Download or read book American radical thought the libertarian tradition ed written by Henry J. Silverman and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Radical Thought The Libertarian Tradition Ed with Introductions by H J Silverman With Contribs of Th Jefferson Th Paine R W Emerson A o written by H. J. Silverman and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Radical Thought written by Henry J. Silverman and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Radicals for Capitalism written by Brian Doherty and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 968 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Wall Street, in the culture of high tech, in American government: Libertarianism -- the simple but radical idea that the only purpose of government is to protect its citizens and their property against direct violence and threat -- has become an extremely influential strain of thought. But while many books talk about libertarian ideas, none until now has explored the history of this uniquely American movement -- where and who it came from, how it evolved, and what impact it has had on our country. In this revelatory book, based on original research and interviews with more than 100 key sources, Brian Doherty traces the evolution of the movement through the unconventional life stories of its most influential leaders -- Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Milton Friedman -- and through the personal battles, character flaws, love affairs, and historical events that altered its course. And by doing so, he provides a fascinating new perspective on American history -- from the New Deal through the culture wars of the 1960s to today's most divisive political issues. Neither an expos' nor a political polemic, this entertaining historical narrative will enlighten anyone interested in American politics.

Download or read book For a New Liberty written by Murray N. Rothbard and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 2006 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Rothbard proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the two major political parties, the ideologies they embrace, and their central plans for using state power against people. Libertarianism is Rothbard's radical alternative that says state power is unworkable and immoral and ought to be curbed and finally overthrown. To make his case, Rothbard deploys his entire system of thought: natural law, natural rights, Austrian economics, American history, the theory of the state, and more. It is relentless, scientific, analytical, and morally energetic—a book that makes an overwhelming case. Indeed, it gave an entire movement its intellectual consciousness and earned Rothbard the titles "Mr. Libertarian" and "The State's Greatest Living Enemy." Society without the nation-state? Rothbard shows that this is the way for peace, prosperity, security, and freedom for all. In the entire history of libertarian ideas, no book has more successfully combined ideological rigor, theoretical exposition, political rhetoric, historical illustration, and strategic acumen. Rothbard poured a lifetime of research and all his intellectual energy into this project and he succeeded in writing a classic. The book is the result of the only contract Rothbard ever received from a mainstream commercial publisher. He was asked to sum up the whole of the libertarian creed. Looking at the original manuscript, which was nearly complete after its first draft, it seems that it was a nearly effortless joy for him to write. It is seamless, unrelenting, and full of life. He cut no corners and pulled no punches. It appeared in 1973 and created a whole movement that set out to crush the political monopoly. From the day the book went out of print, the phone calls and emails started coming into our offices, hopeful of a new edition. Thanks to benefactors who have made it possible, this new edition from the Mises Institute is hardbound, beautiful, and affordable. In subject after subject, this book is informative, bracing, and challenging. It also features the characteristically clear writing style for which Rothbard is famous, which stemmed from his organized thinking and passionate drive to teach and change the world. The book begins with American history to show that the revolution of 1776 was the most libertarian of any in history. The pastors, pamphleteers, and statesmen who led it held that the state has no rights that the people themselves do not possess. They demanded full liberty, not some truncated version that existed in the old world. In this discussion, the reader comes to appreciate the founders of the United States of America as never before. Rothbard then sets out to rekindle that fire, first through a discussion of the philosophy and ethics of freedom. The central axiom: no man or group of men may aggress against the person and property of anyone else. He justifies the axiom on the basis of natural rights. It is an axiom that has few opponents, until Rothbard spells out its implications: taxation is theft, conscription is slavery, and war is mass murder, among many other points. Bracing indeed! But the state is the primary violator of this simple axiom. It presumes the right to rob and kill while purporting to protect us from robbing and killing. Thus follows a full theory of the state, how it gains and maintains controls over the population (but not through a “social contract”!), the various failed methods for keeping it in check (not even constitutions work!), its operations and tendencies to work its evil (it never has enough power), and how intellectuals become co-opted by the forces of state power. Here again, Rothbard draws his argument from American history. He shows how dangerous it was for the US Constitution to entrust the Supreme Court with the job of policing the government for infractions against the Constitution. What it ended up doing, of course, was ratifying egregious violations of the Constitution, with full knowledge that there was no higher court to which the people themselves could appeal. Rothbard isn’t satisfied to make his case on this abstract level. He shows that the most pressing problems of society are wrapped up in government operations. Whether it is medical issues, the price of oil, the disaster of education, conflicts over religion, police corruption, or the scandal of war, the issues that are tearing us apart are invariably the result of government intervention into the sector. When markets are in full control—whether