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Rationalism in Politics, first published in 1962, has established the late Michael Oakeshott as the leading conservative political theorist in modern Britain. This expanded collection of essays astutely points out the limits of 'reason' in rationalist politics. Oakeshott criticizes ideological schemes to reform society according to supposedly 'scientific' or rationalistic principles that ignore the wealth and variety of human experience. "Rationalism in politics," says Oakeshott, "involves a misconception with regard to the nature of human knowledge." History has shown that it produces unexpected, often disastrous results. "Having cut himself off from the traditional knowledge of his society, and denied the value of any education more extensive than a training in a technique of analysis," the Rationalist succeeds only in undermining the institutions that hold civilized society together. In this regard, rationalism in politics is "a corruption of the mind."

This is a newly annotated edition of the classic first published in German in 1922. It is the definitive refutation of nearly every type of socialism ever devised. Mises presents a wide-ranging analysis of society, comparing the results of socialist planning with those of free-market capitalism in all areas of life. Friedrich Hayek's foreword comments on the continuing relevance of this great work: "Most readers today will find that Socialism has more immediate application to contemporary events than it had when it first appeared."

Gordon Tullock is among a small group of living legends in the field of political economics. This volume provides an entree to the mind of an original thinker. Professor Rowley provides deliberately sparse contextual introduction to each volume, opting to allow the very able and eloquent Tullock to speak for himself.

Presents the theoretical and practical arguments for liberalism. The term comes from the Latin word 'liber' (free). Mises defines liberalism as 'the liberal doctrine of the harmony of the rightly understood interests of all members of a free society founded on the principle of private ownership of the means of production'. The foundation of liberalism, Mises says, rests on an understanding and appreciation of the institution of private property, social cooperation, the freedom idea, ethics and morality, democracy and the legitimate role of government. Liberalism is not a political party. The liberal program offers no special privileges to anyone; it aims at securing equality under law for everyone, so as to allow equal opportunity to all human beings to make their own choices and decisions. The role of government should be limited to protecting the lives, property, and freedom of its citizens to pursue their own ends and goals.

This volume contains the four essays that Spencer published as The Man Versus the State in 1884 as well as five essays added by later publishers. In addition, it provides "The Proper Sphere of Government", an important early essay by Spencer. Spencer develops various specific disastrous ramifications of the wholesale substitution of the principle of compulsory co-operation -- the statist principle -- for the individualist principle of voluntary co-operation. His theme is that "there is in society... that beautiful self-adjusting principle which will keep all its elements in equilibrium... The attempt to regulate all the actions of a community by legislation will entail little else but misery and compulsion".

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith's first and in his own mind most important work, outlines his view of proper conduct and the institutions and sentiments that make men virtuous. Here he develops his doctrine of the impartial spectator, whose hypothetical disinterested judgment we must use to distinguish right from wrong in any given situation. We by nature pursue our self-interest, according to Smith. This makes independence or self-command an instinctive good and neutral rules as difficult to craft as they are necessary But society is not held together merely by neutral rules; it is held together by sympathy. Smith argues that we naturally share the emotions and to a certain extent the physical sensations we witness in others. Sharing the sensations of our fellows, we seek to maximize their pleasures and minimize their pains so that we may share in their joys and enjoy their expressions of affection and approval.

In this easily accessible, user-friendly volume, respected economist David R Henderson brings together 152 of the most brilliant minds in economics to show how the analysis of economic topics can illuminate many aspects of the average person's daily life. Some of the noted contributors include Nobel Prize winners Gary Becker and George Stigler, former presidential economic advisors, financial columnists, and economists such as Armen Alchian, Don Boudreaux, Deepak Lal, Anna Schwartz, Lawrence Summers, and Murray Rothbard. The entries cover numerous topics including basic concepts, discrimination and labour issues, corporations and financial markets, issues in economic history, economics of legal issues, regulation, environmental regulation, taxes, economic policy, macroeconomics, money and banking, international economics, economics outside the United States, economic systems, schools of economic thought, and more. Containing over 160 entries, the encyclopaedia provides the reader with a wealth of economic analysis about important issues in a comprehensive, yet readable and engaging format. Originally published as "The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics" and now thoroughly revised and updated, this Liberty Fund edition contains numerous new entries, updates of previously published articles, and a new introduction and index.

Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a keen observer of political and economic problems and a passionate proponent of liberal economic theory. This book collects nineteen of Bastiat's articles, ranging from the theory of value and rent, public choice and collective action, government intervention and regulation, the balance of trade, education, and trade unions to price controls, capital and growth, and taxation. Throughout his articles, Bastiat demonstrates how the combination of careful logic, consistency of principle, and clarity of exposition is the instrument for solving most economic and social problems. In his famous essay "The Law" Bastiat explains that the law, far from being what it ought to be, "namely the instrument that enabled the state to protect individuals' rights and property", had become the means for what he termed "spoliation" (or plunder). From the article "The State" written at the height of the 1848 Revolution in June, comes perhaps his best-remembered quotation: "The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else". In this volume readers will find extensive introductory material, including notes on the translation and on the editions of the uvres completes, a chronology of Bastiat's life and works, two maps of France showing the cities associated with Bastiat, annotations to the articles, and a bibliography. A special section provides charming, little-known anecdotes about Bastiat and his contemporaries, including his editor Prosper Paillottet, who became Bastiat's firm friend and eventually his executor. This section also includes discussions of key concepts such as individualism, laissez-faire, industry, plunder, and the right to work. Three glossaries explain persons, places, and subjects and terms.

4 books. Mises attributes the tremendous technological progress and the consequent increase in wealth and general welfare in the last two centuries to the introduction of liberal government policies based on free-market economic teachings, creating an economic and political environment which permits individuals to pursue their respective goals in freedom and peace. Mises also explains the futility and counter-productiveness of government attempts to regulate, control, and equalise all people's circumstances: "Men are born unequal and... it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilisation."

Liberty Fund's six-volume The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat series, of which The Man and the Statesman is the first volume, may be considered the most complete edition of Bastiat's works published to date, in any country, and in any language. The main source for this translation is the seven-volume Oeuvres complètes de Frédéric Bastiat, published in the 1850s and 1860s. The present volume, most of which has never before been translated into English, includes Bastiat's complete correspondence: 208 letters Bastiat wrote between 1819, when he was only 18 years old, until just a few days before his untimely death in 1850 at the age of 49. For contemporary classical liberals, Bastiat's correspondence will provide a unique window into a long-forgotten world where opposition to war and colonialism went hand-in-hand with support for free trade and deregulation. Bastiat's numerous letters to Richard Cobden, a Member of Parliament and best known today as the leader of the British Anti-Corn Law League, chronicle the profound effect the Anti-Corn League had on Bastiat. The League's success in mobilising a popular movement in England to pressure the British government into abolishing the very protectionist "corn laws" in 1846, inspired Bastiat to emulate the League's success in France by starting his own free-trade movement. This volume also includes articles and other writings on politics and current events that showcase Bastiat's talent as a theoretician, a pamphleteer, a journalist, and a deputy (Member of Parliament) of the nascent French Second Republic. Together with the correspondence, the writings in this volume fill an important gap in our understanding of the lesser-known Bastiat, who, in just a few short years, made a profound impact on French intellectual and political life in Paris.

"Economic Policy" contains six lectures Ludwig von Mises delivered in 1959 at the Centro de Estudios Sobre la Libertad in Argentina. The lectures were posthumously transcribed by Mises's wife, Margit, and edited by George Koether, a student and long-time friend of Mises. This volume serves as an excellent introduction to what Mises sees as the simple truths of history in terms of economic principles. In straightforward language, Mises explains topics such as capitalism, socialism, interventionism, inflation, foreign investment, and economic policies and ideas.

Published in 1944, during World War II, Omnipotent Government was Mises's first book written and published after he arrived in the United States. In this volume Mises provides in economic terms an explanation of the international conflicts that caused both world wars. Although written more than half a century ago, Mises's main theme still stands: government interference in the economy leads to conflicts and wars. According to Mises, the last and best hope for peace is liberalism -- the philosophy of liberty, free markets, limited government, and democracy.

