The Individualists provides an intellectual history of libertarian thought since the birth of the doctrine in the 19th century. The title reflects the tight relationship between individualists and libertarians: “Before the term ‘libertarian’ caught on,” the book notes, “many of the most intellectually active friends of liberty in Britain were simply known as ‘individualists.’”

The authors are philosophers Matt Zwolinski of the University of San Diego and John Tomasi of Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit association for the improvement of higher education. Their book will be challenging for both libertarians and non-libertarians. To the latter, it will show that libertarianism is not as simple a doctrine as the strawmen put forth by its intellectual adversaries. To libertarians, it will suggest that their philosophy is a big tent, perhaps too big for their comfort.

Definition and typology / What is libertarianism? The authors identify six commitments or “markers of membership” that define a libertarian. Yet libertarians often disagree on how to interpret each of the markers. The markers are beliefs in:

  • private property rights
  • negative liberty
  • individualism
  • free markets
  • skepticism of authority (anti-authoritarianism)
  • the normative significance of spontaneous social order

In Zwolinski and Tomasi’s view, broad libertarianism covers both strict libertarianism and contemporary classical liberalism. Strict libertarianism is a radicalized form of 19th century classical liberalism and includes such contemporary thinkers as Ayn Rand (although she considered her philosophy to be a school unto itself), Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, Robert Nozick, and James Buchanan. Contemporary classical liberalism entertains a presumption of liberty as opposed to the absolutism of strict libertarians; think of figures like Friedrich Hayek, Richard Epstein, David Schmidtz, Loren Lomasky, as well as Zwolinski and Tomasi themselves. Where specific theorists fit in this classification is not always clear, but the general idea of considering strict libertarians as more radical or “absolutist” than contemporary classical liberals may both correspond to what many people think and represent a useful analytical distinction.

Zwolinski and Tomasi also consider some “neoliberals” as libertarians in the broad sense. This controversial label is meant to cover thinkers who favor free markets against socialism but distance themselves from laissez-faire and generally accept a more expansive state than both contemporary classical liberals and strict libertarians. They are less critical of existing institutions that have (or had) a sweet tooth for markets, such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. They include figures like Wilhem Röpke, Frank Knight, and Milton Friedman, although the last can also be considered a classical liberal.

Progressive or conservative? / The book emphasizes the tension between progressive and conservative—or even, the authors claim, reactionary—elements within broad libertarianism. The historical sweep presented by Zwolinski and Tomasi is a highlight of the book and helps show the diversity within libertarianism.

Strict libertarianism started with a first wave in 19th century France, Britain, and the United States. In France, Jean-Baptiste Say and his fellow followers of the French Industrialist School fought mercantilism. They later influenced Frédéric Bastiat and, still later, Albert Jay Nock and Murray Rothbard in America. The first anarcho-capitalist, Belgian–French economist Gustave de Molinari, suggested in an 1849 article that free markets could totally replace government, including in the “production of security.”

In mid-19th century England, some classical liberals followed John Stuart Mill and became “progressive liberals” in the sense that they accepted a role for the state in the explicit redistribution of income. But others hardened the classical liberal position and became strict libertarians. Among them, Herbert Spencer developed a theory of the right to ignore the state. Individualist anarchist Auberon Herbert was a disciple of his. “Libertarianism came into the world as classical liberalism’s radical child,” write Zwolinski and Tomasi.

The Individualists tells the exciting story of how British libertarians Richard Cobden and John Bright created the Anti–Corn Law League in the late 1830s, which obtained the abolition of the grain tariffs in 1846. Cobden’s economic argument against these tariffs was that they raised the price of bread and hurt the poor and the middle class for the benefit of the land-owning class. But by the late 1880s, as we will see later, the political winds had turned; the chancellor of the exchequer announced that “we are all socialists now.”

In the United States, like in England, libertarians appeared in the second half of the 19th century. They focused on the fight against slavery while European libertarians were opposing socialism. American libertarians were often anarchists, and sometimes left-leaning anarchists like Benjamin Tucker. Lysander Spooner was an individualist anarchist and strong opponent of slavery.

