists in Europe and the United States,
spreading in the latter half of the 19th century from communist anarchists like
Djacque, who opposed private property, to individualist anarchists like
Benjamin Tucker, who favored it. Both groups believed that opposition to the
state was a necessary corollary of libertarianism, but the word libertarian
itself was still used in a broad sense, as a kind of antonym to authoritarian.8
And it was this broader sense of the word that would ultimately triumph. Thus,
while the anti-statism of Djacque and Tucker would remain an important
element of libertarianism, the term was also used in the late 19th century to refer
to those who opposed the excesses of state authority without opposing the state
as such,9 and by the early twentieth century was used to refer even to a kind of
cultural support for liberty that had nothing directly to do with the state at all

Tucker uses the term in several of the essays collected in Benjamin Tucker, Instead of a
Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One(New York: Elibron Classics, 2005)., always with this
broad meaning. See, for instance, State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They
Agree, and Wherein They Differ (1888: There are two socialismsone is dictatorial,
the other libertarian), A Libertarians Pet Despotisms (1887), and Liberty and the
George Theory (1887: But the divorce laws, instead of being libertarian, are an express
recognition of the rightfulness of authority over the sexual relations).
9 In 1878, for instance, Sir John Robert Seeley described a libertarian as one who can
properly be said to defend liberty by opposing tyranny and resist[ing] the established
Government. Life and Times of Stein or Germany and Russia in the Napoleonic Age, volume 3
(Cambridge University Press, 1878), p. 355.
8

a kind of precursor, perhaps, to the contemporary idea of civil

libertarianism.10
One of the most important figures behind the development of the
contemporary American usage of the word libertarian was Charles T.
Sprading, a wealthy landowner and libertarian activist who lost much of his
fortune in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. In his 1913 book, Liberty and
the Great Libertarians, Sprading made a self-conscious effort to promote the
word libertarian as a way of referring to a broad spectrum of anti-statist ideas
and personalities.11 Indeed, he begins his book by noting that the libertarians
excerpted in it were chosen from all different political parties and economic
schools including Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Single-Taxers,
Anarchists, and Womens Rights advocates.12 So broad was the libertarian
tent, for Sprading, that the Individualist and the Communist could both find
a home in it. Providing, that is, that neither group attempts to impose its views
by force on the other.
Plans voluntarily accepted by individuals or groups of individuals and
not forced upon others are in no way a violation of liberty. They would
be if others were forced to do so by the seizure of "all means of
production and distribution," as the State Socialists purpose to do,
thereby excluding non-conformers from their use. It is not the

In 1901, Frederick William Maitland characterized the English as individualists and

libertarians for their dislike of the thought of an editor [having to defend] his proof
sheets sentence by sentence before an official board of critics. From William Stubbs,
Bishop of Oxford, The English Historical Review, vol. 16, no. 63 (Jul, 1901), p. 419.
11 Charles T. Sprading, Liberty and the Great Libertarians(Los Angeles: Golden Press, 1913).
12 Ibid., 5.
10

difference in taste between individuals that Libertarians object to, but the
forcing of one's tastes upon another.13
In making opposition to the initiation of force central to his definition of
libertarianism, and welding that opposition to the affirmation of private
property,, Sprading paved the way for the current American meaning of the
term, in which people like Rand, Friedman, and Rothbard are seen as
paradigmatic libertarians, while anarcho-communists like Peter Kropotkin,
Emma Goldman, and Murray Bookchin, are either forgotten altogether or
denied the label of true libertarian.
But if Sparding paved the way for the contemporary usage, it was
Leonard Read who applied the sealant. Read, a California businessman and
general manager of the Los Angeles branch of the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, is best known in libertarian circles today for his creation of the
Foundation for Economic Education in 1946, an organization that sought to
promote a philosophy of free markets and limited government in a variety of
ways, perhaps most significantly through its publication, The Freeman.14 Read
and his organization worked closely with most of the important figures in the
post-war libertarian movement in the United States, including Ayn Rand, Rose
Wilder Lane, Freidrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Henry Hazlett. He is
generally credited, and has credited himself, with popularizing the label of
libertarian as a shorthand way of referring to the free market, private
property, limited government philosophy and the moral and ethical tenets

Ibid., 6.
See, for a discussion of Read and the Foundation for Economic Education, Brian
Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian
Movement(New York: Public Affairs, 2007), chapter 4.
13
14

which underlie these institutions.15 And, indeed, The Freeman did publish one
of the earliest explicit calls to embrace the name libertarian for the
burgeoning free-market movement. Lamenting the fact that the word liberal
had been corrupted by leftists, Dean Russell called on his readers to reserve
for our own good use the good and honorable word libertarian, which he
defined as the belief that government should protect all persons equally
against external and internal aggression, but should otherwise generally leave
people alone to work out their own problems and aspirations.16 This
identification of libertarianism with an opposition to aggression would later
be seized upon by Murray Rothbard, who would take it so far as to identify the
Nonaggression axiom as the defining principle of libertarian thought.17 But
while Rothbards usage resonated with certain radical elements of the
libertarian movement, it never quite penetrated into popular usage, where the
term libertarian still serves to identify a principled commitment to something
like Reads free market[s], private property, [and] limited government,
without specifying the particular moral foundations on which that commitment
must rest.

Leonard Read, Talking to Myself (Irvington-on-Hudson: The Foundation for Economic

Education, 1970), 120-21. See also Reads 1975 interview with Reason magazine in which
he says Im the one who brought about and popularized the word libertarian.
Educating for Freedom: An Interview with Leonard Read, Reason, April, 1975, p.5.
Ironically, Read goes on to complain that the word has now been taken over by
anarchists [and] out-and-out socialists. I am indebted to Stephan Kinsella for the
references. See his The Origin of Libertarianism,
http://archive.mises.org/18385/the-origin-of-libertarianism/.
16 Dean Russell, Who is a Libertarian? The Freeman, May 1, 1950.
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/who-is-a-libertarian#axzz2d1BZd095
17 The libertarian creed rests upon one central axiom: that no man or group of men may
aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the
nonaggression axiom. Aggression is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of
physical violence against the person or property of anyone else. Aggression is therefore
synonymous with invasion. Murray N. Rothbard, For a New Liberty(New York: Collier,
1978), 27.
15

Libertarianism and Liberty

The term libertarian has, in the United States at least, thus come to
refer to something more specific than simply one who advocates liberty.
Libertarians advocate not just liberty but a particular vision of liberty as applied
to economic and political questions. But the precise details of that vision, and
its role in the system of libertarian thought, have often been misunderstood.
It has often been said, for instance, that libertarianism is distinguished by
its exclusive focus on what has been called negative liberty (freedom from), as
opposed to positive liberty (freedom to).18 On this view, an individuals liberty is
violated if others forcefully interfere with her doing what she wants to do if,
say, men with guns threaten violence to prevent her from crossing a national
border. But it is not violated if she merely lacks the internal or external means
necessary to do what she wants if, say, she is too weak from disease to walk
across the border, or if the border is a river that she has no boat to cross.
But this common characterization of libertarianism is inadequate in two
distinct ways. First, it is inaccurate insofar as it suggests that libertarians are
necessarily unconcerned with positive liberty, or even that they are less concerned
with positive liberty than with negative liberty. Libertarians do, it is true, believe
that negative liberty is the only form of freedom that can legitimately be

The locus classicus of this distinction is Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Four
Essays on Liberty, ed. Isaiah Berlin(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969). It is worth
noting that Berlin, too, uses the word libertarian in something like the broad sense that
prevailed in the 19th century, referring to those thinks such as Locke and Mill in
England, and Constant and Tocqueville in France, who thought that there ought to
exist a certain minimum area of personal freedom which must on no account be violated
p. 124.
18

demanded from others as a matter of moral right.19 But this is compatible with
believing that positive liberty is a significant moral value,20 and even with the
claim (which some contemporary libertarians have endorsed) that negative
liberty is valuable only because and to the extent that it serves as a means of
obtaining what really matters for its own sake the positive liberty to do what
one most wishes to do.21
But there is a second and even more serious way in which this
characterization is inaccurate. If negative liberty is understood merely as freedom
from forceful interference, then libertarianism turns out not to be committed
to negative liberty after all!22 After all, libertarians are ardent supporters of
rights of private property and, as many of libertarianisms critics have pointed
out, property rights seem to entail and require limitations on the negative
freedom of others.23 After all, part of what it means to own an object perhaps
the most important part is to have the right to forcefully exclude others from

Eric Mack and Gerald Gaus, "Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The Liberty
Tradition," in Handbook of Political Theory, ed. Gerald Gaus and Chandran
Kukathas(London: Sage, 2004), 116-17.
20 See, for instance, David Schmidtz and Jason Brennan, A Brief History of Liberty(New
York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
21 Tyler Cowen, The Paradox of Libertarianism, Cato Unbound, March 11, 2007
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/03/11/tyler-cowen/paradox-libertarianism.
22 Precisely how negative liberty should be characterized turns out to be a rather difficult
matter, involving questions about just what kinds of interference are to count as violating
it (force, sure, but what about a non-violent boycott? Or a threat to reveal embarrassing
information?), questions about what sorts of things are being interfered with (Actions?
Desires? Fully-informed desires?), whether interference must be intentional, and so on.
For our purposes here, though, these details do not matter much. So long as negative
liberty is understood in a non-moralized way, the problems identified in this paragraph will
pertain. See, for an overview, Carter, Ian, "Positive and Negative Liberty", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/liberty-positive-negative/>.
23 For example, see G. A. Cohen, "Freedom and Money," in On the Currency of Egalitarian
Justice and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. G. A. Cohen and Michael
Otsuka(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
19

10

using it without ones consent.24 Freedom from interference with ones

property is therefore secured only by the threat of interference with others.
Libertarians thus do not believe that all forceful interference with others
is wrong. A kidnapper who seizes you and imprisons you in a cabin is
wrongfully interfering with your freedom. But a property owner who forcefully
prevents a traveller from walking across his land (or through his house) is not.
The difference, of course, is that the property owner has a right to
exclude others from using his land without his consent, whereas the kidnapper
does not have a right to seize and imprison your body. The kind of freedom
that libertarians are concerned to protect, then, is not just non-interference as
such, but non-interference with ones rights. Or, as John Locke wrote, it is a
liberty to dispose and order as he lists his person, actions, possessions, and his
whole property, within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and
therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his
own.25 Such a view of liberty is social rather than mechanistic, insofar as it
focuses on the interpersonal relationships between human beings rather than
the mere physical impediment of lack impediment of things.26 But it is also a
conception that, unlike the view of freedom as non-interference, allows the
libertarian to view the protection of all individuals freedom as compossible:
protecting the property of one person might require interfering with the desired
activity of others, but protecting the rights of one individual does not necessitate
infringing the rights of others. Thus, the libertarian who adopts this conception

See David Schmidtz, "The Institution of Property," Social Philosophy and Policy 11, no. 2
(1994).
25 Locke, Second Treatise, 57.
26 See George H. Smith, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism(New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), chapter 7. Smith contrasts the Lockean, social
concept of freedom with the Hobbesian, mechanistic one.
24

11

of freedom can consistently hold that the realization of libertarian ideals would
yield a maximum of freedom for everyone.
Something like this conception of freedom seems to be central to
libertarianism. But while it is central, it cannot be fundamental. It cannot be
fundamental because according to this understanding, we cannot even know
what freedom is until we know what rights people have. And so, on this
account, a theory of rights must come logically prior to a full theory of
freedom.
This does not mean, however, that a theory of rights is itself basic. For
some libertarians, it might be. But other libertarians will attempt to ground
rights themselves in some other more basic value or belief a commitment to
respecting autonomy, for instance, or to treating persons as ends in themselves,
or even to the maximization of human welfare. The libertarian account of
rights, then, like the libertarian account of freedom, will thus be something on
which libertarians converge, but not necessarily the idea on which libertarianism is
based.

