Libertarian Papers

David Gordon’s JLS Editorial

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Sun, 29 May 2022 14:56:19 +0000

David Gordon, “Editorial,” J. Libertarian Stud. 23 (2019): 3-4 (alt link). Text below. See also Timothy D. Terrell , “Journal of Libertarian Studies: Returning 2019,” Power & Market (04/22/2019).

Editorial

12/20/2019 • Journal of Libertarian Studies • David Gordon

When Murray Rothbard founded the Journal of Libertarian Studies in 1977, he wrote an editorial for the first issue. In it, he said, “The Journal of Libertarian Studies has been founded not simply to provide an outlet for scholarship and research that may be unpopular in a particular discipline. It is the belief that there is a new and growing interdisciplinary discipline — libertarianism — enriched by contributions in each of the particular and seemingly isolated fields that study human action which provides the motive for this Journal. Philosophy, political science, economics, history, law, sociology, geography, anthropology, education, and biology will be carried in this Journal.”

In the years after Rothbard wrote this, the JLS published many notable articles, but here we have space to mention only a few. Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, published in 1974, brought libertarianism to the attention of the philosophical world, but several contributors to the first issue of the JLS, including Roy Childs, Randy Barnett, and Rothbard himself, were dissatisfied. They defended anarcho-capitalism and argued that Nozick had failed to justify the “minimal state.”

In history, JLS contributors including the great historian Ralph Raico and the distinguished economist Joseph Salerno brought to renewed scholarly attention to the French Classical Liberal School of the early nineteenth century. Disciples of J.B. Say like Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer developed an account of the state as the source of exploitation.

The JLS featured contributions from world-famous scholars. F.A. Hayek wrote “Toward a Free Market Monetary System,” which appeared in Volume III, number 1. The heterodox psychiatrist Thomas Szasz wrote for us, as did such renowned philosophers as Gilbert Harman, Henry Veatch, and Antony Flew.

It would be easy to go through a long list of important articles in the JLS by such noted scholars as Ronald Hamowy, Walter Block, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Paul Cantor, and Paul Gottfried, but one more must suffice here: Rothbard’s “World War I as Fulfillment: Power and the Intellectuals,” which appeared in the Winter 1989 issue. In this article, Rothbard showed that American Progressives used the increased power of the government during wartime to enact their agenda.

After Rothbard’s death in 1995, Hans-Hermann Hoppe became editor; he was succeeded by Roderick Long. Until 2008, the JLS was a quarterly publication, but in 2008 one annual issue, in print and online, was edited by Thomas Woods. The JLS ceased publication in 2009. A new online journal, Libertarian Papers, under the able editorship of Stephan Kinsella and Matthew McCaffrey, in part acted as a substitute, but this journal was independent from the Mises Institute. When the Mises Institute decided to resume publication of the JLS, the editors of Libertarian Papers elected to cease publication, and future issues of the JLS will include articles that had been scheduled to appear there. (The JLS was published by the Center for Libertarian Studies from its inception in 1977. The Mises Institute took over publication in 2000.)

With the first issue of the revived JLS, we are off to good start, with articles that display the wide range of subjects, including economics, the history of political thought, legal theory, and philosophy, for which Murray Rothbard hoped. We should like to conclude with another remark from Rothbard’s initial editorial, which remains our policy today: “By its existence as a regularly appearing publishing outlet, we hope to stimulate significant expansion in the research and production of scholarly libertarian material. We hope to intensify the development of the emerging discipline of libertarianism. Finally, we expect that the existence of the Journal will serve to multiply the number of libertarian scholars and to intensify communication among and cross-fertilization of them. Whether or not the scholar is personally a libertarian will not be a criterion for acceptance of a manuscript; rather, the criterion will be whether an article will advance the discipline of libertarianism, regardless of the personal beliefs of the author.”

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“Reflections on Ten Years of Libertarian Papers“

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 13:31:46 +0000

Abstract: Libertarian Papers was an experiment in publishing, and one I believe was ultimately successful. Those who contributed—as editors, reviewers, or authors—can be justly proud of their achievements, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate them for their service to the journal. Through their efforts Libertarian Papers became a respectable outlet for a wide range of scholarship on many topics and from many disciplines, and it is with a spirit of gratitude that I will use this editorial to reflect on some of their (and the journal’s) accomplishments.

Keywords: Libertarian Papers, editorial, publishing, history

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Contributor: Adolf Reinach

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“Ten Years of Libertarian Scholarship”

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 09:03:14 +0000

Abstract: For several decades the Journal of Libertarian Studies was the key outlet for important interdisciplinary scholarship in the radical libertarian tradition. But by the late 2000s, the Internet was in full flower and the JLS was in decline. One night in early January 2009, I had the idea to form a new journal for libertarian scholarship, which would help fill the gap left by the declining JLS, and also take advantage of new publishing possibilities: entirely online and free, and with no artificial space constraints, but still of high-quality and peer-reviewed. Within just a few days, we had established the website and the basic design, assembled an impressive editorial board, and collected and edited an initial set of articles, which were published later that month, starting on January 18, 2009.