The second wave of libertarians in America appeared in the 20th century with figures like H.L. Mencken, Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Nock, who tried to ally with conservatives against socialism and the New Deal. But libertarians and conservatives disagreed on many topics. Their uneasy alliance continued during the Cold War with such figures as Rand, Leonard Read, Mises, Hayek, George Stigler, Friedman, and others. Rothbard, the well-known anarcho-capitalist, was “in many ways unique among twentieth-century American libertarians” because he thought that “the antithesis of liberty was not socialism but conservatism”—until his opinions changed.

According to Zwolinski and Tomasi, the third wave of libertarianism started around 1990. They distinguish three strands:

  • Paleo-libertarianism, whose main figures include (the later) Rothbard and Lew Rockwell, emphasizes cultural conservatism, defense of Western culture, and objective standards of morality. Some paleo-libertarians have jumped on the anti-immigration bandwagon and supported the quite illiberal Donald Trump.
  • Contemporary classical liberals, which include theorists such as Lomasky and Schmidtz, but also the so-called Bleeding Heart Libertarians (BHL or BHLers), which may perhaps be compared to left classical liberals à la Mill.
  • Left libertarians or left-wing market anarchists, who uncompromisingly judge the current political–economic system “by libertarian standards” and reject it as unjust and statist.

With such diversity among the libertarians, both over time and currently, interpretation of the membership markers varies. Consider:

Private property /Although all libertarians believe in private property rights (the first marker), they propose different justifications and implications. Henry George even opposed the private appropriation of land.

Libertarians also diverge as to what should be done when a break has occurred in the legitimacy of the transmission of property, when usurpation has occurred at some point in time. Rationalist and strict libertarians such as Rothbard argue for the unconditional compensation of those who have been deprived of their legitimate property whenever it is possible to identify them or their descendants. Other libertarians adopt a more practical approach, à la David Hume, where private property is based on conventions that arise through a spontaneous-order process with the function of solving scarcity problems. Compensation is only warranted for current or recent injustices that create current conflicts and are possible to correct without creating more conflict or injustice. Zwolinski and Tomasi sensibly argue that the Humean approach is often more consistent with other libertarian theories than it seems at first sight.

Trade, migration, peace / Negative liberty (the second marker) means that liberty is the absence of coercion by others, not a positive obligation to do something for them. It implies minimum state intervention and, at the limit, that the state only protects the negative liberty of all. (An obligation consented to is not imposed.) This conception of liberty naturally does not stop at political borders. As Zwolinski and Tomasi note, the libertarian position is often summarized as “free trade, free migration, and peace.” “The libertarian vision is cosmopolitan,” they write, and libertarians generally believe that “basic human rights—including economic rights—apply to all persons everywhere, regardless of boundaries.”

Cobden and Bright saw the major benefit of free trade in its contribution to peace through overcoming patriotic boundaries. Their ideal of liberty also applied to foreigners. Cobden was a cosmopolitan who believed in a united world where conflicts between national governments would be solved by voluntary “judges agreed upon by the conflicting parties themselves.” He toyed with the idea of a federation of European states. He opposed the participation of the British state in the Crimean War (1853–1856) after the Russian government gained control of that territory. He argued against the British tradition of imperialism. As a result, his popularity and influence in England vanished.

The late 19th century American libertarians were similarly opposed to participation in international wars, notably the Spanish-American War of 1898 and its follow-up in the Philippines. To protest the war, William Graham Sumner of Yale University became an active member of the Anti-Imperialist League. In America as in the United Kingdom, the 19th century ended with much libertarian pessimism about the future of liberty.

In the 20th century, Mises explained that libertarianism is an internationalist doctrine, that peaceful cooperation between national states is important, and that free international trade is essential. In his 1944 Road to Serfdom, Hayek proposed a form of international federalism and minimal state. (See “Where Are We on the Road to Serfdom?” Fall 2021.) Mises favored the right of democratic secession of any part of a country provided that individual liberty was maintained in the seceding region. In a liberal world, immigration would not be a problem. Frank Chodorov, a follower of Nock, distinguished between political isolationism, meaning no foreign interference, an idea that he and other libertarians advocated, and economic isolationism, which they rejected in favor of free trade.

