Abstract: For several decades the Journal of Libertarian Studies was the key outlet for important interdisciplinary scholarship in the radical libertarian tradition. But by the late 2000s, the Internet was in full flower and the JLS was in decline. One night in early January 2009, I had the idea to form a new journal for libertarian scholarship, which would help fill the gap left by the declining JLS, and also take advantage of new publishing possibilities: entirely online and free, and with no artificial space constraints, but still of high-quality and peer-reviewed. Within just a few days, we had established the website and the basic design, assembled an impressive editorial board, and collected and edited an initial set of articles, which were published later that month, starting on January 18, 2009.
Keywords: Libertarian Papers, editorial, publishing, history
Download PDF:
I was informed recently that Libertarian Papers has received a quite good ranking from the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), an Australian Government body that deals with academic matters, provides systematic evaluation of a large number of scholarly journals in different disciplines and generates a database and a variety of reports ranking the journals. These ratings are often used by Australian universities to evaluate the contribution of their academics to various fields.
The ERA Journal Ranking List for all law and legal studies journals is appended below. The order of the rankings is A*, A, B, C and then not ranked. Libertarian Papers is highlighted in the list. It is ranked at level A, which is the second best ranking on the list, which is considered quite good.
Needless to say, we are very pleased with this recognition of the excellence the journal strives for.
Abstract: An ethic of self-ownership combined with Lockean homesteading of external resources provides a plausible grounding both for anarchist opposition to the state and for an attractive anarchist legal order. Such an ethic can be understood as specifying that each person prima facie has the right to control his or her own body; and that Lockean homesteading, under which the owner of any scarce resource is its first user (or his contractual transferee), should provide the basis for property rights in such previously unowned goods. Given these rules, monopoly privileges like patent and copyright (intellectual property, or IP) cannot be justified, as they infringe on self-ownership-based body-rights and/or property rights in external resources. In this article, I explain why IP rights are inconsistent with the moral grounds for a stateless society’s legal order, and speculate about the practices or laws that might prevail in the absence of IP in such a system.
Download Paper: “Law and Intellectual Property in a Stateless Society”
The Capital Free Press has compiled a list of the top ranked “libertarian websites based on the number of unique visitors in the most recent month according to the data compiled by Compete.” The post is pasted below. Not surprisingly, LewRockwell.com is the most visited libertarian site. Four of my own sites made the list: StephanKinsella.com (#84), Libertarian Papers (#100), The Libertarian Standard (#75), and Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF, #78).
The Most Visited Libertarian Websites
Automating everything means that adding a new website is as simple as plugging a new url into my list, so you have any suggestions for a website to add, please email me at patrick@capitalfreepress.com.
Due to the restrictions on the free use of the Compete API, there is a chance that I could run out of API calls in a 24 hour period (resets at midnight EST). The way that I compile this list and the terms and conditions on the use of their API prevent me from displaying the number of unique visitors for each website in the chart, though that information and more can be accessed via the link I have provided.
Libertarian Papers is pleased to announce that Matthew McCaffrey has agreed to serve as the journal’s Editor. A PhD candidate at the University of Angers, Mises Institute fellow, and winner of the 2010 Lawrence W. Fertig Prize in Austrian Economics, Matt previously served as the journal’s Managing Editor. He may be reached here.
Stephan Kinsella will serve as Executive Editor.
As discussed previously (see Libertarian Papers, Vol. 3, Part 1 Now Available in Print and Ebook), we recently decided to start offering Paper and Ebook Versions of Libertarian Papers articles, by occasionally collecting them into Parts (like issues) and offered for sale in print versions and epub versions on the major epub retailers. We did this in part in response to several requests by readers over the last couple years to prepare paper versions.
So far, sales for the ebook versions on Kindle, Nook, etc., are pretty low, and, while paper sales are a bit higher, those are pretty low as well. At present the cost to prepare the epub and Createspace files, plus the ebook-aggregator service (Bookbaby) and Createspace fees is probably too high to be recouped by sales. I’d like to gauge reader interest in both the ebook, and paper, versions, to determine how to proceed going forward (although the sales are already telling me something).
What we will probably do, going forward, at least for now, is publish paper versions only, since the majority of the cost per issue lies in the epub preparation fees and the Bookbaby fees. The costs for preparing the Createspace file and its fees are much lower, and might make this sustainable going forward.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment or email me.
Libertarian Papers is pleased to announce that Matt McCaffrey, a PhD candidate at the University of Angers, Mises Institute fellow, and winner of the 2010 Lawrence W. Fertig Prize in Austrian Economics, has agreed to serve as the journal’s Assistant Editor.