E Pluribus?
Is it possible to identify a precise set of beliefs on which libertarianism
must be based? Is it possible even to identify a set of beliefs that all libertarians
and only libertarians share? Unfortunately, at least from the perspective of
philosophical tidiness, there is good reason to doubt that either of these goals
are achievable.
After all, contemporary libertarians are an extraordinarily diverse group!
Some, lsuch as Ayn Rand, believe that the government should be strictly

12

limited to the provision of police, courts, and military protection.27 Others, like
Murray Rothbard, believe that the only justifiable government isno
government at all.28 Some, like Friedrich Hayek, believe that taxation may
legitimately be used to fund public education, public goods, and even a
comprehensive system of social insurance.29 Others, like Robert Nozick, view
all taxation of the earned income as morally on a par with forced labor and
thus almost always impermissible.30
All libertarians emphasize the importance of free markets and private
property, yet some, such as Lysander Spooner, oppose the institution of wage
labor,31 others, such as Benjamin Tucker, oppose as usurious the charging of
interest and rent,32 and still others, such as Herbert Spencer and Henry George,
oppose the full private ownership of land.33
Some libertarians, such as Ayn Rand, are militant atheists,34 while others,
such as Leonard Read, are devout believers.35 Some libertarians, like Volteryne

Ayn Rand, "The Nature of Governement," in The Virtue of Selfishness(New York, NY:
Signet, 1964), 109.
28 See Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty(New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982),
especially part III.
29 On Hayeks support for social insurance, see Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom,
ed. Bruce Caldwell, vol. II, The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2007), 148. For his support of the state provision of public goods and
public education, see The Constitution of Liberty(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1960), p. 223 and chapter 24, respectively.
30 See Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia(New York: Basic Books, 1974), 169.
31 See Lysander Spooner, Poverty: Its Illegal Causes and Its Legal Cure, and A Letter
to Grover Cleveland.
32 See Benjamin Tucker, "State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and
Wherein They Differ," in Instead of a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One(New York:
Elibron Classics, 2005).
33 See Herbert Spencer, Social Statics(New York, NY: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation,
1995), chapter IX; Henry George, Progress and Poverty(New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1886).
34 See Playboys interview with Ayn Rand, March, 1964.
27

13

de Cleyre, are cultural liberals with deep concerns about patriarchy and the
oppressiveness of traditional marriage,36 while others, like Charles Murray, are
cultural conservatives who lament the decline of traditional marriage as a
symptoms of cultural decline.37 And some libertarians, like Murray Rothbard,
are both extreme liberals and extreme conservatives, depending on which
decade they happened to be writing in!38
Finally, when it comes to moral foundations, libertarians stake out claims
all over the philosophical map, Some, such as Milton and David Friedman,
ground their beliefs in broadly consequentialist appeals to economic
efficiency,39 others (like Jan Narveson) appealing to contractarian logic,40 others
(like Randy Barnett) basing their libertarianism on the idea of natural rights,41
others (like Douglas Rasmussesn and Douglas Den Uyl) seeking justification in
Aristotelian principles of perfection,42 and still others (like Tibor Machan) in
ethical egoism.43

See Leonard Read ?

See Voltairine de Cleyre, "Those Who Marry Do Ill," in Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of
Voltairine De Cleyre - Feminist, Anarchist, Genius, ed. Sharon Presley and Crispin
Sartwell(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005).
37 See Charles A. Murray, What It Means to Be a Libertarian(Broadway, 2010); Losing Ground:
American Social Policy, 1950-1980(Basic books, 1994).
38 For the left-wing Rothbard, see Murray N. Rothbard, "Left and Right: The Prospects
for Liberty," Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought 1, no. 1 (1965). For the rightwing Rothbard, see "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement," The
Rothbard-Rockwell Report (1992).
39 See David Friedman, The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism, 2nd ed.(La
Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989), especially part III; Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom,
40th Anniversary ed.(Chicago: University of Chicago, 2002).
40 See Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).
41 See Randy E. Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998).
42 See Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl, Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis
for Non-Perfectionist Politics(University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005).
43 See Tibor R. Machan, Individuals and Their Rights(Open Court LaSalle, Ill., 1989).
35
36

14

Characteristics of the Libertarian Family

Given the diversity of libertarian positions, it is difficult to imagine any
way of completing the sentence You are a libertarian if and only if Rather
than pursuing what we regard as a futile quest for a set of necessary and
sufficient conditions, then, we propose to define libertarianism in terms of the
somewhat looser notion of family resemblance. We believe that there are six
core ideas that are shared by paradigmatic libertarians. But, to continue with the
software metaphor with which this chapter began, we see these six ideas as
informal markers of membership.44 Attention to these ideas allows us to identify
what is common among the libertarian family, even given the uniqueness of
each and every libertarian face. Our six markers of libertarianism are:
commitment to rights of private property, skepticism of authority, appreciation
of free markets, individualism, cosmopolitanism, and a belief in the explanatory
and normative significance of spontaneous order.
Each of these six ideas can be understood in different ways. In a
moment we will specify the range of understandings that is characteristic of
libertarian theories. For now, note that a number of non-libertarian political
ideologies may also be committed to one or more of these six ideas, and may
be committed to one or another of these ideas even as they are traditionally
understood by libertarians. But libertarianism is a doctrine (or family of
doctrines) distinguished by its members commitment to all six ideas

We are not the first to propose defining libertarianism in these terms, though our
particular selection of markers, and our characterization of them, is unique. See, for
another example with a much more extensive set of characteristics, Mack and Gaus,
"Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The Liberty Tradition."
44

15

simultaneously, and to the belief that that they form an integrated framework for
understanding the world.45
Still, even the presence of all six ideas is not always enough for a positive
libertarian ID. For libertarians also deny that there is any other commitment--say, to solidarity, to material egalitarianism, or to cultural integrity---that is more
primary than these six. Imagine running our software on a candidate that
exhibits all six libertarian characteristics as relatively minor features
earlobes and cheeks, say, hairline and brow. Yet imagine that this candidates
face is dominated by some distinctly non-libertarian feature---say a swollen,
indeed a probuscular, commitment to the ideal of cultural integrity (the idea that
the state should above all prevent cultural change, say by prohibiting the use of
rival languages on signs or in schools, providing tax-funded support for
entertainers and art forms judged to be native, and so forth). Despite the
presence of the other markers, our software would screen out that candidate as
non-libertarian, and rightly so. After all, such a view has a non-libertarian
commitment front and center, dominating all the rest. So our software would
pick out as libertarian only views that exhibit a simultaneous commitment to a
particular interpretation of our six core ideas, and for whom that conjunctive
commitment is dominated by no rival commitment or idea.
Let us turn, then, to an examination of the six core ideas of
libertarianism: commitment to rights of private property, skepticism of
authority, appreciation of free markets, individualism, cosmopolitanism, and a
belief in the explanatory and normative significance of spontaneous order. In
what particular way do libertarians understand each of these ideas?

45

We shall have more to say about this second claim later in the chapter.

16

Property
We will begin our analysis with the libertarian commitment to rights of
private property, not merely because we have to start somewhere, but because this
idea comes closer than any other to constituting an essential condition of any
libertarian view. If the six core ideas that we have described can be thought of
as markers of membership in our libertarian facial recognition software, then a
commitment to rights of private property is like the nose on the face.
All liberals value the civil and political rights of individuals: the right to a
fair trial, freedom of expression, political participation, personal autonomy, and
so on. And all liberals agree that rights to personal property like the right to
own your own car and your own furniture are an important component of
personal autonomy and are worthy of political protection.46 What distinguishes
the libertarian view of property from other merely liberal views is the scope, the
weight, and the basicness that they assign to private property rights.
Libertarians are, first of all, distinguished from other liberals by their
belief that individuals should be able to acquire rights of private property in a
wider array of objects.47 At a minimum, libertarians believe that rights of property

This is true even of the 20th centurys most important anti-libertarian liberal
philosopher, John Rawls. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1st ed.(Cambridge: Belknap
Press, 1971), 61.
47 At least, as a general rule. In some ways, libertarians favor property in a smaller
range of objects than others. Many libertarians, for instance, are highly critical of
intellectual property rights. See, for example, Tom G Palmer, "Are Patents and
Copyrights Morally Justified-the Philosophy of Property Rights and Ideal Objects,"
Harv. JL & Pub. Pol'y 13(1990). More generally, libertarians are opposed to
property rights that have their origin in violence and theft, rather than occupation,
use, and peaceful exchange. See, for an important discussion, Thomas Hodgskin, The
Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted [1832].
46

17

should extend beyond personal property like cars and clothes to encompass
productive property like factories and land.48 But many libertarians go farther still,
and argue that we should regard peoples relation to their own body parts as a
kind of private property, and that various forms of currently public property
like roads, parks, and oceans should be converted to private property as well.49
Libertarians also differ from other political liberals in the moral weight
they assign to rights of private property. Again, there is a range of views to be
found within the libertarian camp. But, at a minimum, libertarians have argued
that rights of private property should be treated as morally on a par with the
other civil and political rights of citizens. Rights of property, like civil and
political rights, are basic rights, and whatever social and juridical weight is
accorded to the latter should be accorded in equal measure to the former as
well. On this view, property rights are component parts of a multifaceted,
liberty-protecting scheme. Like freedoms of speech and religion, the economic
freedoms of citizens merit foundational protection. But foundational does
not mean absolute. Any system that admits a plurality of basic rights must
allow for the possibility of conflict between those rights, and unless one kind of
right is held to be somehow more basic than the others, must allow for a process
of weighing and balancing to determine which right trumps in each particular
situation. Sometimes property rights will win out, but not always.50
In contrast to this view, some libertarians have adopted the position that
property rights are more basic than other rights. At the limit, this view suggests

Though, as we will explore in more detail in the next chapter, some libertarians have
taken heterodox positions on the issue of land ownership.
49 Kidney sales, privatize roads, parks, oceans
50 The view expressed here has much in common with the classical liberal idea of the
presumption of liberty, discussed Smith, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of
Classical Liberalism, chapter 1.
48

18

that civil and political rights are not merely less weighty than property rights:
such rights are themselves types of property rights.51 So, for example, libertarians
of this sort might hold that rights of free speech hold only because and to the
extent that the speaker has a property right in (or permission from the property
right holder to use) the various physical objects utilized in the act of speech.
You have the right to write what you want in the newspaper you own, but not
to say whatever you want in the mall, park, or sidewalk that belongs to
somebody else. Freedom of speech, like freedom of religion, freedom of
movement, and every other kind of freedom, is derivative of and dependent for
its force and justification on the underlying rights of property. On this view,
then, property rights always trump because, in the ultimate analysis, there are
no other kinds of right with which they could possibly conflict!
Libertarians base their support of private property in a variety of moral
arguments. Perhaps the most well-known libertarian argument, however,
grounds property rights in physical objects like houses and money in a more
fundamental property right held by each person in his or her self. Because each
of us owns our bodies, we therefore own the labor that our bodies produce.
And so, libertarians argue, when we expend our labor upon things that are not
yet owned by anybody else, we can, under certain conditions, come to own
them too.52 Our property rights in things like houses and money are thus
ultimately produced and justified by our more basic property right in our
person. And, therefore, when our property rights in things like houses and