markets for computer technology and software, or for cell phones—we find not conflict but cooperation and progress. And so Rothbard demonstrates the failure of government and the triumph of markets in a host of areas: personal liberties, education, welfare, inflation and the business cycle, monopoly and regulation, streets and roads, environmentalism and economic growth, and even police, courts, and law. Nor does he neglect the hugely important areas of trade, war, and foreign policy. He shows that states that are aggressive abroad do not maintain liberty at home. He also pioneers a theory of peace in absence of the state. This book is generous with detail on the whole of American history, from the banking debates of the 19th century, through the welfare debate of the 1960s and the controversies over environmental regulation in the 1970s. He shows that the state creates social and economic problems and then further intervenes to make these problems worse then ever while increasing its power at the expense of everyone else. He is particularly good at highlighting who really benefits from government regulation: usually it is the largest corporations who are attempting to rig the game in their favor. The anticipated effect of this book on both liberals and conservatives, the Left and the Right, is to force a rethinking of the typical categories. It asks that all sides face their hypocrisies: the Left favors freedom of speech but cares nothing for the private property that guarantees such freedom. The Right demands lower taxes but wages culture wars and real wars that grant government more power to take liberty and property from the American family. As you can see, this is a radical and challenging book. We are given not only the big picture or a series of small studies but both at once, fully integrated into an analytical whole. Once you are exposed to the complete picture-and For a New Liberty has been the leading means of exposure for more than a quarter of a century-you cannot forget it. It becomes the indispensable lens through which to interpret events in the real world with the greatest possible clarity. This book more than any other explains why Rothbard seems to grow in stature every year (his influence has vastly risen since his death), why the state continues to regard libertarian ideas as the gravest threat to its power, and why Rothbardianism has so many enemies on the left, right, and center. Quite simply, the science of liberty that he brought into clear relief is as thrilling in the hope it creates for a free world as it is unforgiving of the error of power. Its logical and moral consistency, together with its empirical-explanatory muscle, represents a threat to any intellectual vision that sets out to use coercion and violence to refashion the world. And yet, to the same extent, it also impresses the reader with a hopeful vision of what might be. Rothbard chose to pull no punches. Trimming and compromising for the sake of the times or the potential audience was just not his way. He knew that he had a once-in-a-generation chance to present libertarianism in all its glory, and he was not about to pass it up. And thus do we find in this masterpiece: not just a case for cutting government but for eliminating it altogether, not just an argument for assigning property rights but for deferring to the market even on questions of contract enforcement, and not just a case for cutting welfare but for banishing the entire welfare-warfare state. Whereas other attempts to make a libertarian case, both before and after this book, might typically call for transitional or half measures, or be willing to concede as much as possible to statists, this is not what we get from Murray. Not for him such schemes as the privatization of government programs that should not exist at all. Instead, he presents and follows through with the full-blown and fully bracing vision of what liberty can be. This is why so many other similar attempts to write the "Libertarian Manifesto" have not stood the test of time, and yet this book remains in high demand. Similarly, there have been many books on libertarianism that have appeared in the intervening years that have covered philosophy alone, politics alone, economics alone, or history alone. Those that have put all these subjects together have usually been collections by various authors. Rothbard alone had the mastery in all fields that permitted him to write an integrated manifesto—one that has never been displaced. And yet his approach is typically self-effacing: he constantly points to other writers and intellectuals of the past and his own times. In addition, Rothbard never talks down to his readers, who will discover that every page exudes energy and passion, that the logic of his argument is impossibly compelling, and that the intellectual fire that inspired this work burns as bright now as it did all those years ago. The last section is entitled “A Strategy for Liberty.” Here he explains why we can’t count on the political class, big business, big media, or big foundations to point the way toward a libertarian future. We must work through the young on campuses and through our own institutions that we build from the ground up. He shows that the moment is right, that pockets of liberty are all around us. It is up to us to lead in the educational effort and to fight for our ideals in every way. He ends with a bold and inspiring call for us all to throw ourselves into the main battle of our time, which is the battle between the forces of despotism and the freedom of all. Rothbard’s enthusiasm and optimism is as sincere as it is infectious. The book is still regarded as "dangerous" precisely because, once the exposure to Rothbardianism takes place, no other book on politics, economics, history, or sociology can be read the same way again. The news on television and in papers will never read the same way either. Rothbard rediscovers the liberty that is our heritage and can again be our guiding principle in all aspects of public life. It set off a firestorm when it was published. What was once a commercial phenomenon has truly become a classic statement of the political foundations of civilization. The book has been entirely reset from lesser previous editions, and is the first one to really do this classic justice. The footnotes appear on the bottom of each page, the index is authoritative and complete, the binding is outstanding, and the typeface is clean and strong. The full text, including the index, is 419 pages.

