Related Links in the Library:
David M. Hart, Thomas Mackay (1849-1912)
Thomas Mackay (1849-1912) was a successful English wine merchant who retired
early from business so he could devote himself entirely to the study of economic
issues such as the Poor Laws, growing state intervention in the economy, and
the rise of socialism. Mackay was asked by the individualist and laissez-faire
lobby group, the Liberty and Property Defense League (founded in 1882 by the
Earl of Wemyss), to put together a collection of essays by leading classical
liberals to rebut the socialist ideas contained in Fabian Essays in Socialism edited
by George Bernard Shaw in 1889. The result was a volume of essays called A
Plea for Liberty: An Argument against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation which
appeared in 1891, and another volume of essays A Policy of Free Exchange:
Essays by Various Writers on the Economical and Social Aspects of Free Exchange
and Kindred Subjects which appeared in 1894.
Two of the guiding intellectual lights of the Liberty and Property Defense
League were Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), whose The Man versus the State had
appeared in 1884, and Auberon Herbert (1838-1906), whose The Right and Wrong
of Compulsion by the State had appeared in 1885). Both Spencer and Herbert
were troubled by the direction in which the British Liberal Party was heading,
away from strict adherence to policies of individual liberty and non-intervention
in the economy and towards a "New Liberalism" which laid the intellectual
foundations for the modern welfare state. The aim of Mackay and the members
of the Liberty and Property Defense League was to use the occasion of the publication
of a major defense of state interventionism in the economy, the Fabian Essays,
as an opportunity to oppose all advocates of these policies whether from the "right" (the
Liberal Party) or the "left" the Fabian socialists and the Labour
Party. The result were the two volumes mentioned above. The strategy adopted
was to argue against both the morality and the practically of socialism. The
latter resulted in many essays showing how specific examples of state intervention
or control, such as electrical distribution or public housing, led to unintended,
harmfuil consequences.
The ideas expressed in the two volumes, A Plea for Liberty and A
Policy of Free Exchange, are still still timely even after the passage
of some 110 years. In spite of the fall of communism and the discrediting
of the idea of a centrally planned economy, myriad government interventions
in the operation of the economy are still with us, seemingly entrenched and
impossible to remove. It is thus interesting to see the response to socialism
by free market people who were present at is birth. We plan to publish online
all three volumes involved in this intellectual debate - the Fabian defense
of socialism which started the debate, followed by the two volumes containing
the individualist and free market critique. We begin this month with the
first volume published by the Liberty and Property Defense League, A Plea
for Liberty.
Bibliography
Eric Mack, "Foreword" to Herbert Spencer, The Man versus the
State, with Six Essays on Government, Society, and Freedom (Indianapolis:
LibertyClassics, 1981).
Eric Mack, "Introduction" to Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong
of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics,
1978).
Jeffrey Paul, "Foreword" to A Plea for Liberty: An Argument
against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation, consisting of an Introduction
by Hebert Spencer and Essays by Various Writers, edited by Thomas Mackay (1891)
(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981).
Edward Bristow, "The Liberty and Property Defence League and Individualism," The
Historical Journal, 1975, vol. XVIII, no. 4, pp. 761-789.
N. Soldon, "Laissez-Faire as Dogma: The Liberty and Property Defence
League, 1882-1914", in Essays in Anti-Labour History: Responses to
the Rise of Labour in Britain, ed. Kenneth D. Brown (Macmillan1974), pp.
208-233.
J.W. Mason, "Thomas Mackay: The Anti-Socialist Philosophy of the Charity
Organisation Society," , in Essays in Anti-Labour History: Responses
to the Rise of Labour in Britain, ed. Kenneth D. Brown (Macmillan1974),
pp. 290-316.
J.W. Mason, "Political Economy and the Response to Socialism in Britain,
1870-1914," The Historical Journal, 1980, vol. XXIII, no. 3, pp.
565-587.
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