My Mises Daily article “Libertarian Controversies” ran today, discussing my upcoming Mises Academy course, Libertarian Controversies, which some Libertarian Papers readers may find of interest.
Libertarian Papers is pleased to announce that Peter Klein, Associate Professor of Applied Social Sciences and Director of the McQuinn Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the University of Missouri, has joined the Editorial Board.
As noted in Volunteer Sought for DOAJ Listings, Libertarian Papers is indexed in a large number of indexing and related services, and, since May 2009, has been indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (see Libertarian Papers Indexed in DOAJ). Our journal entry is here. Only our very first article had been manually added to the DOAJ index–now, thanks to the volunteer efforts of LP supporter and author Lee Haddigan, all of LP’s articles are now listed in the DOAJ database, and all future articles will be added as they are published. Thanks Lee!
As noted previously, Libertarian Papers articles will occasionally be collected into Parts (like issues) and offered for sale in print versions and epub versions on the major epub retailers (see Libertarian Papers, Vols. 1 and 2, Now Available in Print and Ebook). The first two volumes have already been published this way; ebook versions for the first four issues are sold at $9.99, and print versions sold a slightly above the print-on-demand cost (with a discount at CreateSpace if you use the discount code TV6PLDNW). They may be ordered here.
Volume 3, Part 1, has just been released as well, in several formats. It’s 290 pages, and includes the first 13 articles published so far this year:
1. “Of Private, Common, and Public Property and the Rationale for Total Privatization” by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
2. “Plato and the Spell of the State” by Patrick C. Tinsley
3. “Review of Kosanke’s Instead of Politics” by Don Stacy
4. “Response to Wisniewski on Abortion, Round Two” by Walter E. Block
5. “Unity and Integration in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged” by Edward W. Younkins
6. “Response to Block on Abortion, Round Three” by Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski
7. “Well-Being and Objectivity” by Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski
8. “Truth in Philosophy” by Tibor R. Machan
9. “The Economic Nobel Prize” by Nikolay Gertchev
10. “Free Markets, Property Rights and Climate Change: How to Privatize Climate Policy” by Graham Dawson
11. “Review of Eagleton’s Why Marx Was Right” by Morgan A. Brown
12. “Contra Copyright, Again” by Wendy McElroy
13. “The Causes of Price Inflation & Deflation: Fundamental Economic Principles the Deflationists Have Ignored” by Laura Davidson
A couple of changes from the previous releases. First, since the page count is lower (290 pages versus over 400), the price is lower: $11.99 with discount code TV6PLDNW), Amazon ($12.99); Kindle version is $5.99. Second, due to popular request from readers, we are going to use different cover designs for each published issue going forward. The first two volumes used the same image used for the journal’s website–Canaletto’s Piazza San Marco: Looking South-East (1735–40). The cover image for Vol. 3, Part 1 is Canaletto’s The Grand Canal and the Church of the Salute (1730). Ordering information is below:
- Vol. 3 (2011), Part 1: Articles 1-13
- print: CreateSpace ($11.99 with discount code TV6PLDNW), Amazon ($12.99)
- epub: Kindle; Nook; Sony Reader; iBookstore (forthcoming)
Libertarian Papers is indexed in a large number of indexing and related services, and, since May 2009, has been indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) (see Libertarian Papers Indexed in DOAJ). Our journal entry is here.
Apparently each article published in LP has to be manually added to the DOAJ index via our publisher interface. The only article included at present is our very first article; the remaining articles from Vol. 1 (2009) are not yet included, nore are any articles from Vols. 2 and 3 (2010-2011). I need a volunteer to manually add these approximately 100 articles to the DOAJ database manually via the publisher interface. Then I can add new articles to the DOAJ database each time we publish a new article.
If you are interested in assisting, please let me know (contact).
As readers of Libertarian Papers know, all LP articles are published free and in PDF and in the original Word source file. We use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License so people are free to do what they want with our articles–reprint them, incorporate them into new works, include them as chapters in books–just grab the Word file and you’re good to go, with our blessing. (I discuss the origins of the journal in “Fifteen Minutes that Changed Libertarian Publishing.”)
Still, we often get requests for print and kindle/ebook versions. When we started LP in early 2009, we published the first few articles in Kindle format–I simply uploaded the Word files as individual “books,” and priced them at the lowest price Amazon would allow, $0.99. They sold, even though Kindle owners can easily put the Word version of the article on their Kindle for free. People like convenience, it turns out. But I stopped putting up Kindle versions after a while due to lack of manpower and resources. Gil Guillory helped with some early podcast mixing and with two LuLu print-on-demand versions of Vol. 1, but this was a volunteer effort and could not be sustained. I intended to figure it out myself–I bought a book on Kindle formatting–but I just could not find time to do it. It was time to outsource. (The Mises Institute hosts and publishes the journal and generously provided website design and technical resources. I could have asked them to do the print and ebook publishing, but I knew they are swamped with so many publishing and other projects and their resources, plus I wanted to try this on my own to learn more about this type of publishing.)
