This book is a descriptive and critical bibliography of works on the
philosophy of individualism. I have applied the term “individualism”
in a broad sense. The bibliography includes books which explain the
processes and advantages of free trade, free enterprise and free
markets; which recognize the evils of excessive state power; and which
champion the cause of individual freedom of worship, speech and thought.
Such a compilation seemed to me to be increasingly urgent because so
few writers and speakers on public questions today reveal any idea
of the wealth, depth and breadth of the literature of freedom. What
threatens us today is not merely the outright totalitarian philosophies
of fascism and communism, but the increasing drift of thought in the
totalitarian direction. Many people today who complacently think
of themselves as “middle-of-the-roaders” have no conception of the
extent to which they have already taken over statist, socialist, and
collectivist assumptions--assumptions which, if logically followed out,
must inevitably carry us further and further down the totalitarian road.
One of the crowning ironies of the present era, in fact, is that it is
precisely, especially in America, the people who flatteringly refer to
themselves as “liberals” who have forgotten or repudiated the essence
of the true liberal tradition. The typical butts of their ridicule are
such writers as Adam Smith, Bastiat, Cobden (“the Manchester School”),
and Herbert Spencer. Whatever errors any of these writers may have
been guilty of individually, they were among the chief architects
of true liberalism. Yet our modern “progressives” now refer to this
whole philosophy contemptuously as “_laissez faire_.” They present
a grotesque caricature of it in order to refute it to their own
satisfaction, and then go on to advocate more and more governmental
power, more centralization of government in Washington, fewer and
fewer powers for the States or localities, more and more power for
the President, more and more discretionary power for an appointed
bureaucracy, and less and less power for Congress, which is usually
ridiculed by our self-styled “liberals” and given to understand that
its sole function is to “support the President”--in other words, to
act as a rubber stamp. And none of this group seem to recognize that
they differ from the totalitarians only in that the totalitarians want
_unlimited_ government power, _complete_ centralization, unlimited
power in the President or “Leader,” and no legislature at all except
as window-dressing, or as sycophants to proclaim the greatness of the
Leader.
This present-day reversal of the traditional vocabulary in itself sets
up great obstacles to the compilation of a bibliography of freedom.
But these difficulties and obstacles go much further, of course,
than those created by a reversal in the popular meaning of the word
“liberalism.” “Oh, Liberty!” Madame Roland is said to have exclaimed
as she passed a statue to that goddess on her way to the guillotine,
“what crimes are committed in thy name!” Looking at the world today,
we are tempted to stress the intellectual crimes committed in the name
of liberty as much as the moral crimes. Never were men more ardent in
defense of “liberty” than they are today; but never were there more
diverse concepts of what constitutes true liberty. Many of today’s
writers who are most eloquent in their arguments for liberty in fact
preach philosophies that would destroy it. It seems to be typical
of the books of our intelligentsia to praise one kind of liberty
incessantly while disparaging or ridiculing another kind. The liberty
that they so rightly praise is the liberty of thought and expression.
But the liberty that they so foolishly denounce is economic liberty.
They dismiss this contemptuously as “_laissez faire_”--a phrase, as
I have already pointed out, which they almost always use in a merely
invidious rather than in any seriously descriptive sense. In fact, no
literature is more soaked in semantics than that concerning freedom.
“Freedom” and “liberty” are the honorific terms for the liberties that
the particular writer is defending; “_laissez faire_” or “license” are
the disparaging terms for the liberties he is decrying.
Unfortunately the authors who have fallen into this practice include
some of the finest minds of our generation. (I think particularly of
Bertrand Russell and the late Morris Cohen.) Such writers seem to me
to be at least in part reflecting an occupational bias. Being writers
and thinkers, they are acutely aware of the importance of liberty of
writing and thinking. But they seem to attach scant value to economic
liberty because they think of it not as applying to themselves but to
businessmen. Such a judgment may be uncharitable; but it is certainly
fair to say that they misprize economic liberty because, in spite
of their brilliance in some directions, they lack the knowledge or
understanding to recognize that when economic liberties are abridged
or destroyed all other liberties are abridged or destroyed with them.
