What You Wish They Would Read

By On March 11, 2011 · 31 Comments · In Uncategorized

Part of the goal of this blog is to encurage dialogue between lbertarians and those on the political left.  I think this important partly because I believe these two groups have more in common that many people realize.  But, of course, there are still areas of divergence.  And those are worth exploring.

So, readers, my question to you is this.  If you could pick one thing you'd like the "other side" to read, what would it be?  What would you libertarians give those on the left to push them more in the direction of libertarianism?  And what would those of you on the left give libertarians to push them a bit farther leftward?  What is the lesson that you want this reading to impart?

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  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a550ec1a970b twitter.com/AFG85

    “Economics in One Lesson”, by Henry Hazlitt.

  • http://www.factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com Daniel Kuehn

    Libertarians I think ought to read more Jefferson. I think his letters to Madison from France as well as simply the Declaration itself go a long way. Classical liberalism used to strike a careful balance between self-governance, liberty, and equality, because an imbalance between them was understood to impinge on the others. Jefferson never shrank from democracy the way modern libertarians do. Modern libertarianism is a late nineteenth century strain of classical liberalism that has managed to divorce liberty from self-government and equality, and in the process I think it has done liberty and liberalism a disservice. Jefferson remedies quite a bit of that, and for American readers it reemphasizes the role that classical liberalism plays in our society specifically.

    John Dewey is also quite good and also highlights the interrelations between democratic self-governance, liberty, and equality – interrelations that I think libertarians like to try to finesse or ignore.

  • Aeon J. Skoble

    I know you asked for one, but I’m going to be ornery and pick one fiction, one econ, and one philosophy.
    1. Russ Roberts’ novel “The Invisible Heart”
    2. Heyne/Boettke/Prychitko, “The Economic Way of Thinking”
    3. Narveson’s “The Libertarian Idea.”

  • Joe

    Two suggestions from the left:

    1. David Harvey’s “A Brief History of Neoliberalism”
    2. Wendell Berry’s “What Matters?: Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth”

    Is Wendell Berry on the left? He kinda defies modern categorization, I think.

  • http://www.factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com Daniel Kuehn

    Also – I think Keynes’s The End of Laissez Faire does a great job highlighting how the divorce of concerns about self-governance/democracy, liberty, and equality has lead to some of the more problematic ideologies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The argument there is that the rise of communism and of what we would call libertarianism both ultimately emerge from the same tendency: a buffet-style approach to classical liberalism. The End of Laissez Faire essentially argues that over the course of the nineteenth century the liberal tradition was segregated and ghettoized, and generally speaking that was a bad thing.

  • benjamin buchthal

    mises

  • Greg

    Loren Lomasky, “Libertarianism as if (the other 99% of) People Mattered”

  • http://profile.typepad.com/politicsandprosperitywordpresscom Politicsandprosperity.wordpress.com

    Most leftists are unlikely to be swayed by anything. Ditto for libertarians. Political views are personality-driven, for the most part. The lesser part is the tendency of younger persons to be on the left, but that can be attributed to a combination of naivete and adolescent rebellion, and is often “cured” as a person ages into the personality that has been lurking behind the facade of youthful idealism.

    Having said that, it is good when a person converts to libertarianism, for whatever reason. Experience is the best teacher. Another good one is a straightforward, unemotional analysis of the facts of government (the left’s god). Here is one: http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Robertspolitics.html

  • David Sobel

    I wish there was much more attention on chapter 3 (dealing with risk) of Anarchy State and Utopia and Peter Railton’s “Locke, Stock, and Peril,” in his collected papers. More generally, Nozick noticed a wide range of problem for the view and was free in admitting it. The view is not problem free or such that only an idiot could reject it. Having that be common ground would aid discussion. I’ll work on my consequentialist pals to adopt this attitude as well.