See, for example, Jan Narveson, who equates liberty with property and writes that is is
therefore plausible to construe all rights as property rights. Narveson, The Libertarian
Idea, 66.
52 The most famous version of this argument, of course, is found in chapter five of John
Lockes Second Treatise. More contemporary, and more distinctively libertarian, versions
can be found in Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia; Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty.
51

19

money are infringed upon, the libertarian holds that it is really our basic
property in our self that it infringed upon. Thus the libertarian slogan, taxation
is slavery!, is not meant merely as a provocative bit of rhetoric. It is meant to
expose a deep but often difficult to discern truth about the basis and meaning
of property.
But while an appeal to self-ownership is probably the most famous
libertarian strategy for defending rights of private property, it is by no means
the only one. Some libertarians have sought to base their defense on different
but equally deontological grounds such as an appeal to negative liberty, or to
autonomy.53 Other libertarians have sought to provide a more consequentialist
justification, by showing how private property replaces the zero- (or negative-)
sum transactions of the commons with the positive-sum transactions of a
market economy.54 Or by showing how rights of private property are
instrumentally valuable in securing other important civil and political rights.55
For the most part, though, individuals in the libertarian intellectual tradition
have refrained from drawing sharp distinctions between consequentialist and
deontological arguments, believing instead that respect for private property is
both a moral duty and a wise social policy.56 Libertarians, especially those

For the former, see Narveson, The Libertarian Idea. For the latter, see Horacio Spector,
Autonomy and Rights(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
54 See Schmidtz, "The Institution of Property."
55 See, for example, Gerald Gauss survey of the empirical evidence in Gerald F. Gaus,
"Coercion, Ownership, and the Redistributive State: Justificatory Liberalism's Classical
Tilt," ibid.27, no. 1 (2010).
56 That fact that justice and utility both point in the same direction in so many libertarian
arguments is surely a fact that calls out for explanation. One possible explanation is the
skeptical one. The reason justice and utility line up for libertarians, this line of reasoning
goes, is because libertarians frame their arguments to fit their conclusions, rather than the
other way around. See, for a somewhat sympathetic expression of this skepticism, Jeffrey
Friedman, "What's Wrong with Libertarianism?," Critical Review 11, no. 3 (1997).
However there are other, less skeptical explanations available as well. For instance,
53

20

outside the discipline of academic philosophy, have thus tended to help

themselves generously to both sorts of arguments, without always
distinguishing clearly between them.

Skepticism of Authority
If property can be thought of as the nose on our libertarian face, our
second characteristic, skepticism of authority, is more of an attitude or, if you
like, a distinguishing look on the face of libertarians. When a political leader says
Trust me, the libertarian twists her mouth to one side and raises an eye in
way that says: I dont.
At a minimum, this libertarian skepticism is directed at political
authorities. Drawing on the work of Friedrich Hayek and others, libertarians
doubt that political authorities are as wise as they sometimes claim to be.57 And
drawing on the work of public choice theorists, libertarians doubt that political
authorities are as benevolent as they purport to be.58 Politicians, bureaucrats,
soldiers and police officers might not be any worse than the common run of
humanity, but they certainly arent any better. They suffer from the same
ignorance, the same vanity, the same biases, and the same self-interestedness as
the rest of us. But by virtue of the political power they wield, those common

perhaps justice and utility do not come into conflict because the content of justice is partly
a function of utilitarian considerations? See, for a discussion of many such possible
explanations, and an endorsement of one, Roderick Long, "Why Does Justice Have Good
Consequences?," http://praxeology.net/whyjust.htm.
57 See, for instance, Friedrich A. Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society," American
Economic Review 35, no. 4 (1945); "The Pretense of Knowledge," in New Studies in Politics,
Economics and the History of Ideas(London: Routledge, 1978).
58 See, for instance, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent(Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962); Gordon Tullock, R. D. Tollison, and C. K.
Rowley, The Political Economy of Rent Seeking(Boston: Kluwer, 1988).

21

defects have the potential to do far more damage than most people could hope
or fear to accomplish.
Libertarians thus doubt that political actors are authorities in the sense
of people who are especially competent, virtuous, or wise. But, as a result of
this skepticism and of other more philosophical considerations, libertarians are
also generally skeptical about political authority in another, deeper sense. They
are skeptical that political actors have authority in the sense of the right to rule
over others, and to command their obedience.
At a minimum, libertarians believe that politicians and governments lack
the broad authority they claim. Libertarians believe that many of the things that
governments currently do are illegitimate. They are activities that government has
no business being involved in, and indeed no right to be involved in. No
libertarian, for instance, believes that the government of the United States has
the authority to forcibly prevent private businesses from offering to deliver
mail in competition with the United States Post Office, or indeed in running a
post office at all.59 Nor do most libertarians believe the government has the
authority to ban drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, to draft citizens in time
of war, to transfer wealth from some classes of citizens to others, to
monopolize the printing of currency, and so on. Most of these actions are, of
course, perfectly legal. But even if governments have the legal authority to
pursue these policies, libertarians believe that they lack the moral authority to do

One famous libertarian Lysander Spooner even set entered into a legal battle with
the United States government after setting up his own quite successful competing mail
service, the American Letter Mail Company, in 1844.
59

22

so. And when law exceeds the boundaries established by morality, libertarians
believe, it is simply naked force, and nothing more.60
Indeed, some libertarians take this reasoning a step further and deny that
governments have any authority at all. For these libertarians, there is no such
thing as the right to rule over others in the way that governments claim. The
only way that such a right to rule could have come about is through consent
through one group of people agreeing to follow the commands of another. But
most people over whom governments claim authority never consented to it.
The idea of a social contract, libertarians have pointed out, is a myth, a
fiction that serves to hide governments true origins in conquest and
exploitation.61 Thus all governments, even the most benign, are illegitimate, and
the extreme form of the libertarian skepticism of political authority is
anarchism.62

Appreciation of Free Markets

Libertarians enthusiasm for free markets is without a doubt their most
well known characteristic. But it is also, and perhaps for this reason, the most
misunderstood one. It is widely believed, for instance, that libertarians are

Many libertarians follow Locke, for instance, in defining tyranny as the exercise of
power beyond right. Second Treatise, chapter XVIII, section 199.
61 On the myth of the social contract, see Lysander Spooner, "No Treason No. Iv: The
Constitution of No Authority," in The Lysander Spooner Reader, ed. Lysander Spooner and
George H. Smith(San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1992). For one representative libertarian
account of the so-called conquest theory of the state, see Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the
State(San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1994). Nock draws heavily on the work of the German
sociologist Franz Oppenheimer, especially his The State(San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes,
1997).
62 For a recent and highly sophisticated exposition of this position, see Michael Huemer,
The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to
Obey(Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
60

23

cheerleaders for American capitalism; that they deplore socialism; and that they
base their doctrine on a narrow economic vision of humanity that focuses
exclusively on the rational pursuit of self-interest to the neglect of sociality,
community, and respect for tradition. And there is, in each of these claims, a
certain element of truth. But these common beliefs also reveal certain
widespread misunderstandings about the nature of libertarianism, some of
which run deep.
To begin, it is worth stressing that most libertarians support free markets
only because and only to the extent that they are a form of voluntary,
cooperative social organization. But not everything that we call a market is
truly a form of voluntary, cooperative social organization. And, of course, not
every form of voluntary, cooperative social organization is a market.
Karl Polanyi famously described a "market society" as one in
which instead of the economy being embedded in social relations, social
relations are embedded in the economy."63 And critics of libertarianism often
seem to assume that the libertarian support of free markets entails support for
market society in this sense.64 But this assumption is supported neither by the
logic of the libertarian argument for free markets, nor by what libertarians
themselves have said about the relationship between markets and other forms
of social organization. Libertarians who support markets because they respect
the right of individuals to engage in voluntary cooperative organization likewise
support other forms of voluntary cooperative organization into which

Karl Polanyi, "The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our
Time Author: Karl Polanyi, Publisher: Beacon Press Pa," (2001): 57.
64 Consider, for example, the titles of two recent anti-libertarian books, both of which
suggest this misunderstanding: Michael J. Sandel, What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits
of Markets(Macmillan, 2012); Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral
Limits of Markets(Oxford University Press, 2010).
63

24

individuals can and do enter families, friendships, monastic orders, kibbutzim,

mutual-aid societies, clubs, and others that are governed by norms and values
quite different from those governing the market order.
Nor are libertarians who support markets for more consequentialist
reasons barred from endorsing these other forms of social organization. If
markets produce good consequences, it is because they are a good tool for
solving a certain kind of social problem. But not every social problem is the
same, and there is no reason to think that the kind of organization that works
to coordinate the behavior of strangers on a large scale will be the best way of
coordinating behavior among families, neighborhoods, or religious
communities, where norms of altruism and solidarity play a much greater and
effective role. Indeed, there is every reason to think that the attempt to impose
the norms and values of the market on these other organizations would be
disastrous. Society requires both the extended order of the market and the
various sub-orders that compose it even though, as Hayek warned, the attempt
to navigate both worlds simultaneously can lead to difficulties:
If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the micro-cosmos
(i.e. of the small band or troop, or of, say, our families) to the macrocosmos (our wider civilisation), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings
often make us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were always to apply
the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would
crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of world at once.65
So, libertarians do not support turning everything into a market. But nor do
they support every institution that we call a market today. After all,

Friedrich A. Hayek and W.W. Bartley III, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of
Socialism(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 18.
65

25

libertarians support free markets, and many if not most real world markets are
rigged in ways that systematically advantage certain classes to the disadvantage of
others.66
We shall have much more to say about such rigging in chapter four. But
before we discuss the cases in which libertarians dont support markets, we
ought to say at least a little bit about the reasons why they often do. As with
each of the other characteristics, libertarians reach their conclusions about
markets by a variety of different routes. But we can broadly, and roughly, divide
the arguments in to two categories.
In the first category are arguments that make reference to the beneficial
consequences of free markets. The most important single argument of this sort
is based on the mutually beneficial nature of market exchange. Because both
parties must consent in order for a market exchange to take place, such
exchanges will generally be mutually beneficial in the sense that both parties will
walk away with something that they value more than whatever they gave up.
This fact establishes a very strong moral presumption against third parties
(including governments) blocking or interfering with those exchanges. And, on
a larger scale, it is this fact that accounts for the ability of market economies to
create wealth on a massive scale. There basic physical building blocks of the
universe might be finite, but wealth is not, since wealth is a function of how
that stuff is arranged to satisfy our wants, not merely how much of it there is.
The consequentialist case for free markets can be fleshed out by Hayeks
arguments on the ability of market prices to convey dispersed information to

See, for a discussion, Charles W. Johnson, "Markets Freed from Capitalism," in Markets
Not Capitalism, ed. Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson(New York: Minor
Compositions, 2010).
66

26

market actors in a decentralized manner,67 by Deirdre McCloskeys work on the

bourgeois virtues fostered by market societies,68 by Tyler Cowens research
on the beneficial effects of markets on art and culture,69 and other sources that
will be discussed throughout this book.
But the libertarian support for markets, like the libertarian support for
property, is based not only on appeals to consequences but on an appeal to
justice. Part of that appeal, of course, is based on the underlying justice of
property rights themselves. After all, if you owns something and would like to
trade it in exchange for something that one desires more, why should anyone
else have the right to stop you? What grounds could there possibly be for
forbidding capitalist acts between consenting adults, at least when those acts
are voluntary and do not violate the rights of third parties?70 Markets, then,
embody justice insofar as they respect a persons ownership over her person
and her rightful possessions. To this basic case, libertarians have added a host
of subsidiary ones, such as the role of markets in embodying and promoting
reciprocity, in satisfying norms of desert, in instituting a relation among
persons as free and equal, in satisfying standards of social justice, and in
meeting peoples basic needs.71

Hayek, "The Use of Knowledge in Society."

