Archive of Material added to the Website

Additions in 2019

Dec. 2019:

Sept. 2019: Libertarian Scholars Conference, NYC, papers:

  • Molinari: "Was Molinari a true Anarcho-Capitalist?: An Intellectual History of the Private and Competitive Production of Security" [Full paper HTML and PDF - Slides - Handout]
  • Bastiat: "Some Thoughts on an 'Austrian Theory of Film': Ideas and Human Action in a Film about Frédéric Bastiat" [Full paper in HTML and PDF - Slides] [Screenplay - Illustrations]

July 2019: chapter on "The Paris School of Liberal Political Economy" in The Cambridge History of French Thought (CUP, 2019) - a much longer version is here.

June 2019: Molinari bicentennial celebrations throughout 2019

April 2019: Paper on "The Conflicted Western Tradition: Some Provocative Pairings of Texts about Liberty and Power" for the Association of Core Texts and Courses annual conference, April 2019, Santa Fe, NM.

 

2018

 

 

2017

Title: Say, Jean-Baptise, Cours complet d'économie politique pratique; ouvrage destiné à mettre sous les yeux des hommes d'état, des propriétaires fonciers et les capitalistes, des savans, des agriculteurs, des manufacturiers, des négocians, et en général de tous les citoyens, l'économie des sociétés (Paris: Rapilly, 1828-9), 6 vols.

E-Text: vol. 1 [13.9 MB PDF] - vol. 2 [16.5 MB PDF] - vol. 3 [23.5 MB PDF] - vol. 4 [22 MB PDF] - vol. 5 [14.7 MB PDF] - vol. 6 [21 MB PDF]

Comment: This important work by Say has never been translated into English.

Date Added:

Guillaumin Collection: French Political Economy

Title: Wendell Phillips, The Disunionist, Can Abolitionists vote or take Office under the United States Constitution? (Cincinnati: Sparhawk and Lytle, Printers, 1845).

E-Text: [Facsimile PDF] [HTML]

Comment: A foundational text for the "voluntaryists" who think it is immoral to vote or to sweath an oath to take office in government.

Date Added: 22 Jan. 2017

Guillaumin Collection: Slavery and Abolition

 

2014

23. Dec. 26: Bastiat's, Le Libre-Échange (Nov. 1846-April 1848) - Updated

Title: Le Libre-Échange. Journal du travail agricole, industriel et commercial. Première année, No. 1: 29 novembre 1846; No. 52: 21 novembre 1847. And Le Libre-Échange. Deuxième année, No. 1: 28 novembre 1848; No. 20: 16 avril 1848. Edited by Frédéric Bastiat and Charles Coquelin.

E-Text: 52 issues of the first year and 20 issues of the second year are available in facsimile PDF. [Orignally scanned 2 pages to a page - now reformatted to one page per page].

Comment:The last issue edited by FB was No. 12: 13 février 1848. Subsequent issues were edited by Charles Coquelin as Bastiat became increasingly busy during the revolution, editing and distributing the little magazine La République française and then standing for the April elections to the Constituent Assembly (which he won representing his home district of Les Landes).

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

 

22. Oct. 28: Le Travail intellectuel (1847-48).

Title: Le Travail intellectuel. Journal des intérêts scientifiques, littéraires et artistiques (Paris) 15 Aug. 1847 - 15 Feb. 1848 (7 issues). Rédacteur en chef: Hippolyte Castille, rue Saint-Lazare 79.

E-Text: [Facs. PDF 105 MB]

Comment: A short lived journal founded by H. Castille and his economist friends such as Bastiat, Molinari, and others. It was designed to defend the idea of the perpetual property rights in ideas. The address of the editorial offices, rue Saint-Lazare 79, was Castille's home where he held a salon. This is where Molinari got the idea for the title of his book Les Soirées de la rue Saint-Lazare (1849). Page 1 of issue no. 1 is missing.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

 

21. Oct. 26: Frederick Douglass, Oration (July 5th, 1852).

Title:Oration, Delivered in Corinthian Hall, Rochester, by Frederick Douglass, July 5th, 1852 (Rochester: Printed by Lee, Mann, and Co., American Building, 1852).

E-Text: The speech is available in HTML and facs. PDF 3.9 MB.

Comment: Fredercik Douglass is a little appreciated classical liberal who based his defence of freedom solidly on the grounds of self-ownership and the renunciation of corecion. He believed these were universal principles which applied to both African-Americans and women.

Guillaumin Collection: Anti-Slavery Writings

 

20. Oct. 26: Laisson Faire: : Revue des économistes français (Paris: Institut Coppet)

Title: Laissons Faire: Revue des économistes français (revue mensuelle de l’Institut Coppet). Rédacteur en chef : Benoît Malbranque, chercheur-associé, vice-président de l’Institut Coppet. Éditeur : Damien Theillier, président de l’Institut Coppet, professeur de philosophie. David M. Hart, Membre du Comité d’honneur.

