According to Charles Gide’s 1899 review (now posted), the problem with Molinari’s proposed Society of the Future is that it is both too hopelessly utopian – and too similar to the society we’re already living in.
There’s no satisfying some people ….
Tag Archives | Industriels
Those That Leave Their Valiant Bones In France
Graves of Gustave de Molinari and Benjamin Constant in Paris
David Hart and Robert Leroux have released an amazing-looking anthology of French Liberalism in the 19th Century, including several works not previously translated. Check out the table of contents:
Introduction
Part I: The Empire (up to 1815)
1. Pierre-Louis Roederer: Property Rights (1800)
2. Jean-Baptiste Say: The Division of Labour (1803)
3. Destutt de Tracy: The Laws and Public Liberty (1811)
4. Charles Comte: Foreword to Le Censeur (1814)Part II: The Restoration (1815-1830)
5. Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer: Foreword to Le Censeur Européen (1817)
6. Destutt de Tracy: Society (1817)
7. Germaine de Staël: The Love of Liberty (1818)
8. Benjamin Constant: The Liberty of the Ancients and the Moderns
9. Pierre Daunou: Freedom of Opinion (1819)Part III: The July Monarchy (1830-1848)
10. Alexis de Tocqueville: The Liberty of the Press (1830)
11. Pierre-Jean de Béranger on his Songs and Liberty (1833)
12. Gustave de Beaumont: The Abolition of the Aristocracy in Ireland (1839)
13. Pierre-Jean de Béranger: Selected Poems (1800-1840)Part IV: The Second Republic (1848-1852)
14. Frédéric Bastiat: Disarmament and Taxes (1849)
15. Gustave de Molinari: The Private Production of Security (1849)
16. Michel Chevalier: The Protectionist System (1852)
17. Léon Faucher: Property (1852)
18. Courcelle-Seneuil: Sumptuary Laws (1852)
19. Joseph Garnier: The Cost of Collection of Taxes (1852)
20. Joseph Garnier: Laissez Faire — Laissez Passer (1852)
21. Ambroise Clément: Private Charity (1852)Part V: The Second Empire (1852-1870)
22. Henri Baudrillart: Political Economy (1852)
23. Augustin Thierry: The Rise of the Bourgeoisie (1859)
24. Louis Wolowski and Émile Levasseur: Property (1863)
25. Horace Say: The Division of Labour (1863)
26. Maurice Block: Decentralization (1863)
27. Édouard Laboulaye: Individual Liberties (1865)Part VI: The Third Republic (1871 onwards)
28. Hippolyte Taine: Abusive Government Intervention (1890)
29. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu: The Definition of the State (1890)
30. Yves Guyot: The Tyranny of Socialism (1893)
31. Gustave de Molinari: Governments of the Future (1899)
Unfortunately, the pricetag is currently $130, so I’ll be waiting until after my summer salary hiatus to pick it up.
Cordial and Sanguine, Part 22: War Among the Bleeding Hearts Continued
Greetings from Seattle! My entry in the aforementioned Cato Unbound symposium is now up. It’s titled “In Praise of Bleeding Heart Absolutism.”
Molinari/C4SS/ALL Wild West Tour Dates
Next week I’m off to Las Vegas for the APEE (Harrah’s, 1-3 April), and then to Seattle for the Pacific APA (Westin, 4-7 April). Our sessions are as follows:
APEE, Monday, 2 April:
FMAC Session 1: 1:35-2:50 p.m. [M3.9, Parlor F]:
“Topics in Free-Market Anti-Capitalism”chair: Sheldon Richman (The Freeman)
presenters:
Gary Chartier (La Sierra U.), “Fairness and Possession”
Darian Worden (Center for a Stateless Society), “State-Capitalist Plutocracy or Free-Market Progress: Which Way Will We Go?”
Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.), “Enforceability of Interest Under a Title-Transfer Theory of Contract”commentator: Keith Taylor (U. Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
FMAC session 2: 4:15-5:30 p.m. [M5.11, Laughlin room]:
“Explorations in Libertarian Class Theory”chair: Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.)
presenters:
Sheldon Richman (The Freeman), “Seeing Like a Ruling Class”
Steven Horwitz (St. Lawrence U.), “Punishing the Poor: The Redistributive Effects of Inflation”
Gary Chartier (La Sierra U.), “Jasay and Libertarian Class Theory”commentator: David Friedman (Santa Clara U.)
Pacific APA, Saturday, 7 April:
Molinari Society, 7:00-10:00 p.m. (or so) [G9G, location TBA]:
“Explorations in Philosophical Anarchy”presenters:
David M. Hart (Liberty Fund), “Bastiat’s Distinction Between Legal and Illegal Plunder”
Kurt Gerry (Independent Scholar), “On Political Obligation and the Nature of Law”commentators:
Daniel Silvermint (U. Arizona)
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute)
Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.)
Where Minarchists Fear to Tread, Part 2
As previously mentioned, the Society of Political Economy met in 1849 to critique Molinari’s market anarchist ideas. A month later, one of the participants in that discussion, free-banking theorist Charles Coquelin, developed his objections further in a book review of Molinari’s Soirées on the Rue Saint-Lazare for the Journal des Économistes. I have now translated and posted Coquelin’s review also.
These two pieces are especially important as the first critiques ever published (AFAIK) of the idea that the legitimate functions of government could and should be turned over to market mechanisms.
Where Minarchists Fear to Tread
In 1849, the members of the Society of Political Economy – the chief organisation for classical liberalism in France at the time – met to discuss Molinari’s proposal for the competitive provision of security. 
The meeting included some of the foremost liberal thinkers of the day, such as Bastiat, Dunoyer, Coquelin, Wolowski, and Horace Say (son of J.-B.). Without exception they agreed that Molinari’s ideas were unworkable, offering much the same objections to market anarchism as those that are prevalent today. (Although, oddly, nobody raised the objection that would later lead Molinari himself to moderate his position, namely the problem of so-called “public goods.”) Even Dunoyer, who in his earlier work had come close to Molinari’s position, now held that it was best to leave coercive force “where civilisation has placed it – in the State.”
As Rothbard notes, this is an odd claim coming from “one of the great founders of the conquest theory of the State.” Dunoyer’s suggestion that democratic elections provide all the competition that’s needed in the market for security also sits oddly with his earlier interest-group analysis of electoral politics.
A summary of this meeting was published in a subsequent issue of the Society’s organ, the Journal des Économistes. I have now translated and posted this summary, which bears the title “Question of the Limits of State Action and Individual Action Discussed at the Society of Political Economy.”