For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto (1973; second edition 1978; third edition 1985) is a book by American economist and historian Murray Rothbard, in which the author promotes anarcho-capitalism. The work has been credited as an influence on modern libertarian thought and on part of the New Right.
The core of libertarianism, writes Rothbard, is the non-aggression axiom: "that no man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else." He argues that while this principle is almost universally applied to private individuals and institutions, the government is considered above the general moral law, and therefore does not have to abide by this axiom.
Rothbard attempts to dispel the notion that libertarianism constitutes a sect or offshoot of liberalism or conservatism, or that its seemingly right-wing opinions on economic policy and left-wing opinions on social and foreign policy are contradictory.
Reception
The Objectivist author Peter Schwartz criticized the views Rothbard expounded in For a New Liberty, writing that like other libertarians, Rothbard cared about neither "the pursuit of freedom nor the exercise of reason" and supported only "the extermination of government and the inculcation of anti-state hostility." Schwartz maintained that Rothbard wrongly viewed the state as "by nature criminal."[1] Libertarian author Tom G. Palmer commented in 1997 that For a New Liberty "provides a good overview of the libertarian worldview, although the chapters on public policy issues and on the organized libertarian movement are by now somewhat dated."[2] Libertarian author David Boaz writes that For a New Liberty, together with Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) and Ayn Rand's essays on political philosophy, "defined the 'hard-core' version of modern libertarianism, which essentially restated Spencer's law of equal freedom: Individuals have the right to do whatever they want to do, so long as they respect the equal rights of others."[3] British philosopher Ted Honderich writes that Rothbard's anarcho-libertarianism informed "one messianic part of the New Right".[4]
In Radicals for Capitalism (2007), journalist Brian Doherty writes of For a New Liberty, "This book strove to synthesize, in condensed form, the economic, historical, philosophical, and policy elements of Rothbard's vision...the book was meant as both a primer and a manifesto, so Rothbard crammed in as much of his overall theory of liberty as he could ... Rothbard hits the harder anarcho-capitalist stuff, but slips it in so smoothly that many readers might not notice that this 'libertarian manifesto' promotes anarchism."[5]
Publishing history
In 2006 the Ludwig von Mises Institute released a new hardbound edition, with a new introduction by Lew Rockwell. There were also translations in Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
Hacia una Nueva Libertad: El Manifiesto Libertario. Grito Sagrado. 2006. Paperback. ISBN987-1239-01-7
Italian
1996 Per una nuova libertà. Liberilibri, Macerata. 1996. Paperback.
2004 Per una nuova libertà. Liberilibri, Macerata. 2004. Paperback. ISBN88-85140-27-0
Portuguese
Por Uma Nova Liberdade O Manifesto Libertário. Instituto Ludwig von Mises do Brasil. 2013. Paperback. ISBN978-85-8119-060-0
Ukrainian
Ротбард, Мюрей. До нової свободи. Лібертаріанський маніфест / пер. з англ. Олександр Гросман, ред. Володимир Золотарьов, К. : К. І. С., 2022. — 427 c. Paperback. ISBN978-617-684-270-5
References
^Schwartz, Peter (1986). Libertarianism: The Perversion of Liberty. New York, New York: The Intellectual Activist. pp. 4, 63.
^Palmer, Tom G.; Boaz, David (1997). The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman. New York: The Free Press. p. 417. ISBN0-684-84767-1.
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