E-Text: <http://www.institutcoppet.org/laissons-faire/archives/> or here [complete backlist with ToC].

Comment: The French classical liberal tradition is alive and flourishing in Paris. The Institut Coppet (named after madame de Staël's château in Switzerland where classical liberals could seek shelter from the wrath of Napoléon) is undertaking a large republishing effort to bring back into print the French classics from the 18th and 19th century. This is their monthly journal.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

19. Sept. 26: Bastiat's, Le Libre-Échange (Nov. 1846-April 1848)

Title: Le Libre-Échange. Journal du travail agricole, industriel et commercial. Première année, No. 1: 29 novembre 1846; No. 52: 21 novembre 1847. And Le Libre-Échange. Deuxième année, No. 1: 28 novembre 1848; No. 20: 16 avril 1848. Edited by Frédéric Bastiat and Charles Coquelin.

E-Text: 52 issues of the first year and 20 issues of the second year are available in facsimile PDF.

Comment:The last issue edited by FB was No. 12: 13 février 1848. Subsequent issues were edited by Charles Coquelin as Bastiat became increasingly busy during the revolution, editing and distributing the little magazine La République française and then standing for the April elections to the Constituent Assembly (which he won representing his home district of Les Landes).

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

 

18. August 25: Bastiat and Molinari, La République française (Feb./March 1848)

Title: La République française. Daily journal. Signed: the editors: F. Bastiat, Hippolyte Castille, Molinari. Appeared 26 February to 28 March. 30 issues.

E-Text: 28 of the 30 issues are available in PDF.

Comment: The day after the July Monarchy collapsed in late February Bastiat, Molinari, and Castille were on the streets of Paris with their own revolutionary magazine advocating free market ideas to the rioters in the streets. This is a fascinating piece of liberal history.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

 

17. August 21: Humboldt, Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Gränzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen (1851)

Title: Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Gränzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen (Some Ideas in an Attempt to determine the Limits of the Functions of the State) (Breslau: Heinrich Richte, 1851).

E-Text: German version in HTML - [facs. PDF 12 MB]

Comment: Humboldt's essay on "The Limits of State Action" is an early effort to define the boundaries of the limited classical liberal state. He wrote this as a series of essays in 1792 during the French Revolution a couple of which were published at the time. He did not publish the compelte book in his lifetime, perhaps fearing how radical it was now that he had become a seniour public servant in the Prussian education system. It was published in 1851 in German and was quickly translated into English in 1854, just in time to have an impact on John Stuart Mill who acknowledged Humboldt's influence on his thinking in On Liberty which was published in 1859.

Guillaumin Collection: German Classical Liberalism

 

16. August 17: A Foreword by Rose Wilder Lane to Bastiat's Social Fallacies (Economic Sophisms) (1944)

Title: Social Fallacies (Economic Sophisms) by Frederic Bastiat. Translated from the Fifth Edition of the French by Patrick James Stirling, L.L.D., F.R.S.E. with A Foreword by Rose Wilder Lane (Published by Register Publishing Co., Santa Ana. Calif. 1944).

E-Text: Translator's Preface (Stirling), Publisher's Statement (Hoiles), Foreword (Lane) - HTML and facs. PDF 5 MB

Comment: Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968) was an American individualist and libertarian who was very important in the founding of the modern American libertarian movement in the mid-20th century. Lane wrote The Discovery of Freedom in 1943 and the following year this Preface for R.C. Hoiles' edition of Bastiat's Social Fallacies (Economic Sophisms). This was an important moment when Bastiat's free trade and free market ideas were re-introduced to America. In her foreword Lane provides a remarkable survey of the rise and fall and possible rise of liberty again over the previous 200 hundred years, and placed the work of Bastiat in the context of this historical movement.

Guillaumin Collection: American Individualists

 

15. August 14: Frédéric Bastiat, Harmonies of Political Economy, trans. Stirling (1880).

Title: Harmonies of Political Economy, by Frédéric Bastiat. Translated from the Third Edition of the French, with a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author. Second Edition (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1880).

E-Text: Facimile of the 1880 vesion [PDF 12.2 MB] and an HTML version with links to earlier versions in facsimile.

Comment: The first complete English edition of Bastiat's Economic Harmonies (1880). James Patrick Stirling translated the 1st ed. of Economic Harmonies in 1860 (the 1st 10 chapters of Bastiat's unfinished work appeared in Jan. 1850), the 2nd French edition of 1851 with 15 additional chapters from his papers and drafts which Stirling translated and published in 1870, and then this 1880 edition of the complete volume.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

 

14. August 10: Adolphe Thiers, The Rights of Property; A Refutation of Communism and Socialism (1848).

Title: Adolphe Thiers, The Rights of Property; A Refutation of Communism and Socialism [no name given for the translator] (London: R. Groombridge & Sons, 1848).