Download or read book Cedric Robinson written by Joshua Myers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-09-03 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cedric Robinson – political theorist, historian, and activist – was one of the greatest black radical thinkers of the twentieth century. In this powerful work, the first major book to tell his story, Joshua Myers shows how Robinson’s work interrogated the foundations of western political thought, modern capitalism, and changing meanings of race. Tracing the course of Robinson’s journey from his early days as an agitator in the 1960s to his publication of such seminal works as Black Marxism, Myers frames Robinson’s mission as aiming to understand and practice opposition to “the terms of order.” In so doing, Robinson excavated the Black Radical tradition as a form of resistance that imagined that life on wholly different terms was possible. In the era of Black Lives Matter, that resistance is as necessary as ever, and Robinson’s contribution only gains in importance. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting to learn more about it.

Download or read book Freedom and Virtue written by George W. Carey and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-07 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-running debates between between conservatives and libertarians are vigorous and highly charged, dealing with ideas about the very nature of liberty and morality. Like no other single work, Freedom and Virtue explores what unites and divides the adherents of these two important American traditions—shedding much light on our current political landscape.

Download or read book For a New Liberty The Libertarian Manifesto written by Murray Newton Rothbard and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 1978 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Democracy in Chains written by Nancy MacLean and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist for the National Book Award The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" “[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic “This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be.”—NPR An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

Download or read book The Libertarian Mind written by David Boaz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revised, updated, and retitled edition of David Boaz’s classic book Libertarianism: A Primer, which was praised as uniting “history, philosophy, economics and law—spiced with just the right anecdotes—to bring alive a vital tradition of American political thought that deserves to be honored today” (Richard A. Epstein, University of Chicago). Libertarianism—the philosophy of personal and economic freedom—has deep roots in Western civilization and in American history, and it’s growing stronger. Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the campaigns of Ron Paul and Rand Paul, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses have pushed millions more Americans in a libertarian direction. Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz, the longtime executive vice president of the Cato Institute, continues to be the best available guide to the history, ideas, and growth of this increasingly important political movement—and now it has been updated throughout and with a new title: The Libertarian Mind. Boaz has updated the book with new information on the threat of government surveillance; the policies that led up to and stemmed from the 2008 financial crisis; corruption in Washington; and the unsustainable welfare state. The Libertarian Mind is the ultimate resource for the current, burgeoning libertarian movement.

