Libertarianism.

• Author: Kogelmann, Brian

Libertarianism

By Eric Mack

Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 2018.

Pp. vii, 162. $19.95 paperback.

Eric Mack has spent a career producing cutting-edge work at the forefront of libertarian political thought. In Libertarianism, Mack takes a step back and offers an accessible and broad overview of libertarian political philosophy. The book covers what libertarianism is, libertarianism's intellectual forefathers, intralibertarian disputes, libertarianism's most serious criticisms (along with responses to these criticisms), and much more. Perhaps the most valuable feature of the book is Mack's emphasis on just how big a tent libertarianism is as a political philosophy; many different normative theories lead to a set of broadly libertarian political institutions.

After a concise and informative introductory chapter, the book starts in earnest in chapter 2, where Mack covers libertarianism's philosophical antecedents. Mack argues there are three distinct proto-libertarian camps. In the first camp are theorists such as John Locke, who grounds property rights and constraints on government authority by appeal to natural rights. The second camp is led by David Hume and Adam Smith, who focus on the conditions necessary to achieve cooperation and mutual advantage. According to Hume, for instance, cooperation demands stable property rights and contracts. Third are those who justify libertarian institutions through appeal to utility or consequences; less government and more freedom, so the argument goes, will tend to produce better outcomes. In this camp are John Stuart Mill as well as Herbert Spencer.

The intellectual history Mack provides in chapter 2 is both deep and fascinating. Even those who have been steeped in libertarian political philosophy for some time will find something new (I learned a tremendous amount about Spencer in particular). One possible criticism here is that the camps Mack proposes are not always as clear-cut as he suggests. Locke, for instance, was of course a natural-rights theorist, but it is not hard to find consequentialist arguments in Locke as well. For example, when discussing the institution of property, he notes "that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind" (Second Treatise of Government [Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett, 1980], pp. 23-24). Remarks like these cast Locke in a consequentialist light, suggesting that there is much fluidity between the camps.

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