After some digging, I found Mark Stanley (email: jmark@mises.com), who did a great job for me converting the files into “books” for both print and ebook purposes (PDF files for the former, and epub and .mobi files for the latter). The first two volumes, for 2009 and 2010, were each over 800 pages (each including 44 or so articles). I decided to split each volume up into two parts, Part 1 and Part 2, similar to a conventional journal’s “issues,” each Part having 400+ pages and 20+ articles. And there are corresponding ebooks.
As can be seen on the journal’s Paper and Ebook Versions page (see information pasted below), the first two volumes are now available in print and ebook versions. The print versions are available from Amazon and CreateSpace (the Amazon subsidiary I used for the print-on-demand books; one advantage of CreateSpace over LuLu for print-on-demand is that they automatically list the book on Amazon). And the ebook versions are now available on the Kindle, Nook, and iBookstore platforms (Sony Reader versions should be up before long). I used BookBaby, an ebook aggregator, to publish on all 4 ebook platforms, for convenience. CreateSpace assigns an ISBN for the print version for free, and BookBaby assigns an ebook ISBN for a small fee.
I priced the print versions a bit above cost and the ebooks at $9.99 to make a few bucks per copy. I could price them lower, but I would like to recoup my costs (paying Mark for his formatting work, the CreateSpace “pro” charge and the BookBaby charges, and a few other incidental costs). I figure if I sell maybe 70-100 copies per “issue” I will break even and will be able to continue doing this going forward. If I sell more, I can use the extra funds for a few other little things to improve the journal, and/or lower the price going forward to fine-tune it to break-even.
Links for the various versions of the first two volumes are below. I intend to release Vol. 3, Part 1, shortly, rather than waiting to the end of the year; that means Vol. 3 will probably have 3 or 4 smaller-sized Parts (say, 200-250 pages) instead of two big ones. If anyone orders any of the ebooks or print versions, please feel free to send me any feedback, comments, or suggestions (here in the comments or by email).
Paper and Ebook Versions
Libertarian Papers articles will occasionally be collected into Parts (like issues) and offered for sale in print versions and epub versions on the major epub retailers. Epub versions for the first four issues are sold at $9.99, and print versions sold a slightly above the print-on-demand cost (with a discount at CreateSpace if you use the discount code TV6PLDNW).
More information may be found at the links below:
- Vol. 1 (2009), Part 1: Articles 1-25
- print: CreateSpace ($15.99 with discount code TV6PLDNW), Amazon ($16.99)
- epub: Kindle; Nook; Sony Reader; iBookstore
- Vol. 1 (2009), Part 2: Articles 26-44
- print: CreateSpace ($15.99 with discount code TV6PLDNW), Amazon ($16.99)
- epub: Kindle; Nook; Sony Reader; iBookstore
- Vol. 2 (2010), Part 1: Articles 1-22
- print: CreateSpace ($15.99 with discount code TV6PLDNW), Amazon ($16.99)
- epub: Kindle; Nook; Sony Reader; iBookstore
- Vol. 2 (2010), Part 2: Articles 23-45
- print: CreateSpace ($15.99 with discount code TV6PLDNW), Amazon ($16.99)
- epub: Kindle; Nook; Sony Reader; iBookstore
[Mises cross-post]
The O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship is a $1000 prize awarded by the Mises Institute each year for the the article published in the preceding volume of Libertarian Papers that best advances libertarian scholarship, as chosen by the journal’s Editor and Editorial Board. There were forty-five articles were published in Libertarian Papers in 2010. The 2010 award was given by Mises Institute President Doug French at the Austrian Scholars Conference 2011 to Professor Philipp Bagus for his article “Austrian Business Cycle Theory: Are 100 Percent Reserves Sufficient to Prevent a Business Cycle?” (See the video of Bagus’s Murray N. Rothbard Memorial Lecture.) Congratulations to Dr. Bagus.
Libertarian Papers has in the past produced print archives (paper versions) of its articles. Our last volunteer, Gil Guillory, had to quit so we have a need for some volunteer assistance help assemble Vol. 1, Part 3, and two or three parts for Vol. 2. Ideally I’d like it kindle formatted and also a PDF version that I can use for Lulu or Amazon’s print on demand service. I need someone who can take a batch of Word files and create these files for me, with some guidance from me on cover, etc.