“Power over a man’s subsistence,” as Alexander Hamilton reminded us,
“is power over his will.” And if we wish a more modern authority, we
can quote no less a one than Leon Trotsky, the colleague of Lenin, who
in 1937, in a moment of candor, pointed out clearly that: “In a country
where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow
starvation: The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has
been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”
Liberty is a whole, and to deny economic liberty is finally to destroy
all liberty. Socialism is irreconcilable with freedom. This is the
lesson that most of our modern philosophers and littérateurs have yet
to learn.
I write all this to explain why certain books which some readers might
expect to find in this compilation will not be found here. They may
say some eloquent and even true things about liberty; but their net
influence is not on the side of liberty. The test I have tried to
apply here is whether any book, regardless of the reservations I may
personally have on the position it takes on this issue or that, is
still _on net balance_ on the side of true liberty.
I have long contemplated a compilation like the present one. But I kept
postponing the task because it seemed too formidable. My hesitation was
broken at last when a friend informed me of the existence of a 95-page
pamphlet published by the Individualist Book Shop of London in 1927,
which might be the kind of bibliography I had in mind. I immediately
sent to London for this book, and quite as promptly received a copy
from Miss Marjorie Franklin, General Secretary of The Society for
Individual Freedom. Miss Franklin warned me, however, that not only had
the pamphlet been long out of print, but that I was getting a “precious
file copy.”
I read this pamphlet with satisfaction and delight. If it could not be
republished simply as it stood, it was at least the ideal nucleus to
build around. It was both scholarly and penetrating; its standards of
selection were at once discriminating and catholic; its judgments were
sound, and it was written with charm.
The pamphlet was anonymous; but I learned by inquiry that it had been
prepared by Professor W. H. Hutt, the British economist, now Dean of
the Faculty of Commerce at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Professor Hutt informed me in correspondence, however, that while he
was responsible for the greater part of the pamphlet he “did everything
in collaboration with” the late Francis W. Hirst, the well-known
British Liberal and former editor of _The London Economist_, “and
if there is any acknowledgment in the preface, his name should be
mentioned as well as mine.”
This compilation and discussion for the Individualist Bookshop had only
one major defect: it was more than a quarter of a century old. But this
defect, it seemed to me at first, could very easily be remedied. It
would simply be necessary to drop one or two score of its 166 entries
(because they were books now obsolete or superseded), to shorten the
comments on some of the rest, and to add a score or two of entries to
cover the important libertarian books that had been published in the
nearly thirty years since 1927.
The work of elimination proved no more difficult than I had supposed.
But the work of addition took on a far different aspect. I was
surprised to find, for example, that even some of the classics of
freedom and individualism--the relevant works, say, of Milton,
Montesquieu, Burke, de Tocqueville and Lord Acton--had been omitted.
These gaps were of course easily filled. Much more formidable was the
task of selecting from the mass of books published since 1927.
* * * * *
This raised many problems. I will expand on only one by way of
illustration. This was the problem of whether to include or exclude the
more important works that have appeared in the last quarter-century
denouncing the immorality or warning against the internal or external
perils of communism. The Hutt pamphlet had been mainly devoted to
books expounding the positive philosophy of freedom and individualism.
Yet it had freely listed the books primarily critical of socialism.
On the same principle there was every reason for including the books
critical of communism. The two terms were used by Karl Marx, in fact,
interchangeably. The Russian Communists still call their domain the
Union of Soviet _Socialist_ Republics. Communism is not merely the
logical and inevitable end-product of socialism; it is also another
name for a socialism that is really complete. We must subscribe, in
short, to the definition of Bernard Shaw that “A communist is nothing
but a socialist with the courage of his convictions.”
Yet the decision to add the leading anti-communist books not only
swelled the dimensions of this bibliography, but presented a problem
of another kind. The authors who attack socialism have generally based
their criticism on the explicit premises of a free, competitive,
private enterprise. But probably a good half of the books of the
last quarter-century which attack communism do so on the basis of
socialist assumptions. They attack Russian communism as a “betrayal”
of true socialism. (The works of Arthur Koestler are an outstanding
example.) They attack even Stalinism as a betrayal of “true Leninism.”