  • Ian Lippert

    Hayek

    The Road to Serfdom and The Fatal Conceit are great places to start

  • Logan Buck

    I was going to recommend “Locke, Stock, and Peril” by Railton, but I’ve been beaten to it! That’s a recommendation to libertarians from whatever perspective I represent.

  • Aaron

    Human Action or The Calculus of Consent, either of those would be ideal.

  • http://barrystocker.blogspot.com/ Barry Stocker

    A ‘libertarian’ (inverted commas since a lot of people on this blog seem to think libertarian means anti-democratic anarchist or near anarchist) book for the left to read would be Smith, ‘Wealth of Nations’, which has some left leaning enthusiasts, e.g. Samuel Fleischacker. The left reading annoys some of the more irascible ‘libertatarians’, but Fleischacker is certainly more libertarian than the average ‘egalitarian liberal’/left liberal/social democrat.

    A good ‘left’ book for libertarians would be nearly anything by Michel Foucault, I’ll highlight ‘Discipline and Punish’ since that’s the one usually highlighted in discussions of political theory. It puts well meaning programs of state led and communitarian reform under suspicion, and puts all institutional power under suspicion not just the state. There are certainly some ‘libertarians’ who would benefit from thinking about this more.

  • http://Www.liveloud.net Doug

    Anything that helps dismantle the myth that society and the state ought to be or are one and the same. Chodorov’s Rise and Fall of Society comes to mind.

  • libert

    From the left, I’d suggest libertarians re-read Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. While it certainly isn’t a progressive manifesto, there are surprisingly many bits in there that are much closer to modern liberalism than to modern libertarianism. (E.g., what Friedman terms “neighborhood effects,” his advocacy for a government agency that provides income-contingent loans, and his support for a negative income tax as a guaranteed minimum income)

  • Dan Kervick

    Hmmm… I’m stumped.

  • benjamin buchthal

    capitalism and freedom to seems like a very flawed book. even though it has been really successful and im usually a great supporter of milton friedman.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/zackbeauchamp1 Zackbeauchamp

    Depends on what sort of libertarian we’re talking about.

    Libertarians who lean principally on self-ownership style philosophical arguments: Sam Freeman’s “Illiberal Libertarians.” I suspect his rhetoric might be too hostile to persuade many right-libertarians, but it’s worth a shot.

    Libertarians who lean principally on empirical/economic arguments: The vast literature demonstrating significant imperfections in human cognitive capabilities (e.g., Kahneman and Taversky) that undermine the core neoclassical assumptions that underpin a lot of libertarian arguments in this area.

    Libertarian isolationists (libertarians who see foreign aid, democracy promotion, etc. as outside the legitimate scope of government action): Charles Beitz’s Political Theory and International Relations. An old book now, but it demolishes conclusively the still commonly held view that “national interests” always trump moral obligations.

    As for my fellow left-liberals – well, they should read this blog, as well as 1. Jason’s paper on Rawls and economic growth (it’s quite a challenge to core lefty views about distributive justice) and 2. the empirical literature on the benefits of free trade.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/drswaraj DrSwaraj

    For libertarians:

    (1) Where Misesian praxeology is a conceptual train wreck: http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2011/01/autistic-economies.html and http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2011/01/hulsmmania.html

    If I can indulge beyond the instructions, I have a few more that I think would be constructive for libertarians, and then for leftists:

    (2) How derivatives markets can crash an economy without any help from the state, and how the externalities can infringe on the rights of those entirely uninvolved in the schemes: http://www.propublica.org/article/the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble-going and http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2010/12/ludwig-von-mises-vs-ludwig-von-mises.html

    (3) When libertarians need to look in the mirror at their own political conflations (shots specifically at Roderick Long as I stand on his shoulders — with an assist from Julian Sanchez): http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2011/01/libertarian-conflationism-part-ii.html and http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2010/12/happy-syzygy.html

    (4) Why knee-jerk anti-Keynesianism is self-defeating and ignores the real drivers of markets, even though Keynesianism is fatally flawed: http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2011/02/kevin-carson-nails-it.html