Keywords: Libertarian Papers, editorial, publishing, history

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“The Use of Torrents in Society”

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 12:32:41 +0000

Abstract: This paper explores whether the case against intellectual property can be strengthened by appealing to the work of F.A. Hayek. It strives first to establish a Hayekian research agenda on copyright by providing a unified reading of Hayek’s scattered remarks and positioning them within a broader picture of the contemporary philosophy, politics, and economics of IP. Secondly, exploring peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and copyright infringement through a Hayekian lens suggests what might be a useful analogy between the ability of torrent downloads and prices to convey information. Last but not least, the paper ends on a skeptical note concerning the moral and economic foundations of copyright by presenting what I consider a more Hayekian alternative: crowdfunding platforms.

Keywords: Intellectual property, copyright, torrents, knowledge, F.A. Hayek

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“The Still Tenuous Foundations of a Sufficiency Proviso: A Rejoinder to Wendt”

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Thu, 13 Jun 2019 08:41:07 +0000

Abstract: I am grateful to Fabian Wendt for responding to my evaluation of his work on Moderate Libertarianism. Wendt’s efforts are important because they focus on foundational issues of justice and there is a dearth of quality work on those issues these days. Due to lack of space, the most productive way to structure this brief rejoinder is to focus on two general issues before touching on one smaller point. First, I explain why Wendt offers something like an empirical justification of libertarianism. Here I will be clearer than I originally was about why this is a problem that Wendt needs to address better than he has. It is my hope that this initial discussion paves the way for me to demonstrate my second point—namely, that Wendt’s statement of his own argument for the proviso is either question-begging or unsurprising. I conclude by saying a little bit about Wendt’s discussion of positive obligations.

Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, positive rights, self-ownership

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Contributor: Lamont Rodgers

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“Caring about Projects, Responsibility, and Rights: A Response to Rodgers”

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Wed, 05 Jun 2019 08:29:15 +0000

Abstract: I thank Lamont Rodgers for critically discussing my work and giving me the chance to clarify and elaborate several points about the sufficiency proviso and moderate libertarianism in general. I hope this exchange will help us better understand where the main points of disagreement lie. After a very brief summary of what moderate libertarianism and the sufficiency proviso are (section 1), I try to answer his main allegations: that I advance a problematically “consequentialist derivation of rights” (section 2) and a questionably “robust conception of ‘care’” (section 3). Both allegations invoke a good deal of misunderstanding, as I will explain. I then discuss the role of personal responsibility (section 4) and whether self-ownership rights are mitigated in a problematic way (section 5) and thereby try to refute arguments against my view that many not-so-moderate libertarians will be inclined to make. The last section provides a short discussion of an issue I did not take up earlier: how practices of private property are to be individuated (section 6).

Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, care, responsibility, rights, self-ownership

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“The Tenuous Foundations of the Sufficiency Proviso”

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Mon, 06 May 2019 08:32:48 +0000

Abstract: Fabian Wendt proposes combining libertarian foundations with a proviso that requires a just system of private property to ensure that everyone has a sufficient amount of resources to pursue projects. He calls this proviso a sufficiency proviso. This proviso is said to have advantages over all rival provisos “because it better coheres with the most plausible rationale for endorsing a libertarian theory of justice in the first place” (Wendt 2018b, 169). Given these advantages, he expresses surprise that no other libertarians have defended a sufficiency proviso. I trace Wendt’s argument and identify several weaknesses in it. I argue that, at is stands, the argument for a sufficiency proviso fails.

Keywords: sufficiency proviso, consequentialism, justice, care, self-ownership

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Contributor: Lamont Rodgers

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“Deriving Rights to Liberty”

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Wed, 01 May 2019 08:24:27 +0000

Abstract: The rights to liberty championed by classical liberal and libertarian theorists may be supported as products of practical reason. The foundations for these rights rest initially on the idea that the separateness of persons is embedded in the circumstances of life that make justice a meaningful concept. We can discover the duties justice imposes on us through a procedure for identifying principles of justice based on the concept of reasonableness that supports a method for testing proposed principles for human interaction. This procedure, which I present as a contractualist method of ethical justification, vindicates principles that establish duties to others that also constitute rights to liberty and rule out some kinds of purported rights that cannot be justified through the proffered contractualist method.

Keywords: rights, liberty, liberalism, contractualism, justification

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“Review Essay: Selfish Libertarians and Socialist Conservatives? The Foundations of the Libertarian-Conservative Debate“

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 09:21:51 +0000

Abstract: This book makes interesting reading not only because of the subject but also because of the authors’ approach to it. It is, in fact, an energetic and thought-provoking dialogue between a libertarian political economist, Nikolai G. Wenzel, and a conservative political philosopher, Nathan W. Schlueter. By setting aside the journalistic urge for simplifications and catering to the biases of partisans—a stance summed up in the title of the book—the authors are laying the groundwork for intellectually honest investigation of the key principles of conservatism and libertarianism and the main arguments that stem from them.

Keywords: libertarianism, conservatism, natural law, natural rights, public choice, immigration, education, marriage

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“On Banking, Credit, and Inflation”

Stephan Kinsella (Editor) — Thu, 03 Jan 2019 12:37:12 +0000

Abstract: In the end, there can be no credits or purchasing power but that which comes from the production of wealth and services and the putting of these into the course and channels of exchange. It is, at the last, only by freedom of production and freedom of exchange in unrestricted markets that authentic credits can be established as instruments of exchange. It is only in this way—by freedom of production and exchange—that just and rightful purchasing power can be created and maintained. When this truth becomes well understood, it will be practiced; and all the mystery and all the menace of inflation will have passed away.

Keywords: Banking, credit, inflation, deflation, exchange

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