In fact, most of the best known anti-communist books, including some
that are admirable in other respects, attack the end-product without
seeming to realize that it is socialist ideals that inevitably create
this end-product. The authors of these books attack the despotism in
Russia, for example, without recognizing that you cannot carry out the
centralized economic planning of socialism without despotism. They
attack the communist suppression of freedom of speech and thought
without recognizing that once you give government complete power over
jobs and employment--the power to promote or demote, to hire or fire,
to say, in short, whether a man is to live or starve--you at the same
time give government complete power to control or suppress speech and
thought. They fail to recognize that in prescribing the means they are
prescribing the end. They fail to recognize that the immorality and
the intellectual and spiritual suppression that they denounce flow
inevitably out of the centralized economic planning and governmental
omnipotence that they applaud.
Yet some anti-communist books of disillusioned communists who are
still socialists or planners are among the most eloquent and powerful
denunciations that have yet been written on the end-products of
communism. I have therefore decided to include them, often accompanied
by a warning against acceptance of their premises.
This decision to include anti-communist volumes, as I have indicated,
created as many problems as it solved. It substantially increased the
length of this book. I soon found that by adding one book after another
to my list I had raised the number of entries from 166 in the original
Hutt bibliography, notwithstanding my numerous omissions from it, to a
new total of more than 550.
As a result of these inclusions other decisions were forced upon me. My
original purpose had been to offer my own judgments of all the works
included, except when I was satisfied with those given in the Hutt
pamphlet. But as my ideas expanded concerning the volumes that ought
to be included I was forced by sheer growth of number to fall back
in many cases, as the reader will see, on the judgments of others.
This decision was forced for a double reason. It was as impracticable
as it would have been supererogatory to read through from cover to
cover each of the 400 or so additional volumes listed in order to
write a half-dozen lines about it. I found, in addition, that even
where I had read a substantial part of a book, or even where I had
read it through--but years ago--my present memory did not leave me
with sufficient confidence in my own judgment of it. In these cases I
have fallen back upon critics whose judgments seem to me to deserve
confidence, or writers who have spoken with special authority or
justness on the book in question. In some cases I have also added such
judgments in the hope of reinforcing my own.
By following this eclectic procedure I have of course lost whatever
advantages might have accrued in the following compilation from a
completely uniform style and uniform standard of judgment. But such
a disadvantage, it seems to me, is more than compensated by greater
comprehensiveness than I could otherwise have achieved. And I early
decided that the application of a uniform standard was in any case next
to impossible. The reader will find in the following compilation books
of very different “weights.” He will find the works of Locke and Adam
Smith and Mill cheek by jowl with modern books just out last year. He
will find the works of the great pioneers and trail blazers next to
popularizations written mainly for beginners. I do not know how this
kind of heterogeneous mixture can be avoided if this book is to fulfill
the functions for which it is designed. For it is designed to guide the
reader not merely to the great classics on liberty and individualism,
but to introductory works.
A further word should be said here regarding the standards I have
applied in deciding whether or not a given work should be included in
this compilation. I already see myself being buttonholed occasionally
by some angry reader who asks: “Why on earth did you include
Pumpernickel’s book in your bibliography? Don’t you know that on page
155 he writes this outrageous sentence--?” And then my questioner will
probably quote or misquote some pronouncement that I do not at all feel
like defending. In an effort to answer as many as possible of such
objections in advance, I should like to say here that the inclusion
of a book in this bibliography certainly does not imply that I myself
subscribe to every doctrine or sentence in that book or that I think
every opinion it enunciates is an essential part of the libertarian
or individualist tradition. What inclusion does imply is that in my
judgment the book, to repeat what I have said earlier, makes _on net
balance_ a factual or theoretical contribution to the philosophy of
individualism, and that at least some readers may derive from it a
fuller understanding of that philosophy.
The inclusion of any book in this list, in brief, implies
recommendation. Therefore, with few exceptions, I have confined myself
to making or quoting comments which emphasize the merits of a book
rather than its defects. A primer, for example, may ably serve its
modest purpose without necessarily constituting a major contribution
to the subject with which it deals. A book may contain, in parts,
collectivist or confused thinking and still be one from which a student
of liberty could greatly profit. In my comments, therefore, I have
tried to keep reservations, misgivings and objections to a minimum.
