The Cato Institute’s Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, forthcoming for lo these many years, has finally forthcome; I received my copy in the mail yesterday. (Cato offers it for $125, and Amazon (as of this writing) for $90; I could have gotten it from the publisher at an author discount for $75, but I managed to find a copy online at the Strand for only $60.)
My comrades in the Alliance of the Libertarian Left will be wondering how our perspective fares in the book. At first glance, not terribly well; there are no entries for Konkin, agorism, or mutualism, and the entry on left-libertarianism is devoted exclusively to the Vallentyne/Steiner position and ignores our variety of left-libertarianism entirely. On the other hand, though, there are entries for Proudhon, Spooner, Tucker, and Hess.
Surprisingly, there is no entry for the Libertarian Party or for any libertarian think tank.
I noticed a couple of errors concerning contributors: Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad’s last name is misspelled “Ahmed,” while the entry on José Ortega y Gasset is misattributed to David Fitzsimons (DMF) when it should actually be Dario Fernández-Morera (DFM). (I also would rather have been listed as Roderick T. Long instead of Roderick Long, but that’s fairly trivial.)
More annoyingly (from my point of view), some editorial infelicities seem to have crept into my own entries, in a number of cases transforming my true sentences into false ones. I’ve put my original drafts online with the more egregious alterations marked.
Still, all such quibbles aside, it looks pretty good, and I’m very much looking forward to diving into it. To be sure, anything called an encyclopedia of libertarianism is bound to be filled with much I agree with and much I disagree with, but I don’t know yet which is which; so I propose to read through it from A to Z (actually A to W – Abolitionism to Wollstonecraft), blogging as I go. (Hence my new blog category, “Cato Encyclopedia.”) I’ll begin that process with my next post; but first, I thought readers would be interested in which contributors wrote which articles, and the book doesn’t bring that information together clearly in one place, so I’ve compiled a list:
Richard Adelstein: Progressive Era
Jonathan Adler: Environment
Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad: Islam
Paul Dragos Aligica: Black Markets, Bureaucracy, Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, State, Gordon Tullock
Nigel Ashford: Subsidiarity
Ralf Bader: Immanuel Kant, Natural Harmony of Interests
Charles Baird: Labor Unions, Mont Pelerin Society
Doug Bandow: Conscription
Robert Bannister: William Graham Sumner
Randy Barnett: U.S. Bill of Rights, Lysander Spooner
Norman Barry: Rule of Law, Spontaneous Order
Patrick Basham: Political Parties
David T. Beito: Charity/Friendly Societies
Bruce Benson: Illicit Drugs, Robert LeFevre, Restitution for Crime
Tom Bethell: Private Property
Colin Bird: Liberal Critique of Libertarianism
David Boaz: Ed Clark, John Hospers, Roger MacBride, Tonie Nathan, Ron Paul
Peter Boettke: Austrian School of Economics
Clint Bolick: Affirmative Action, Racism
Donald Boudreaux: Antitrust, Free-market Economy, Material Progress, Price Controls, Leonard Read [with Nick Slepko], Julian Simon
Karol Boudreaux: Eminent Domain/Takings
Richard Boyd: Frank Knight
John Mark Brady: Richard Cobden
James Buchanan: Italian Fiscal Theorists
T. Patrick Burke: Jeremy Bentham
Guy Calvert: Gambling
Michael Cannon: Health Care
Bryan Caplan: Anarchism, Fascism, David Friedman, Laissez-Faire Policy
George W. Carey: Conservatism, Fusionism, Henry Sumner Maine
Ted Galen Carpenter: Foreign Policy [with Malou Innocent]
Alejandro Chafuen: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Scholastics/School of Salamanca
Michael Chapman: Communism
David Conway: Classical Liberalism
Leda Cosmides: Evolutionary Psychology [with John Tooby]
Anthony Coulson: Education
Tyler Cowen: Division of Labor, Market Failure
Stephen Cox: Isabel Paterson
Christie Davies: Sociology and Libertarianism
Stephen Davies: General Introduction, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Capitalism, Cities, Civil Society, Imperialism, Limited Government, Magna Carta, World Slavery
Jarett Decker: Capital Punishment
Anthony de Jasay: Presumption of Liberty
Douglas Den Uyl: Virtue
Detmar Doering: Wilhelm von Humboldt
Brian Doherty: Karl Hess, Israel Kirzner, Charles Murray, Murray Rothbard
James A. Dorn: Peter Bauer, Lao Tzu
Wayne Dynes: Sexuality
Lee Edwards: Barry Goldwater
Hans Eicholz: Puritanism, Pursuit of Happiness
Richard Epstein: Liability
Rod L. Evans: H. L. Mencken, Responsibility, Thomas Szasz
Dario Fernández-Morera: José Ortega y Gasset [with Lester Hunt]
Edward C. Feser: Conservative Critique of Libertarianism