While this volume presents the important writings of James M. Buchanan on taxation and debt, Geoffrey Brennan makes it clear in the foreword that the thrust of Buchanan's work in this area has been to integrate theories of taxation and debt with public-expenditure theory. Therefore, the editors strongly urge that the present volume on taxation and debt be read in tandem with the subsequent Volume 15, 'Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory'. Included in this present volume are thirty-five important writings by Buchanan on taxation and debt. These are grouped into the following major subject categories: taxation, politics, and public choice; earmarking and incidence in democratic process; analytical and ethical foundations of tax limits; the fiscal constitution; confessions of a burden monger; Ricardian equivalence; the constitution of a debt-free polity. As Geoffrey Brennan points out in the foreword to this volume, "Although James Buchanan's interests are wide-ranging, the core of his professional reputation as an economist and the origin of much of his broader thinking lie in public economics -- in engagement with the questions of what governments do and how governments should properly finance what they do." This volume together with its partner subsequent volume present clear and accessible insights into the rich economic work for which Buchanan is best known.

In this text, the author argues that organisations -- or governments -- based solely on the methods of science threaten to foreclose a full human knowledge of the mysteries of existence and therefore pose a direct threat not only to academic freedom but also to social and political liberty.

First published in German in 1933 and in English in 1960, Epistemological Problems of Economics presents Ludwig von Mises's views on the logical and epistemological features of social interpretation as well as his argument that the Austrian theory of value is the core element of a general theory of human behavior that transcends traditional limitations of economic science. Epistemological Problems of Economics presents the first outline of Mises's general science of human action, and may, therefore, be of special interest to individuals with knowledge in sociology or philosophy or those who are seeking a suitable initiation to Mises's thought. This volume is unique among Mises's works in that it contains a collection of essays in which he contested the theories of intellectuals he respected, such as Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, and Max Weber. Mises describes how value theory applies to human action at all times and places, as opposed to economic theory, which applies only to human action guided by economic calculation.

Grotius's "The Truth of the Christian Religion" was first published in Leiden in 1627 in Latin. Written in a plain and direct language for his countrymen, this short work aimed to show those who would encounter pagans, Muslims, and Jews that the Christian religion was the true revealed religion. In addition to "fortifying" the beliefs of his fellow Christians, the treatise intended to convince non-Christians of "the reasonableness of believing and embracing the Christian Religion above any other." Editor Maria Rosa Antognazza suggests that "Grotius claimed the superiority of Christian doctrine and morality and their perfect conformity with the teaching of the most enlightened reason, and at the same time he advocated tolerance for all positive religions... Grotius rejected the use of any kind of violence, proclaiming that 'the weapons appointed for the soldiers of Christ are... proper to the Spirit.'... Moreover, in an era of bloody and violent confrontations amongst the different Christian confessions, Grotius raised a forceful appeal 'to mutual agreement'. All Christians should remember that they 'were baptised into the same Name', that of Jesus Christ, and that 'therefore there ought to be no Sects or Divisions amongst them'.

Hippolyte Taine's The French Revolution, which is written from the viewpoint of conservative French opinion, is a unique and important contribution to revolutionary historiography in which Taine condemns the radicals of the French Revolution, freely contradicting the rosy, Rousseauesque view of the Revolution. Taine approached the Revolution in the same way that a medical doctor approaches a disease. Indeed, he described his work not so much as a history as a 'pathology' of the Revolution. By investigating the French and the English, Taine contrasted the English ability to conserve and even to expand liberty through gradual adaptation to changing circumstances, with a 'French spirit' that became his central explanation of the French revolutionary phenomenon. This phenomenon explained, Taine argued why France 'had demolished its national community well before the Revolution' -- thus making the Revolution not only inevitable, but also inevitably terrible. This book features an introduction, prefaces, bibliography, index, each volume has a separate table of contents, and volumes are presented in a slipcase.

Who decides? Who is the Sovereign? What is a good act? In quest of answers to these vitally important questions, Bertrand de Jouvenel examines successively the nature and history of authority, the political good, the sovereign, and liberty. His concern is with the prospects for individual liberty in democratic societies in which sovereignty purportedly resides in the whole people of the body politic. His objective is a definition and understanding of the canons of conduct for the public authority of a dynamic society. He writes for whoever would exercise the duties of a citizen.