Deirdre N. McCloskey, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce(Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006).
69 Tyler Cowen, In Praise of Commercial Culture(Harvard University Press, 1998).
70 The characteristically delightful phrase comes from Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia,
163.
71 On markets and equality, see Roderick Long, "Equality: The Unknown Ideal," Mises
Daily. On markets and social justice, see John Tomasi, Free Market Fairness(Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2011). And for a discussion of markets and need, reciprocity,
equality, and desert, see David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
67
68

27

Spontaneous Order
The fourth characteristic of libertarianism is a belief in the explanatory
power and normative significance of spontaneous orders. Like social theorists
of any political stripe, libertarians recognize the importance of organization and
coordination in social life. But what sets libertarians apart is their belief that
such order can be, and usually ought to be, allowed to evolve from the bottom
up through the peaceful interactions of individuals, rather than being imposed
coercively by a technocratic elite. Order is best grown, not made. And it is
something that emerges, often in unanticipated ways, rather than something that
is designed in advance.
Suppose you wanted to design a college campus, and were trying to
decide where the sidewalks ought to go.72 One way to go about this task would
be to think in advance about where people were likely to want to go, and to
place your sidewalks so as to make travel between those places as efficient as
possible. This is order by design. An alternative approach would be to wait to
see where students wear down the lawn, and put the sidewalks there. This is
order by emergence.
Spontaneous orders are those which, in the words of the Scottish moral
philosopher Adam Ferguson [1767], arise as the result of human action, but
not the execution of any human design.73 Like the pathways across the
campus lawn, such orders arise out of the intentional actions of human agents.
But no agent designed or even foresaw the overall order that resulted from her
action and those of the many other individuals who participated in the process.

The example has been attributed to Gary Wolfram. See Gus DiZerega, "Timothy
Sandefurs Criticism of Spontaneous Order," Studies in Emergent Order (2009).
73 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Part III, section II. See also
Friedrich A. Hayek, "Kinds of Order in Society," New Individualist Review 3, no. 2 (1964).
72

28

The vocabulary and grammar of language is an example of spontaneous order.

No one decided that Google would become a verb, and attempts to design
more logical languages from scratch have had little success. The use of
certain commodities such as gold as a medium of exchange in a barter
economy is another example.74
Perhaps the most famous example of a spontaneous order, however, is
Adam Smiths description of the process of wealth creation in a market
economy. Individual actors in such an economy, Smith noted, do not intend to
make their society rich. In buying low and selling high, each agent intends only
to make himself wealthier. But because his own wealth can only be increased by
selling individuals goods that they value more than the money they pay for it,
he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an
end that was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society
that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes
that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote
it.75
Since the time of Smith and Ferguson, libertarians have taken the
concept of spontaneous order and run with it, finding examples in the
evolution of property rights,76 of common law,77 of the rules of pirate ships,78

See, for a discussion, Carl Menger, Principles of Economics(Institute for Humane Studies,
1976), 257-62.
75 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Edwin Cannan,
ed., (London: Methuen, 1904). Vol. 1., CHAPTER II: OF RESTRAINTS UPON THE
IMPORTATION FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES OF SUCH GOODS AS CAN BE
PRODUCED AT HOME
76 property
77 See, for a discussion, John Hasnas, "Toward a Theory of Empirical Natural Rights,"
Social Philosophy and Policy 22, no. 1 (2005).
78 Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates(Cambridge Univ Press,
2009).
74

29

and of the state itself.79 As the examples have multiplied, however, the basic
concept of spontaneity has sometimes seemed less than fully clear.80 Can a state
really be a spontaneous order if part of its evolution involves the violent
imposition of rules upon recalcitrant individuals? Can Wikipedia really be a
spontaneous order if the resulting product a reliable reference source was a
predetermined goal of that was then consciously and deliberately pursued by
the individuals who contributed to it?
To answer these questions, it is useful to follow Charles Johnson in
distinguishing between three different ways in which order can be
spontaneous.81 An order can be spontaneous in the sense of being 1) consensual
rather than coerced, 2) polycentric rather than directive, or 3) emergent rather than
consciously designed. Some orders, such as the network of pathways on the
college campus, are spontaneous in all three senses. They arise from the
consensual activities of different individuals; those individuals act on their own
independent judgment; and the resulting pattern is not part of the intention of
any of the individuals who contribute to them. But orders can be consensual
without being emergent (Wikipedia), polycentric without being consensual (the
common law), and so on.
Thus, when libertarians discuss the spontaneity of market orders, they
do so both in order to stress the voluntary nature of those orders, and in order
to point the way in which those orders exceed in many ways the power of
conscious human understanding. Even a lowly No. 2 pencil, Leonard Read
noted, results from such a complex amalgamation of human activity--

See Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, part 1.

See, for a discussion of some of the conceptual difficulties, Timothy Sandefur, "Some
Problems with Spontaneous Order," The Independent Review 14, no. 1 (2009).
81 Charles W. Johnson, "Women and the Invisible Fist,"(2013).
79
80

30

lumberjacks, miners, metal-workers, chemists, accountants, lawyers, etc.--- that

there is literally not a single person on the face of this earth who knows
everything it takes to make one.82 Likewise, there is no single person or group
of persons in charge of the diverse and intricate set of predictions, plans, and
actions necessary to feed the citizens of a complex metropolis like Paris. And
yet the people of Paris are fed, and fed well.83 When dealing with complex
systems, from ecosystems to market economies, the attempt to impose a
consciously designed order from above often backfires, and the unavoidable
narrowness of our perspective and knowledge causes our interventions to yield

Leonard E. Read, "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read," Library of
Economics and Liberty, http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html.
83 On coming to Paris for a visit, I said to myself: Here are a million human beings who
would all die in a few days if supplies of all sorts did not flow into this great metropolis. It
staggers the imagination to try to comprehend the vast multiplicity of objects that must
pass through its gates tomorrow, if its inhabitants are to be preserved from the horrors of
famine, insurrection, and pillage. And yet all are sleeping peacefully at this moment,
without being disturbed for a single instant by the idea of so frightful a prospect. On the
other hand, eighty departments have worked today, without co-operative planning or
mutual arrangements, to keep Paris supplied. How does each succeeding day manage to
bring to this gigantic market just what is necessaryneither too much nor too little?
What, then, is the resourceful and secret power that governs the amazing regularity of
such complicated movements, a regularity in which everyone has such implicit faith,
although his prosperity and his very life depend upon it? That power is an absolute principle,
the principle of free exchange. We put our faith in that inner light which Providence has
placed in the hearts of all men, and to which has been entrusted the preservation and the
unlimited improvement of our species, a light we term self-interest, which is so illuminating,
so constant, and so penetrating, when it is left free of every hindrance. Where would you
be, inhabitants of Paris, if some cabinet minister decided to substitute for that power
contrivances of his own invention, however superior we might suppose them to be; if he
proposed to subject this prodigious mechanism to his supreme direction, to take control of
all of it into his own hands, to determine by whom, where, how, and under what
conditions everything should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed?
Although there may be much suffering within your walls, although misery, despair, and
perhaps starvation, cause more tears to flow than your warmhearted charity can wipe
away, it is probable, I dare say it is certain, that the arbitrary intervention of the
government would infinitely multiply this suffering and spread among all of you the ills
that now affect only a small number of your fellow citizens. Frdric Bastiat, "There Are
No Absolute Principles," in Economic Sophisms(Irvington-On-Hudson, NY: Foundation for
Economic Education, 1964).
82

31

consequences that we never intended, and did not desire.84

Individualism
Libertarians are individualists through and through: ontologically,
normatively, and politically. Ontologically, libertarians hold that individuals are
the ultimate unit of analysis, and not groups like races, communities, or nations.
Only individuals are agents capable of choice, only individuals are the sites of
moral value, and only individuals can truly bear rights and responsibilities.85
Libertarians do not deny that groups exist and that they play an important role
in our lives. But they insist that when we talk, for instance, of the government
of the United States choosing a policy in order to benefit its citizens, this is
mere shorthand for what is really going on. Some particular individuals with
political power made choices that benefitted some other people (and likely
harmed some others).
Libertarianism is normatively individualistic in that it insists that each
persons life if valuable in itself. According to libertarians, the value of every
persons life is situated in the person living that life, rather than being situated
in some group of which that individual is a member. As a moral matter,
libertarians say, it is the interests or preferences of individuals---not those of
groups---with which we must always be concerned.

Though he does not use the terminology, James C. Scotts Seeing Like a State serves as a
useful study in the contrast between spontaneous and nonspontaneous orders, and his
opening chapter on scientific forest management in Germany provides a poignant
example of the unintended consequences that can arise from the attempt to impose a
logical design on a complex ecosystem. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain
Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
85 See, for a discussion, Mack and Gaus, "Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The
Liberty Tradition," 116.
84

32

Because of their commitment to normative individualism, libertarians

tend to think that responsibility for the well-being of each individual resides
ultimately those individuals themselves. People write the stories of their lives
through the choices and efforts they themselves make. So too, normative
individualism leads libertarians to deny that individuals can be sacrificed for the
greater good. Libertarians resist policies that would impose costs on
individuals, however few, in the attempt to generate greater benefits for some
group, however large.86 Finally, normative individualism also sets libertarians on
a course to oppose victimless crimes. If prostitution, drug-taking, or
unorthodox sexual behaviors are to be outlawed, for example, such activities
must be shown to be bad for someone more specifically, to be bad for
someone in a way that violates their rights. To limit the freedom of individuals
in these areas, it is not enough to claim that such activities constitute a kind of
free floating evil, or that they harm the interests (or offend the sensibility) of
the community or group. For libertarians, groups have no basic moral standing:
only individuals do.

Nozicks account of libertarianism in Anacrhy, State, and Utopia was famously criticized by
Thomas Nagel for simply assuming the truth of libertarian rights and failing to provide
them with any moral foundation. See Thomas Nagel, "Libertarianism without
Foundations," Yale Law Journal 85(1975). But Nozick actually did provide at least a sketch
of a foundation. In a crucial passage, for instance, he addresses the issue of social tradeoffs as follows: there is no social entity with a good that undergoes sacrifice for its own
good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own
individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits
the others. Nothing moreTo use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and
take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has. He
does not get some overbalancing good from his sacrifice, and no one is entitled to force
this upon him. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 32-33. Interestingly, John Rawls appeals
to this very same idea as part of the moral foundation of his liberal-egalitarian account in
A Theory of Justice, 27. How the same moral idea could be developed in such strikingly
different political directions is something of a puzzle. See, for a discussion, Matt
Zwolinski, "The Separateness of Persons and Liberal Theory," Journal of Value Inquiry 42,
no. 2 (2008).
86

33

Finally, libertarians are politically individualistic. Part of what this means

is simply that libertarians want their political institutions to reflect the moral
significance of individuals by enforcing a regime of exclusively libertarian
rights. But libertarians are also individualistic in the way they understand the
nature and grounding of political authority. For, libertarians believe that political
authority is something that must be justified to each individual as a separate
person. For, as Locke pointed out in his Second Treatise, there is nothing more
evident than
that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all
the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should
also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection,
unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest
declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an
evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and
sovereignty.87
Since there exists no natural or divine authority among men, the only
way by which any human being can come to have authority over another is by
justifying it, and justifying it to the person over whom he claims authority. In
traditional social contract theory, a doctrine to which many libertarians are
attracted, justification is obtained only upon receipt of the actual express
consent of the governed. Some contemporary libertarians soften this doctrine
somewhat to allow that authority might be justified when it is in the interest of
the governed, even if they have not explicitly consented. But that even this
lowered hurdle is still a relatively difficult one to clear is shown by the
attraction that philosophical anarchism holds to so many libertarians.

