The Market for Liberty [Paperback]

Morris Tannehill (Author), Linda Tannehill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1993 | ISBN-10: 0930073088 | ISBN-13: 978-0930073084

Some great books are the product of a lifetime of research, reflection, and labored discipline. But other classics are written in a white heat during the moment of discovery, with prose that shines forth like the sun pouring into the window of a time when a new understanding brings in the world into focus for the first time.

The Market for Liberty is that second type of classic, and what a treasure it is. Written by two authors-Morris and Linda Tannehill-just following a period of intense study of the writings of both Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, it has the pace, energy, and rigor you would expect from an evening's discussion with either of these two giants.

More than that, these authors put pen to paper at precisely the right time in their intellectual development, that period rhapsodic freshness when a great truth had been revealed, and they had to share it with the world. Clearly, the authors fell in love with liberty and the free market, and wrote an engaging, book-length sonnet to these ideas.

This book is very radical in the true sense of that term: it gets to the root of the problem of government and provides a rethinking of the whole organization of society. They start at the beginning with the idea of the individual and his rights, work their way through exchange and the market, expose government as the great enemy of mankind, and then-and here is the great surprise-they offer a dramatic expansion of market logic into areas of security and defense provision.

169 page softcover

Editorial Reviews

Review

The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should be politics. Morris and Linda Tannehill, in this book, which has become something of a classic even while being (until now) out of print, answer that politics is not necessary, that the ancient and ongoing contrivance of the marketplace can be substituted for it with ennobling results. -- Karl Hess, author of Capitalism for Kids

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The following is the Foreword by Karl Hess.

The most interesting political questions throughout history have been whether or not humans will be ruled or free, whether they will be responsible for their actions as individuals or left irresponsible as members of society, and whether they can live in peace by volitional agreements alone.

The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should be politics.

Morris and Linda Tannehill, in this book, which has become something of a classic even while being (until now) out of print, answer that politics is not necessary, that the ancient and ongoing contrivance of the marketplace can be substituted for it with ennobling results.

Advocates of state power will of course recoil from the idea and point out that it is all idle dreaming, that the state has always existed and must always exist lest brutal humans descend into, horrors, anarchy. They are correct, of course. Without the state there would be anarchy for that is, despite all of the perfervid ravings of the Marxist Left and statist Right, all that anarchy means--the absence of the state, the opportunity for liberty.

As for the direction that a world headed for liberty would be taking (descending or ascending) the Tannehills and many others have reviewed the record of the nation state and have discovered a curiously powerful fact. The nation state has never been associated with peace on earth. Its most powerful recommendation and record is, as a matter of fact, as a wager of war. The history of nation states is written around the dates of wars, not peace, around arms and not arts. The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar.

Having shown no capacity whatsoever to bring peace to earth, then what is the claim of the state on our allegiance? In closely reasoned arguments, the Tannehills maintain that there should be no claim at all; that the state is not needed at any point in our lives and that other, volitional, arrangements can be substituted for every single state function. They see these arrangements operating in the framework of a truly free market and they carefully explain them.

Product Details

• Paperback: 169 pages
• Publisher: Laissez Faire Books (December 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930073088
• ISBN-13: 978-0930073084
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,079,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An important volume in the case for liberty November 8, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Actually, as any Austrian economist including Murray Rothbard would have told independentwhig, the existence of a free market that serves the "subjective" (which does not mean "arbitrary") desires (not "whims") of consumers _requires_ a foundation in objective "natural" law -- and such a foundation positively precludes the existence of a parasitic State.

Opponents of anarchocapitalism (including those who, like our apparently Randian friend below, speak Objectivese rather than English) have never come satisfactorily to grips with the fact that market-based law not only is possible but has actually existed. In order for anarchocapitalism to work, what is required is that objective "natural" law be permitted to affect the preferences of "consumers of law," so that the legal system consumers tend to prefer is one that is aligned with the nature of reality. That system _is_ the libertarian system of individual rights and private property. There is no need to impose it from the "top down," because it is what consumers would generate from the "bottom up" precisely in order to secure the conditions for the best and most efficient fulfillment of their "subjective" wants.

Morris and Linda Tannehill provide here an imaginative account of how various "State" functions might actually be fulfilled by the free market, and indeed fulfilled _better_ than any State could do. Ignore the opinions of people who don't know what they're talking about and consider their case on its own merits.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Important Work November 22, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

If you care about freedom, read this book. The passages about Defense particularly are illuminating. Government is not anything magic. It is comprised of people of no more ability than anyone else and only can be funded from the resources of the individuals that live under the government's rule. The other reviewers mustn't have read the book very carefully. They selected a quote about objective law, but neglected to communicate that there is only one law/principle in the free society that Morris and Tannehill describe--no individual shall infringe on the property or person of another through force or fraud. There is no such thing as a body of law in the way that we are taught to think of it in civics class. Read the book for yourself.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Exploring the role of government November 22, 2002

By Blake Elder

Format:Paperback

This book was a fascinating read. When I began reading it book, I was quite sceptical that government could be practically eradicated. By the end of it, I wasn't convinced. The chapters devoted to the subject of defense and the waging of war I found particularly interesting, if a bit unrealistic. Everybody ought to read a book like this, just to explore the ideas it contains. Late in the book, it discusses the power of ideas. Ideas are definitely the most powerful force in the universe and if a majority of people were aware of ideas such as the ones discussed in this book, we would be well on the way towards building a far better world (not perfect of course as that is impossible).