The freedom of the seas -- meaning both the oceans of the world and coastal waters -- has been among the most contentious issues in international law for the past four hundred years. The most influential argument in favour of freedom of navigation, trade, and fishing was that put forth by the Dutch theorist Hugo Grotius in his 1609 Mare Liberum'. The Free Sea' was originally published in order to buttress Dutch claims of access to the lucrative markets of the East Indies. It had been composed as the twelfth chapter of a larger work, De Jure Praedae' (On the Law of Prize and Booty'), which Grotius had written to defend the Dutch East India Company's capture in 1603 of a rich Portuguese merchant ship in the Straits of Singapore. This new edition publishes the only translation of Grotius's masterpiece undertaken in his own lifetime -- a work left in manuscript by the English historian and promoter of overseas exploration Richard Hakluyt (1552-1616). This volume also contains William Welwod's critque of Grotius (reprinted for the first time since the seventeenth century) and Grotius's reply to Welwod. Taken together, these documents provide an indispensable introduction to modern ideas of sovereignty and property as they emerged from the early-modern tradition of natural law.

David Ricardo and T. R. Malthus shared an endearing friendship despite a contentious divergence of opinion on many political economic issues. This volume contains the formal remnants of their differences. Ricardo analyses, issue-by-issue, his points of divergence to Malthus's 'Principles of Political Economy'. Malthus's contributions to political economics generally concern his bleak forecast that a geometrically growing population would surpass the arithmetically growing capacity of essential natural resources.

The author offers his perspective as a seasoned journalist on the US involvement in World War II. It was written only five years after the surrender of Germany and Japan making the book a window into its time.

Published by Liberty Fund for the first time in English, "On the Manipulation of Money and Credit" consists primarily of three pieces on monetary theory written by Ludwig von Mises between 1923 and 1931. As a precursor to Human Action, Mises's magnum opus, this volume includes some of his most important contributions to trade-cycle theory. The first essay, "Stabilization of the Monetary Unit from the Viewpoint of Theory" written in 1923 during a period of German hyperinflation, discusses the consequences of the fluctuating purchasing power of paper money and explores such ideas as the outcome of inflation, that is, the result of the increase in the amount of money, and an emancipation of monetary value from the influence of government. Written in 1928, the second essay, "Monetary Stabilization and Cyclical Policy" critiques schemes for stabilising prices and for "measuring" purchasing power. The third selection is a speech Mises gave in 1931, "The Causes of the Economic Crisis". It explores the nature and role of the market and cyclical changes in business conditions.

"The Evolution of Civilizations" is a comprehensive and perceptive look at the factors behind the rise and fall of civilisations. Quigley defines a civilisation as "a producing society with an instrument of expansion". A civilisation's decline is not inevitable but occurs when its instrument of expansion is transformed into an institution -- that is, when social arrangements that meet real social needs are transformed into social institutions serving their own purposes regardless of real social needs.

This edition contains the thirty-nine essays included in Essays, Moral, and Literary, that made up Volume I of the 1777 posthumous Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects. It also includes ten essays that were withdrawn or left unpublished by Hume for various reasons. The two most important were deemed too controversial for the religious climate of his time. This revised edition reflects changes based on further comparisons with eighteenth-century texts and an extensive reworking of the index.

The fifteen essays in this collection, first published in 1947, treat a variety of economic, social, political and philosophical problems and were written by a legendary professor of economics at the University of Chicago.

Fisher Ames was a leading New England Federalist and sublime critic of Jacobin Democracy and the French Revolution. During the presidency of George Washington, he was the leader of his party in the House of Representatives. Ames was active in public life from 1787 through 1807 and was instrumental in one drafting of the First Amendment to the Constitution. His witty, often brilliant, letters, speeches, and essays offered a sustained defense of conservative principles and insight into the Federalist theory of government. This enlarged edition includes many speeches and writings by Ames that were omitted from the original edition of Ames' works published in 1854.