87

Locke, Second Treatise, chapter 2, paragraph 4.

34

Cosmopolitanism
Partly as a consequence of their individualism, libertarians ascribe little
moral significance to the existence of national boundaries. Individuals,
libertarians believe, have the same basic moral status no matter where (or
when) they reside. Governments have legitimate political power (if they can
have it at all) only insofar as they protect those rights. They are therefore morally
forbidden from violating the individual rights of their own citizens. But they
are equally forbidden from violating the rights of noncitizens, whether they
reside within the nations borders or without.
The libertarian position on international relations can thus be
understood by simply pretending that nations dont exist at all, and thinking
about the ways that it would permissible or impermissible for individuals to treat
each other. If A and B are trading partners, would B be acting within his rights
to employ physical violence to stop C from taking Bs place? If not, then why
would it be permissible when states do it and call it protectionism?88 If A and
B dont like living around people who speak some different language, could
they legitimately use physical violence to stop C from renting his house to D,
who speaks that language? If not, then why would it be OK for states to do it
and call it an immigration restriction?89 If A wants Bs land, can he kill him
for it? Can he kill C because C inconveniently stands in between A and B,

The 19th century French economist Frdric Bastiat was fond of (and famous for) using
such micro-level arguments to demonstrate the folly of protectionism. See, in particular,
the essays collected in his Economic Sophisms(Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for
Economic Education, 1964).
89 This style of argument is employed by the libertarian philosopher Michael Huemer
throughout his article, "Is There a Right to Immigrate?," Social Theory and Practice 36, no. 3
(2010).
88

35

whom A wants to kill? Can A kill 25% of the people who live in the same city
as D, just to stop D from unjustly attacking A?90 If not, then why would it be
permissible for states to do these things, and call them acts of war?
Libertarians are thus skeptical of the nationalistic sentiments that have
led so many to be willing to sacrifice individual rights especially the individual
rights of the other for the sake of the nation. Thats not to say that libertarians
can never be patriots. But when they are, it is a guarded and somewhat abstract
patriotism. Ayn Rand, for instance, wrote that the United States of America is
the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral
country in the history of the world.91 But as the quotation suggests, Rands
patriotism was a product of and limited by her judgment that the U.S better
satisfied the requirements of a timeless morality than any other country. When
those requirements are violated, libertarians have generally felt little need to
stick up for their country right or wrong, and had little respect for those who
do. Thus Herbert Spencer was only being unusually (though characteristically)
blunt when he wrote, in a short discussion of patriotism and military service,
that when men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking
nothing about the justice of their cause, I dont care if they are shot
themselves.92
A libertarian world order would thus be one characterized by free trade,
free migration, and peace. For those libertarians who base their theory on a
belief in natural rights, these doctrines are simply the logical consequence of

It is estimated that approximately 66,000 out of the 255,000 residents of Hiroshima,

roughly 26%, were killed by the atomic bomb dropped by the United States in 1945.
91 Ayn Rand, "Philosophy: Who Needs It?," in Philosophy: Who Needs It?(New York: Signet,
1984).
92 Herbert Spencer, "Patriotism," in Facts and Comments(New York: D. Appleton and
Company, 1902).
90

36

respecting those rights consistently, for all human beings regardless of

nationality. And for those libertarians who ground their doctrine on
considerations of expediency, the same generalizations that make peaceful,
voluntary cooperation a good policy within a nation also make it a good one
between nations.
Libertarians thus disagree with those on the left who celebrate open
migration but condemn free trade. And they disagree with those on the right
who think free trade is a great idea except when it comes to the free trade of
labor across borders. For libertarians, the immorality of protectionism, closed
borders, and war all rest on the more fundamental immorality of using
aggressive violence to achieve the states goals at the expense of individual
freedom. Those who reject such violence, libertarians argue, should reject it
consistently, for all policies, and for all persons across the board.

Varieties of Libertarianism
If libertarianism is a family defined by a combination of the six
characteristics described in the previous section, we should not be surprised to
find significant variation among the members of that family, depending on
precisely how those characteristics are interpreted and combined. In this section,
we explore three dimensions of variation within the libertarian family:
variations in the object of libertarian belief, variation in the moral ground of
libertarian belief, and variation in the form of libertarian belief.

Variations in Object: Thick vs. Thin Libertarianism

37

So far in this chapter our focus has been on describing what we see as
the six defining characteristics of libertarian theory. But what, exactly, is
libertarianism a theory of? What is its proper object, or domain?
The answer to this question might seem obvious. Libertarianism is a
political theory, and so its object or domain is the realm of politics.
Libertarianism is a theory about the proper size and scope of the state: one that
tells us that the state ought to be limited to (at most) protecting peoples rights
to life and property, and prohibited from otherwise interfering in peoples
economic, religious, or personal choices.
But the inadequacy of this characterization becomes clear once we give it
a moments thought. Libertarians do, it is true, characteristically think the state
ought to do no more than protect peoples negative, individual rights, and that
it would be wrong for the state to, say, engage in the large scale transfer of
wealth from some citizens to others.
But why? Libertarians come to their conclusions about the proper size
and scope of the state for a reason. But what is that reason? For many
libertarians, the reason is to be found in an underlying theory of individual rights.
It is wrong for the state to force us to practice a certain religion, or to take away
our property without our consent, because each of us has a right not to be
aggressed upon in certain ways. The state is bound to respect and protect those
rights, and is forbidden from violating them.
But if this is the reason offered by the libertarian, then libertarianism
isnt just about the proper size and scope about the state. For, after all, if it is
wrong for the state to do certain things because they would violate individual
rights, then it is wrong for anyone to do those things. Even Murray Rothbard,
who once wrote that the distinctive element of his work and that of other

38

radical libertarians was a a deep and pervasive hatred of the State and all of its
works, based on the conviction that the State is the enemy of mankind,
sometimes recognized that anti-statism was not the sole or even the primary
focus of libertarian thought.93 Thus, he once wrote that
libertarians had misled themselves by making their main dichotomy
"government" vs. "private" with the former bad and the latter good
What we libertarians object to is not government per se but crime,
what we object to is unjust or criminal property titles; what we are for is
not "private" property per se but just, innocent, non-criminal private
property. It is justice vs. injustice, innocence vs. criminality that must be
our major libertarian focus.94
As we will see below, not all libertarians base their political conclusions
in an underlying moral theory of natural rights. Some libertarians come to their
beliefs by way of an economic analysis of markets and of politics. For these
libertarians, the kinds of considerations that lead them to conclude that policies
of taxation and redistribution are generally wrong (e.g. considerations about the
inefficiency of bureaucracy, or of state aid) might apply only to the state, and
not to the action of private individuals.
For most libertarians, however, libertarianism will be a theory about
something more than just the state, as such. For those in the Rothbardian
natural rights tradition, libertarianism is fundamentally a theory about property

93
94

Murray N. Rothbard, "Do You Hate the State?," The Libertarian Forum 10, no. 7 (1977).
"Confiscation and the Homestead Principle," The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 4 (1969).

39

rights and the proper use of force. Conclusions about the state follow from this
fundamental theory, but do not constitute the core of it.95
For some, the object of libertarian theory is even broader than this.
Charles Johnson, for instance, argues that we should understand libertarianism
as a thick doctrine rather than as a thin one about the use of force alone.96
After all, whatever moral, economic, and other kinds of reasons libertarians
draw on to support their political views will inevitably be ones that have
implications beyond libertarianism itself. They will, in other words, also be
reasons for endorsing other values, projects, and cultural practices beyond
strictly political ones. Similarly, the practical realization of libertarian political
institutions might turn out to depend on people holding certain moral beliefs
or engaging in certain cultural practices. In either of these cases, a libertarian
would have reasons qua libertarian to endorse certain values, ideas, or practices
beyond the narrow scope of politics.
To illustrate the difference between thick and thin libertarianism,
consider the issue of interracial marriage an issue that, in most places in the
United States, is no longer an issue at all but an ordinary feature of everyday
life. Is the spread and cultural acceptance of interracial marriage something that
libertarians qua libertarians should celebrate? In their recent book on libertarian
politics, Reason Magazine editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch say that it is.

Thus the libertarian periodical Liberty was not changing the subject when it polled its
readers about various aspects of libertarian thought, including questions about the moral
permissibility of a number of individual actions, such as whether someone who fell off the
balcony of a 50 story building and managed to catch a flagpole on the way down would
be justified in trespassing across the flagpole owners property. See "The Liberty Poll:
Who We Are and What We Think," Liberty, July 1988.
96 Charles W. Johnson, "Libertarianism through Thick and Thin," in Markets Not
Capitalism, ed. Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson(New York, NY: Minor
Compositions, 2008).
95

40

Libertarianism is about freedom and personal choice, and so when choice is

expanded whether because of an increase in political liberty or because of a
liberalization of cultural attitudes this is something that libertarians as such
ought to celebrate.97 In his review of the book, however, the libertarian critic
David Gordon expressed skepticism. What do you think of interracial
marriage? It would be hard, offhand, to think of a question less relevant to
libertarianism, as usually understood. Of course, no one has the right forcibly
to prevent such marriages. What more need a libertarian say about this issue?98
Or consider some of the different ways in which the six characteristics
of libertarian thought might be interpreted. Should libertarians limit their
skepticism of authority to political authority? Or are (many of) the same
considerations that underlie that skepticism also good reasons for being
skeptical of parental, aesthetic, or ecclesiastical authorities?99
To consider a case in somewhat more detail, consider the libertarian
appreciation of spontaneous order. Thin and thick libertarians alike draw on
this concept to argue that government intervention in culture and the economy
ought to be limited or forbidden. But should libertarians qua libertarians draw
any implications beyond this political one? Many libertarians are cultural
optimists, believing that technological advances and cultural changes are

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can
Fix What's Wrong with America(New York: Public Affairs, 2011).
98 David Gordon, "A Political Philosophy or a Social Attitude?,"
http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/david-gordon/a-political-philosophy-or-a-socialattitude/.
99 Whether skepticism about governmental authority rationally entails skepticism about
other forms of authority or not, at least one study purports to show that libertarians are as
a matter of psychological fact significantly more skeptical than average about the moral
relevance of authority as a general matter, and not just when it comes to politics. See
Ravi Iyer et al., "Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of
Self-Identified Libertarians," PloS one 7, no. 8 (2012).
97

41

generally working to make life better, not worse.100 Is this merely a coincidence?
Or is there something within libertarianism itself that leads libertarians to take
an optimistic stance regarding, say, the impact of new technologies such as
Facebook and text messaging on human relationships and sociality? A thick
libertarian is likely to think that there is. New technologies, it is true, destroy
old ways of pursuing and expressing certain kinds of values. But one of the
insights that comes from thinking about spontaneous order is that people find
ways of adapting new technologies to their lives, and using them to find new
and better ways of giving their lives meaning. From the bottom up, they mold
technology to enrich their lives. Because their use is bottom-up rather than
imposed by the technology itself, it is difficult for outsiders to observe.
(Spontaneous order, as James Scott notes, is often illegible to outsiders).101
And this can be cause for despair. But those who have learned the insights of
spontaneous order will take that pessimistic despair with a heavy grain of salt.
A thick libertarian appreciation for spontaneous order leads naturally to a kind
of cultural optimism.102
These are merely two examples. Similar stories could, we suspect, be told
about the other core libertarian ideas skepticism about power, individualism,
and private property. (Some people impressed with the power of propertybased markets to coordinate diverse and contending preferences, for example,
may for this reason be disposed to adopt market-like procedures in non