    For leftists:

    (1) How the hierarchical organization has expired: http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks.pdf

    (2) Where e-learning can facilitate a paradigm shift in education and accounting/a brief exchange between me and Brad DeLong: http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2010/12/grasping-reality-with-non-rival.html

    (3) Why the argument that people aren’t rational actors is confused: http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2011/01/hulsmmania.html

    (4) When coordination theory intersects with institutional analysis, or, preserving government to end the state: http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2010/12/ping-over-matter.html

  • Mad Rocket Scientist

    This T-Shirt

  • John V

    I echo the first comment. “Economics in one Lesson” was actually what started my conversion from modern to classical liberalism.

    Utterly compelling.

  • Dan Kervick

    Rather than any particular book, I would just try to get people to bone up on contemporary decision theory, value theory, epistemology and game theory so that they gain a greater appreciation of the variety of kinds of exchanges that can take place in the real world under unregulated conditions, and the many ways in which those exchanges can fail to optimize and promote well-being, under any reasonable definition of the latter two terms.

    But I tend to think people already know most of the things they need to know to be argued into changes in their position, and just need to be asked to be more reflective.

    I would ask them to reflect not just on the role of irrationality in exchange – of the kind studied by Tversky and Kahneman – but on the role of sheer ignorance. People work with very imperfect knowledge about the full value of the items they are exchanging, and there can also exist large asymmetries in the degree of imperfection. These phenomena can easily result in an individual’s diminishing his well-being in a voluntary exchange.

    I would try to get them to reflect on the inherent imperfection of actually existing incentive systems, and the many ways in which the agents involved in carrying out transactions possess incentives that are only imperfectly aligned with the interests of the owners of the goods being exchanged. This is especially the case when the owners are a diffuse population of equity holders. Bad agents don’t always pay a price for their failures, but can cash out before the failures become apparent. And since causal responsibility is often an obscure collective matter, not easily compartmentalized among individual agents, systems of accountability are very imperfect.

    I would try to get them to reflect on the high degree of sheer deception, misrepresentation, conniving, legerdemain and collusive signaling that occur in real-world exchanges.

    I would ask them to think more about akrasia, and other forms of psychological and evaluative instability, and how important a role those things plays in exchange.

    I would also ask them whether they really think all human desires are equally worthy of representation and influence in the market place. There is such a thing as human depravity, and maybe depraved desires should not be permitted to influence production and resource allocation decisions to the extent they do in our own superficial and debauched society.

    Many libertarians I have talked to about these things retreat under pressure into an idealized definition of exchange or voluntary exchange, one that packs all kinds of exception-making into the definition of “voluntary”. Fine. But the result is to base an allgedly empirical and predictive theory on a form of exchange that hardly ever occurs in the actual world.

    And given all these factors, I would ask people to reflect on the important role of planning, governance and strategy in almost any complex human enterprise, and ask them whether they are really entitled to their pessimism about the incompetence and dysfunctionality of governing agencies, in comparison with an unregulated and throughly decentralized price system.

  • Aeon J. Skoble

    I’m going to have to disagree with the idea that reading Tversky and Kahnemann would help move libertarians to the left. If people are subject to a variety of lapses in critical reasoning, that’s all the more reason to eschew the technocratic/paternalistic central planning the left proposes. Also, not all approaches to libertarianism require perfect rationality; indeed most do not, so noting that people are prone to a host of common failures in logic means that more people should study logic, not that rights theory is a sham.

  • pedrovedro

    From a former libertarian who has moved to the left, I recommend reading:
    late John Stuart Mill
    John Hicks
    Richard Thaler

  • http://profile.typepad.com/andrewlevine Andrewlevine

    From another former libertarian now on the left: Tom Slee’s Nobody Makes You Shop At Wal-Mart was a good introduction during college.