David Fitzsimons: Thomas Paine
Antony Flew: Humanism, John Milton
Sigrid Fry-Revere: Bioethics, Euthanasia
David Gordon: Minimal State
Bettina Bien Greaves: Henry Hazlitt
Dan Griswold: Free Trade, Immigration
Gregory Gronbacher: Lord Acton
Charles Hamilton: Albert J. Nock
Ron Hamowy: Editor’s Introduction, Cato’s Letters, Chicago School of Economics, English Civil Wars, Adam Ferguson, Glorious Revolution, Friedrich A. Hayek, Adam Smith, Whiggism
David Harper: Entrepreneur
Jim Harper: Internet
David M. Hart: Charles Comte, Marquis de Condorcet, Benjamin Constant, Charles Dunoyer, French Revolution, Gustave de Molinari, Jean-Baptiste Say, Destutt de Tracy, A. R. J. Turgot
John Hasnas: Utilitarianism
Gene Healy: Drug Prohibition, War Powers
Stephen Hicks: Enlightenment
Robert Higgs: Peace and Pacifism, War
Randall Holcombe: Democracy
Steven Horwitz: Family
Guido Hülsmann: Austrian Theory of Banking, Frédéric Bastiat
Jeff R. Hummel: U.S. Civil War, Federalists versus Anti-federalists, William Lloyd Garrison
Thomas M. Humphrey: Joseph Schumpeter
Lester Hunt: Friedrich Nietzsche, José Ortega y Gasset [with Dario Fernández-Morera], Self-interest
Sanford Ikeda: Interventionism, Jane Jacobs, Rent-seeking
Malou Innocent: Foreign Policy [with Ted Galen Carpenter]
Bill Kauffman: Decentralism
David Kelley: Objectivism
Maureen Kelley: Children
Israel Kirzner: Socialist Calculation Debate
Daniel B. Klein: Assurance and Trust
Alan Kors: Freedom of Speech
Jackson Kuhl: Prohibition of Alcohol
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard: Levellers
Jason T. Kuznicki: Denis Diderot, Dutch Republic, Michel Foucault, Marxism, Michel de Montaigne, Charles de Montesquieu, Nationalism, Classical Republicanism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Separation of Church and State, Alexis de Tocqueville
Jo Kwong: Antony Fisher, Thomas Sowell
Dwight R. Lee: Wealth and Poverty
Peter Leeson: James Buchanan
Leonard Liggio: Robert Taft
Brink Lindsey: Social Security
Roderick Long: John Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Epicureanism, Liberty in the Ancient World, Nonaggression Axiom, Stoicism
Nelson Lund: Right to Bear Arms
Tibor Machan: Kleptocracy, Positive Liberty
Eric Mack: Auberon Herbert, Individual Rights, John Locke, Retribution for Crime
Douglas MacKenzie: Ronald Coase, Competition, Keynesian Economics
Daniel J. Mahoney: Bertrand de Jouvenel
David N. Mayer: U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson
Deirdre McCloskey: Industrial Revolution
Robert McDonald: American Revolution, George Mason, Right of Revolution
Wendy McElroy: Abortion, Feminism and Women’s Rights, William Godwin, Pornography, Richard Price, Voltaire, Voluntarism, Mary Wollstonecraft
Fred Miller: Aristotle, Natural Law, Natural Rights
Daniel Mitchell: Tax Competition
Andrew Morriss: Anarcho-capitalism, Common Law, Law and Economics
John Mueller: War on Terror
Michael Munger: Regulation
Jan Narveson: Contractarianism/Social Contract [with David Trenchard], Government [with David Trenchard], Thomas Hobbes [with David Trenchard], David Hume [with David Trenchard], Left Libertarianism [with David Trenchard]
William A. Niskanen: Public-choice Economics
Johan Norberg: Globalization
Eric O’Keefe: Term Limits
Walter Olson: Thomas B. Macaulay
Tom G. Palmer: Cicero , Cosmopolitanism
Allen Parkman: Marriage
Ellen Frankel Paul: Robert Nozick
Mark Pennington: Urban Planning
Robert W. Poole: Privatization
Benjamin Powell: Voluntary Contract Enforcement [with Edward Stringham]
Christopher Preble: Frank S. Meyer, Military-Industrial Complex
Sharon Presley: Étienne de la Bo&eaute;tie
Stephen B. Presser: Roscoe Pound
Terry Price: Coercion, Consequentialism, Freedom
David Prychitko: Socialism
Douglas B. Rasmussen: Theories of Rights
Lawrence W. Reed: William Wilberforce
Matt Ridley: Genetics
Jeff Riggenbach: Henry David Thoreau
Gabriel Roth: Transportation
Jonathan Rowe: George Washington
John Samples: Corruption, Federalism
Timothy M. Sandefur: Censorship, Constitutionalism, Frederick Douglass, Political and Ethical Individualism, Judiciary
Jeffrey A. Schaler: Psychiatry
David Schoenbrod: Delegation
M. L. Schut: William Gladstone
Chris M. Sciabarra: Nathaniel Branden, Ayn Rand
Jeremy Shearmur: Collectivism, Karl Popper
Stephen M. Sheppard: Edward Coke, Albert Venn Dicey
Aeon Skoble: Individualist Anarchism, John Stuart Mill
Mark Skousen: Classical Economics, David Ricardo
Nick Slepko: Leonard Read [with Donald Boudreaux]
Bradley Smith: Campaign Finance
George H. Smith: Abolitionism, Thomas Aquinas, Henry Thomas Buckle, Richard Cantillon, Conscience, Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, Equality, Existentialism, Freedom of Thought, Thomas Hodgskin, Francis Hutcheson, Methodological Individualism, Bernard Mandeville, Mercantilism, Franz Oppenheimer, Philosophic Radicals, Physiocracy, Praxeology, Progress, Religion and Liberty, William Nassau Senior, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer
Solveig Singleton: Privacy
Vernon L. Smith: Experimental Economics [with Bart Wilson]
Jason Sorens: Secessionism
David Ramsay Steele: George Orwell
Aaron Steelman: Anti-Corn-Law League, Gary Becker, John Bright, Frank Chodorov, Richard Epstein, Milton Friedman, Intellectual Property [mentions me!], Richard Posner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Wilhelm Röpke, Algernon Sidney, George Stigler, Benjamin Tucker
Edward Stringham: Voluntary Contract Enforcement [with Benjamin Powell]
Amy Sturgis: Robert Heinlein, Rose Wilder Lane
Michael Tanner: Welfare State
Joan Kennedy Taylor: Roy Childs
John Tooby: Evolutionary Psychology [with Leda Cosmides]
David Trenchard: Contractarianism/Social Contract [with Jan Narveson], Government [with Jan Narveson], Thomas Hobbes [with Jan Narveson], David Hume [with Jan Narveson], Left Libertarianism [with Jan Narveson], Slavery in America
Louis Torres: Arts and Public Support
Ian Vásquez: Economic Development
Michiel Visser: John Adams, Edmund Burke
Alexander Volokh: Externalities
Richard Wagner: Taxation, Knut Wicksell
Robert Whaples: Great Depression, New Deal
Lawrence H. White: Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, William Leggett, Carl Menger, Money and Banking
Will Wilkison: F. A. Harper, Paternalism, John Rawls, Max Stirner
Bart Wilson: Experimental Economics [with Vernon Smith]
Leland Yeager: Ludwig von Mises
Kate Zhou: Culture
Michael Zuckert: James Madison
I like to think that the T stands for Tiberius, like Captain Kirk, not the kooky Roman Emperor. Also, what did you think of Smith’s entry on Herbert Spencer?
I am not confident that any Cato publication will include an unbiased entryon Murray Rothbard. Chris Sciabarra is not the right person to write the entries on Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand.
The omission of Konkin and agorism is a disgrace. I can only hope that Wendy mentioned them in the voluntarism entry. Ron Paul and Harry Browne, despite their faults, deserved entries too.
Well Ron Paul did get an entry, written by David Boaz.
I disagree with Roderick’s assumption that the editorial change from “Native Americans” to “American Indians” had something to do with anti-PC behavior. I lean more toward the idea that they chose to use American Indian out of respect for the somewhat libertarian spirited American Indian Movement, and for Russell Means who has tried to encourage the use of the term.
Also the new museum in DC was adopted as the “Museum of the American Indian” not the “Native American Museum.” The name was (as best I can remember) adopted by a representative body of American tribes.
what did you think of Smith’s entry on Herbert Spencer?
I haven’t read it yet, but I would expect it to be good; George Smith was doing Spencer anti-defamation work long before I was.
Chris Sciabarra is not the right person to write the entries on Nathaniel Branden and Ayn Rand.
He seems like a good choice to me. But who would you suggest?
The omission of Konkin and agorism is a disgrace. I can only hope that Wendy mentioned them in the voluntarism entry.
No, Wendy’s post really is about voluntarism, not about voluntaryism.
I lean more toward the idea that they chose to use American Indian out of respect for the somewhat libertarian spirited American Indian Movement
Hmm, could be. And I hope so. The fact that they also changed my gender-neutral language to men-talk is probably what inclined me to suppose otherwise.
What’s wrong with Valentyne/Steiner? I’ll take Steiner over American leftists who get their metaphysics from the table scraps of Marx any day!
Looking through that page of edits was painful–maybe one just can’t go more than three paragraphs without finding something to edit.
Oh, by the way, your RSS feed just coughed up the last week’s worth of entries all at once. I wouldn’t want you to think that we RSS followers were snubbing you.
I’ve learned to just come here for blog updates rather than rely on the Google Reader. The links for this site haven’t been update in half a month I think.
Yeah, my code has been hacked in various ways and my RSS feeds suffer as a result.
Roderick, have you considered using FeedBurner to manage your RSS? I’m an RSS follower, but I don’t want to give up my Google Reader because of RSS glitches.
Hmmm…might have to buy it just to look at Stringham’s entry.
The “R” in “R”obert McDondald was left out.
Also, I wanted to add something I should’ve written after I first read this post:
They should’ve gone all the way to Z by asking Roderick to include an entry on the “Zaxlebax Problem”.
The “R” in “R”obert McDondald was left out.
hanks. ‘ve ixed he istake.