See, for example Julian Lincoln Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2(Princeton University
Press, 1998); Virginia Postrel, The Future and Its Enemies(Free Press, 1998); Matt Ridley, The
Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves(HarperCollins, 2011).
101 See Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed.
102 A weaker thesis is that such optimism is part of what Bryan Caplan has called the
libertarian penumbra a set of beliefs that is overrepresented among libertarians as a
statistical matter, even if not logically or causally related to core libertarian beliefs
themselves. See http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/02/the_libertarian_3.html.
100

42

political sphere such as the domains of family and neighborhood, whereas

others might not.) Our point in making this distinction is not to argue that one
sort of libertarianism is superior to another that, for instance, only thick
libertarians are real libertarians, or that they are somehow more libertarian than
their thin counterparts. Our point, rather, is to try to answer a fundamental
question that any theorist of libertarianism must address: what is libertarianism
a theory of? And our answer to that question is that there is not just one but at
least two answers, each of which has its virtues.
There is something important and worthwhile about conceiving of
libertarianism as a thin doctrine. It would be a good thing if people with diverse
religious, moral, and cultural commitments could agree on questions about the
role of the state without having to resolve or even raise the issue of their other
disagreements. Libertarianism, on this this reading, gains the attractions of
other big tent doctrines. We dont need to agree on all the questions of how
to live our lives. We simply need to agree about those areas where
disagreement and diversity will be tolerated.
Still, some values seem so deeply in tension with the underlying spirit of
libertarianism, even if they are formally consistent with its thin political
institutions, that any sensible libertarian must reject them. A libertarian who
railed against infringements of negative liberty by the state but turned a blind
eye to infringements by private persons would seem to have a hard time
defending her values. A libertarian who decried the hierarchical and oppressive
structure of the state but who saw no problem with equally oppressive and
hierarchical structures that were socially rather than politically constructed
would appear to be in an equally difficult situation. To view opposition to the

43

states use of force as the only issue of relevance to libertarianism is not merely
thin: it is anemic.

Variations in Ground: Rights, Consequences, Contract, and Flourishing

Philosophers often distinguish various types of libertarians in terms of
the basic moral ideas atop which they build their political views. Many
libertarians are consequentialists. For thinkers in this tradition, the right action
is the action that produced the greatest balance of desirable over undesirable
outcomes or consequences the world. By extension, a just political and
economic order would be one that tended to produce good consequences.
Members of this consequentialist branch of libertarianism might well offer
different accounts of what exactly counts as a good consequence. But they all
insistent that political institutions should be evaluated by considering the social
states-of-affairs that they produce.
For example, Ludwig von Mises is widely hailed as one of the grand old
men of the 20th century libertarian movement. Politically, Mises argued that the
primary role for the state was to protect property, trade, and a small set of civil
rights. Mises opposed taxation for welfare or aid programs of any kind, and
opposed public support for schooling.103 A fierce critic of the doctrine of
national sovereignty, Mises objected to economic tariffs and trade barriers of
any kind. Indeed, Mises thought that a consistent libertarianism called for a

Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition(San Francisco: Cobden Press,
1985), 115.
103

44

policy of free migration, with all people living freely together under a single,
property-protecting global state.104
Why does Mises advocate this institutional approach? Ultimately, Mises
seems to care most about the happiness of citizens. Citizens are happy when
they are protected from interference from others and when they possess the
largest bundle of all-purpose material goods. Following in the tradition of
classical economists such as Adam Smith, Mises argues that the division of
labor is a devise that enables a society to put its resources to the maximally
productive use. For Mises, a just society is one that, while protecting people
from coercive influence of others, is set up so as to maximize the economic
productivity of its members.
For Mises, even personal freedom is justified in terms of the good
consequences that Mises expects freedom to produce. Thus, Mises offers two
reasons in support of the liberal doctrine of equal treatment under the law.
First: In order for human labor to realize its highest attainable productivity,
the worker must be free, because only the free worker, enjoying in the form of
wages the fruits of his own industry, will exert himself to the full. Second, the
rule of law helps maintain social peace. And social peace is important, Mises
says, because only in conditions of peace can the division of labor be maximally
extended and thus generate the largest possible economic product.105
On the natural rights approach, in contrast, libertarian institutions are
justified not by the outcomes that they produce but by the moral constraints
that they respect. For example, Robert Nozick argues his libertarian classic
Anarchy, State and Utopia that our belief that individuals are ends and not

104
105

Ibid., 137, ff.

Ibid., 28.

45

merely means supports a moral framework of strong individual rights.106

Those rights serve as side-constraints, which prohibit certain kinds of
infringement of the moral boundaries between persons, even when the
consequences of that infringement would be maximally productive of good
consequences.
Nozick then works out a view about the proper shape and scope of state
activity by asking how much room the natural rights of individuals leave for
state activity, and concludes that only the minimal state is morally justified. In
order to do enough so as to protect the rights of individuals, but also to avoid
doing so much as to violate those rights, the function of the state should be
limited to the protection of property rights, the enforcement of contracts, and
protections against force and fraud.107 Among the things a state notably may
not do is using its coercive apparatus to force some citizens to aid others, or to
prevent them from doing harm to themselves.
The contrast between consequentialist and natural rights approaches to
libertarianism is often stark. Natural rights theorists argue that the institution of
private property is justified precisely because that institution respects the
natural rights that people have to hold and use property. Consequentialist
libertarians such as Mises seem to disagree. Mises writes: It is not because the
abolition of [the institution of private property] would violate property rights
that liberals want to preserve it. Instead, Mises insists, the institution of private
property is justified only if, and because, it is an institution that works for the
good and benefit of all.108

Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 30-31.

Ibid., ix.
108 von Mises, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition, 30.
106
107

46

But both as a logical philosophical matter and as a matter of intellectual

history, the contrast between natural rights approaches and consequentialist
ones are easily overstated. As we have seen, most figures in the libertarian
intellectual tradition have not drawn a sharp distinction between these two
justificatory approaches, preferring instead to help themselves to arguments of
both sorts in different contexts. And as we shall see in more detail in the next
chapter, when it comes to the right of property, both Locke and Nozick two
paragons of natural rights libertarianism - make the beneficial consequences of
property central to their justification of it. On the flip side, even
consequentialists believe that individuals have at least one natural right the
right to have their interests taken into account equally with the interests of
others in our consequentialist calculations. It is probably best, then, to think of
these two approaches as different strategies of emphasis, rather than radically
different and mutually exclusive forms of justification.
Natural rights and consequentialist lines of argument are probably the
best-known approaches to defending libertarian theory. But there are other
approaches as well. Some libertarians, for instance, seek to ground their
political views in considerations of virtue and human flourishing. Ayn Rand
was perhaps the most popular modern proponent of such theory, and while her
writings were largely ignored by academics, the core idea has since been picked
up and developed with greater sophistication by philosophers like Tara Smith,
Douglas Rasmussen, and Douglas Den Uyl.109

See Tara Smith, Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006); Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of
Morality(Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000); Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J.
Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order(La Salle, IL: Open Court,
1991); Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics.
109

47

Teleological versions of libertarianism are in some significant respects

similar to consequentialist versions, insofar as they hold that political
institutions are to be judged in light of their tendency to yield a certain sort of
outcome. But the consequentialism at work here is markedly different from the
aggregative and impartial consequentialism of act-utilitarianism. Political
institutions are to be judged based on the extent to which they allow individuals
to flourish, but flourishing is a value that is agent-relative (and not agent-neutral
as is happiness for the utilitarian), and also one that can only be achieved by the
self-directed activity of each individual agent (and not something that can be
distributed among individuals by the state). It is thus not the job of political
institutions to promote flourishing by means of activist policies, but merely to
make room for it by enforcing the core set of libertarian rights.
Finally, some libertarians are contractualists. As a moral theory,
contractarianism is the idea that moral principles are justified if and only if they
are the product of a certain kind of agreement among persons. A set of political
and economic arrangements is just only if that set of institutions could be the
object of agreement among the people who are to live their lives under them.
Among libertarians, this idea has been developed by Jan Narveson in his book,
The Libertarian Idea, which attempts to show that rational individuals would
agree to a government that took individual negative liberty as the only relevant
consideration in setting policy.110 And, while not self-described as a
contractarian, Loren Lomaskys work in Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community

110

Narveson, The Libertarian Idea.

48

has many affinities with this approach, as it attempts to defend libertarianism as

a kind of policy of mutual-advantage between persons.111

Variations in Form: Anarcho-Capitalism, Minimal-Statism, and Classical Liberalism

All members of the libertarian family exhibit the six markers of
membership we have discussed. But each of those markers, as we have seen,
can be and has been interpreted in very different ways by different libertarians.
And the combinations to which they can give rise are almost infinite in their
variance. Some libertarians will hold a commitment to property rights to be
absolutely central to the libertarian worldview, with cosmopolitanism playing
only a subordinate and subservient role. For others, spontaneous order might
be thought to be the core concept around which a libertarian theory will be
built. And all of these sources of variance are only multiplied by the additional
variance that comes from the wide range of moral theories to which libertarians
appeal.
It should not be surprising, then, that when it comes time to answer
practical questions about the proper powers and scope of government,
libertarians often disagree. Some libertarians hold that the provision of police,
courts, and military is the only proper sphere of government activity. But
others hold that the state might legitimately do somewhat more, while still
others hold that it must do considerably less.
For classificatory purposes, we can distinguish between three broad
approaches that libertarians have taken to questions of this sort: minimal state

Loren E. Lomasky, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community(Oxford: Oxford-Univ-Pr,

1987).
111

49

libertarians, classical liberals, and anarcho-capitalists. As with so many of the

distinctions we have tried to draw in this chapter, this classificatory scheme
draws sharp lines on a terrain that is marked in reality only by vague and
sometimes imperceptible borders. But the ideal types that such a classification
yields can provide a useful framework for understanding some of the more
important divisions between libertarians, and some of the more significant ways
in which the markers of libertarianism have been combined to yield a
programmatic political ideology.
The minimal state libertarian holds the position that is probably most
paradigmatically associated with libertarianism as such. She believes that states
can in principle be morally justifiable, but only if they are very strictly limited in
their functions. Typically (though not necessarily), minimal state libertarians are
natural rights libertarians, and believe that the proper functions of the state are
limited to those necessary to the protection of individuals natural rights. So, a
police force is justifiable in order to prevent people from assault, theft, and the
like. A military is justifiable in order to defend the population from foreign
aggression. And a court system is justifiable in order to adjudicate disputes
among persons regarding putative rights-violations. Anything else falls outside
the proper sphere of the state, not merely in the sense of being something that
the state is not obligated to do, but in the stronger sense of being something that
the state is positively prohibited from doing. Thus, Robert Nozick, one of the 20th
centurys main exemplars of this position, writes not only that the minimal
state is the most extensive state that can be justified, but also that any state
more extensive violates peoples rights. For states to go above and beyond the
call of duty necessarily involves them violating their duty.

