# Crosscurrents (Vol. 1 No. 1) **URL:** **Published:** March 1, 1982 --- “Some have been found covered in dust on library shelves, obviously never touched, with their pages uncut since the time they were bound.” Many of our bibliographies and review essays will deal with Classical Liberal classics which are often extremely hard to find and have been long out of print. Some have been found covered in dust on library shelves, obviously never touched, with their pages uncut since the time they were bound. However, when important recent books and articles come to our attention and which have not yet been mentioned in our bibliographies, we will briefly review them here. As the name “Crosscurrents” suggests, these books and articles will not necessarily be explicitly libertarian but will contain insights and important information of interest to students of liberty and which, with critical awareness and care, can be integrated into the Real Liberal corpus. ## Natural Rights A very important book by the Cambridge historian Richard Tuck, _Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development_ (Cambridge University Press, 1979), attempts to deal with the difficulties which 20th-century philosophers have had in writing about rights by undertaking an historical investigation of natural rights theories, in particular, the two main periods in which natural rights were discussed (1350–1450 and 1590–1670). The key figure for the revival of natural rights theories was Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) whose writings, especially his _Introduction to the Jurisprudence of Holland_, trans. and ed. R. W. Lee (Oxford, 1926), provided justification for both conservative authoritarian and radical libertarian theories of natural rights. The latter tradition developed Grotius’s ideas on the individual’s inalienable rights during the 17th century and Tuck, interestingly enough, sees continuity between the Levellers and less radical Independents and the radical Whigs of the post-Reformation period (e.g. James Tyrrell’s _Patriarcha non Monarchia_ (1681) and John Locke). Tuck’s book is particularly useful and important in showing the constant tension within natural rights theories between their conservative and their revolutionary political implications. The most developed Leveller statement on inalienable individual property rights was put forward by Richard Overton in his 1646 and 1647 pamphlets (especially _An Appeale_, July 17, 1647, reprinted in Don M. Wolfe (ed.), _Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution_ (New York, 1967 (1944), pp. 157–188, particularly p. 162) and represents, along with John Locke’s _Second Treatise_, the most revolutionary aspect of natural rights theory before the 18th century. Tuck should be read alongside Quentin Skinner’s _The Foundations of Modern Political Thought_ (Cambridge University Press, 1979, 2 vols.) in order to understand the development of modern radical liberal thought. ## English Anti-Militarism Lois G. Schwoerer, “No Standing Armies!”: _The Antiarmy Ideology in 17th-Century England_ (John Hopkins University Press, 1974): A common theme of 17th and 18th-century liberal thought was a thoroughgoing anti-militarism. Standing armies were seen as the tools of absolutist and imperial monarchs, to be used to crush internal opposition to tyranny or to impose the imperial yoke upon other peoples. Schwoerer examines the 17th-century English opposition to standing armies (and hence, opposition to the powers of the crown) in order to appreciate the results of the Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights, as well as to trace English influence on the American Revolution. Of particular interest is the Leveller agitation within the New Model Army for civil control of military matters and popular election of officers, restrictions upon the demands of the state for military service and for an end to the practice of imposing martial law in peacetime. Also of interest is the pamphlet war against standing armies initiated in October 1697 by John Trenchard with _An Argument Showing that a Standing Army is Inconsistent with a Free Government and Absolutely Destructive to the Constitution of the English Monarchy_ and his later _A Short History of Standing Armies in England_ (November 1698). John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon were to exert a considerable influence on the American Revolution with these pamphlets as well as with their widely circulated and read _Cato’s Letters, or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious_ (London, 1733) reprinted in two volumes by Da Capo Press, New York, 1971. See in particular Nos. 25, 33, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65, 94 and 98 for their views on political power, liberty and armies. Schwoerer’s book is important in showing the 17th-century origins of liberal anti-military sentiment, a theme which was to recur in the thought of the 19th-century classical economists. See Edmund Silberner, _The Problem of War in the 19th-Century Economic Thought_ (Princeton University Press, 1946), reprinted by Garland, New York, 1972. ## Class Analysis Other books which have recently come of our attention include the following: Alexander Rüstow, _Freedom and Domination: A Historical Critique of Civilization_ (Princeton University Press, 1980), ed. Dankwart A. Rustow, translated by Salvator Attanasio. A brilliant classical liberal interpretation of western civilization which uses a sophisticated class analysis. The book is marred by its “abbreviation,” i.e., chapters are left out and the all-important footnotes have been