Download or read book American Political Thought written by Jonathan Keller and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twenty-first century presents unique political challenges, like increasing concern over racially based police brutality and mass incarceration, continuing economic and gender inequality, the rise of conservative and libertarian politics, and the appropriate role of religion in American politics. Current scholarship in American political thought research neither adequately responds to the contemporary moment in American politics nor fully captures the depth and scope of this rich tradition. This collection of essays offers an innovative expansion of the American political tradition. By exposing the major ideas and thinkers of the four major yet still underappreciated alternative traditions of American political thought—African American, feminist, radical and conservative—this book challenges the boundaries of American political thinking about such values like freedom, justice, equality, democracy, economy, rights, identity, and the role of the state in American life. These traditions, the various authors show in different ways, not only present a much fuller and more accurate characterization of what counts as American political thought. They are also especially unique for the conceptual resources they provide for addressing contemporary developments in American politics. Offering an original and substantive interpretation of thinkers and movements, American Political Thought will help students understand how to put American political thought into conversation with contemporary debates in political theory.

Download or read book Redemption and Utopia written by Michael Lowy and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classic study of Jewish libertarian thought, from Walter Benjamin to Franz Kafka Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there appeared in Central Europe a generation of Jewish intellectuals whose work was to transform modern culture. Drawing at once on the traditions of German Romanticism and Jewish messianism, their thought was organized around the cabalistic idea of the “tikkoun”: redemption. Redemption and Utopia uses the concept of “elective affinity” to explain the surprising community of spirit that existed between redemptive messianic religious thought and the wide variety of radical secular utopian beliefs held by this important group of intellectuals. The author outlines the circumstances that produced this unusual combination of religious and non-religious thought and illuminates the common assumptions that united such seemingly disparate figures as Martin Buber, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukács.

Download or read book The American as Anarchist written by David DeLeon and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2019-12-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1978. When compared with socialist and communist systems in other nations, the impact of radicalism on American society seems almost nonexistent. David DeLeon challenges this position, however, by presenting a historical and theoretical perspective for understanding the scope and significance of dissent in America. From Anne Hutchinson in colonial New England to the New Left of the 1960s, DeLeon underscores a tradition of radical protest that has endured in American history—a tradition of native anarchism that is fundamentally different from the radicalism of Europe, the Soviet Union, or nations of the Third World. DeLeon shows that a profound resistance to authority lies at the very heart of the American value system. The first part of the book examines how Protestant belief, capitalism, and even the American landscape itself contributed to the unique character of American dissent. DeLeon then looks at the actions and ideologies of all major forms of American radicalism, both individualists and communitarians, from laissez-faire liberals to anarcho-capitalists, from advocates of community control to syndicalists. In the book's final part, DeLeon argues against measuring the American experience by the standards of communism and other political systems. Instead he contends that American culture is far more radical than that of any socialist state and the implications of American radicalism are far more revolutionary than forms of Marxism-Leninism.

Download or read book An American Anarchist written by Paul Avrich and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An American Anarchist closes a major gap in our understanding of American an- archism and particularly a gap in our understanding of its deep roots in American radicalism. It makes the same contribution to our understanding of American feminism.” —Richard Drinnon, author of Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman "Paul Avrich's book is very well researched—it fascinated me as I am sure it will fascinate many other people who are interested in the anarchist personality." —George Woodcock An American Anarchist marked the trail historians of American anarchism are still following today: above all else, to understand anarchists as human beings. Narrative-driven like all of Paul Avrich’s works, this story highlights famous characters like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and the infamous, like Dyer D. Lum—Voltairine de Cleyre’s lover and the man who sneaked a dynamite cartridge into Louis Lingg’s cell so the accused Haymarket Martyr could die at his own hand and not the state’s. De Cleyre (1866–1912), born in Michigan, is noted as the first prominent American-born anarchist. From her voluminous writings and speeches, the illnesses that plagued her, the shooting on a streetcar in Philadelphia that left de Cleyre clinging for life, to her eventual death at forty- five in Chicago, she worked tirelessly for her ideal.