50

Take, for example, the provision of public roads. Such provision is not
necessary in order to protect individuals natural (negative) rights. So it is not
within the proper sphere of activity of a just state. But moreover, any attempt
by the state to provide roads would be impermissible insofar as it would
necessarily involve the violation of libertarian rights. Roads cost money, after all,
and governments generally obtain their money through taxation. But minimal
state libertarians must hold that government taxation is a violation of rights, at
least when the money obtained is spent on anything other than those activities
which constitute the essential rights-protecting purpose of government.
Within the libertarian tradition, minimal state libertarians face challenges
from two sides. On one side are the anarcho-capitalists, who hold that no state
is morally justifiable. Existing states ought to be abolished altogether, and the
services they perform can and should be provided voluntarily through the
mechanisms of civil society or the market.112 Anarcho-capitalists are, again,
characteristically but not necessarily natural rights libertarians.113 But they
typically hold that they are more consistent in their application of natural rights

The most well-known anarcho-capitalist of the 20th century was certainly Murray
Rothbard, who develops his position in Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty; For a New Liberty;
Man, Economy and State(Los Angeles: Nash, 1970); Power and Market(Kansas: Sheed Andrews
& McMeel, 1970). Other contemporary proponents of the doctrine include Randy
Barnett, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law., chapter 14, David Friedman, The
Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism., John Hasnas, "The Obviousness of
Anarchy," in Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a Government Part of a Free Country?, ed. Roderick
Long and Tibor R. Machan(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008); "The Depoliticization of
Law," Theoretical Inquiries in Law (2007); "Reflections on the Minimal State," Politics,
Philosophy and Economics 2, no. 1 (2003)., Roderick Long, "Market Anarchism as
Constitutionalism," in Anarchism/Minarchism: Is Government Part of a Free Country?, ed.
Roderick Long and Tibor R. Machan(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008); "Rule-Following,
Praxeology, and Anarchy," New Perspectives on Political Economy 2, no. 1 (2006)., and Aeon
Skoble, Deleting the State: An Argument About Government(Chicago: Open Court, 2008).
113 Rothbard, Long, and Skoble, for instance, are all fairly traditional natural rights
theorists. David Friedman is something of an anomaly as the lone critic of this view, his
own position being based in a kind of broad consequentialism or pluralism.
112

51

theory than their minimal state brethren. A famous open letter from Roy
Childs (an anarcho-capitalist) to Ayn Rand (a minimal state libertarian)
illustrates the argument nicely.114 It is our natural right, Childs held, to be free
from the initiation of physical force. And yet, a minimal state must necessarily
either initiate force or stop being a government. This is so in two ways. First,
if a minimal state provides police and military services, it must fund these
services in just the same way that it would have to fund projects like roads or
public schools typically through taxation.115 But how can a libertarian hold that
the state is justified in taking peoples money without their consent, even if it
uses the revenues in order to protect individual rights? I cannot take your
money, even if I promise to use it to protect you. So why are states any
different? And second, if the government is to really be a state in the technical
sense of that word, it must not only provide police and other protective services,
it must claim a monopoly on the provision of such services. If it does not, it is
merely one firm among others competing in an open marketplace. But this
claim to monopoly, like all claims to enforceable monopoly, is inconsistent with
libertarian rights. I do not violate anyones libertarian rights if I sell protective
services to you for a fee. Therefore, if you forcibly prevent me from doing so,
then you are violating my rights.

Roy A. Childs, "An Open Letter to Ayn Rand," in Liberty against Power: Essays by Roy A.
Childs, Jr., ed. Joan Kennedy Taylor(San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1994).
115 Ayn Rand famously proposed that her minimal state government could be funded
voluntarily by selling lottery tickets. See her "Government Financing in a Free Society,"
in The Virtue of Selfishness(New York: Signet, 1961). This plan, however, was widely
lambasted by other libertarians, including Robert Nozick, who wonders why, since a
minimal state would have no power to prevent private parties from running their own
lotteries, we should think that the state would have any more success in attracting
customers in this than in any other competitive business? Nozick, Anarchy, State, and
Utopia, 25.
114

52

But while minimal state libertarians are fighting the anarchists on one
front, they are simultaneously waging war on another front as well. Their rivals
on the other side are the classical liberals. This faction, led by the likes of
Friedrich Hayek, Richard Epstein, Gerald Gaus, and Loren Lomasky, pushes
for a state that is much, much smaller than any state that currently exists on the
face of the planet.116 But they also hold that a legitimate state can, and in some
cases should, be larger than the night watchman state advocated by the minimal
statists. How large, precisely, a legitimate state may be is a matter about which
classical liberals disagree amongst themselves. But there is general consensus
that states may justly use tax revenues for the provision of certain public goods
(in the technical, economic sense). And classical liberals, unlike minimal state
libertarians, tend to be open to the possibility that justice may allow or even
require a limited amount of redistribution in order to provide a kind of social
safety net for the very poor.
In the sense in which we use it here, classical liberal is a label that
describes a particular sort of political-philosophical view, and thus one that can
be applied to contemporary and historical figures alike. But the term also has a
distinctly historical meaning, as well, referring primarily to figures of the 17th
and 18th centuries such as John Locke, Algernon Sydney, Adam Smith, David
Hume, and Immanuel Kant. This dual usage can lead to some confusion,
unless we are careful. But by and large, there is significant overlap. Most of the
classical liberals, in the historical sense, were classical liberals, in the politicalphilosophical sense. Thus, Adam Smith believed that government ought to be

See Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty; Richard A. Epstein, Principles for a Free Society:
Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good(New York: Basic Books, 1998); Gerald F.
Gaus, The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded
World(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Lomasky, Persons, Rights, and the
Moral Community.
116

53

generally limited by the obvious and simple system of natural liberty. Under
that system, government has three duties to fulfill:
first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of
other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as
possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression
of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact
administration of justice; and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and
maintaining certain publick works and certain publick institutions, which
it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of
individuals, to erect and maintain; because the profit could never repay
the expence to any individual or small number of individuals, though it
may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.117
By any contemporary standards, Smiths ideal government is quite small indeed.
But compared to the standards of a Murray Rothbard, or even a Robert
Nozick, it is nevertheless objectionably large. Smith, after all, was no strict
ideologue of laissez-faire, endorsing not only the erection of public works but
also the Navigation Acts, the regulation of paper money in banking, the public
provision of fire protection, a government post office, the establishment of
temporary monopolies, including patents and copyrights, education of the
youth, the production and regulation of coinage, and much else.118
Classical liberals are often consequentialists, and this has sometimes even
been taken as a defining characteristic of the view.119 There is, after all, a certain

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Chapter IX, paragraph 51.
See, for the classic and exhaustive study, Jacob Viner, "Adam Smith and Laissez
Faire," The Journal of Political Economy 35, no. 2 (1927).
119 Norman P. Barry, On Classical Liberalism and Libertarianiam(London: Macmillan, 1986).,
chapter 1
117
118

54

kind of moral flexibility to classical liberalism, or at least a tendency to resist

drawing bright lines in order to distinguish the proper from the improper
spheres of government, and such flexibility is a (sometimes notorious) hallmark
of consequentialist moral approaches. But there are classical liberals who are
not consequentialists (Lomasky and Gaus, for example), and there are
consequentialists who are not classical liberals (e.g. David Friedman). So, once
again, neat classifications elude us.

Will The First Real Libertarian Please Stand Up?

This chapter opened with an account of the first recorded uses of the
term libertarian, and the different meanings that term developed over time.
But, labels aside, what about the history of the idea itself? Given the way in
which we have characterized libertarianism in this chapter, are we able to say
who the first libertarian intellectual was?
Questions such as this are perhaps more important, and more tractable,
for those who define libertarianism by way of a rigid set of necessary and
sufficient conditions than it is for those like us who think of libertarianism as a
kind of cluster concept. As we have seen in the previous two sections, the
variety of ways in which our six characteristics can be interpreted, combined,
and integrated into an overarching moral theory means that libertarianism can
take a wide variety of different forms. Debates can be had and, every day on
the internet, debates are had about which form of libertarianism is the purest
and who should or should not count as a real libertarian.120 Such debates can

Want to find out how pure you are? Take Bryan Caplans Libertarian Purity Test
and find out! http://www.bcaplan.com/cgi-bin/purity.cgi.
120

55

be entertaining, but we see little scholarly value in trying to impose overly rigid
boundaries upon what is, in reality, a messy ideological terrain.
Our approach to libertarianism in this book is evolutionary rather than
formal. Thus, we focus on the distinctive characteristics of the libertarian
intellectual tradition, rather than on some one (putatively) authentic libertarian
template primordially espoused by any individual thinker. Like the historical
origins of a real family, the historical edges of the libertarian tradition are rough
and blurred rather than neat and clean. Later family members such as Rothbard
may display our five markers of the libertarian family in a particularly explicit
and familiar and way, at least when compared to more distant figures such as
Adam Smith or John Locke. But if we wish to understand the libertarian
tradition in a deep and nuanced way, we must peer through the shadows and
attend to those early figures too. Early thinkers in the libertarian tradition
sometimes expressed social concerns, and combined moral ideas, in ways that
were rejected, or simply forgotten, by the postwar archetypes. By focusing
broadly on the libertarian tradition rather than any self-styled group of
libertarian archetypes, we hope to recover and hold up for reconsideration
some of these less familiar libertarian combinations and concerns
Nevertheless, there is some value in asking when libertarianism came
into being. Did libertarianism spring into existence in the middle of the 20th
century, in the person of Murray Rothbard? Or is it an older doctrine, first

56

developed, perhaps by the English Leveller John Lilburne?121 Could it be even

older still? Was Jesus the first libertarian?122 Was Lao-tsu? 123
Many individuals over the course of a number of centuries played a role
in developing each of the six characteristic ideas we have explored in this
chapter, and our book will discuss some of those individuals in detail. Still, not
everyone who played a role in the development of libertarian ideas should
properly be classified as a libertarian. A libertarian is someone who bears not
just one or two of our markers of membership, but all of them. She is,
moreover, someone for whom those ideas form a kind of deeply integrated system
of belief, such that her libertarian political conclusions flow from her
fundamental beliefs about human nature and the nature of the world.124
Arriving at the same conclusions as libertarians do about politics isnt enough
to make one a libertarian; one has to arrive at them for the right sorts of
reasons as well.
Understood in this way, we think, there is a good case to be made for
the claim that libertarianism emerged in its contemporary form in the middle of
the 19th century in Britain and France. Before that time, there were classical
liberals, but not libertarians as such. The difference between the two is partly a
matter of substance. At least in its ideal type, libertarianism, as we understand

Peter Richards, "John Lilburne (1615-1657): English Libertarian," Libertarian Heritage,

no. 25 (2008).
122 Tom Mullen, "Jesus Christ, Libertarian," LewRockwell.com,
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/12/tom-mullen/jesus-christ-libertarian/.
123 See Murray N. Rothbard, "Concepts of the Role of Intellectuals in Social Change
toward Laissez Faire," Journal of Libertarian Studies IX, no. 2 (1990): 44. The first
libertarian intellectual was Lao-tzu, the founder of Taosim.
124 See George Smiths useful distinction between liberal sentiments, liberal principles,
liberal theories, and liberal ideologies. What we have in mind here is a question about the
origin of libertarian ideology, not merely of libertarian sentiments, principles, or theories.
Smith, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, 51-52.
121

57

it, is a more radical doctrine, a more absolutist one, and a more systematic one.125
And, prior to the Industrial Revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries,
many of the issues involving property and, especially, market exchange simply
could not play the central, defining role they would come to play for libertarianism
in its modern form. It is difficult to ascertain what John Locke would have
thought about international trade, markets in kidneys or the regulation of
modern commodity markets. And without knowing more about what he would
think about these issues, it is difficult to say for sure whether the label of
libertarian is an appropriate one.
But the substantive difference between classical liberalism and
libertarianism is also, we think, the product of an underlying and in some ways
more fundamental historical difference. Classical liberalism developed in the 17th
century largely in reaction to the emerging phenomenon of political absolutism.126
Prior to that time, and without that clearly defined system against which to
identify itself, liberalism as we know it today simply could not be conceived.
Similarly, we would argue, libertarianism largely defined itself in opposition to
the rising tide of socialism in the 19th century, especially, perhaps, as manifested
in the revolutions of 1848. Right around that time, but not much before, there
an occurred an explosion of unmistakably libertarian writing, including the
French economist Frdric Bastiats libertarian tract, The Law (1850), his
Belgian-born colleague Gustave de Molinaris anarcho-capitalist essay, The
Production of Security (1849), and Herbert Spencers libertarian synthesis,
Social Statics (1851). One could, perhaps, trace the development of

Classical liberals like Locke and Sydney could, of course, be quite radical in at least
some important senses of the term. But even these icons of classical liberalism, we believe,
were not libertarians in the fullest sense.
126 See Smith, The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism, 1, 55.
125

58

libertarianism back a little earlier in the century. Thomas Hodgskins essay,

The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832) is an
important work in the libertarian tradition that develops a number of important
insights regarding ideas of property, spontaneous order, and skepticism of
authority. And Spencer himself produced a remarkable series of twelve letters
on The Proper Sphere of Government, published in 1842-43 in The
Nonconformist and later republished in his book, The Man vs. The State.
Each of these texts played an important role in the development and
articulation of libertarian thought. But if we had to pick only one as the first
real work of libertarian synthesis, it would have to be Spencers Social Statics. In
terms of its breadth of coverage, its ability to draw connections between
question of practical policy and questions of fundamental moral principle, its
radicalism, and its connections (both explicit and implicit) to earlier and later
works of libertarian thought, it is simply without equal. This is not to say, of
course, that it is the best work of libertarian thought, or the one best articulates
the particular variety of libertarianism to which we the authors are attracted.
But it is certainly an important work, in many ways an excellent work, and
probably the work that has a better claim than any others to being the first real
libertarian text.

