Mises Search

[ This article is the foreword to Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Decentralization, and Smaller Polities , by Ryan McMaken, available in PDF , at the Mises store , and on Amazon . ]  Classical liberal tradition defends the right of secession on many grounds. One of the main reasons is that the territorial dispersion of power limits political

The first myth one has to debunk in order to assess the relationship between the provision of law and order and the rise of the (modern) State is that this political institution is merely a natural and organic outgrowth of political power, as old as the history of mankind or of organized society. Actually, it would be wise to dispose of the

New from the Journal of Libertarian Studies: ABSTRACT: This article will show that there is nothing innocent about taxation. While coercion had various and rather ruthless forms in premodern times, with the birth of the state, the expansion of taxation has increasingly become the repudiation of a visible brutality. The Enlightenment period marks

My thanks to Carlo Lottieri for publishing an Italian translation of ” A Brief History of Secession Referenda in Europe “ in the publication L’indro: “ Breve storia dei referendum sulla secessione “: La Scozia non ha ancora rinunciato all’idea di tenere, nei prossimi anni, un altro referendum sull’indipendenza. Anche se Londra si oppone, è da

[The State] forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or alien. —Albert Jay Nock, 1928, On Doing the Right Thing LIBERTARIANISM AND THE STATE: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT Libertarianism has proved to be a

If libertarianism wishes to give up modern political categories, it has to think about law in a different way. Murray N. Rothbard, the most important exponent of the radical libertarian school, is right when he rejects the historicism and relativism of legal realism and when—for the same reasons—he criticizes Hayek and Leoni. But unfortunately, he

Edtor’s Note: This is a selection from “The Problem of Security: Historicity of the State and ‘European Realism’” found in the collection The Myth of National Defense edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe . The constitutionalist claim to justify the State’s monopoly of violence has been challenged directly by the radical libertarian tradition (Molinari)

Originally published as “European Unification as the New Frontier of Collectivism: The Case for Competitive Federalism and Polycentric Law.” Frankfurt, Bremen, Hamburg, Luebeck are large and brilliant, and their impact on the prosperity of Germany is incalculable. Yet, would they remain what they are if they were to lose their independence and be