[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire and Liberty & Power]
My copy of Ed Stringham’s anthology Anarchy and the Law just arrived in the mail. (Amazon insists that the paperback isn’t available yet, but they’re wrong.)
This nearly 700-page book is quite simply the definitive collection on free-market anarchism. Its forty chapters include contributions from Randy Barnett, Bruce Benson, Bryan Caplan, Roy Childs, Anthony de Jasay, David Friedman, John Hasnas, Hans Hoppe, Jeff Hummel, Don Lavoie, Murray Rothbard, the Tannehills, and many more, including even your humble correspondent. It also features historical classics by Voltairine de Cleyre, Gustave de Molinari, Lysander Spooner, and Benjamin Tucker, among others. It covers both moral arguments and economic ones; it ranges over both abstract theory and historical examples. It even includes important criticisms of market anarchism, like Tyler Cowen’s and Robert Nozick’s, along with anarchist replies. Check out the full table of contents.
Are there any regrettable omissions? Well, of course. Any self-respecting anarchist geek could easily cite another thousand pages’ worth of “absolutely essential” additional material, additional authors, additional perspectives. But never mind: this, here and now, is it. Wonder no more what is the market anarchist book to recommend to the anarcho-curious or wave menacingly at the statist heathen; it’s this one.
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Anarcho-geeks rejoice! Another item for my amazon wishlist.
No waiting for me. Hopefully sometime this week I’ll just drop on by Independent Institute to pick up my paperback (hooray) copy…
Glad to see it’s finally available. They said January and just happened to make the deadline.
A $60 difference between paperback and hardback? Ouch…
So when are you guys going to provide the PDF for downloading?
Pretty hefty, but this is the kind of thing you’d want to sit prominently on your bookshelf (when you weren’t pawing through it).
I notice that the “debate” part of the book contains objections to anarchism responded to by anarchists except in the case of Ayn Rand. The book seems to go straight into Roy Childs’ excellent criticism of Rand’s “The Nature of Government” without actually including Rand’s essay.
I seriously doubt that Rand’s estate would give permission for her essay to be reprinted in a pro-anarchist book.
Ummmm, a lot of these chapters and articles are widely available on the internet and in other books. $90 bucks doesn’t seem like quite the bargain or even $30 for the paperback. Dr. Stringham, nice list, but why not just place links to these works on your website?
The book will be available on Mises store, at a good price, I’m pretty sure.
I will check this book out and give it a read when I get through some other things stacking up on my desk. It sounds acclaimed and interesting.
However, for people who are just getting into anarchism, a 700 page text could be intimidating. I always recommend to people Laws of the Jungle, a free book on the web that is probably less than 100 pages in print, written by a completely unknown and rather obscure “anarchist thinker/writer” named Allen Thornton.
It’s very methodical, simple and very hard to argue with. If you can’t convince people you’re right on at least SOME points, ask them to read the Laws and see if their perspective changes.
Even for all you die-hards at MI and elsewhere in the anarchist world, I highly suggest this read. I think you’ll be surprised it isn’t more well-known after nosing through it.
Well let me try a thing here:
Section I: Theory of Private Property Anarchism
2. Police, Law, and the Courts—Murray Rothbard
3. The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism (excerpt)—David Friedman*
4. Market for Liberty (excerpt)—Morris and Linda Tannehill*
5. Pursuing Justice in a Free Society: Crime Prevention and the Legal Order—Randy Barnett**
6. Capitalist Production and the Problem of Public Goods—Hans Hoppe***
7. National Defense and the Public-Goods Problem—Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Don Lavoieâ€
8. Defending a Free Nation—Roderick Long†â€
9. The Myth of the Rule of Law—John Hasnas
*I wasn’t sure which excerpts were used so I just gave a general link to the authors’ works.
**Part 2 is here.
***It’s chapter 10.
†Couldn’t find it… online.
††Google Cache
p.s. Another repeat code…
Brilliant work Black Bloke! It seems Keith is correct, I even took a cursory glance at the other sections availability online. This deserves a post of its own!
Section II: Debate
10. The State—Robert Nozickâ€
11. The Invisible Hand Strikes Back—Roy A. Childs
12. Robert Nozick and the Immaculate Conception of the State—Murray Rothbard*
13. Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand—Roy Childs
14. Do We Ever Really Get Out of Anarchy?—Alfred G. Cuzan**
15. Law as a Public Good: The Economics of Anarchy—Tyler Cowenâ€
16. Law as a Private Good: A Response to Tyler Cowen on the Economics of Anarchy—David Friedman
17. Rejoinder to David Friedman on the Economics of Anarchy—Tyler Cowen***
18. Networks, Law and the Paradox of Cooperation—Bryan Caplan and Edward Stringham
19. Conflict, Cooperation and Competition in Anarchy—Tyler Cowen and Daniel Sutterâ€
20. Conventions: Some Thoughts on the Economics of Ordered Anarchy—Anthony De Jasayâ€
21. Can Anarchy Save Us from Leviathan?—Andrew Rutten
22. Government: Unnecessary but Inevitable—Randall Holcombe
23. Is Government Inevitable? Comment on Holcombe’s Analysis—Peter Leeson and Edward Stringham
†Couldn’t be found… online.
*HTML version here.
**Because I’m on the Mises site I put the link to the JLS version here, but there’s a much better (and revised for this specific publication) .pdf file here.
***Google produced HTML version of Tyler Cowen’s Original .doc file.
However, for people who are just getting into anarchism, a 700 page text could be intimidating.
True enough, but a 700-page book of separate articles is less intimidating than a 700-page continuous treatise; they can just dip in and read an article or two.
Also, the intimidation factor can be an advantage; when someone facilely dismisses market anarchism as a pipe dream, being able to wave a 700-page text featuring multiple researchers at them may give them pause.
The great benefit of having this stuff in a book is simply that you don’t have to read for hours on a computer monitor. I can only do that for limited amounts of time before I need to look away.
Plus, if you enjoy the intimacy of print, it’s more satisfying to read on a page and have it be portable.
Section III: History of Anarchist Thought
24. Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal Tradition (excepts)—David Hart*
25. Vindication of Natural Society (excerpt)—Edmund Burke**
26. The Production of Security—Gustave de Molinari
27. Individualist Anarchism in the United States: The Origins—Murray Rothbard
28. Anarchism and American Traditions—Voltairine de Cleyre
29. On Civil Government—David Lipscomb
30. No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (excerpt)—Lysander Spooner***
31. Trial by Jury—Lysander Spooner
32. Relation of the State to the Individual—Benjamin Tuckerâ€
33. Political and Economic Overview—David Osterfeld†â€
*I wasn’t sure which excerpts were used so I gave the link to Part I above. Here are Parts II and III.
**HTML version here.
***I wasn’t sure which excerpts were used so I give a link to the entire work. A pretty good audio version is available here.
†Google Cache. There also an entry for this work in Google Books’ The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty By Frank H. Brooks
††I couldn’t find this one… online.
another repeat code
Section IV: Historical Case Studies of Non-Government Law Enforcement
34. Are Public Goods Really Common Pools? Considerations of the Evolution of Policing and Highways in England—Bruce Benson*
35. Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law—Joseph Peden
36. Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case—David Friedman
37. The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs—Paul Milgrom, Douglass North, and Barry Weingast*
38. Legal Evolution in Primitive Societies—Bruce Benson
39. American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West—Terry Anderson and P. J. Hill**
40. Order Without Law (excerpt)—Robert Ellickson
*I couldn’t find this… online.
**HTML version here.
Repeat code again
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