References
Barnett, Randy E. The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Barry, Norman P. On Classical Liberalism and Libertarianiam. London: Macmillan,
1986.

59

Bastiat, Frdric. Economic Sophisms. Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for

Economic Education, 1964.
. "There Are No Absolute Principles." In Economic Sophisms. IrvingtonOn-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education, 1964.
Berlin, Isaiah. "Two Concepts of Liberty." In Four Essays on Liberty, edited by
Isaiah Berlin, 118-72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Buchanan, James, and Gordon Tullock. The Calculus of Consent. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1962.
Childs, Roy A. "An Open Letter to Ayn Rand." In Liberty against Power: Essays by
Roy A. Childs, Jr., edited by Joan Kennedy Taylor. San Francisco: Fox &
Wilkes, 1994.
Cohen, G. A. "Freedom and Money." In On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice and
Other Essays in Political Philosophy, edited by G. A. Cohen and Michael
Otsuka. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011.
Cowen, Tyler. In Praise of Commercial Culture. Harvard University Press, 1998.
de Cleyre, Voltairine. "Those Who Marry Do Ill." In Exquisite Rebel: The Essays
of Voltairine De Cleyre - Feminist, Anarchist, Genius, edited by Sharon Presley
and Crispin Sartwell. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
2005.
DiZerega, Gus. "Timothy Sandefurs Criticism of Spontaneous Order." Studies
in Emergent Order (9/10/2009 2009).
Doherty, Brian. Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern
American Libertarian Movement. New York: Public Affairs, 2007.
Epstein, Richard A. Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the
Common Good. New York: Basic Books, 1998.
Friedman, David. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to Radical Capitalism. 2nd ed.
La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.

60

Friedman, Jeffrey. "What's Wrong with Libertarianism?". Critical Review 11, no.
3 (1997): 407-67.
Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. 40th Anniversary ed. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 2002.
Gaus, Gerald F. "Coercion, Ownership, and the Redistributive State:
Justificatory Liberalism's Classical Tilt." Social Philosophy and Policy 27, no.
1 (January 2010): 233-75.
. The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse
and Bounded World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. New York: D. Appleton and Company,
1886.
Gillespie, Nick, and Matt Welch. The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian
Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America. New York: Public Affairs,
2011.
Gordon, David. "A Political Philosophy or a Social Attitude?" Last Modified
8/29. http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/david-gordon/a-politicalphilosophy-or-a-social-attitude/.
Hasnas, John. "The Depoliticization of Law." Theoretical Inquiries in Law (2007).
. "The Obviousness of Anarchy." Chap. 8 In Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a
Government Part of a Free Country?, edited by Roderick Long and Tibor R.
Machan, 111-32. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008.
. "Reflections on the Minimal State." Politics, Philosophy and Economics 2,
no. 1 (2003): 115-28.
. "Toward a Theory of Empirical Natural Rights." [In English]. Social
Philosophy and Policy 22, no. 1 (Wint 2005): 111-47.
Hayek, Friedrich A. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1960.

61

. "Kinds of Order in Society." New Individualist Review 3, no. 2 (Winter

1964).
. "The Pretense of Knowledge." In New Studies in Politics, Economics and
the History of Ideas, 25-34. London: Routledge, 1978.
. The Road to Serfdom. The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek. edited by
Bruce Caldwell. Vol. II, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
. "The Use of Knowledge in Society." American Economic Review 35, no. 4
(September 1945): 519-30.
Hayek, Friedrich A., and W.W. Bartley III. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of
Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Huemer, Michael. "Is There a Right to Immigrate?". Social Theory and Practice 36,
no. 3 (2010).
. The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and
the Duty to Obey. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Iyer, Ravi, Spassena Koleva, Jesse Graham, Peter Ditto, and Jonathan Haidt.
"Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of
Self-Identified Libertarians." PloS one 7, no. 8 (2012): e42366.
Johnson, Charles W. "Libertarianism through Thick and Thin." In Markets Not
Capitalism, edited by Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson, 131-44.
New York, NY: Minor Compositions, 2008.
. "Markets Freed from Capitalism." In Markets Not Capitalism, edited by
Gary Chartier and Charles W. Johnson. New York: Minor
Compositions, 2010.
. "Women and the Invisible Fist." 2013.
Leeson, Peter T. The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Cambridge
Univ Press, 2009.
"The Liberty Poll: Who We Are and What We Think." Liberty, July 1988, 37-48.

62

Lomasky, Loren E. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community [in English]. Oxford:
Oxford-Univ-Pr, 1987.
Long, Roderick. "Equality: The Unknown Ideal." Mises Daily.
. "Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism." In Anarchism/Minarchism: Is
Government Part of a Free Country?, edited by Roderick Long and Tibor R.
Machan, 133-54. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008.
. "Rule-Following, Praxeology, and Anarchy." New Perspectives on Political
Economy 2, no. 1 (2006): 36-46.
. "Why Does Justice Have Good Consequences?".
http://praxeology.net/whyjust.htm.
Machan, Tibor R. Individuals and Their Rights. Open Court LaSalle, Ill., 1989.
Mack, Eric, and Gerald Gaus. "Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism: The
Liberty Tradition." Chap. 9 In Handbook of Political Theory, edited by
Gerald Gaus and Chandran Kukathas, 115-30. London: Sage, 2004.
McCloskey, Deirdre N. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Menger, Carl. Principles of Economics. Institute for Humane Studies, 1976.
Mullen, Tom. "Jesus Christ, Libertarian." LewRockwell.com, Last Modified
12/25/2010. http://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/12/tom-mullen/jesuschrist-libertarian/.
Murray, Charles A. Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980. Basic books,
1994.
. What It Means to Be a Libertarian. Broadway, 2010.
Nagel, Thomas. "Libertarianism without Foundations." Yale Law Journal 85
(1975): 136-49.
Narveson, Jan. The Libertarian Idea. Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1988.

63

Nock, Albert Jay. Our Enemy, the State. San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1994.
1935.
Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, 1974.
Oppenheimer, Franz. The State. San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1997. 1914.
Palmer, Tom G. "Are Patents and Copyrights Morally Justified-the Philosophy
of Property Rights and Ideal Objects." Harv. JL & Pub. Pol'y 13 (1990):
817.
Polanyi, Karl. "The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins
of Our Time Author: Karl Polanyi, Publisher: Beacon Press Pa." (2001).
Postrel, Virginia. The Future and Its Enemies. Free Press, 1998.
Rand, Ayn. "Government Financing in a Free Society." In The Virtue of
Selfishness. New York: Signet, 1961.
. "The Nature of Governement." In The Virtue of Selfishness. New York,
NY: Signet, 1964.
. "Philosophy: Who Needs It?". In Philosophy: Who Needs It? New York:
Signet, 1984.
Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Douglas J. Den Uyl. Liberty and Nature: An
Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991.
. Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics.
University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005.
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. 1st ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971.
Read, Leonard E. "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read."
Library of Economics and Liberty.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html.
Richards, Peter. "John Lilburne (1615-1657): English Libertarian." Libertarian
Heritage, no. 25 (2008).
Ridley, Matt. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. HarperCollins, 2011.

64

Rothbard, Murray N. "Concepts of the Role of Intellectuals in Social Change

toward Laissez Faire." Journal of Libertarian Studies IX, no. 2 (1990).
. "Confiscation and the Homestead Principle." The Libertarian Forum 1,
no. 4 (1969).
. "Do You Hate the State?". The Libertarian Forum 10, no. 7 (1977): 1, 8.
. The Ethics of Liberty. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1982.
. For a New Liberty. New York: Collier, 1978.
. "Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty." Left and Right: A Journal of
Libertarian Thought 1, no. 1 (Spring 1965): 4-22.
. Man, Economy and State. Los Angeles: Nash, 1970.
. Power and Market. Kansas: Sheed Andrews & McMeel, 1970.
. "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." The
Rothbard-Rockwell Report (January 1992): 5-13.
Sandefur, Timothy. "Some Problems with Spontaneous Order." The Independent
Review 14, no. 1 (2009).
Sandel, Michael J. What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Macmillan,
2012.
Satz, Debra. Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets.
Oxford University Press, 2010.
Schmidtz, David. Elements of Justice [in English]. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.
. "The Institution of Property." [In English]. Social Philosophy and Policy
11, no. 2 (Sum 1994): 42-62.
Schmidtz, David, and Jason Brennan. A Brief History of Liberty. New York:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

65

Simon, Julian Lincoln. The Ultimate Resource 2. Princeton University Press, 1998.
Skoble, Aeon. Deleting the State: An Argument About Government. Chicago: Open
Court, 2008.
Smith, George H. The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Smith, Tara. Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006.
. Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality. Lanham:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2000.
Sparding, Charles T. Liberty and the Great Libertarians. Los Angeles: Golden
Press, 1913.
Spector, Horacio. Autonomy and Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Spencer, Herbert. "Patriotism." In Facts and Comments. New York: D. Appleton
and Company, 1902.
. Social Statics. New York, NY: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1995.
Spooner, Lysander. "No Treason No. Iv: The Constitution of No Authority."
In The Lysander Spooner Reader, edited by Lysander Spooner and George
H. Smith. San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes, 1992.
Tomasi, John. Free Market Fairness. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2011.
Tucker, Benjamin. Instead of a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One. New York:
Elibron Classics, 2005. 1897.
. "State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherein
They Differ." In Instead of a Book: By a Man Too Busy to Write One. New
York: Elibron Classics, 2005.
Tullock, Gordon, R. D. Tollison, and C. K. Rowley. The Political Economy of Rent
Seeking. Boston: Kluwer, 1988.

66

Viner, Jacob. "Adam Smith and Laissez Faire." The Journal of Political Economy 35,
no. 2 (1927): 198-232.
von Mises, Ludwig. Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition. San Francisco: Cobden
Press, 1985.
Zwolinski, Matt. "The Separateness of Persons and Liberal Theory." Journal of
Value Inquiry 42, no. 2 (June 2008): 147-65.