E-Text: The English version in HTML with links to the facsimile PDFs (French and English versions)

Comment: The attempt by the socialists in the Provisional Government after the February Revolution of 1848 in France led to a vigorous discussion about property rights and socialism when the socialists tried to enshrine a "right to a job" clause in the new constitution. Liberals like Bastiat and Molinari wrote pamphlets and books defending property and criticising socialism, as did liberal conservatives like the historian and politician Adolphe Thiers. In this book Thiers gives a very interesting defence of the right of self-ownership which is aLockean notion.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

 

13. August 3: Yves Guyot, Le Libre-Échange international (1918).

Title: Le Libre-Échange international. Six Conférences organisées en 1918 par la Ligue du Libre-Échange à l'École des Hautes Études Sociales par MM. Yves Guyot, Germain Paturel, G. Schelle, J. Pierson, Frédéric Mathews (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1918).

E-Text: [PDF 8.3 MB]

Comment: In 1911 the remnant of the French free traders formed a new Free Trade Association modelled on Bastiat's of 1846. Yves Guyot, the editor of the Journal des Économistes, was the President and their Manifesto was published there in 1911. A second Manifesto was published during WW1 in 1916 and a conference organised in January 1918 in order to assess the prospects for free trade as the war came to a conclusion. Guyot was not optimistic as he observed that when businessmen and financiers advise and cooperate with governments in the conduct of the war they become more interventionist than the careeer bureaucrats. He noted the existence of a stark antithesis between the interventionist and militarist oligarchies which controlled the governments on both sides and the supporters of free trade who wanted to destroy the power of these oligarchies by introducing a policy of international free trade (pp. 34-35).

Guillaumin Collection: War and Peace

 

12. July 29: Bastiat, Molinari, et al., Jacques Bonhomme (June, 1848).

Title: Jacques Bonhomme, (Paris: 11 June - 13 July, 1848).

E-Text: [to come - see this page in the meantime]

Comment: Jacques Bonhomme was a short lived journal which was written and distributed on the streets of Paris during the 1848 Revolution by 4 economists, Gustave de Molinari, Charles Coquelin, Alcide Fonteyraud, and Joseph Garnier. It appeared approximately weekly with 4 issues between 11 June to 13 July. It was forced to close by the violent repression by the army of the 'June Days' uprising.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism

 

11. July 20: Francis W. Hirst, The Political Economy of War (1915).

Title: Francis W. Hirst, The Political Economy of War (London and Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1915)

E-Texts: [PDF 13MB]

Comment: Francis Hirst (1873-1953) was an English classical liberal author and book editor who was the editor of The Economist from 1907 to 1916. He wrote biographies of William Gladstone, Adam Smith, and John Morley and many books on economics. While editor of the Economist he published the first book devoted to the "political economy of war" which drew upon the ideas of Adam Smith and Frédéric Bastiat.

Guillaumin Collection: War and Peace

10. July 20: Poems by Wilred Owen (1921).

Title: Poems by Wilred Owen, with an Introduction by Siegfried Sassoon (New York: The Viking Press; London: Chatto & Windus, 1921).

E-Texts: [PDF 436KB]

Comment: Wilfred Owen is the best known of the English war poets who fought in WW1. He died on 4 November 1918 one week before the Armistice ended the war. This collection of his war poerty was published by friend Siegfried Sassoon who was also a poet. My favourites in this volume are "Parable of the Old Men and the Young" and "Dulce et Decorum est". His unfinished preface is also very moving.

Guillaumin Collection: Literature

 

9. July 19: Jean de Bloch, The Future of War (1903).

Title: Jean de Bloch, The Future of War in its Technical, Economics, and Political Relations. Translated by R.C. Long, and with a Conversations with the Author by W.T. Stead, and an Introduction by Edwin D. Mead (Boston: Published for the International Union, Ginn and Company, 1903).

E-Texts: [PDF 8MB]

Extracts in HTML: VI. Probable Losses in Future Wars and VII. Militarism and its Nemesis [with data tables]

Comment: This is the 1 vol. abridgement of his 6 vol. work originally published in Russian and German in 1899.

Guillaumin Collection: War and Peace

 

8. July 19: Johann von Bloch (Jean de Bloch), Der Krieg (6 vols.) (1899).

Title: Johann von Bloch (Jean de Bloch), Der Krieg. Uebersetzung des russischen werkes des Autors: Der zukünftige krieg in seiner technischen, volkswirtschaftlichen und politischen Bedeutung (Berlin: Puttkammer & Mühlbrecht, 1899).

