Market for Liberty

Market for Liberty
Forward
by Karl Hess

The most interesting political questions throughout history have been whether or not humans will be ruled or free, whether they will be responsible for their actions as individuals or left irresponsible as members of society, and whether they can live in peace by volitional agreements alone.

The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should be politics.

Morris and Linda Tannehill, in this book, which has become something of a classic even while being (until now) out of print, answer that politics is not necessary, that the ancient and ongoing contrivance of the marketplace can be substituted for it with ennobling results.

Advocates of state power will of course recoil from the idea and point out that it is all idle dreaming, that the state has always existed and must always, exist lest brutal humans descend into, horrors, ANARCHY. They are correct, of course. Without the state there would be anarchy for that is, despite all of the perfervid ravings of the Marxist Left and statist Right, all that anarchy means — the absence of the state, the opportunity for liberty.

As for the direction that a world headed for liberty would be taking (descending or ascending) the Tannehills and many others have reviewed the record of the nation state and have discovered a curiously powerful fact. The nation state has never been associated with peace on earth. Its most powerful recommendation and record is, as a matter of fact, as a wager of war. The history of nation states is written around the dates of wars, not peace, around arms and not arts. The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar.

Having shown no capacity whatsoever to bring peace to earth, then what is the claim of the state on our allegiance? In closely reasoned arguments, the Tannehills maintain that there should be no claim at all; that the state is not needed at any point in our lives and

that other, volitional, arrangements can be substituted for every single state function. They see these arrangements operating in the framework of a truly free market and they carefully explain them.

The benefits, they argue, are as numerous as the problems that now plague us. Pollution is more easily opposed when it is seen sensibly as an aggression against property rather than as a political cause or licensure. Monopoly is less likely in a laissez faire world than in a regulated one. Crime is less likely in communities responsible for their own protection than in those which are simply precinct outposts of the state’s police forces. And so on and on throughout the entire, dreary record of state activity and through the exciting possibilities of libertarian activity.

Much of what the Tannehills have to say has become familiar to libertarians since the book was first published in 1970. It is their proposition that it will become familiar to more and more people as the myths of the state topple under the weight of reality. It is also their proposition that the changed order that will ensue from libertarian ideas will be enduring and beneficent, unlike the changes that have occurred in the past as the result of violence.

Supporting their contention is an analysis of the state of the state which even if it seemed fanciful to some in 1970 must seem almost modest today. The free economies of the world, the so-called underground economies, are growing at an astonishing rate. In Italy it is the underground economy that keeps the country afloat. In America it is the least inflation-prone and probably the fastest growing part of the economy, having elicited from President Reagan the wistful comment that if the underground paid its taxes (tribute) to the state then he could balance the budget. In the countries of the Soviet police-state the underground economy is at one and the same time a powerful force in keeping people alive and also a powerful force in keeping alive their hopes for freedom.

Meantime, the economy of the least free state, the Soviet, continues to sputter along at a rate so depressed that the subjects of the state tyranny cannot even feed themselves adequately. And the economy of the most free state, America, drags itself deeper and deeper into state-related debt and depression. Only, in America at least, a renewed sense of entrepreneurial possibility keeps anything moving ahead. Seeing such activity should remind us all that the entrepreneurial shine in a state society could become star-bright brilliance in a fully free society.

The importance of re-issuing the Tannehills’ book at this time, it seems to me, is in the probability that it will inspire and enlarge the horizons of young entrepreneurs who may enormously enjoy what they are doing but may not fully appreciate the larger implications of a free market world. Some will appreciate, from reading the Tannehills, that not only can they make money but that they can help make a new world as they do it.

Introduction
by Douglas Casey

Ideas are the force which shape history and, more importantly, the lives of the individuals who make it happen. Books are the main transmitters of ideas. Morris and Linda Tannehill’s The Market for Liberty has shaped my thinking, and someday I hope it will do the same for history.

In my two investment/economic books, Crisis Investing and Strategic Investing, I said the Tannehills’ book was “one of the two most important books I have ever read.” Perhaps I should take advantage of the present opportunity to restate my sentiments: The Market for Liberty was the second most important book in time, but the most important in significance.

I well remember the evening when I read the first important book, Ayn Rand’s The Virtue of Selfishness. I was 21 at the time, and had been serious about ideas and philosophy for some years, but was having a little trouble putting it all together. I liked some things liberals said, and some others conservatives said, but I didn’t like either group. After reading only the first page of Rand’s book, I was thunderstruck, and had to put the small volume down momentarily:

It became clear to me that someone had been there before, recognized the same problems, and thought them out logically.

Rand’s book gave me a moral and philosophical foundation upon which to build, and, at the very least, saved me a lot of time it would have taken to figure things out for myself. It’s so nice when you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But the Tannehills’ book helped me to build an elegant structure on that foundation, and that’s where one lives. They acknowledge an intellectual debt to Rand, but, in my opinion, they have performed an even greater service to the intellectual marketplace than she has. The relationship is analogous to the contributions of Einstein and of Newton in the field of physics.

The Market for Liberty is, on the face of it, about politics, but it is really much more. In order to have a political view, it’s necessary to have a view on economics, on philosophy, and on the nature of man himself. That, of course, is why 99.99 percent of all books on politics aren’t worth reading; they amount to little more than a regurgitation

of the author’s half-digested opinions. That’s also why this book is so sound in its reasoning, and stunning in the scope of its implications. What Rand’s books did for philosophy, what Mises’ did for economics, this book does for politics — and more.

In the past all political writing (with a few, somewhat checkered exceptions, such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Berkman, Goldman, Spooner, and Mencken, and, more recently, Murray Rothbard, Harry Browne, John Pugsley, and Karl Hess), has dealt with government as a noble and ennobling, if somewhat flawed, institution that should be nurtured and cherished. Morris and Linda Tannehill point their fingers at government per se as the problem. They demonstrate that it is the institution itself, not just a few bad men who occasionally take its reins, or a few mistaken laws which alter its direction, which needs to be done away with. The Market for Liberty explains that government is not what keeps human beings from reverting to the jungle, as most think, but is rather what keeps them from advancing to the stars.

The word “anarchy” is never used in this book, as far as I can recall. I suppose the authors chose not to employ it for much the same reason another great thinker, Robert LeFevre, doesn’t: it scares people. In the commonly held view, anarchists are violent, unstable characters dressed in black capes, skulking about carrying little round bombs with lit fuses. The word carries a lot of emotional baggage in people’s minds, and unleashes suppressed atavistic fears when it appears. Paradoxically, anarchy is perhaps the gentlest of social systems; it is a political manifestation of the ancient Chinese Taoist philosophy, wherein everything flows unrestricted, to its own level, at its own pace. “Anarchy” is equated with “chaos” and “danger,” while “government” is equated with “order” and “peace,” when exactly the opposite is true.

It’s been said that it isn’t so much what people know that creates problems, but, rather, what they think they know that just isn’t so. And that’s certainly the case with words in the intrinsically Orwellian world of politics.

Anarchy means only the absence of government. And since government, as Mao Zedong, lately one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, once said, “comes out of the barrel of a gun,” that’s not a bad start.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have used the word in this introduction; by doing so, I may have raised your defenses implanted by the system, and thus frustrated the Tannehills’ intent. But, ideas speak for themselves, and semantics are better used to clarify than to obscure their meaning.

If you are interested in ideas or, indeed, in life itself, this book has the potential to more than just shock you. It has the power to change the way you view the world, to change your ideas, and then, perhaps, to change the world itself. I believe The Market for Liberty will do so.

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Wayne Fazio
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