    But I think I actually got the most from African and Asian studies. There’s an undercurrent in a lot of libertarian thought that seems to hold as an article of faith that the Western Enlightenment was and remains the best mode of thinking about the universe ever devised by humans, in all circumstances, period.

  • Jimbino

    For the liberal: Free to Choose by Milton & Rose Friedman

  • John V

    Tom Slee’s book doesn’t square with basic economics.

    That’s the problem with such leftish books. Naomi Klein is another.

    I simply don’t see how such books can somehow make their point to someone with a basic grasp of economics.

    The problem I have with a lot of leftish books (and I have a lot of them from my leftish days) is they misconstrue cause/effect on so many economic issues. Once a lot of bad and inaccurate presumptions where beaten out of me with no honest rebuttal, I had nothing left but to repent. For this reason, “former libertarians now on the left” leave me quite suspicious of their claims.

  • John V

    John Stuart Mill…for a Left of Center POV?

    We must have differing definitions of the “Left”.

  • Greg

    Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation

  • http://juilansanchez.com Julian Sanchez

    Not that these weren’t great books to read as a teenager, but is an adult worth bothering to “convert” really going to have political views so uninformed that they’d be altered by “Economics in One Lesson,” or even “Capitalism & Freedom”? I think you have to give people credit for having familiarity with the basic argument and having rejected it for one reason or another. I think sophisticated folks on the left are sometimes put off by the tendency of some libertarians to act as though anyone who’s not on board already must just never have taken freshman micro.

    For a lefty, I might suggest Scott’s “Seeing Like a State,” Beito’s “From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State,” plenty of Mancur Olson. For a libertarian, maybe Barbara Fried’s “The Progressive Assault on Laissez Faire”?

  • M

    I would recommend that libertarians read social and economic history, for several reasons:

    1) For a look at different property regimes throughout time and space. This is of course interesting in itself but may demonstrate to certain deontologists that property is a social convention and that no obvious property regime (certainly not an idealized version of the current one with coinciding absolute rights of use, alienation, and so on) exists in the “nature” of things,

    2) For a demonstration that our world was not created in accordance with anything like Nozickian standards of justice,

    3) For examples of how adherence to liberal principles in such a world has led to catastrophically bad outcomes – I specifically recommend Mike Davis’ “Late Victorian Holocausts,”

    4) For instances of economically successful state intervention and central planning, even when implemented by exceptionally wicked, none too brilliant, and not very accountable people.

    I’m glad to see some unfamiliar titles recommended in my general direction, and will be sure to take a look at them.

  • Agnar

    I’d recommend The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi for libertarians looking left.

  • Ray

    The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, especially the essay “Man’s Rights”.

  • John V

    Julian,(if this is THE Julian Sanchez I’m thinking of))

    I think you overestimate the general level of economic understanding of most people.

    My brother (hardcore conservative), for example, last night said, in light of proposed PA state spending cuts to for state universities and grants, that the obvious end result would be jacked up, higher tuition prices to make up for the probable lower number of students who would go to college. ??

    See?

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p014e5fa8b46f970c Michel Phillips

    I’d say, put down your book, get out of the house, and develop a real relationship with some of the working poor.

    I have a friend who’s been working 19 hours a week for minimum wage, no benefits. Has been asking and hoping for more hours; instead just got laid off. Her 19-year-old son, also recently laid off, had urological pain, went to the ER, was told he has two kidney stones and something undetermined going on with his prostate. ER doctor says he should see a urologist. Urologist wants money up front.

    Kinda brings these theoretical policy debates into sharp focus.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/drswaraj DrSwaraj

    For Austrian Economists:

    The conceptual train wreck that is Misesianism: http://ubunturising.blogspot.com/2010/12/ludwig-von-mises-vs-ludwig-von-mises.html

  • JH

    Perhaps strangely, I’m a libertarian who loves G.A. Cohen’s work (I very much wish that libertarians had someone like Cohen on their side).

