Category
Political Theory
Thomas Paine
The Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. II (1779-1792)
Vol. 2 of a 4 vol. collection of the works of Thomas Paine. Vol. 2 (1779-1792) contains the Letter to Abbey Raynal, Dissertations on Government, The Rights of Man (1 and 2) and various articles.
Open the reader →Thomas Paine
The Writings of Thomas Paine, Vol. I (1774-1779)
Vol. 1 of a 4 vol. collection of the works of Thomas Paine. Vol. 1 contains letters and newspaper articles, *Common Sense,* and *The American Crisis.*
Open the reader →Herbert Spencer
The Man versus the State, with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (LF ed.)
This volume contains the four essays that Spencer published as <i>The Man Versus the State</i> 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.
Open the reader →Anthony de Jasay
The State
*The State* is a brilliant analysis of modern political arrangements that views the state as acting in its own interest contrary to the interests of individuals and even of an entire society. [Read the Liberty Classic](https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/Lemieuxstate.html) on this title from Econlib
Open the reader →Bruce Smith
Liberty and Liberalism: A Protest against the Growing Tendency toward undue Interference by the State, with Individual Liberty, Private Enterprise and the Rights of Property
Smith was a follower of Herbert Spencer and the English Liberty and Property Defence League. His book is a critique of the growing intervention of the state in economic and civil matters in Australia and elsewhere in the late 19th century.
Open the reader →John Milton
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
Written during the English Revolution, Milton’s pamphlet argues that there exists a voluntary contract between free men and their rulers, and that if a ruler becomes a tyrant then the people have the right to depose him if the ordinary magistrates have not done so.
Open the reader →William Godwin
An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Vol. II.
Godwin’s best known work of political theory. Written in the early years of the French Revolution before the Terror had begun, Godwin provides a devastating critique of unjust government institutions and optimistically proposes that individuals not the state can best provide for their needs. He believed that political change could best be brought about gradually and as a result of free discussion in small communities. This work has inspired many generations of radical thinkers.
Open the reader →Algernon Sidney
Discourses Concerning Government (LF ed.)
Written in response to Sir Robert Filmer’s <i>Patriarcha</i> (1680), the <i>Discourses Concerning Government</i> is a classic defense of republicanism and popular government. Sidney rejected Filmer’s theories of royal absolutism and divine right of kings, insisting that title to rule should be based on merit rather than birth; and republics, he thought, were more likely to honor merit than were monarchies.
Open the reader →John Locke
The Two Treatises of Civil Government (Hollis ed.)
Locke’s most famous work of political philosophy began as a reply to Filmer’s defense of the idea of the divine right of kings and ended up becoming a defense of natural rights, especially property rights, and of government limited to protecting those rights. This 1764 edition is famous for being the edition which was widely read in the American colonies on the eve of the Revolution.
Open the reader →Sir Robert Filmer
Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings
In the aftermath of the English Revolution which saw the execution of a king and the creation of a Commonwealth and the restoration of the monarchy, Filmer wrote a solid defense of the divine right of kings which in turn prompted John Locke to write a riposte - part 1 of the <i>Two Treatises of Government</i>.
Open the reader →William Godwin
An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Vol. I.
Godwin’s best known work of political theory. Written in the early years of the French Revolution before the Terror had begun, Godwin provides a devastating critique of unjust government institutions and optimistically proposes that individuals not the state can best provide for their needs. He believed that political change could best be brought about gradually and as a result of free discussion in small communities. This work has inspired many generations of radical thinkers.
Open the reader →Thomas Paine
The Writings of Thomas Paine, 4 vols.
A 4 volume collection of the works of Thomas Paine.
Open the reader →John Stuart Mill
On Liberty and The Subjection of Women (1879 ed.)
Mill had been somewhat coy about publishing *The Subjection of Women* during his lifetime because he feared the condemnation of his peers for daring to apply the general notions of individual liberty which he had clearly spelled out in *On Liberty* to the particular case of women. So he withheld publication until just before his death. It was left to an enterprising publisher after the author’s death to recognize the connection between the two works and to combine them in a new edition.
Open the reader →Herbert Spencer
The Man versus the State (1885 ed.)
A facsimile edition of the four essays that Spencer published as <i>The Man Versus the State</i> in 1884. Spencer develops various specific disastrous ramifications of the wholesale substitution of the principle of compulsory cooperation - the statist principle - for the individualist principle of voluntary cooperation.
Open the reader →Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Individualism: A System of Politics
Donisthorpe provides a theory of politics from the individualist standpoint in the tradition of Herbert Spencer and Auberon Herbert. He also attacks the rise of socialism which he regards as the greatest threat to social progress.
Open the reader →Wordsworth Donisthorpe
Law in a Free State
A collection of essays by a radical individualist political thinker on a range of topics which he called "the hardest nuts to crack", in other words, topics which pushed the theory of individual liberty to its limits. He discusses questions of libel, of cruelty to animals, of copyright, of adulteration, of the relation of the sexes, of rights over land, and of nuisance
Open the reader →William Godwin
An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in 2 vols.
Godwin’s best known work of political theory. Written in the early years of the French Revolution before the Terror had begun, Godwin provides a devastating critique of unjust government institutions and optimistically proposes that individuals not the state can best provide for their needs. He believed that political change could best be brought about gradually and as a result of free discussion in small communities. This work has inspired many generations of radical thinkers.
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