Fr. James Sadowsky is a Jesuit priest and retired professor of philosophy at Fordham U. He used to be a member of the Rothbard circle in Manhattan in the 1960s. I’ve known him for a few years and visit regularly in NY. He is 79 and seemingly in good health.
I interviewed him last time we met, and this interview appears in the current issue of Le Québécois Libre. Jim talks about his life and career, his conversion to Austrian economics after reading Rothbard, libertarians in the 60s, his views on objectivism and Austrianism, his anarchism, etc. We also reproduced his article on private property and collective ownership, first published in 1966 and reprinted in Tibor Machan’s book in 1974, which was nowhere to be found on the Web.
A CONVERSATION WITH JAMES SADOWSKY, PHILOSOPHER OF FREEDOM: Father James Sadowsky is not a well-known figure of the libertarian movement. But he is a pioneer. One of a small band of enlightened people who were meeting regularly in Murray Rothbard’s apartment in Manhattan in the early sixties, to discuss revolutionary ideas which today can be shared with hundreds of thousands of people through the Internet.
PRIVATE PROPERTY AND COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP: Fr. Sadowsky attempts a justification of private ownership and then analyzes the term “collective ownership.” He shows that this latter term is without any meaning. Unfortunately, it is often assumed to have meaning and the existence of such a thing in reality is frequently taken for granted even by defenders of individual ownership.
