[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.
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
I’ve put the first half of Dyer Lum’s 1890 The Economics of Anarchy online. More to follow!
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!
Happy Birthday to three great anarchists: Murray Rothbard (yesterday), and William Godwin and Gustave de Molinari (today)!
I’ve blogged previously about Doug Den Uyl’s plug for the Anarchism/Minarchism anthology, which reads:
This volume is a much needed revival of a debate critical to Libertarians, but also of significance to political theorists generally. The issue itself goes to the heart of what it means to do political philosophy, and the contributions found here skillfully keep those basic concerns in sight. In addition, I found the writing lucid and fair minded–something often missing in scholarly debate anthologies. I have no doubt that this volume will become a standard reference source for those interested in this particular debate and among the sources one consults when considering the foundations of the state generally.
I see that a second plug has since been added to Ashgate’s page for the book; this one is from Elaine Sternberg, and reads:
The forceful philosophical and historical challenges to the state presented in this volume should be read not just by libertarians, but by everyone who believes that government is either necessary or legitimate.
Also check out this write-up on the Auburn website.
Incidentally, anyone who is planning both a) to buy the book and b) to attend the Austrian Scholars Conference might want to postpone (a) until (b), because ASC attendees will be able to get 20% off the cover price if they pick up a flier from me at the conference. (Still pretty steep, alas.)
Or at least there’s a plug for our Anarchism/Minarchism anthology on the Atlas Objectivist Studies Institute Center Society website, thanks to Will Thomas’s appearance (on behalf of minarchy) therein.
[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
Robert Higgs confesses a dark secret from his family’s past:
[M]y father had done something quite remarkable: he had left the sovereign state of Oklahoma, crossed the sovereign states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and entered into and established permanent residence in the sovereign state of California, all without the permission of any of the rulers of these states. Imagine that! …
Many of the Mexican children with whom I grew up might have told a tale similar to mine. The only difference would have been that for them, the origin of their migration to California happened to be not one of the states of the United States of America, commonly known as America, but one of the states of the United Mexican States, commonly known as Mexico. Was this difference important? If so, why? Do the lines that government officials draw on maps sever the heart of humanity?
Read, comme l’on dit, the whole thing.