E-Texts:

  • Band I. Beschreibung des Kriegsmechanismus [PDF 39MB]
  • Band II. Der Landkrieg [PDF 33MB]
  • Band III. Der Seekrieg [PDF 23MB]
  • Band IV. Die ökonomischen Erschütterungen und materiellen Verluste des Zukunftkrieges [PDF 44MB]
  • Band V. Die Bestrebungen zur Beseitigung des Krieges. Die politischen Konflikts-Ursachen und die Fogen der Verluste [PDF 27MB]
  • Band VI. Der Mechanismus des Krieges und seine Wirkungen. Die Frage vom internationalen Schiedsgericht [PDF 15MB]

Comment: Jean de Bloch (1836-1902) was a Polish born banker and railway financier who lived and worked in Russia. The quick Prussian defeat of France in 1870 led him to pursue a scientific study of what a modern war might look like in the near future. This 6 volume work is remarkably prescient in many of his predictions of what actually transpired in WW1 . A 1 vol. abridgement was published in English and a 4 vol. one in French. The Germans got the full 6 vol. treament but ignored it. The graphs and statistical tables about the destructiveness of modern weaponry and his predicted death rates are especially interesting.

Guillaumin Collection: War and Peace

 

7. July 17: Yves Guyot, Les Causes et les conséquences de la Guerre (1915).

Title: Yves Guyot, Les Causes et les conséquences de la Guerre. (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1915).

E-Text: [PDF 23MB]

Comment: Guyot wrote a series of 9 aticles for the Journal des Économistes (of which he was the editor) as the war was unfolding between August 1914 and April 1915 [French version [PDF 16MB]. This was expanded and published as a book which was translated into English. It provides an interesting insight into the minds of the last remaining classical liberals in France before they were marginalised after the war.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism and War and Peace

 

6. July 16: Yves Guyot, The Causes and Consequences of the War (1916).

Title: Yves Guyot, The Causes and Consequences of the War. By Yves Guyot, Late French Minister of State. Principle Editor of the "Journal des Économistes." Translated by F. Appleby Holt, B.A., LL.B. (New York: Brentanbo's, 1916).

E-Text: [PDF 8MB]

Comment: Guyot wrote a series of 9 aticles for the Journal des Économistes (of which he was the editor) as the war was unfolding between August 1914 and April 1915 [French version [PDF 16MB]. This was expanded and published as a book which was translated into English. It provides an interesting insight into the minds of the last remaining classical liberals in France before they were marginalised after the war.

Guillaumin Collection: French Classical Liberalism and War and Peace

 

5. July 14: Élie Halévy, La Formation du Radicalisme philosophique III: Le Radicalisme philosophique (1904).

Title: Élie Halévy, La Formation du Radicalisme philosophique III: Le Radicalisme philosophique (Paris: AF. Alcan, 1904).

E-Text: [PDF 14 MB].

Comment: The third volulme of a three volume work on the movement for liberal reform in England, known as the Philosophic Radicals, in last part of the 18th century and the first 3 decades of the 19th.

Guillaumin Collection: English Classical Liberalism

 

4. July 14: Élie Halévy, La Formation du Radicalisme philosophique II: L'Évolution de la doctrine utilitaire de 1789 à 1815 (1901).

Title: Élie Halévy, La Formation du Radicalisme philosophique II: L'Évolution de la doctrine utilitaire de 1789 à 1815 (Paris: F. Alcan, 1901).

E-Text: [PDF 11.1 MB].

Comment: The second volulme of a three volume work on the movement for liberal reform in England, known as the Philosophic Radicals, in last part of the 18th century and the first 3 decades of the 19th.

Guillaumin Collection: English Classical Liberalism

 

3. July 14: Élie Halévy, La Formation du Radicalisme philosophique I: La jeunesse de Bentham (1901).

Title: Élie Halévy, La Formation du Radicalisme philosophique I: La jeunesse de Bentham (Paris: F. Alcan, 1901).

E-Text: [PDF 13.8 MB].

Comment: The first volulme of a three volume work on the movement for liberal reform in England, known as the Philosophic Radicals, in last part of the 18th century and the first 3 decades of the 19th.

Guillaumin Collection: English Classical Liberalism

 

2. July 14: Élie Halévy, Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) (1903).

Title: Élie Halévy, Thomas Hodgskin (1787-1869) (Paris: Société Nouvelle de librairie et d'édition, 1903).

E-Text: [PDF 3.8 MB].

Comment: The first biography of the life and thought of Hodgskin was written by a Frenchman who also wrote an imporatnt 3 volulme history of the Philosiophic Radicals who were influenced by Bentham's theories, most notably James and John Stuart Mill.