If you would like to help, please let me know (contact).
Please feel free to send me nominations for the best LP article from 2010.
Alford Prize Awarded for Best Libertarian Article in 2009
The O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship is a $1000 prize awarded by the Mises Institute each year for the the article published in the preceding volume of Libertarian Papers that best advances libertarian scholarship, as chosen by the journal’s Editor and Editorial Board.
I am seeking volunteer referees to review 7 draft articles submitted to Libertarian Papers. I list the titles and Abstracts of a few of them below. If you are potentially interested in reviewing any of these, or if you have any particular referee suggestions for any of them, please contact me. I’d be happy to send blind drafts to anyone who is interested in considering reviewing any of these. (Also, if you are a scholar who is interested in being added to my email list of potential referees for future submissions, please let me know.) *** 1. “Government Through The Eyes of Emergence” 2. “Choice and Language Shift” I shall analyze the decision to shift from one’s mother tongue to a different language, following three different theoretical perspectives: libertarian, left-liberal, and national/identity. Following which I shall analyze three potential governmental responses to a language shift scenario from the same three theoretical perspectives: libertarian, left-liberal and national/identity. The last part of the essay discusses arguments that may assist us in deciding among the potential governmental responses described. 3. “The Current Evidence for Hayek’s Cultural Group Selection Theory” 4. “Reexamining the Federal Monetary Powers” 5. “Praxeological implications for Belief and the case against Value Pluralism” 6. “Mises’s Defense of Liberty: A Critique” 7. “Contemporary Philosophy Versus the Free Society“ Without by any means implying that philosophical issues are exclusively central to a defense of a just system of human community life, it would be of some value to see what philosophy can—indeed, needs to—contribute to such a task. Let me take a brief look at some of the most important of these. We receive a variety of submissions on various topics of libertarian scholarship, such as philosophy, economics, legal theory, political science, history, and social/cultural analysis. If you are interested in serving as an occasional referee, please contact me privately at nskinsella@gmail.com.
We are pleased to announce that the distinguished philosopher Gerard Casey, of the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, author of various works such as Born Alive: The Legal Status of the Unborn Child (Chichester: Barry Rose Law Publishers, 2005) has joined the Editorial Board of the journal.
Abstract: Examining the legitimacy of government by using Reductionist and Emergent principals. The essay addresses issues on morality, the is – ought fallacy, and the misrepresentation of government.
Abstract: What is the adequate normative response to a growing trend of language shift in a given small linguistic community, either a minority or a majority community in a given liberal country? This essay attempts to answer this question. I shall analyze carefully whether the members of this small linguistic community choose to continue (or choose not to continue) to use their mother tongue. Carefully examining the ‘choice’ aspect of the decision to shift from language A to B is important for the analysis of a language shift scenario, as a proper understanding of the ‘shifting decision’ is crucial for any attempt to theorize about the proper governmental response to a language-shift scenario.
Abstract: In this article I summarize Friedrich Hayek’s cultural group selection theory and describe the evidence gathered by current cultural group selection theorists within the behavioral and social sciences supporting Hayek’s main assertions. Before concluding with a few comments on Hayek as a libertarian, I also describe three ways in which current cultural group selection theory has superseded Hayek’s views.
Abstract: The present paper challenges today’s consensus that the Constitution plays no role in limiting the federal government’s exercise of its monetary powers. Noting a growing international consensus regarding the need for monetary reform and reviewing the Supreme Court decisions which led to today’s American monetary system, the author argues that unless the Constitution is returned to its proper role in limiting the federal government’s exercise of monetary powers, a legal system may emerge far beyond the control of the American people and absolutely contrary to their best interests.
Abstract: In this brief essay, I outline the implications of Praxeology for a variety of kinds of Value pluralism. I attempt to show how action, logic and even belief itself, results in a self refutation of these doctrines.
Abstract: What this paper attempts to demonstrate is that, in his treatise Liberalism, Mises’ defense of liberty is incomplete because his reasoning in favor of liberty for all is – not of a moral, but – exclusively of an economic kind. Without a moral justification, Mises’s defense –- once the aim of productivity has been abandoned–is forced to affirm with cold indifference that a society of slaves is no better or worse than one of free men. There exists a more comprehensive defense.
(from introduction): Some would have it that we can have a philosophy of freedom without, well, a philosophy. In other words, they find it rather pointless to dwell on various philosophical topics, such as free will versus determinism, the problem of knowledge, what is the nature of right conduct and so forth. Instead they wish to focus on so called practical issues, such as how much prosperity or science or satisfaction is produced in a relatively free versus planned society. As if these considerations didn’t have some philosophical dimensions.