Nor is the reader to take the amount of space devoted to the discussion
of any book as a necessary measure of my own judgment regarding its
relative merit or importance. A classic may be so well known, and
there may be so many sources from which a reader can learn about it,
that a few lines of comment may be sufficient for the purpose of this
bibliography. Another work, less meritorious and less important, may
yet rightly, for some special reason, call for longer comment. But I
cannot do better here than to quote with approval a footnote in the
Hutt bibliography on the lengthy entries under the name of Auberon
Herbert: “It may seem incongruous to give far more space to Auberon
Herbert than to Locke or Bentham. But the object of making this list
is to put information before the student, and, if important matter is
neglected or inaccessible, it needs more space than is required by
works known, by name at least, to ‘every schoolboy.’”
With some reluctance, however, I have made it a general rule to exclude
pamphlets from my list, notwithstanding the many admirable ones that
have appeared in recent years. I have done this not only because their
inclusion would have swollen this bibliography far beyond useful
dimensions, but because it is usually so difficult for readers to
obtain pamphlets, particularly after they have been allowed to fall
out of print, that their inclusion might too often merely arouse a
curiosity could not be satisfied. I must add, in fact, that in spite
of my _general_ rule against including pamphlets, I have felt simply
compelled to make a few exceptions because of their outstanding
importance.
This points to one of the insoluble problems of the bibliographer
in dealing with practically any great subject. He finds it next to
impossible to draw sharp boundaries, to be completely consistent, to
defend confidently his every inclusion or omission. If he tries to make
his list “complete,” his task becomes a labor of Sisyphus; and even if
he were to succeed, his list would be unmanageable and useless to most
readers. If he makes his bibliography “selective,” he is inevitably
accused of being arbitrary or capricious in his selections.
* * * * *
I became increasingly conscious of this dilemma as my work proceeded.
I am aware that for a great number of readers the more than 550
entries here may seem more bewildering than helpful. The device of
marking with an asterisk those books “specially recommended” would, I
fear, have created more problems than it solved. Therefore, for the
sake of those who would appreciate the guidance of a shorter list,
I have resorted to a practice that has become a traditional annual
event with many American book reviewers, and drama and motion picture
critics. I have compiled a list of “the best ten.” This, of course,
adds the limitations of an arbitrary number to the other arbitrary
factors in selection. To make my task just a little less provocative of
indignation, I have in fact compiled two lists of ten--first, the “ten
best” historic classics on liberty and individualism; and secondly, the
“ten best” contemporary works.
Here is the list of “classics” in chronological order:
JOHN MILTON, _Areopagetica_
JOHN LOCKE, _Second Treatise on Government_
DAVID HUME, _Essays Moral, Political and Literary_
ADAM SMITH, _The Wealth of Nations_
EDMUND BURKE, _Works_
FRÉDÉRIC BASTIAT, _Economic Sophisms_
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, _Democracy in America_
JOHN STUART MILL, _On Liberty_
HERBERT SPENCER, _The Man vs. the State_
LORD ACTON, _Essays on Freedom and Power_
Here are the “ten best” contemporary works, in alphabetical order:
B. M. ANDERSON, _Economics and the Public Welfare_
F. A. HAYEK, _The Road to Serfdom_
F. A. HAYEK, _Individualism and Economic Order_
F. A. HAYEK et al., _Capitalism and the Historians_
JOHN JEWKES, _Ordeal by Planning_
LUDWIG VON MISES, _Socialism: an Analysis_
LUDWIG VON MISES, _Human Action_
GEORGE ORWELL, _Nineteen Eighty-Four_
LIONEL ROBBINS, _The Great Depression_
WILHELM RÖPKE, _The Social Crisis of Our Time_
If the reader is tempted to smile at the presumption and crudity
of selecting a list of the “ten best” works in this field, either
classic or contemporary, he may at least be assured that I smile with
him. If he is unhappy about the particular selection even within the
arbitrary number of ten, I may add that I am a little unhappy about it
myself--though perhaps not for his reasons.
In restricting the list of classics to ten, I have been forced to leave
out Montesquieu’s _Spirit of the Laws_, the writings of Jefferson,
the speeches of Cobden, Calhoun’s _A Disquisition on Government_,
the writings of Jacob Burckhardt, and the essays of William Graham
Sumner--all of which would have been included had my list been slightly
larger, and one or two of which, no doubt, some readers will think
should have been included in my list of ten at the expense of one or
two already there.
