Liberty Matters: Arthur Seldon and the IEA (November, 2013) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

This online discussion is part of the series “Liberty Matters: A Forum for the Discussion of Matters pertaining to Liberty.” John Blundell, who headed the IEA between 1993 and 2009, discusses the contribution of Arthur Seldon ((1916-2005) to the success of the London based Institute of Economic Affairs in spreading free market ideas in Britain. He attributes much of its success to Seldon’s rigorous editing of material which turned technical economic language into jargon free prose which was readable by any educated person. In addition, Seldon’s vision was to secure the IEA a place midway between academia and the production of actual government policies. Responding to Blundell are Stephen Davies, Peter Boettke, and Nigel Ashford.

The Best of the OLL No. 59: Louis Wolowski and Émile Levasseur,“Property II” (1864) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

The Best of the OLL No. 58: Léon Faucher,“Property I” (1852) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. This essay was written some 10 years after that of Léon Faucher when some of the heat felt in 1852 towards the failed socialist experiments of 1848 had dissipated. Wolowski and Levasseur begin their essay quite differently with an almost poetical defence of private property and its individual and social benefits.

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. This article was written when the memory of the socialist experiments of the 1848 Revolution were still fresh in the minds of the political economists. Faucher castigates the economists for taking the right of property for granted and for assuming it as a given. So he provides a vigorous defence of the right of private property in order to counter the socialists’ critique.

Subject Guide: The American Revolution and Constitution (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

Subject Guide: War and Peace (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

The Best of the OLL No. 57: John Stuart Mill, “The Spirit of the Age” (1831) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. This extract includes the first and fifth parts of a long essay which appeared in The Examiner between January and May 1831. Mill believed that English society had entered an “age of transition” in which the ideas and the ruling elites of the old society were no longer able to provide the direction the country needed. New ideas and new men were about to step forward and introduce “one of the greatest revolutions of which history has preserved remembrance.”