The best books on libertarianism

Locke’s Second Treatise on Government is the first book to present a coherent liberal theory of the State. Many of its core ideas are now common-sense: that the legitimate end of government is to preserve and enlarge the freedom of its subjects; that sovereigns should be held accountable to the law; and that individuals have a natural right to life, liberty, and property even in the absence of government.

This is a short and readable book that reminds us how much the liberal tradition initiated by Locke is, at least rhetorically, embedded in much of contemporary discourse on democracy and politics.

This book is also of paramount importance to libertarians because it presents one of the first articulated arguments for private property as a means to create wealth.

Near-death experiences on the surface sound like they have no relationship to politics and economics. However, they allow us to make inferences about a “moral imperative” embedded within the structure of reality itself.

Near-death experiences are instances in which a person’s consciousness has remarkable perceptions—even though the person is sometimes clinically dead. In fact, the experiences are often reported to be “realer” than real. This perplexing phenomenon has been studied extensively by the University of Virginia’s Bruce Greyson, MD, and he explains in his book why many of these profound cases are likely not hallucinations. (And he further explained these concepts to me when I interviewed him for my podcast, Where Is My Mind?).

The life-changing messages from near-death experiences teach us that we are all interconnected at a deep and fundamental level. Many near-death-experience survivors even report that they relived their whole life, and they become each person… show more.

Even though Adam Smith is often said to be the father of all that is good or bad about capitalism very few people have read his famous Wealth of Nations. Why? Well, 1) they think they already know what’s in it: no government intervention in the economy, thank you. 2) It is two volumes. 3) It must be very dreary because it is about economics, and 4) they are not good at economics or math.  

But read it for yourself, and you will find that it is readable, nuanced, and you can skip the bits that you can’t make out, enjoy the examples, and decide for yourself what he actually argued and whether you agree with it or not.

Capitalism and Freedom is the greatest exposition of the consequential case for libertarianism. In other words, Milton Friedman’s case for libertarian policies rests not on moral assumptions or “natural” rights but on showing that capitalism is important because it has positive consequences – it enables human prosperity and flourishment.

Perhaps as importantly, Capitalism and Freedom shows that economic freedom is a necessary condition not just for economic prosperity but for personal and political freedom. Thus, free markets are not only compatible with democracy (contra what many people claim), but a necessary condition for protecting democracy and personal freedoms.

This book’s outlook is probably the closest to the one articulated in my book. It is also the most recent one on the list, making it an easy read.

This is the indispensable book if you want to know what libertarianism is and where it came from. It is filled with more entertaining eccentrics than a Dickens novel. My book focuses on philosophical arguments for a minimal state, but I couldn’t get very deep into the historical background: who was making those arguments and what moved them to do it. One of the pleasures of intellectual history is encountering minds that are weird and surprising (not necessarily in a bad way), and Doherty offers a lot of them.

Written by Nobel Prize winning, libertarian communist (don’t worry about it, it’s a thing) author Jose Saramago, All the Names is a weird and joyful exploration of the grind of bureaucracy and the power of information to control lives. Unlike Bear, this is not an easy read. Saramago’s signature style features long, convoluted sentences, which confuse and disorient – much like plunging into complex archival research. The story focuses on Senhor José, a poorly socialised records clerk, trudging through his days in a faceless, nonsensical records centre. One day he connects with a particular file and the realisation that the pieces of paper he manages represent whole beautiful lives sends him on a journey that requires breathtaking bravery and the formation of new, if eccentric, friendships. A life-affirming read.

It’s quite a trick to overthrow a government without firing a shot. It’s an even better trick to do it without most people noticing what you’ve done. Dark Money shows how a cadre of American oligarchs, who believed the US had gone too far in reining in people like them, poured barrels of cash into undermining the average American’s economic, labor, and civil rights progress. They created think tanks. They bankrolled TV pundits. They funded departments at top universities—and micro-managed the curriculum—intent on influencing new generations of politicians, economists, and judges. In the end, they completely reshaped American thought and jurisprudence.

