Liberals who came to be Ancaps, Minarchists, Libertarian, Whatever..

Miscellaneous General
1

Greetings,

I’d like to compile a methodical list of literature by people who came from the liberal prespective. If you have been converted from Liberalism to Minarchism, or Liberalism to Anarchy of some sort I need your input.

What I need is the list of books you read which ultimately got you to where you are today and in the specific order you read them in.

You can send me a PM or post them here as a reply to this thread.

I’ll use your feedback for this project here. I can then compile a list and build a recommended reading list for liberals. We can use our reading lists to help us make recommendations to friends/families/others ect…

2

Can’t really help you there, I was with the good old american facists b4 I made the jump but I know Hayek used to be a socialist so his works might help you

3

Read human action, became an old fashioned libertarian.

Read Democracy: The God that Failed, and that was the end of statism for me.

This path will only work for people who have a strong interest in economics.

4

Roderick T Long’s seminar on an anarchist legal order really nailed it for me. I was a confused socialist before… But RTL was really appealing to me because I had such a strong background in philosophy. I don’t think that most people would appreciate him.

5

Thanks guys, keep these coming please!

6

Human Action is not ideal I think for starters. What about prior to human action that will get people excited about it?

7

Can you direct me to which seminar’s your referring to specifically?

8

Good books for Classical Liberalism:

Jean-Baptiste Say’s A Treatise on Political Economy

Benjamin Constant The Cambridge Political Writings of Benjamin Constant

Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America

John T Flynn As We Go Marching, While You Slept, Country Squire in the White House

Robert Higgs Crisis and Leviathan

Walter Block Defending the Undefendable

Murray Rothbard Betrayal of the American Right, History of Economic Thought, For a New Liberty, Ethics of Liberty, Conceived in Liberty, History of Money and Banking in the United States, America’s Great Depression

Garet Garrett People’s Pottage

John Denson Costs of War, Reassessing the Presidency

Ludwig von Mises Liberalism, Marxism Unmasked, Theory and History

Lysander Spooner Let’s Abolish Government, Natural Law

Herbert Spencer The Man vs The State

Albert Jay Nock Our Enemy, The State

David Gordon Secession, State & Liberty

Franz Oppenheimer The State

Hans Hoppe The Myth of National Defense

9

Hey! Your going to end up doing my job for me. :slight_smile:

10

That’s just the classical liberal books I am reading right now. There are a whole bunch of socialist critiques but that is for another topic.

11

First one here

12

Karl Popper was a Social Democrat in his younger days in Austria, back when the Social Democrats still adhered to the tenets of Marxism.

As for non-famous people,I was until about a year ago still a card-carrying member of Iceland’s left-green party, mainly because they were the only party who had a firm anti-war, anti-NATO stance. No libertarian tradition here unfortunately, so I plan to build one :smiley:

13

Ludwig Von Mises Socialism , that’s it. All the rest came afterwards.

14

My liberalism (in the Pelosi sense) was quickly remedied by these two books:

  • The Road To Serfdom-Hayek
  • Contra Keynes and Cambridge-Hayek
15

“That which is seen, and that which is not seen” by Frederic Bastiat and “Economics in one lesson” by Henry Hazlitt are still very good and very quick reads for people without the slightest understanding of economics.

16

Thanks Everyone! I’ll be compiling a list a bit later today. Keep em comin if you have em!

17

Liberal

Animal Farm - Orwell

Capitalism and Freedom by M. Friedman

The Road to Serfdom

Libertarian

Economics In One Lesson

Constitution of Liberty - Hayek

Socialism - Mises

Fatal Conceit - Hayek

Minarchist

No Treason - Spooner

What Has Gov’t Done To Our money - Rothbard

Power and Market - Rorhbard

For A New Liberty -Rothbard

The State - Oppenhiemer

An-Cap

Enterprise Of Law - Bruce L. Benson

18

I definitely qualify as such. I just started reading tons of Mises and Cato, and now I’m an ancap. Whodathunkit?

19

Is there anything that first kicked it off?

An article in relation to a specific issue? Someone posted you something to read?

20

A man named Matthew Jones and I were talking on an Obama discussion board on facebook, and he kept using Mises links. It started for me with the concept of self-ownership and the non-aggression principle. Does that help at all?