The Defenders of Liberty presents a history of economic liberalism
from the Renaissance to the present. It chronicles the tradition of
thought that sees human nature as social yet self-interested,
methodological individualism as its key analytical tool, and
property rights as foundational to a civilised society. In the
development of this way of thinking, it considers the contributions
of many key thinkers including Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes,
John Locke, Richard Cantillon, A.J.R. Turgot, David Hume, Adam
Smith, Nassau William Senior, Richard Cobden, Herbert Spencer,
Jean-Baptiste Say, Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, Gaetano
Mosca, Eugen Boehm-Bawerk, Vilfredo Pareto, Phillip Wicksteed,
Edwin Cannan, Ludwig von Mises, Lionel Robbins, F.A. Hayek, W.H.
Hutt, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Murray N. Rothbard, James M.
Buchanan, and Thomas Sowell. The book contends that liberalism
needs to be grounded in realism, and that it has been derailed
whenever economists have deviated from an explicitly realist
understanding of human nature, individualism and property rights.
It argues that the cause of liberalism was compromised by errors in
economic reasoning by such major figures as David Ricardo, John
Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, A.C. Pigou, and John Maynard Keynes.
In diagnosing what has gone wrong for liberalism in the
twenty-first century, The Defenders of Liberty argues against
substituting mathematical abstraction for causal realism; it
opposes interventionist central banking; it seeks to recover
economic liberalism from social and political liberalism, which are
somewhat unrelated schools of thought; it resists a view of human
nature rooted in selfishness or atomised individualism; and finally
alerts defenders of freedom to the ruthless but effective language
games played by their opponents. This book will be of interest to
the educated general reader as well as undergraduates and
postgraduates in disciplines such as economics, political theory
and philosophy.
General
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