Ever wonder how the US of FDR and JFK could have taken such a sharp turn to the extreme right? I recommend you read Dark Money.

For starters an absolutely brilliant book title: beautifully capturing the complexities of American culture, at once compelled by soaring social aspirations while tending to act out of pure individualism often with disdain for social impact. The narrative abounds in identifying seemingly contradictory national impulses – imported vs. Indigenous traditions, socialism vs. libertarianism, utopian vs. prosaic undertakings, the welcoming of and resisting of others – with the author arguing that through the interaction of such opposite impulses over time the particular genius of American society evolved. Kammen delights in reminding Americans of our “unstable pluralism,” and supports William James’ conclusion that “Americanism” continues to be a “volatile mixture of hopeful good and curable bad.”  Overall impressive scholarship and a delightful read.   

The classic exposition of the idea that central governmental economic planning will inevitably be wasteful and tyrannical. Hayek today is caricatured by both right and left, but he is not the minimal state absolutist that both sides often take him to be. Hayek thinks that the way to attack poverty is not redistribution – there isn’t yet enough wealth in existence to give everyone a decent life – but the opportunities created by free markets. Another impetus for my own work was reading this book and discovering that I agreed with him much more than I had expected to. 

For Attack, I knew I had to explain the libertarian origins of bitcoin, and Golumbia’s book supplied my reference list for chapter 2. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand why bitcoin.

The political currents that went into bitcoin include several strains that are now accepted as the normal Silicon Valley political position—the “Californian ideology.” Bitcoin shares an ancestry with Silicon Valley startup culture, internet free speech movements, the right wing of transhumanism, and the neoreactionary political movement.

It’s a short book, but it does its homework thoroughly. Cryptocurrency still follows the bitcoin political template in 2023.

In the 21st century, you occasionally hear about libertarian fantasies of floating island civilizations free from the pesky laws of nation-states.

They always bring me back to China Miéville’s pirate city of Armada, which is the opposite of a libertarian fantasy; it’s a city populated by the kidnapped, ruled by contentious factions, and steered through the seas with a weird purpose.

The Scar’s main character is a linguist, unsure if she’s been brought to Armada to put her own skills to use or as collateral damage in the kidnapping of another character, and unsure how to relate to a city that she’s growing more comfortable in even as she can’t forget it holds her prisoner.

Also everyone has to donate blood to feed the vampires. Socialism!

I read this book very early, because it was recommended to me by senior Austrian economists as the best introduction to the Austrian School, being much easier to read than Human Action.

Hazlitt´s book is a classic. It destroys many fallacies such as the broken window fallacy. Hazlitt´s book is unrivaled as an introduction into sound economic thinking.

For a New Liberty breaks apart traditional assumptions about politics in ways that I hadn’t considered until reading this book.

Rothbard uses common-sense reasoning to explain the problems with our governing structures today and paves the way for a whole new paradigm. Even more than that, Rothbard shows how society could look in the future if government functions were privatized.

This book is also a great primer for the “Austrian School” of economics. I had many aha moments when reading this book, and it helped change my worldview. 

DiLorenzo analyzes fundamental economic topics in a clear and understandable way.

This book helped me develop better counterarguments to many of the mainstream views on how the economy “should” work. For instance, he explains that although the government is supposed to try to help the economy, its policies are often driven by special interests that steer the economy in their own desired direction.

And he explains that although government central planning is supposed to help the environment, it often results in great environmental damage (such as the severe environmental harm done under the former Soviet Union).

DiLorenzo gives example after example of the ways in which governments damage the very economies that they are allegedly tasked with managing for the “greater good.” 

This book is not for the faint of heart: it challenges deeply held assumptions about government that many of us have had since childhood.

Larken Rose critiques the basic role of “authority” in society and shows its moral and philosophical flaws. I’ve heard from so many readers that this book caused a paradigm shift in the way that they view government. There are certain concepts that you can’t “unhear” after you encounter them…and you’ll find many such ideas in this book.

I can say this from personal experience!