Against The State

Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto diagnoses what is wrong with the American political system and tells us what we need to fix things. The cure is a radical one because, as the book incontrovertibly shows, the many problems that confront us today are no accident. They stem from the nature of government itself. Only peaceful cooperation based on the free market can rescue us from our present plight. Against the State is written by Lew Rockwell, the founder of the Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com, and the closest friend and associate of Murray Rothbard, the leading theorist of anarcho-capitalism. Rockwell applies Rothbard’s combination of individualist anarchism and Austrian economics to contemporary America. The book shows how the government is based on war, both against foreign nations and against the American people themselves, through massive invasions of our liberties. Fueled by an out-of-control banking system, the American State has become in essence fascist. We cannot escape our predicament through limited government: the government is incapable of controlling itself. Only a purely private social order can save us, and Rockwell succinctly sets out how an anarcho-capitalist order would work.

Forty years after its first publication, In and Against the State returns with a new introduction and featuring an interview with John McDonnell

Irreverent and incisive critique of liberal theories of the state.

Political philosophy is dominated by a myth, the myth of the necessity of the state. The state is considered necessary for the provision of many things, but primarily for peace and security. In this provocative book, Gerard Casey argues that social order can be spontaneously generated, that such spontaneous order is the norm in human society and that deviations from the ordered norms can be dealt with without recourse to the coercive power of the state. Casey presents a novel perspective on political philosophy, arguing against the conventional political philosophy pieties and defending a specific political position, which he identifies as 'libertarian anarchy'. The book includes a history of the concept of anarchy, an examination of the possibility of anarchic societies and an articulation of the nature of law and order within such societies. Casey presents his specific form of anarchy, undergirded by a theory of human action that prioritises liberty, as a philosophically and politically viable alternative to the standard positions in political theory.

Reconstructing the dramatic struggle surrounding the building of the New Tokyo (Narita) International Airport near Sanrizuka, this scrutiny of modern protest politics dispels the myth of corporate Japan's unassailable success, while showing that the problems of the Narita situation are also endemic to other industrialized countries.

This volume investigates the use of law by ordinary individuals and groups as a form of protest against 'the state'.

“...the starting point for anyone concerned with the antecedents of libertarianism in the United States...” MEN AGAINST THE STATE first appeared in the spring of 1953. Within a matter of months it had received nearly fifty highly commendatory reviews in thirteen countries in seven languages. Few products of American scholarly research in our time have gained more widespread international respect in such a short time. This book brought back into view a tradition which almost disappeared between the beginning of the First World War and the end of the Second, the philosophy and deeds of anti-statist libertarian voluntarism in the United States during the three generations which flourished between 1825 and 1910, in a style which a London commentator described as “a model of readable scholarship.” In the 1950s, the era of the “organization man” and almost unparalleled political passivity, MEN AGAINST THE STATE may have been a premature book, as some have observed, despite being reprinted two more times later in the decade. This quiet and unsensational circulation continued to further its reputation, nevertheless. In the last ten years however it has been recognized by many as the starting point for anyone concerned with the antecedents of libertarianism in the United States. The spread of interest in such thinking among a new generation has prompted the reissuance of this book, in a conventionally-printed popularly priced edition for the first time.

Robert Nozicka s Anarchy, State, and Utopia is a powerful, philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age ---- liberal, socialist and conservative.