    Anyway, libertarians with a philosophical bent should read Cohen’s Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality or some of the papers from On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice (I would not recommend his shorter, superficial book Why Not Socialism?).

    I think that liberals and egalitarians should read 3 or 4 years of Marginal Revolution, Will Wilkinson’s blog(s), and anything Bryan Caplan writes.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p00e5500515a98833 BerserkRL

    Both for moving libertarians farther left and for moving leftists farther libertarianward, I would recomend Kevin Carson’s Studies in Mutualist Political Economy (download) and Charles Johnson’s Liberty, Equality, Solidarity: Toward a Dialectical Anarchism, and then follow those up with Carson’s Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (download).

  • http://profile.typepad.com/fteson Fernando Teson

    Sorry, but I am pessimistic about persuading progressives, for a number of reasons that Guido Pincione and I explore in our book. I hope no one gets offended, but my research on trade has convinced me that nothing, and I mean NOTHING, not Smith, not Ricardo, not 250 years of almost unanimous economic research, not the empirical evidence, will persuade progressives to accept that free trade is beneficial. We do better by talking about things like civil liberties.
    I would like to be wrong on this, so I welcome refutations.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p00e5500515a98833 BerserkRL

    Well, on free trade specifically Carson does a good job of arguing that some of the features of globalisation that progressives object to as showing the badness of free trade to are actually worth objecting to but are really the products of government intervention instead.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/tomslee tomslee

    “Tom Slee’s book doesn’t square with basic economics”

    It was as a popularisation of the ideas of John Nash, George Akerlof, Josef Stiglitz and others. I ain’t perfect, but those people do know their economics.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/danielshapiro Daniel Shapiro

    For those on the left: The Invisible Heart and The Price of Everything both by Russ Roberts.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/lippard Jim Lippard

    Alan Haworth, _Anti-libertarianism_
    Jonathan Wolff, _Robert Nozick: Property, Justice, and the Minimal State_
    David Schmidtz, _Elements of Justice_
    Jeffrey Friedman, “What’s Wrong with Libertarianism” (and the subsequent exchange with Tom Palmer, who proceeds to prove Friedman’s points)

  • http://profile.typepad.com/danielshapiro Daniel Shapiro

    For the left: David Beito From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State.

  • http://ToddSeavey.com Todd Seavey

    My one suggestion for those on the left would be a reminder that the Western Enlightenment was and remains the best mode of thinking about the universe ever devised by humans, in all circumstances, period.

  • http://ToddSeavey.com Todd Seavey

    (Just trying to irk Andrew Levine.)

  • M

    Fernando, plenty of progressives support free trade; it’s one of the stances that has near-universal assent from the educated classes. (Maybe because it’s so obviously right; maybe because the credentials of the educated constitute a form of protectionism in no danger of slipping away.)

    John, note that he said people worth convincing. Conversely my attitude towards anyone on my side of the aisle who’d become a libertarian after reading “Economics in One Lesson” is “good riddance.”

    I can assure my fellow lefties that Julian’s recommendations of Scott and Olsen are great, (and everyone that “Seeing Like a State” belongs in Roderick’s category of books to move libertarians leftward and leftists towards skepticism of state action.) I’ll make a point of checking out Bobbio, since he was included in their company – thanks, Julian!

  • http://profile.typepad.com/drswaraj DrSwaraj
  • http://profile.typepad.com/andrewlevine Andrewlevine

    Tom Slee’s book doesn’t square with basic economics.

    Since I’m the one who brought it up (and Tom stopped in on the thread to name the economists he relied on), I’m curious: where doesn’t it square with basic economics?

  • J

    For either side: Tao Te Ching-skewers both government excess and obsession with money and fame.

    Examples:

    When the Master governs, the people
    are hardly aware that he exists.
    Next best is a leader who is loved.
    Next, one who is feared.
    The worst is one who is despised.

    If you don’t trust the people,
    you make them untrustworthy.

