Everything Voluntary – Voluntaryist Resources

Table of Contents
Previous – Section One – Chapter 6 – “Charity in the Land of Individualism” by John D. Fargo

The Ethics of Liberty, by Murray Rothbard
“First published in 1982, The Ethics of Liberty is a masterpiece of argumentation, and shockingly radical in its conclusions. Rothbard says that the very existence of the state – the entity with a monopoly privilege to invade private property – is contrary to the ethics of liberty. A society without a state is not only viable; it is the only one consistent with natural rights. In this volume, Rothbard first familiarizes the reader with Natural Law theory. After this ethical introduction, he goes on to address numerous ethical issues, showing how liberty is in the right in every case. In the final two sections, Rothbard enumerates the state’s role in society as inherently anti-liberty, and details the structure of alternate theories of liberty.” (Mises.org)

Our Enemy, The State, by Albert J. Nock
“What does one need to know about politics? In some ways, Nock has summed it all up in this astonishing book. Here was a prominent essayist at the height of the New Deal. In 1935, hardly any public intellectuals were making much sense at all. They pushed socialism. They pushed fascism. Everyone had a plan. Hardly anyone considered the possibility that the state was not fixing society but destroying it bit by bit. And so Albert Jay Nock came forward to write what needed to be written. And he ended up penning a classic of American political commentary, one that absolutely must be read by every student of economics and government.” (Amazon.com)

I Must Speak Out, by Carl Watner
This work is “an Anthology of 70+ essays from the first 100 issues” of The Voluntaryist as published between 1982-1999.

Private Means, Public Ends by J. Wilson Mixon, Jr.
“This collection of essays daringly challenges the perceived wisdom of government necessity by pointing to instances of the free market fulfilling these functions. The book seeks to illustrate that there are, inevitably, many intrinsic problems with governmental attempts to plan and implement these functions. Moreover, governments operate on the leverage of coercion – whether that be in the form of laws or taxation. These essays suggest that the private alternatives not only tend to work better at achieving the desired end, but they also serve to reintroduce the much diminished principle upon which civil society is founded: namely voluntary cooperation between free men.” (Amazon.com)

The Conscience of an Anarchist, by Gary Chartier
“Anarchy happens when people organize their lives peacefully and voluntarily – without the aggressive violence of the state. This simple but powerful book explains why the state is illegitimate, unnecessary, and dangerous, and what we can do to begin achieving real freedom.” (Amazon.com)

The Economics and Ethics of Private Property by Hans Hoppe
“The right to private property is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics, argues Hoppe, and the basis for civilizational advance. Indeed, it is the very foundation of social order itself. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromising privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of private property rights.” (Amazon.com)

FFF.org, “the mission of The Future of Freedom Foundation is to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, and private property.”

Voluntaryist.com is a website dedicated to promoting voluntaryism through the written word via an email group and newsletter, The Voluntaryist, and established by Carl Watner. From their Statement of Purpose, “Voluntaryists are advocates of non-political, nonviolent strategies to achieve a free society. We reject electoral politics, in theory and in practice, as incompatible with libertarian principles. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy. Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which State power ultimately depends.”

LewRockwell.com is the most read libertarian website in the world. From their About page, “The daily news and opinion site LewRockwell.com was founded in 1999 by anarcho-capitalists Lew Rockwell and Burt Blumert to help carry on the anti-war, anti-state, pro-market work of Murray N. Rothbard.”

C4SS.org, “The Center for a Stateless Society is a project of the Molinari Institute and dedicated to building public awareness of, and support for, market anarchism. We provide news commentary, related analysis and original research from our unique perspective, serving as a market anarchist media center.”

Praxeology.net/molinari.htm, “The mission of the Molinari Institute is to promote understanding of the philosophy of Market Anarchism as a sane, consensual alternative to the hypertrophic violence of the State. The Institute takes its name from Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912), originator of the theory of Market Anarchism.”

CompleteLiberty.com is a website “for those who advocate complete liberty, to share ideas and create and join local groups, devising win/win strategies to help people and institutions evolve to the truly free market society of the future.” Created by Wes Bertrand.

Strike-The-Root.com “is a daily journal of current events and commentary from a libertarian/market anarchist perspective. The mission of STR is to advance the cause of liberty, primarily by demystifying and delegitimizing the State. STR seeks a world where people are free to live their lives as they see fit, as long as they don’t use force or fraud against peaceful people.”

ZeroGov.com is a website dedicated to setting people “free from the physical and intellectual shackles that makes them wards of the state and beasts of burden subject to the whim of rulers whose only legitimacy is the perception by the fettered and the chained that they must submit.”

Next – Section Two – Chapter 7 – “The Origin of Religious Tolerance” by Wendy McElroy