Raised since early childhood to promote Jeremy Bentham's theory of utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill both expanded on those ideas and developed many of his own regarding individual freedom and liberty.

John Dickinson led an active political life. He was a member of the Continental Congress, served as Governor of Pennsylvania from 1782 to 1785, and was a member of the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

Prosperity and property rights are inextricably linked. The importance of having well-defined and strongly protected property rights is now widely recognized among economists and policymakers. A ...

The socialist calculation debate revolves around the question of whether central planners can, at least in principle, make the economic calculations necessary to achieve the rational, efficient ...

Guaranteeing a minimum income to the poor is better than our current system of welfare, Zwolinski argues. And it can be justified by libertarian principles. Still skeptical? Well, here are three ...

Paul Meany is the editor for intellectual history at Lib er tar i an ism .org, a project of the Cato Institute. Most of his work focuses on examining thinkers who predate classical liberalism but ...

While Karl Marx hated Pierre- Joseph Proudhon and his philosophy of mutualism, a libertarian can find in it much to appreciate. Although Herbert Spencer has been rightly regarded as the most ...

Having previously discussed abolitionist black women, Presley highlights some of the white women in the movement to end slavery. The valiant efforts of abolitionist men like William Lloyd Garrison, ...

A libertarian world won’t eliminate all poverty, but it offers powerful tools for greatly reducing it, and improving the lives of the poorest and least privileged. Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at ...

Spontaneous order theory is properly located in the history of social science. Indeed, the only part of social theory that can genuinely be said to be scientific derives from it. This scientific ...

Crypto- anarchism is a philosophy whose advocates think technology can assist them in creating communities based on consent rather than coercion. Crypto- anarchists wish to be free from state ...

In his first essay in a new series on John Locke, Smith explains some essential features of Locke’s case for private property. George H. Smith was formerly Senior Research Fellow for the Institute for ...