    Chase after money and security
    and your heart will never unclench.
    Care about people’s approval
    and you will be their prisoner.

    If you overesteem great men,
    people become powerless.
    If you overvalue possessions,
    people begin to steal.

    Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men
    doesn’t try to force issues
    or defeat enemies by force of arms.
    For every force there is a counterforce.
    Violence, even well intentioned,
    always rebounds upon oneself.

    I have just three things to teach:
    simplicity, patience, compassion.
    These three are your greatest treasures.
    Simple in actions and in thoughts,
    you return to the source of being.
    Patient with both friends and enemies,
    you accord with the way things are.
    Compassionate toward yourself,
    you reconcile all beings in the world.

  • David Sobel

    Oh, I certainly would have mentioned GA Cohen’s stuff on self-ownership if I had not assumed everyone knew it was required reading already.

  • Aeon J. Skoble

    As several others have noted, David Beito’s work is absolutely crucial here: Left-liberals will never move towards libertarianism/classical-liberalism as long as they remained convinced that without the strong state, the poor would starve. Beito shows, as only a historian can, that that’s false.

  • Michael

    I’d have both sides watch all five seasons of The Wire.

  • http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/philosophy/faculty/neufeld.cfm Blain Neufeld

    I strongly recommend that ‘libertarians’ of any stripe read Liz Anderson’s excellent political economy posts (http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Eeandersn/blogpoliticaleconomy.html).

    I also think that Joseph Heath’s article, “The Benefits of Cooperation” (Philosophy & Public Affairs 34, 2006), is well worth reading (essentially, Heath points out that there are a variety of important forms of social cooperation, and that markets are only conducive to *some* of them).

    Finally, anyone sympathetic to Nozickian or Rothbardian style libertarianism must read Samuel Freeman’s “Illiberal Libertarians: Why Libertarianism is Not a Liberal View” (Philosophy & Public Affairs 30, 2002).

  • http://blog.mikebilly.com Mike Billy

    I would have the Left read Bastiat’s The Law http://amzn.to/hWGOWn

  • http://blog.hecker.org/ Frank Hecker

    @Zakbeauchamp: By “Jason’s paper on Rawls and economic growth”, are you referring to “Rawl’s Paradox”? (I can’t tell for sure because I don’t have access to it.)

  • http://www.tmmblog.co.uk Cahal

    For libertarians I’d recommend reading Michael Hudson.

    An important point he makes is that the ‘free market’ was initially defined as a market free of rent seeking, monopoly power and fraud, rather than one ‘free’ of any government intervention whatsoever.

  • Carlo Cordasco

    Law, legislation and Liberty F. A. Hayek
    Against Politics De Jasay
    The order of public reason G. Gaus

  • http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/mlister/ Matt

    For most anyone I’d recommend Alec Nove’s excellent _The Economics of Feasible Socialism_. It left me less inclined towards (some sorts) of socialism than I was before I read it, but does do a good job of showing how some forms can work, too. More readable than Nove and also nice for giving some good discussion of what sorts of regulation and planing might work and what sorts probably won’t is Joseph Heath’s _Economics Without Illusions_ (the US title- it was “Filthy Lucre” in Canada and the UK.)

  • http://e-vigilance.blogspot.com ricketson

    Here’s what I suggest for “both sides”… a series of books and articles that have bit-by-bit shaped my views (or expressed them well), and incorporate both “left” and “libertarian” aspects:

    1) Benjamin Tucker: Anarchism and State Socialism (http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm)
    2) Aldous Huxley: Brave New World, BNW Revisited, and Island (the later being more of a Randian essay-as-novel rather than real literature)
    3) George Orwell — many things.
    4) Geo-libertarian stuff: Dan Sullivan’s “Royal Libertarianism” (http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sullivanonlibertarians.html)

  • http://e-vigilance.blogspot.com ricketson

    If I may throw in two periodicals: Slashdot and The Economist

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