Navigation

Archive | Uncategorized

Rand Together

By on March 15, 2008 2

Interesting article today from Justin Raimondo on his youthful meeting with Ayn Rand. (Conical hat tip to LRC.) I must Randgeekily (not to be confused with Radgeekily) point out, however, that he has confused We the Living’s Andrei Taganov with Leo Kovalensky, and The Fountainhead’s Cortland Homes with the Stoddard Home for Subnormal Children.

(P.S. – Raimondo notes that in his teenage years his “own sense of diplomacy, and basic human interaction, was somewhat retarded as a result” of Rand’s influence. Thank goodness he got over the diplomacy thing!)

Celebrity Death Match: Bastiat vs. Proudhon

By on March 12, 2008 6

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

In 1849, France’s leading spokesman for libertarian “capitalism” (Frédéric Bastiat) and France’s leading spokesman for libertarian “socialism” (Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) exchanged a series of public letters debating the nature and legitimacy of charging interest on loans.

Bastiat and Proudhon In 1879, American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker translated most of the letters, which were then published serially in the Irish World and American Industrial Liberator – whereupon, apart from a few excerpts, they vanished henceforth from human sight.

I’ve managed to track down a copy of the Irish World in microform and transcribe Tucker’s translation. Where the microform was too dark to read (it was really a lousy copy) I made educated guesses based on the French original, marking my conjectures in brackets. I’ve also translated two additional letters not included in Tucker’s translation, and thrown in an anonymous public-domain translation of Bastiat’s earlier criticism of Proudhon (which was what sparked off the debate to begin with). As of today, the whole thing is now, finally, online as The Bastiat-Proudhon Debate on Interest.

Most of this debate has not been widely available in English since 1879; and parts of it (including Bastiat’s final reply to Proudhon) have never been translated into English until now.

So who wins? Well, in my view, neither one – the two thinkers persistently talk past each other. I’ve posted a fuller analysis here; I’ll also be presenting this material at the Austrian Scholars Conference later this week.

Roger Lee

By on March 12, 2008 3

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I’m saddened to learn (from Tibor Machan) that libertarian philosopher J. Roger Lee has died.

Roger was one of the commentators at my very first APA presentation (Pacific Division, Los Angeles, 29 March 1990). More recently Roger contributed an essay to Tibor’s and my Anarchism/Minarchism anthology.

Might As Well Jump

By on March 11, 2008 0

For anybody with even a little bit of comic-book geek in them, this demonstration of what a human body (well, an in-shape human body – sure as hell not my human body) can do when attached to the right equipment is going to seem like a fantasy come to life. Just give this guy a costume and we’ll be all set. (Conical hat tip to William Gillis.)

Dyer Straits

By on March 11, 2008 6

[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]

I’ve put the first half of Dyer Lum’s 1890 The Economics of Anarchy online. More to follow!

Dyer Lum I first heard of Dyer Lum from Frank Brooks, best known in libertarian circles today for his 1994 anthology of selections from Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty. When I met Frank, around 1986, we were both grad students at Cornell (he in political science, I in philosophy), and we carpooled together down to my first IHS conference as he told me about this oddly named fellow he was writing his dissertation on. (Though in a movement that includes Lysander Spooner, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Anselme Bellegarrigue, and Voltairine de Cleyre, perhaps “Dyer Lum” isn’t such an odd name.)

Lum was a mutualist anarchist along lines broadly similar to Tucker’s, a kind of fusion of Spencer and Proudhon, though Lum had a more optimistic view of the prospects for unions as vehicles of the labour movement. (He also preferred Buddhism to Stirnerism – the Absence-of-Ego and Its Own? – but that aspect of his thought doesn’t come out in this work.) Apparently Lum and de Cleyre collaborated on a long anarchist novel, the manuscript for which has been maddeningly lost. Judging from The Economics of Anarchy, I find Lum a less clear writer than either Tucker or deCleyre – but still a fun read.

Coming tomorrow: the Bastiat-Proudhon debate!

Powered by WordPress. Designed by WooThemes