The Debate
Summary:
This discussion had its beginnings in a Liberty Fund conference on Molinari
which was held in late 2012, the centennial year of his death. The discussants
here were also at that conference and showed considerable interest in continuing
that conversation online. Some of the topics which were raised at the conference
were the following: Molinari between conservatism and socialism, eminent
domain and the rights of labor, the competitive provision of security, religion
and ethics, the evanescence of war, and the rise of autonomous communities.
In his Lead Essay Roderick Long assesses Molinari's legacy, giving him a "hit" for
his work on the competitive provision of security, his proposal for a system
of labor exchanges, and his opposition to war and empire; and a "miss" for
the weakness of the moral foundation of his philosophy, his hedonistic assumptions
about human psychology, the historical inadequacy of his theory of political
and economic evolution, and his theory of "tutelage" for those
groups he believed were not yet ready for liberty. Long concludes that “for
all his shortcomings, Molinari remains not only an interesting historical
thinker, but also a vital lodestar for the liberty movement today.”
Liberty Matters