Guillaumin Collection: English Classical Liberalism

OLL: Thomas Hodgskin

 

1. July 13: Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825).

Title: Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital. Or the Unproductiveness of Capital proved with reference to the present Combinations amongst Journeymen. With an Introduction by G.D.H. Cole (London: The Labour Publishing Company Ltd., 1825).

E-Text: [PDF 4.9 MB].

Comment: Claimed by many socialists as "one of them" Hodgskin is in fact a radical individualist and supporter of free trade and free markets.

Guillaumin Collection: English Classical Liberalism

OLL: Thomas Hodgskin

 

2013

Jeremy Bentham's plan for a "Panopticon" (all-seeing) penitentiary
Covers for Penguin editions of George Orwell's dystopian novel Nine-Teen Eighty Four (1949)

 

[Frédéric Passy (1822-1912)]

 

 
  • October 6: A colour version of Bastiat's pamphlet La Loi (1850) [PDF 18.2 MB].
  • October 6: A very early work by Molinari: Gustave de Molinari, Biographie politique de M. A. de Lamartine. Extrait de la Revue générale biographique, politique et littéraire, publiée sous la direction de M. E. Pascallet. Deuxième Edition (Paris: Impr. de Mme Lacombe, 1843). [PDF 4 MB].
  • October 6: Gustave de Molinari, Le Congrès européen (Bruxelles: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie, 1864). [PDF 1.9 MB].
  • October 6: I have found and downloaded but not yet edited the 5th Series of the Journal des Économistes (1890-1903) and most of the 6th Series (1904-1920). These will also have an HTML ToC. [Watch this space!] Molinari was the editor from 1881 to 1907. The issues covering the First World War will be especially interesting as the 100th anniversary of the start of WW1 is next year.
  • October 6: I finally found a digital copy of Molinari's book on Bonapartist despotism: Les révolutions et le despotisme, envisagés au point de vue des intérêts matériels, précédé d'une lettre à M. le comte J. Arrivabene, sur les dangers de la situation présente (1852). [PDF 23.4 MB] There is some good material here on Molinari's class anaysis of "the tax payers" and "the tax eaters".
  • July 28: This is perhaps the first libertarian tract ever written (1552). Étienne de la Boétie's Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Wrote in French by Stephen de la Boetie. One of the King's Councillors in the Parliament at Bordeaux, in the Reign of Charles IX, King of France (London: T. Smith, 1735). [PDF 2.7 MB]. This may be preferable to the Harry Kurz edition used by Rothbard in 1975. [PDF 245 KB]. Much more to come on Boetie …
  • July 28: Lysander Spooner's great essay on the injustice of so-called "victimless crimes" was originally published anonymously in Dio Lewis, Prohibition a Failure: or, the True Solution of the Temperance Question (Boston: James R. Good and Co., 1875) [PDF 5.8 MB]. See Spooner's essay "Vices are not Crimes. A Vindication of Moral Liberty", pp. 107-46 [PDF 1.1 MB].
  • July 28: Here are three of the earliest one volume syntheses of the classical liberal/libertarian worldview ever written. Think of Rothbard's For a New Liberty (1974) 120 years earlier: Gustave de Molinari's Les Soirées de la rue Saint-Lazare (1849) (en français) [PDF 12.1 MB]; Herbert Spencer's Social Statics (1851) 1st ed. [PDF 19.7 MB] and 1954 Falkenbach ed. [PDF 20.8 MB]; Wilhelm von Humboldt's posthumous The Limits of State Action (writen 1790s, 1st pubished 1851) [auf deutsch] [PDF 12.1 MB]; and J.S. Mill's On Liberty (1859) [PDF 6.6 MB]. More later...
  • July 28: A facsimile copy of Edmund Burke's Vindication of Natural Society (1756) [PDF 3 MB]. Rothbard thought this was a piece of youthful radicalism before Burke went conservative; others think it is a satire showing the absurdities to which the freedom principle might take you if you weren't creful.
  • July 28: The Institut Coppet in Paris is doing great things to revive interest in the 18th and 19th century French classical liberal tradition. They are republishing some of the classics every week and have a new journal with articles about their great intellectual predecessors. It is called, appropriately "Laissons Faire" [let us freely to go about our business!], which is a version of the great18th century slogan "Laissez Faire" (leave us free to go about our business!). They have two issues out already: June 2013 [PDF 2.3 MB] and July 2013 [PDF 2.4 MB].
  • July 28: An update to my annotated anthology of French classical liberal texts (en francais). I have added essays by Bastiat on Republicanism, Dunoyer on the politics of political economy, Molinari's Credo of Liberty, Molinari's pessimism for the future, Molinari's vision of he future, Horace Say on the division of labour, Thierry on"factions" (or class), and the anonymous "T.S." on women's rights.