removed. The only remedy is to return to the original, _Ortbestimmung der Gegenwart_, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1950, 1952, 1957). From another perspective, class analysis is used effectively by Arno J. Mayer in his _The Persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War_ (Pantheon, New York, 1981). Mayer has annoyed Marxists by arguing that the _ancien régime_ in pre-World War One Europe was essentially feudal rather than industrial and, through its control of the state apparatus, was able to protect its privileged position in a time of rapid economic change and to “set the terms for the implantation of manufactural and industrial capitalism, thereby making it serve their own purposes.” Mayer sees the Two World Wars of this century as elements of a general crisis and Thirty Years War, similar to that of the 17th century, and with equally revolutionary implications. ## Liberal Classics in Reprint Liberty Press/Liberty Classics, 7440 North Shadeland, Indianapolis, Indiana 46250, is currently reprinting some important libertarian classics. Not only are the books well-bound and presented, they are extremely cheap. A catalog is available on request. Some of my favorites include: _Lecky’s Democracy and Liberty_; _Mises’ The Theory of Money and Credit_ and _Socialism_; the _New Individualist Review_, which contains important essays edited by the University of Chicago chapter of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists in the 1960s, including essays by Milton Friedman, Ronald Hamowy, Israel Kirzner, Leonard Liggio, Ralph Raico, Murray Rothbard (especially his “H. L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian,” Summer 1962, vol. 2, no. 2, p. 253); _Hayek’s The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason_, which demonstrates the absurdities resulting from transferring the methodology of the “hard” sciences to the “humane” sciences; _Frank Chodorov’s Fugitive Essays_, written by one of the great libertarians of the 20th century and a forefather of the modern libertarian movement; and _Auberon Herbert’s The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays_, a collection of essays by an almost forgotten English Individualist and “Voluntaryist” of the late 19th century. ## Critiques of Socialism The latest issue of the _Journal of Libertarian Studies_ (vol. 5, no. 1, Winter 1981) is devoted to “An Economic Critique of Socialism,” with five important and stimulating essays edited by Don Lavoie of George Mason University. The purpose of these papers is to reassess the famous “calculation debate” of the 1930s in which Mises and Hayek raised devastating criticisms of the possibility and efficiency of “collectivist economic planning.” The common theme connecting these papers by David Ramsay Steele, Robert Bradley, Jr., Don Lavoie and Sheldon Richman is “that the notion of planning an entire economy from the center is an utter sham both theoretically and practically.” Only the spontaneous order of the free market can supply the information necessary to sustain a complex industrial economic system. One of the persistent yet perplexing questions in social and economic theory is how does a socialist society function, or better yet, why do they function as poorly as they do? Given the current volatility in Eastern Europe, the timeliness of two recent reprints by the Liberty Fund couldn’t be better. _Socialism. An Economic and Sociological Analysis_, by Ludwig von Mises remains the classic social, historical and economic analysis of all aspects of socialism. This book has also been reissued, in German, by the Philosophia Verlag in Munich as part of their Carl Menger Library series. (Their first volume was the original German edition of _Human Action, Die Nationaloekonomie_ (1940).) The second volume on socialism published by the Liberty Fund is Trygve J.B. Hoff’s _Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society_, which is a lesser known but penetrating analysis of the theoretical economic aspects of socialism. Both Mises and Hoff should be read in conjuction with the special issue of the _Journal of Libetarian Studies_ on socialism (see above). ## Transfer Society The post-civil war period was witness to numerous interventions by the American government into social and economic affairs. The practice was to take from some people and give to others. The result was what Terry Anderson and Peter J. Hill entitle their recent book–essay, _The Birth of the Transfer Society_, (Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1980). The authors trace this trend through the First World War up to the present day and show that when the government intervenes in economic matters, the transfers do not just “wash out,” but create instead a negative–sum game. ## Hayek Except for the important book by Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., _Economics as a Coordination Problem: The Contributions of Friedrich A. Hayek_ (Sheed Andrews and MacMeel, Kansas City, 1977), in which the author integrates the economic contributions of F.A. Hayek into a comprehensive whole, no one has attempted to integrate the other aspects of Hayek’s social thinking on law, philosophy, history, the history of ideas, as well as economics into a systematic _Weltanschauung_. Norman P. Barry’s _Hayek’s Social and Economic Philosophy_ (Macmillan, London, 1979) is a provisional attempt to do just that. Although Barry does not deal with Hayek’s important contributions to the history of ideas, especially on John Stuart Mill, it is a valuable aid to the study of one of the truly great Liberals of the twentieth century.