I am sorry that in the case of Burke I have felt compelled to list
his collected works rather than any particular book or speech. This
is because his finest aphorisms and most luminous passages on liberty
are scattered throughout his work and have not been satisfactorily
extracted and collected, to my knowledge, in any single volume. Many
of us have been brought up to believe that, although Burke may have
begun as a liberal (as exemplified in his speech on _Conciliation with
America_), he ended as a vehement reactionary (as in his _Reflections
on the Revolution in France_). Yet any open-minded reader, even though
he is opposed to Burke’s main conclusions on the French Revolution,
as William Hazlitt so strongly was, will agree with the latter that
“in arriving at one error [Burke] discovered a hundred truths.”
Therefore, Hazlitt considered himself “a hundred times more indebted to
[Burke] than if, stumbling on that which I consider as the right side
of the question, he had committed a hundred absurdities in striving
to establish his point.” We, too, I think, must agree, as Hazlitt
did, with the judgment that in political philosophy Burke “was the
most eloquent man of his time; and his wisdom was greater than his
eloquence.”
Burke in his later years was certainly a conservative; and the
prominent inclusion of his works in a bibliography of freedom may
seem to some readers, accustomed to associate the case for freedom
with the case for “liberalism,” to call for explanation. But there
is no necessary conflict between intelligent conservatism and real
liberalism. On the contrary, at least in the peculiar climate and
conditions of the present age, they have come to mean nearly the same
thing.
Historically, the liberals fought against government tyranny; against
governmental abridgment of freedom of speech and action; against
governmental restrictions on agriculture, manufacture, and trade;
against constant detailed governmental regulation, interference and
harassment at a hundred points; against (to use the phrases of the
Declaration of Independence) “a multitude of new offices” and “swarms
of officers”; against concentration of governmental power, particularly
in the person of one man; against government by whim and favoritism.
Historic liberalism called, on the other hand, for the Rule of Law,
and for equality before the law. The older conservatives opposed many
or most of these liberal demands because they believed in existing
governmental interferences and sweeping governmental powers; or because
they wished to retain their own special privileges and prerogatives; or
simply because they were temperamentally fearful of altering the status
quo, whatever it happened to be.
Those who flatteringly call themselves “liberals” today, and to
whom confused opponents allow or even assign the name, are for
nearly everything that the old liberals opposed. Most self-styled
present-day “liberals,” particularly in America, are urging the
constant extension of government “planning.” They constantly press for
a greater concentration of governmental power, whether in the central
government at the expense of the States and localities, or in the hands
of a one-man executive at the expense of any check, limitation, or
even investigation by a legislature. And they look with favor on an
ever-growing bureaucracy, and on the spread of bureaucratic discretion
at the expense of a Rule of Law. Those who oppose this trend toward a
new despotism, on the other hand, and plead for the preservation of
the ancient freedoms of the individual, are today’s conservatives.
The intelligent conservative, in brief, is today the true defender of
liberty.
This conclusion should not seem too paradoxical. It was always possible
to reconcile intelligent conservatism with real liberalism. There is
no conflict between wishing to conserve and hold the precious gains
that have been achieved in the past, which is the aim of the true
conservative, and wishing to carry those achievements even further,
which is the aim of the true liberal. Burke not only recognized that
these two aims were compatible; he summed up that compatibility in one
of his memorable aphorisms: “A disposition to preserve and an ability
to improve, taken together, would be my standard of the statesman.”
Let us go on, after this long digression, to consider the list I have
put forward of the “ten best” contemporary books on the philosophy of
individualism.
My contemporary list is even more unsatisfactory to me than my
historic one, especially in what I am forced to exclude. My reasons
for including each of the twenty books in the two lists will be found
under the entry for that book in the bibliography that follows.
However, I should perhaps say a word in explanation of the fact that
there are three entries under the name of Professor Hayek. Hayek’s
_The Road to Serfdom_ is the most acute and impressive analysis of the
modern drift to totalitarianism that has been written in our time. It
deserves a place in any contemporary list no matter how short. His
essays collected under the title of _Individualism and Economic Order_
have been included in the list chiefly because of the leading essay,
_Individualism: True and False_, which no open-minded individualist
can read without having his ideas enlarged and clarified; for true
individualism certainly does not consist in mere eccentricity,
intransigence, or contempt for voluntary social cooperation. It is
the mistaken association of these qualities with “individualism” that
has given that philosophy a dubious reputation with many who would
otherwise be won to it. Professor Hayek is not the author of the third
volume, _Economics and the Historians_; he is simply the editor and one
of the contributors. The selection of this short book from among some
excellent economic histories is perhaps arbitrary; but it performs,
better than any other work I know of, the negative function of
informing the reader how grossly some of the most celebrated economic
historians of the last half century or more have misrepresented the
meaning of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of capitalism.