  • July 27: After a bit of a hiatus we are back to adding material to our collection. We are getting ready to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the founding of Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer's journal Le Censeur in June/July 1814. We have nearly a complete set of Le Censeur (June/July 1814 - September 1815) and its successor Le Censeur européen (Feb. 1815 - April 1819) and are compiling a complete table of contents with the names of the authors of the articles. Thanks to the Institut Coppet we also have Ephraim Harpaz's history of the journals PDF [9.3 MB] which is essential reading. I also have a new HTML version of my book on Comte and Dunoyer's "Industrialist Theory of History.
  • February 9: The Introduction by Guillaumin and Clément to the Dictionnaire de l'Économie Politique (1853) where they reflect on "The Current State of Political Economy in France" - [PDF 1.5 MB] and HTML.
  • February 6: Thomas Hodgskin's defence of the free market and spontaneous order in an article in The Economist (Sept. 1849) called "Is Laissez-Faire Anarchy?".
  • February 5: The Prospectus and Preliminary Article in the first issue of The Economist magazine (August, 1843).
  • February 5: additional copies of John Wade's Extraordinary Black Book (1828, 1831) and Appendix.
  • February 3: an HTML version of James Mill, "Summary Review of the Conduct and Measures of the Seventh Imperial Parliament" (1826) on the nature of "aristocratical government". And Vilfredo Pareto, "Un' applicazione di teorie sociologiche," (1900) trans. in English as The Rise and Fall of the Elites. [PDF 3.8 MB].
  • February 2: a new section of Classic Works on Libertarian Class Analysis with Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (English and Italian), Franz Oppenheimer, Der Staat, and Randolph Bourne, The State (1918). Also the 1950 edition of Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, the State (1935). This year is the 40th anniversary of Walter Grinder's edition of Nock's classic work published by Free Life Editions in 1973.
  • February 1: added an HTML version of James Mill's Encyclopedia Britannica article on "Caste" (1824).
  • January 31: I completed my anthology of The Political Writings of James Mill: Essays and Reviews on Politics and Society, 1815-1836 which is a PDF document 831 pages long (the link takes you to the ToC page)
  • Janurary 31: also added more books by James Mill: Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829); A Fragment on Macintosh (1835)
  • January 30: Added many books, articles and essays by James Mill, including essays from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Westminster Review, and the London Review. I am compiling an anthology of his "Political Essays and Reviews, 1815-1836".
  • January 28: added James Mill, "The State of the Nation," The London Review (1835) with his class analysis of British society which is divided into "those who pillage" and "those who are pillaged." [Also into "The Conservatives" and "The Destructives."]
  • January 27: added the 1st edition of Bastiat's Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas, ou l'Économie politique en une leçon (Paris: Guillaumin, 1850). [PDF 1.49 MB].
  • January 27: added Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Philosophical View of Reform (1820) in HTML and PDF.
  • January 14: I have reorganised the file structure of the site. The home page is now <davidmhart.com/liberty>. I have also gathered together all the Bastiat resources on one page here <davidmhart.com/liberty/Bastiat>.
  • January 13: I have also been sending French language material to the Institut Coppet in Paris to add to their growing library of material on the French classical liberal tradition (so far stuff by Molinari, Bastiat, Thierry).
  • January 13: J.B. Say's curious "utopian" vision of a society based upon free market principles - Olbie (1800) [in both facsimile PDF and HTML].
  • January 12: The manuscript of our French language anthology of 19th century French classical liberal thought has been submitted to the publisher Ellipses. It was heavily edited for reasons of length!
  • January 8: A list of the articles in Le Censeur européen (1817-19) written by Charles Dunoyer.
  • January 6, 2013: an interesting short article on classes ("les factions") from 1817: "T.", "Des Factions" Le Censeur européen, Tome 3 (1817), pp. 1-8.
  • January 6, 2013: A full table of contents of Comte and Dunoyer's journal Le Censeur européen (1817-1819) is now in HTML format with author's name where available.
  • December 6: the final volume (7) of Le Censeur from September 1815 which was confiscated by the censors and is therefore hard to come by. This copy has some pages missing at the end. See Comte's bibliography.

