Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172582 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 768 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Modern libertarians see themselves as the loyal opposition to the totalitarian tendencies of centralized power, in an American tradition reaching back to the anti-Federalists. Doherty's astute history shows where that consensus comes from and where it fractures along personal, political and practical lines. As a procapitalist and antistatist philosophy, libertarianism has had its greatest impact in economics. But Doherty shows that modern libertarianism since the 1940s, and increasingly since the 1980s, has been politically and ideologically influential, too. Whether believers in a small state regulating only contracts and national defense, or no state at all (like self-described “anarcho-capitalist” Murray Rothbard), libertarians have rooted themselves in a number of institutions—from schools, publications and think tanks to the Libertarian Party, the country's third-largest ticket. Reason magazine senior editor Doherty conveys an insider's understanding in clear, confident prose. However, his sympathies resist questioning the fundamental assumption uniting diverse ideas, personalities and institutions: the belief in the power of completely unfettered markets to bring about the best possible society. Though partisan and sometimes hagiographic, Doherty's well-researched history avoids polemics in outlining a vital political orientation that cuts across the political spectrum.
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(Laissez Faire Books)
"[Doherty] has done an impressive job of pulling together an interesting, enlightening, and entertaining history of the American libertarian movement."

New York Sun, January 24, 2007
"remarkably engaging and encyclopedic history"

Customer Reviews

Almost overwhelming
In researching this book, Brian Doherty took on a monumental task, and for the most part he succeeded admirably. "Radicals for Capitalism" spans seven decades, and mentions about 500 individuals (including myself) who have played some role in advancing free-market ideas in America during that period. The narrative gets a bit choppy in places, and some of Doherty's sentences and paragraphs are HORRENDOUSLY long, but if the subject matter interests you, there's no better place to find this much information between two covers.

A Wild Romp Through Some Neglected Political History
The organization of the book is, as the title would suggest, a bit 'freewheeling.' And the name-dropping can make one dizzy at times. But it is very entertaining and no matter how well-versed you are in libertarian historical lore, you will come away from it with both a better understanding of the history of the American movement, and a host of wonderful anecdotes.

Well-written and very informative chirping
The conservative author Russell Kirk once described libertarians as a movement of "chirping sectaries" who are "forever splitting...rarely conjugating." It is highly fitting that Kirk based this severe verdict on the mentality of Murray Rothbard, who emerges as one of the primary heroes of this book and who, as many libertarians are often reluctant to acknowledge, was everything Kirk described. However, despite his disdain for the excesses of Rothbard, one imagines that even Kirk himself would have been tickled by this book, for within it Doherty does for libertarianism what Kirk did for conservatism - he roots it in the American tradition with a scrupulously researched, fabulously written historical account filled with lively insights, larger-than-life characters and above all, fresh and unpredictable ideas.

Doherty locates the original libertarian ideas with Thomas Jefferson, and claims that the libertarian tradition necessarily corresponds with the antifederalist tradition in American politics. As the book progresses, however, it becomes apparent that though Jefferson's ideas certainly leaned in the libertarian direction, he would probably have been dismissed as a "statist" or a "socialist" by the colorful characters who populate the rest of this book. In that capacity, the title is especially apt, for whether it's Mises, Rothbard, Lefevre or Rand, every person profiled in this book is both in favor of capitalism and extremely radical (often to the point of insanity). Also, for those who think that anti-capitalist Leftists have a monopoly on idealism, this book will function as a dose of cold water to the face, since many libertarians were exceedingly utopian-minded and sometimes even allied themselves with the anti-capitalist Leftists in pursuit of this utopianism, rather than submit to the more predictable alliance with conservatives, who they saw as carrying on the tradition of "the thumbscrew, the rack and the whip."

Another particularly interesting theme that emerges from the pages of this book is the constant battle between pro-Government libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, but unfortunately, it's not a dispute in which Doherty is entirely neutral. The entire book sometimes devolves to an apology for anarcho-capitalism, and the only libertarians whose warts show up in any relief are the more Governmentally friendly characters such as Leonard Read and even Ayn Rand. This seeming hardline bias does do some violence to the book's effectiveness - one gets the sense that Doherty wrote it specifically for already hardcore libertarians, rather than for their ideologically heterogeneous fellow travelers. Perhaps, however, this tone is not conscious on Doherty's part, but rather simply a function of the numerous libertarians he quotes who seemed not only ambivalent, but outright hostile to fellow travelers. Certainly, insularity is a problem which the book exposes in hardline libertarians, though the battle between the "Marxists and Fabians" which Doherty describes gives some hope that this insularity will evaporate. Interestingly, despite being on the "Right", the group the libertarians seem to despise the most is not the Left or even liberals, but rather conservatives, who they see as primitive apes who want to revive the Spanish Inquisition. Doherty himself seems to share this view, for he frequently makes snide side-comments about the "cold-warriorism" of Buckley and depicts the traditionalist wing of the conservative movement as an assortment of violence-loving thugs whose only intellectual contribution is an injunction to "kill the lazy fairies!" During moments like this, the book is weakest, but thankfully, they are few and far between.

However, in terms of scholarship, the book is a tour de force. It gives one not only a sense of the libertarian past, but also a hopefulness for the future of this unique, intellectually rich and frequently correct political movement. Certainly, given the current state of the Right, Doherty's insights and the insights of his libertarian brethren on the nature of State power and the inherently corrupt nature of government are desperately, deeply needed. One only hopes that, like Doherty, these individuals will be willing to exit their cocoons and begin to persuade those of us for whom privatization of the fire department is not a foregone conclusion. In the meantime, for anyone desiring to understand who the libertarians are, this book is the best, most well-documented, most impressive description available today.