Download or read book Burning Down the House written by Andrew Koppelman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively history of American libertarianism and its decay into dangerous fantasy. In 2010 in South Fulton, Tennessee, each household paid the local fire department a yearly fee of $75.00. That year, Gene Cranick's house accidentally caught fire. But the fire department refused to come because Cranick had forgotten to pay his yearly fee, leaving his home in ashes. Observers across the political spectrum agreed—some with horror and some with enthusiasm—that this revealed the true face of libertarianism. But libertarianism did not always require callous indifference to the misfortunes of others. Modern libertarianism began with Friedrich Hayek’s admirable corrective to the Depression-era vogue for central economic planning. It resisted oppressive state power. It showed how capitalism could improve life for everyone. Yet today, it's a toxic blend of anarchism, disdain for the weak, and rationalization for environmental catastrophe. Libertarians today accept new, radical arguments—which crumble under scrutiny—that justify dishonest business practices and Covid deniers who refuse to wear masks in the name of “freedom.” Andrew Koppelman’s book traces libertarianism's evolution from Hayek’s moderate pro-market ideas to the romantic fabulism of Murray Rothbard, Robert Nozick, and Ayn Rand, and Charles Koch’s promotion of climate change denial. Burning Down the House is the definitive history of an ideological movement that has reshaped American politics.

Download or read book Transforming Free Speech written by Mark A. Graber and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary civil libertarians claim that their works preserve a worthy American tradition of defending free-speech rights dating back to the framing of the First Amendment. Transforming Free Speech challenges the worthiness, and indeed the very existence of one uninterrupted libertarian tradition. Mark A. Graber asserts that in the past, broader political visions inspired libertarian interpretations of the First Amendment. In reexamining the philosophical and jurisprudential foundations of the defense of expression rights from the Civil War to the present, he exposes the monolithic free-speech tradition as a myth. Instead of one conception of the system of free expression, two emerge: the conservative libertarian tradition that dominated discourse from the Civil War until World War I, and the civil libertarian tradition that dominates later twentieth-century argument. The essence of the current perception of the American free-speech tradition derives from the writings of Zechariah Chafee, Jr. (1885-1957), the progressive jurist most responsible for the modern interpretation of the First Amendment. His interpretation, however, deliberately obscured earlier libertarian arguments linking liberty of speech with liberty of property. Moreover, Chafee stunted the development of a more radical interpretation of expression rights that would give citizens the resources and independence necessary for the effective exercise of free speech. Instead, Chafee maintained that the right to political and social commentary could be protected independent of material inequalities that might restrict access to the marketplace of ideas. His influence enfeebled expression rights in a world where their exercise depends increasingly on economic power. Untangling the libertarian legacy, Graber points out the disjunction in the libertarian tradition to show that free-speech rights, having once been transformed, can be transformed again. Well-conceived and original in perspective, Transforming Free Speech will interest political theorists, students of government, and anyone interested in the origins of the free-speech tradition in the United States.

Download or read book Anarchist Voices written by Paul Avrich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through his many books on the history of anarchism, Paul Avrich has done much to dispel the public's conception of the anarchists as mere terrorists. In Anarchist Voices, Avrich lets American anarchists speak for themselves. This abridged edition contains fifty-three interviews conducted by Avrich over a period of thirty years, interviews that portray the human dimensions of a movement much maligned by the authorities and contemporary journalists. Most of the interviewees (anarchists as well as their friends and relatives) were active during the heyday of the movement, between the 1880s and the 1930s. They represent all schools of anarchism and include both famous figures and minor ones, previously overlooked by most historians. Their stories provide a wealth of personal detail about such anarchist luminaries as Emma Goldman and Sacco and Vanzetti.