 

2012

 

  • December 6: several volumes of material by Charles Dunoyer: Oeuvres de Dunoyer, 3 vols. (vol. 3 contains an important collection of his articles); Le Second Empire et une nouvelle restauration (1864-65), 2 vols; La Révolution du 24 Février (1849). See his bibliography page.
  • December 5: I have added some more French language material: a collection of articles Bastiat wrote for the revolutionary magazines La République française (Feb-Mar 1848) and Jacques Bonhomme (June 1848) taken from the Oeuvres complètes; part of the dialogue between the Economist and his rivals in Conversations sure les grains (1886) which reveals Moilinari's growing pessimism.
  • November 26: in preparation for a conference on Molinari I have added 8 new titles and 4 corrected or complete titles to the bibliography. Note: intro to Contes choisis sur l'économie politique, par Miss Harriet Martineau (1881); De l'enseignement obligatoire. Discussion entre G. de Molinari et Frédéric Passy (1859); Lettres sur la Russie (1st edition 1861), 2nd edition (1877); Le Mouvement socialiste et les réunions publiques avant la révolution du 4 septembre 1870 (1872); Questions économiques à l'ordre du jour (1906).
  • November 22: the 1st edition of Say's Traité d'économie politique (1803), the 3rd edition of his Cours complet (1852), and an HTML version of the 6th edition of his Traité (1841) [1.6 MB]. [See Say bibliography page for details].
  • October 6: found missing volume and added to collection - Molinari's Économiste belge for 1860 [PDF 62.5 MB]. File of full table of contents updated [PDF 7.2 MB]
  • October 6: Gustave de Molianri On the Different Kinds of Liberties and Entrepreneurs (1849-1863)
  • Blog 15 July: Ridiculing the Anti-Imperialist League's Opposition to the Conquest of the Philippines
  • Blog: 14 July: Otto Dix and the First World War (1924)
  • Blog: 13 July: IHS Lecture: The Culture of Obedience
  • Blog: 13 July: IHS 2012 Lecture: War and the Growth of the State
  • July 12: Complete set of Otto Dix's drawings of WW1, Der Krieg (1924).
  • Blog: 9 July: IHS 2012 Lecture: The State and the Ruling Class
  • Blog: 1 July: The ANZAC Book (1916): Part IV - Another Attempt at an ANZAC Alphabet (Ubique)
  • July 1: The ANZAC Book (1916) [PDF 15.3 MB] which contains drawings, poems and articles written by Australian and NewZealand troops at Gallipoli in November 1915. I discuss these poems and drawings in several postings at my blog. "An ANZAC Alphabet" is one of the better known pieces.
  • Blog: 30 June: The ANZAC Book (1916): Part III - An ANZAC Alphabet (Henderson)
  • Blog: 30 June: The ANZAC Book (1916): Part II - Two ANZAC Alphabets
  • Blog: 30 June: The ANZAC Book (1916): Part I Coloured Plates
  • June 29: Google Books keeps adding new material so you have to keep an eye out for recent additions. This original edition of Bastiat's The Law was posted late last year: La Loi (Paris: Guillaumin, 1850). [PDF 1.7 MB]. Highly recommended is this charming abbreviated and illustrated version of The Law [Bastiat for Dummies?] published by FEE in the late 1940s as part of their rehabilitation of Bastiat in America [PDF 3.1 MB]. See my blog for a discussion of the illustrations. As a companion piece to the illustrated Bastiat I have also added the illustrated ("cartoon") version of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1945).
  • Blog: 29 June: The Illustrated Road to Serfdom
  • Blog: 29 June: Illustrations for Bastiat's The Law
  • June 28: a collection of 15 titles published by Guillaumin between 1840 and 1848 called the Collection des principaux économistes [A Collection of the Principal Works of Economics] in which the economists asserted their intellectual heritage going back to the early 18th century. Interestingly the first volume to appear was Say's Cours complet from the late 1820s.
  • June 22-23: I have added new books by Constant, Béranger, Destutt de Tracy, Staël, Stendhal, Tocqueville, Beaumont, Schoelcher, Bastiat, and many others. See the main bibliography on 19th Century French Classical Liberalism.
  • June 20: The full, unexpurgated edition of our anthology of 19th century French classical liberal thought is now online (in French). It contains material by 35 authors, 79 articles, chapters, and extracts, making up a collection of 1,221 pages with 550,000 words. See the most up-to-date table of contents and the PDF version of the 20 June 2012 Draft Copy here [PDF 12.6 MB]. Lots of Molinari as you would expect in his centennial year. One of the revelations is how clear-eyed and realistic Molinari was at the turn of the 19th-20th century. He could see what was coming - war, inflaton, economic breakdown, tyranny - but was hopeful that a liberal renaissance would eventually take place after the catastrophe of statism had wrought its destruction. He thought maybe after a 100 years or so...
  • June 16: as I have been working on the French language edition of our anthology of 19th century French classical liberal thought ("The Golden Age of French CL Thought") I have been gathering scores of new books which I want to put online. I thought I would begin with the 1st part of Molinari's work of historical sociology on "The Evolution of Economic and Political Liberty". Part 2 has been online for a while [L'évolution politique et la révolution (1884)] and I have just added Part 1 [ L'évolution économique du XIXe siècle: théorie du progrès (1880)]. See the Molinari bibliography.
  • May 24: HTML version of paper on JS Mill's On Liberty and Subjection of Women
  • May 24: Updated brief bio and recent papers
  • May 20: one of the greatest anti-war speeches ever given was by Frédéric Passy (1822-1912) in Paris in 1867. Online here in French.
  • May 17: first draft of Molinari's Soirées is online at the OLL [comments welcome!].
  • April 28: ANZAC Day address to the Indy Aussies.
  • April 22: A paper and video of my remarks about the history of the Workers Party in Australia circa 1975
  • April 22: some videos of my talks on Bastiat at FEE (February 2011); San Jose State (April 2011); Cato Book Forum (October 2011); the Mises Seminari in Sydney (December 2011) (and now with an HTML version of the lecture)
  • April 10: A French language anthology of 19thC Fr. Classical Liberal Thought
  • April 3: A paper on Bastiat's Theory of Legal Plunder
  • March 27: an Anthology of 19thC French Liberalism
  • March 25: a translation of Molinari on"Ulcerous Government"
  • March 23: a new French edition of Les Soirées.
  • March 23: an extract from the 12th concluding chapter of Molinari's Soirées in which Molinari waxes lyrical about liberty [complete chap. 12 on OLL]
  • March 3: My favourite war films
  • March 3: For Molinari's birthday we have a draft chapter of a translation of Les Soirées
  • February 12, 2012: Digitized 2 albums made by Knox Grammar School - Music of the Jubilee 1974 and a Tribute to Dr. McKenzie 1968