Those who think my contemporary list unbalanced can substitute for
Hayek’s _Individualism and Economic Order_, say, Max Eastman’s
_Reflections on the Failure of Socialism_, or Walter Lippmann’s _The
Good Society_ (at least the first half of that book).
To offer an abbreviated list of “best” books is one thing; to suggest a
“reading course” is quite another. It is not always advisable for the
novice to begin with the masterpieces; he must be educated to the point
where he can understand and appreciate them. But this is a subjective
problem in which no two readers are likely to be in precisely the
same position; and the ideal reading program should be individually
tailored to fit a particular reader’s requirements. A major purpose of
the present extensive bibliography, in fact, is to act as a guide to
the reader in making his own individual choices. The tyro will learn
more or faster from one set of books, the proficient from another.
Bearing in mind these reservations, however, some readers may still
find it helpful if I suggest at least one “introductory course.”
Fortunately this task is not too difficult, because the finest books
of the past and present are usually as distinguished for lucidity
as for wisdom. So even an introductory course could easily be built
exclusively from our two lists of the “ten best.” An introductory
course of five books, for example, might be this: The reader might
begin with (1) a contemporary book, F. A. Hayek’s _The Road to
Serfdom_. He might then read in this order: (2) John Stuart Mill’s
classic essay _On Liberty_; (3) Ludwig von Mises’ _Socialism_; (4)
Hayek’s essay, _Individualism: True and False_, or Max Eastman’s
_Reflections on the Failure of Socialism_; and (5) Ludwig von Mises’
_Human Action_.
The most formidable books on the foregoing list, in length and
difficulty, are the two volumes by von Mises. For readers to whom
this program may seem too arduous or ambitious, therefore, I suggest
this introductory list of only three books, each short and relatively
simple: (1) Hayek’s _The Road to Serfdom_; (2) Mill’s _Liberty_; (3)
von Mises’ short collection of essays, _Planning for Freedom_.
The reader should be able to steer his own course from there on, a
process in which I hope this bibliography will still prove helpful.
* * * * *
The main purpose of this bibliography, to repeat what has already been
said in substance, is to bring to the attention of the modern reader
the most important, useful or available books in the true liberal
tradition--the tradition of free trade, free enterprise, free markets;
of limited and decentralized government; of freedom of speech, of
religion, of the press, and of assembly; of security of person and
private property--the tradition, in brief, of the freedom and dignity
of the individual.
Now this tradition, rich and deep and noble as it is, is being treated
by most present-day intellectuals almost as if it had never existed.
When they speak of it, they usually speak merely of some grotesque
caricature in their own minds, which they contemptuously dismiss as
“_laissez faire_” or “the Manchester School.” Yet as Friedrich Hayek
has pointed out in _The Road to Serfdom_ (p. 13), what the modern trend
to socialism means “becomes clear if we consider it not merely against
the background of the nineteenth-century, but in a longer historical
perspective. We are rapidly abandoning not the views merely of Cobden
and Bright, of Adam Smith and Hume, or even of Locke and Milton, but
one of the salient characteristics of Western civilization as it has
grown from the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and
Romans. Not merely nineteenth-and eighteenth-century liberalism, but
the basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne,
from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides, is progressively
relinquished.”
This bibliography, I hope, will help to clarify as well as to mobilize
the case for individualism and true liberalism. It is designed to
strengthen individualists in their knowledge and convictions, to place
in their hands the intellectual weapons that will help them to combat
the totalitarian trend. It is designed, also, to call attention to the
richness of the truly liberal tradition, to the excellent books and the
many noble minds that have helped to shape it.
But this compilation would fail of part of its purpose if it gave
readers the impression that the literature of freedom and individualism
is already so rich that it does not need to be supplemented and
expanded. On the contrary, there are deplorable gaps in this
literature, particularly in recent writing. It would take me too far
out of my way to try to call attention in detail to these gaps. The
task, moreover, would be odious. Frankly, I have occasionally included
a book in the following list because, in spite of serious shortcomings,
it happens to be the only book which covers some special subject
from the libertarian point of view. But it is my hope that this
bibliography will indirectly call attention to some existing gaps, and
thereby stimulate the writing of better books to fill them.
