John Locke lays out the foundational arguments of liberalism: people have rights preexisting government, and government exists to protect those rights. Nicknamed the "Father of Liberalism," Locke's ...

Spooner argues in this radical essay that the Constitution, which he frames as a legal contract, is not binding. The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or ...

Minocher Rustom “Minoo” Masani was an Indian politician, a leading figure of the erstwhile Swatantra Party, a three- time Member of Parliament, and was among the founders of the Indian Liberal Group ...

In Man Versus the State, Herbert Spencer argues that as the state tries to regulate more of our lives, it inches us closer to slavery. What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of ...

For those interested in history, Menger’s Principles of Economics offers a way to unify gritty historical experience with pure economic theory. Carl Menger has played an interesting supporting role in ...

Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments included this passage about spontaneous order vs planned economy. Adam Smith was a Scottish political philosopher and economist, considered one of the ...

William Graham Sumner held a professorship in political economy at Yale and did pioneering work in sociology when the field was in its infancy. In addition to doing academic work that spanned a ...

Emma Goldman discusses the nature of the state as an institution and how it is fundamentally at odds with the dignity of the individual. Emma Goldman was a socialist anarchist activist, writer, and ...

“He fell upon Government, and shew’d, that every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired.” One of the most important primary sources of any kind ...

“Plantain was resolved that he would now make himself King of Madagascar, and govern there with absolute Power and Authority.” Clement Downing served on a variety of ships in the Indian Ocean as an ...

“Servitude and mastery result from the struggle between the strong and the weak…and Blue Heaven has nothing whatsoever to do with it.” We know next to nothing about the man historian Etienne Balazs ...

So far, Menger has gently revised Classical Economics. Once subjective and marginal utility enter the equation, though: a revolution is underway. So far in our explorations in early Austrianism, Carl ...