 

2011

[A Schematic Diagram showing the Institutions and Class Structure of the State - see a larger version in JPG or PDF]

 

 

 

This is a "concept map" I developed for a series of lectures on the history of the classical liberal tradition. [See a larger version in PDF].

 

The Centennial of the Death of Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912): Founding Father of the Anarcho-Capitalist Tradition

 

GUSTAVE DE MOLINARI (1819-1912)
Commemorating the Centennial of his death at 92 years of age on
28 January, 1912 in Adinkerke, Belgium. [Obit]

 

Richard Cobden & Frédéric Bastiat urged us to demand "free trade in everything"
Gustave de Molinari dared to think about "free trade" in just one more thing...

free trade in government services.

John Locke's motto was "Pax ac Libertas". Molinari's was "La Liberté et la Paix". Mine is "In vino libertas".

 

"(A)u risque d'être qualifiés d'utopistes, nous dirons que cela n'est pas contestable, et qu'un attentif examen des faits résoudra de plus en plus, en faveur de la liberté, le problème du gouvernement, de même que tous les autres problèmes économiques. Nous sommes bien convaincus, en ce qui nous concerne, que des associations s'établiront un jour pour réclamer la liberté de gouvernement, comme il s'en est établi pour réclamer la liberté du commerce."
[Molinari, "The Production of Security" (1849)].

[See our Molinari page for more].

[(A)t the risk of being considered utopian, we affirm that this is not disputable, that a careful examination of the facts will decide the problem of government more and more in favor of liberty, just as it does all other economic problems. We are convinced, so far as we are concerned, that one day groups will be established to agitate for free government, as they have already been established on behalf of free trade.]
[Molinari, "The Production of Security" (1849)].

[See his seminal papers from which anarcho-capitalism sprang, which are part of an anthology I have edited of his writings on the State (1846-1912) (en français)].

 

French Liberals on Ridiculing & Exposing State Power

 

Stendhal on power & "the empire of ridicule":

"Voilà le sens dans lequel moi, poète comique, je dois travailler pour être utile à la nation, en détruisant la prise des tyrans sur elle, et la rapprochant par-delà de la divina libertà.
[This is the direction in which I, as a comic poet, must work in order to be useful to the nation, by annihiliating the power of the tyrants over her, and hence bringing her to the divina libertà.]
(Stendhal, Pensées, 12 August 1804).

 

Béranger on ringing the bell of power:

"Dans mes petites guerres avec le pouvoir... (j'ai conclu) que le pouvoir est une cloche qui empêche ceux qui la mettent en branle d'entendre aucun autre son."
[In my small warfare with Power... (I have come to the realisation) that power is a bell, that hinders those who ring a peal on it, from hearing any other sound.]
(Béranger, Preface to his edition of 1833).

Bastiat on the State as a great fiction:

"L'État, c'est la grande fiction à travers laquelle Tout Le Monde s'efforce de vivre aux dépens de Tout Le Monde."
[The state is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.]
(Bastiat, L'État [The State] (1848)).