It is partly, in fact, in the hope that it may encourage translations
that I have listed a number of books in French and German that have not
yet been made available in English.
A similar hope may be expressed about pamphlets. There are many of
the first rank, some by the same author, some on different phases of
the same subject, that urgently need to be brought together and made
permanently available in book form.
* * * * *
As a final word, I must emphasize again my sad discovery that a
bibliographer’s lot is not a happy one. If he is “selective,”
his selections are likely to be called arbitrary, subjective and
capricious. If he seeks to be “comprehensive,” his troubles multiply
beyond counting. In the present case, I have been constantly troubled
by the problem of exactly where to draw my boundary lines. This is
essentially a bibliography on the philosophy of individual freedom.
A few economic classics and a few contemporary economic analyses and
textbooks are included because they either explicitly or by logical
implication support this philosophy. But other economic volumes, which
considered purely as technical economic analysis are as good as or
perhaps in some respects even better than some of those included, have
been omitted either because most of their discussion is only remotely
relevant to a libertarian philosophy or may even veer off to support a
socialist or statist philosophy. Yet between the easily classifiable
cases there are any number of borderline cases in which the decision
to include or exclude is very difficult and cannot fail to be in some
respects arbitrary.
An essential part of the philosophy of individualism, again, is the
doctrine of the Rule of Law. This calls for the inclusion of some works
on jurisprudence. But at exactly what point does one stop? And so for a
score of other fields. The philosophy of individualism can be reflected
in works on jurisprudence, on administrative law, on politics, on
ethics, on general economics, on agriculture, on labor relations,
on interest rates, on money and banking policy, and so on. How much
weight should one attach to the technical excellence or importance of
works of this type in their special fields as compared with that of an
individualistic philosophy which may merely be implied in such works?
I have found no satisfactory answer to questions of this sort, no
clear-cut pigeonholes that satisfy my bibliographic conscience. In any
case, the process of compiling a critical bibliography is at best an
art and can never be reduced to an exact science. It is at the mercy
of accident and subject to the limitations of the compiler. I shall
not be completely astonished to find, for example, after this book has
been printed and bound beyond alteration, that I have omitted an entry
or two from sheer oversight. In still other cases, when some kind lady
corners me at a social gathering and asks with a puzzled expression,
“Why did you leave Professor X’s book out of your list?”, I may have
to reply, as the great Samuel Johnson had the courage to do to a woman
who asked him to account for an error in his dictionary: “Ignorance,
madame. Pure ignorance.”
Fortunately for readers and writers alike, a book not free from
shortcomings may still perform a useful and necessary function; and
it is in the belief that this volume will prove helpful not merely to
individual readers, but to the great cause of human liberty itself,
that it is put forward.
* * * * *
A word should perhaps be added about the title of this bibliography.
In calling it _The Free Man’s Library_ I do not, of course, mean to
imply that books on the philosophy of individualism, or in defense of
personal liberty, are the only books that a “free man” should carry
on his shelves. The free man is free to take all human knowledge for
his province. His full library, let us hope, will contain the Bible
and Shakespeare, Homer and Plato, and other well-chosen selections
from the world’s treasuries of drama, fiction, poetry, history, art,
philosophy and science. By _The Free Man’s Library_ I mean to indicate
merely the books that a man may wish to know about, to read or have
in his home specifically in his role _as_ a free man--as a man who
wants to understand how he may best restore, preserve, or increase
his own freedom and the freedom of others. In the same way we should
expect a bibliography called “The Physician’s Library” to be confined
to the books that a physician should know about or read in his special
capacity _as_ a physician, and a bibliography called “The Engineer’s
Library” to be confined to the books that a man should know in his
capacity _as_ an engineer. But neither the physician nor the engineer,
let us hope, will be _solely_ a physician or an engineer, but will have
the range of intellectual interests that we associate with a liberal
education and a broad, humane culture. And the “free man,” we may hope
also, whatever his special calling, will have the same wide range of
intellectual interests, the same broad, humane culture, for these are
among the finest fruits of freedom; and it is partly because it has
these fruits that freedom is so precious.