Zwolinski and Tomasi explain that there is no history of libertarian defense of immigration in the 19th century simply because it then faced little restriction except for private financial costs. The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 between the US government and the Chinese emperor contains a revealing clause that recognized “the inherent and inalienable right of man to change his home and allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of the free migration and emigration …, for purposes of curiosity, of trade, or as permanent residents.” So, explain Zwolinski and Tomasi, “the full libertarian position did not come into its own until it had something to push against.” In his 1927 book Liberalism, Mises wrote that “the liberal demands that every person have the right to live wherever he wants.”

Many contemporary classical liberals or libertarians such as Hayek and Buchanan later accepted some restrictions to immigration for the purpose of protecting a free society and its institutions. Paleo-libertarians like Hans-Hermann Hoppe proposed a very different argument that residents have a property right over incoming immigrants. As Zwolinski and Tomasi correctly note, it is not clear that public places are anything else than a sort of unowned commons also open to immigrants, nor why the majority in a community would have the right to overrule a minority who welcome immigrants.

Racial justice / The BHL approach applies to “structural” or “cultural” racism and possibly to other forms of discrimination against groups, thereby pushing for a reinterpretation of individualism (the third marker). Nineteenth-century libertarians radicalized the classical liberals’ “already egalitarian and racially progressive doctrine.” Mill strongly opposed the conservative Thomas Carlyle’s racist elitism. Yet, in the 20th century, most libertarians—including Rand, Friedman, and Walter Williams—opposed the coercive ban on private discrimination legislated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Zwolinski and Tomasi wonder if “rights-respecting racism” is not “a libertarian blind spot.”

Big business / Support for free markets (the fourth marker) does not imply unconditional support for businesses. It is difficult to determine whether it was “labor” or “business” that first benefited from state privileges. Left libertarians entertain a presumption in favor of labor, while other libertarians hold a presumption for business. Left libertarians have viewed large regulation schemes from the Progressive Era, such as the Federal Trade Commission, as established to protect incumbent businesses against competition. I would add that many less radical classical-liberal economists of our time have argued that business enterprises “capture” government regulation.

Anarchy / Anti-authoritarianism (the fifth marker) has led some libertarians to anarchism and especially to “anarcho-capitalism,” which was the original idea of Molinari. Anarcho-capitalists believe in private property, contrary to traditional anarchists on the left. They also believe in personal morality, contrary to some 19th century American anarchists. Spooner and contemporary philosopher Michael Huemer defend the “moral parity” thesis according to which governments have no rights that are not derivable from individual rights, which implies no power to tax. (See “A Wide-Ranging Libertarian Philosopher, Reasonable and Radical,” Winter 2021–2022.) Rothbard reached similar conclusions with different ethical arguments. Left-libertarian anarchists such as Roderick Long and Gary Chartier oppose big-business capitalism but defend markets, extending the tradition of Benjamin Tucker.

When we consider that libertarian economist Tyler Cohen favors more “state capacity” for promoting economic growth, we can measure the width of the libertarian spectrum on the statist–anarchist dimension. Even more extreme are the paleo-libertarians, who seem to merge with the far right. As noted in The Individualists, they sometimes condone police brutality and “rough justice,” and Rothbard proposed a “right-wing populism.”

Poverty / Libertarians disagree on the capacity of spontaneous order (the sixth marker) to eliminate or alleviate poverty. For most classical liberals from Bernard Mandeville to Adam Smith to modern libertarians, the only way to effectively combat poverty is a free-market economy based on self-interest. But not all libertarians in a broad sense reject all government assistance. Friedman and Hayek argued there should be some sort of annual guaranteed income or income threshold under which nobody should fall. Buchanan thought that a unanimous social contract could adopt a rule establishing an equal “demogrant,” the equivalent of an annual guaranteed income. (See “Designed for Another World,” Summer 2024.)

The authors of The Individualists give much importance to BHL, of which Zwolinski has been the main inspirator. The BHLers go further than even most other classical liberals on issues related to inequality: They want to reconcile libertarianism with “social justice.” Even if Hayek specifically condemned the notion of social justice as a “mirage,” Zwolinski and Tomasi argue, he converged with Buchanan and Rawls toward the view that an entire system of rules can be just or unjust. For the BHLers, social justice is only condemnable if it serves “to forcibly direct goods to some favored group or other.” According to them, the ideal of negative liberty is often not sufficient to correct the consequences of injustices.

