Great ideas and philosophy! Unfortunately not part of the ANC's planning, but still a model to be pursued, and a new perspective on the role of government. Goes all American in the middle if you have to criticize, but still interesting.

A must-read! ( )

This book begins with a philosophical analysis of property, ethics, and political science. It uses this as the justification and basis of the rest of the book, which breaks down many of the major areas of our lives where our centralized governments (at least nominally) provide services and organize society. For each of those areas, it points out where government either does more harm than good or, at best, seems to come out benefit-neutral, but does so only at the cost of violated individual rights. It goes on to explain how each of these areas might be better served by an anarchocapitalist social order, backing it up with examples from history and layman-accessible economic analysis of the factors involved.

That first part of the book, where Rothbard sets out to establish a system of ethics and political philosophy of property rights from a "natural rights" justification as the most fundamental right of individuals, is easily the weakest part of the book. As many opponents of his ideas have said, Rothbard is a "philosophical lightweight", whose investigations into the necessities of universal ethics fall somewhere on the naive side of important philosophy, and his core argument is circular. He seems to have picked up some good ideas and organized them reasonably well, tried to justify them based on his preferential biases, and come to the conclusion he is a philosophical genius in the process.

The remainder of the book, however, is well researched, well presented, well argued, and grounded in Rothbard's solid mastery of economic theory, for which he is rightly regarded as one of the field's foremost experts. In fact, he does an excellent job of answering the constant annoyance of libertarians everywhere somewhere in the middle of the book -- the strident demands from authoritarians for an answer to the question "What about the roads?" The fact such a question is still asked rhetorically when this book has been around for so long is a testament to the mental laziness of authoritarian pseudo-intellectuals everywhere (just as the widespread acceptance of Rothbard's natural/property rights ethics as unassailable is a testament to the mental laziness of libertarian pseudo-intellectuals everywhere). ( )

summary of libertarian philosophy

How a society organised without rulers might work. i.e. political anarchy (not to be confused with violence, chaos and disorder). ( )

Since the Libertarian party has been getting so much attention during the 2016 election as a possible alternative to the candidates from the two major parties, it seemed like a good idea to try to learn more about the positions of the party. I started with their 2016 party platform but found it nothing more than the equivalent of a few powerpoint bullet points.

I was therefore happy to have found this book from Rothbard since it tries to layout the Libertarian position on everything from drugs, abortion, foreign policy, and even air and noise pollution. Although I still have many questions about their positions, after finishing this book I feel I have a real understanding of the principles of the party. The book begins with a discussion of the basic principles of the Libertarians and then, chapter for chapter applies those principles to specific topics in a well reasoned fashion. It is also easy to read depite many of the political discussions being dated to the situations in the 1970s.

The author, Murray Rothbard, is considered to be one of the founders of the Libertarian movement and had been involved with other key movement figures like Ayn Rand and the Koch brothers. According to other books about the movement, most of those relationships ended in disagreements. This book was published originally in 1973 as an attempt to layout the Libertarian principles. It succeeds very well.

Reading the book, it was hard to escape the impression that Libertarian thinking fit perfectly for a comfortably living academic who now has his own and wants to keep everyone else away. It is hard to imagine this philosophy appealing to people that are poor or downtrodden or not strong enough to protect their own interests like the women killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire or coal miners who had been forced to "sell their souls to the company store."

It is easy to imagine the movement as an association of people arguing about true principles rather than as an association of people that could actually build a society that functions. One conservative (William Buckley) described them as a group of people that would argue constantly about privatizing garbage disposal. I can imagine their get-togethers having the same level of discussion as a get-together of Trotsky and Lenin followers.

It is debatable whether many of these Libertarian approaches would work in practice. For that reason, it would be really useful if a group of Libertarians would form a community somewhere based upon their principles to see if they could really make this work. For example, many of their approaches for providing community services and infrastructure is based upon an assumption that so many firms would be competing to supply you with water and remove your garbage that those businesses would provide perfectly efficient services to you. Ironically, Rothbard's love of firms in the earlier chapters is dismissed by his attacks of our current big businesses with their tendencies to drive towards monopolies and to feed at the government trough.

The Libertarian society painted by Rotbard would likely be a very litigious society since many of Rothbard's remedies for air and noise pollution involve suing the person who caused this attack on your personal property.

Rothbard paints the Libertarian movement like other utopian movements but claims that his utopian vision is the one utopia that will really work since he feels it is the only movement based upon real human nature. The last chapter at the end of the book discusses how to make a Libertarian world come about. His proposed techniques are admittedly borrowed from Marxist movements and include many strategies that have since been implemented by the Koch brothers and the tea party movement. He also sees the need for a "crisis moment" to occur in order to get the world to adopt the Libertarian agenda. If he were still alive, Rothbard would clearly be made happy by the crisis of the 2016 election. He sees hope that "government itself has been desanctified in America. No one trusts politicians or government anymore; all government is viewed with abiding hostility, thus returning us to that state of healthy distrust of government ...."

One challenge for the Libertarian political party having a presidential candidate would be what would happen if he would actually win. Since Rothbard explains that the Libertarian movement is against government in general, it would make it very difficult for any true Libertarian to take the presidential oath to preserve the constitution.

In summary, this book is recommended as a logical and easy to read explanation of Libertarian thinking. ( )