Critiques / To summarize, Zwolinski and Tomasi claim that “libertarianism was largely progressive and radical in the nineteenth century, then took a conservative turn in the twentieth” with conservative alliances and the appearance of paleo-libertarians. In the 21st century so far, the third wave of libertarianism shows much diversity between paleo-libertarianism, contemporary classical libertarianism, and left libertarianism.

As instructive as the book is, it is open to a few general critiques. One of them, I think, is the disproportionate importance that Zwolinski and Tomasi give to BHL, their own flavor of contemporary classical liberalism. It is far from obvious that the standard libertarian argument for negative liberty is not sufficient to combat poverty, racism, and other valid concerns. The more attention that group claims receive, the more identity groups will form to stake such claims. The more redistribution is realized, the more will be required, by both the net taxpayers to get even in other ways (say, business subsidies), and the beneficiaries who never have enough. If negative liberty needs to be exceptionally restricted, the only valid argument to do so would arguably lie in a unanimous contractarian argument à la Buchanan.

As for the legacy of racism, I would argue that the way to undo it is not to grant special privileges to its victims or the descendants of its victims but to abolish government restrictions that prolong the problem: professional licensure, minimum wage laws, zoning laws, police militarization and brutality, criminalization of victimless crimes (23 percent of Black adults are convicted felons), and similar measures. (See “The One-Percenter State,” Spring 2020.) Such orientations would facilitate the discovery and affirmation by Black individuals of their equal dignity and liberty—as opposed to perpetuating their status as victims.

Legal scholar David Bernstein has made some practical proposals, cited by Zwolinski and Tomasi, that should be considered. For example, he suggests replacing the current coercive bans on discrimination in hiring with a mere default rule of non-discrimination that would leave an employer free to discriminate provided the opting-out is disclosed. Many firms would likely eschew such discrimination lest they displease their non-bigoted customers or investors.

Another problem: the authors’ BHL ideology suffers a too common error: assuming that a good idea will be sensibly legislated and implemented by government. This is not how governments and democratic politics work. If they did work that way, there would today be no trace of racism after more than a half-century of policies to combat it. If the state has not been able to do better, we can assume it will not be more successful after another century of imposing group justice, except in increasing its own power.

Last but not least, there is a big absence in the book’s review of contemporary libertarian schools of thought. Nowhere is the work of economist and political philosopher Anthony de Jasay mentioned. In my opinion, de Jasay fundamentally renewed both the critique of the state and the liberal–libertarian argument for anarchy. (See “A Conservative Anarchist? Anthony de Jasay, 1925–2019,” Spring 2019.) De Jasay’s work also attenuates the relevance of the standard left–right, progressive–conservative distinction, and throws new light on political philosophy and libertarianism. For sure, he is far from an academic household name, but his first, seminal book, The State, was published four decades ago. Since I did not myself immediately discover its importance (Buchanan was quicker), I can’t really cast the first stone.

In my view, the real watershed between libertarians and classical liberals on one hand, and the rest of the political world on the other, lies in the distinction between the primacy of individual choices and the primacy of collective choices. In his radical book Social Contract, Free Ride, de Jasay defines (classical) liberalism as “a broad presumption of deciding individually any matter whose structure lends itself, with roughly comparable convenience, to both individual and collective choice.” (See “Against the State and Its ‘Public Goods,’” Spring 2024.) This definition, which looks very moderate, may help find the irreducible core of libertarianism.

Is libertarianism too large a tent, with too many diverse occupants? The authors of The Individualists believe that “libertarianism is not accidentally but intrinsically a diverse ideology” and that “the tension between radical and reactionary elements is not accidental but intrinsic to libertarian thinking.” They seem to attribute this characteristic to the different circumstances where the major threats to liberty changed. Perhaps it is also because libertarianism is defined along a different dimension than the standard left–right spectrum: the dimension of individual choice/​collective choice. At any rate, analysis, discussion, peaceful diversity, and tolerance are pluses, not minuses. Zwolinski and Tomasi’s book is a useful guide in these interrogations.