The Market for Liberty is an anarcho-capitalist book written by Linda and Morris Tannehill, which according to Karl Hess has become "something of a classic." It was preceded by the self-published Liberty via the Market in 1969.

Mary Ruwart credits the Tannehills and their book with winning her over to anarchism. Doug Casey was also converted to anarcho-capitalism after reading the book at the behest of Jarret Wollstein.

According to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, it was written just following a period of intense study of the writings of both Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. It was the first big anarchist tome to hit the movement, beating Rothbard's Power and Market (which had been written a decade or more earlier) to print by a year.

Like Murray Rothbard, the Tannehills oppose statutory law and advocated the usage of natural law as the basis for society; however, unlike Rothbard who aimed to explain what sort of libertarian legal code the market would create in an anarcho-capitalist society, the Tannehills saw it fit to merely point out that society would not be lawless in the absence of the state.

Conversely, the Tannehills, in The Market for Liberty, spend a great deal of time outlining how different businesses and organisational structures would interact in a laissez-faire society, and how these interactions would create checks which would ultimately keep the tendency for crime low. Despite their belief in radical free market principles, they were skeptical about the potential for violent anarcho-capitalist revolution to bring about good outcomes.

Radicals for Capitalism describes the authors as "a pair who dropped out of the movement and then dropped out of society." (Wikipedia.org)

Download The Market for Liberty

PDF format, 14MB, 174Pages. Thanks to The Mises Institute.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments iv
PART I—The Great Conflict 1
Chapter 1. If We Don't Know Where We're Going 2
2. Man and Society 6
3. The Self-Regulating Market 16
4. Government—An Unnecessary Evil 32
PART II—A Laissez-Faire Society 43
Chapter 5. A Free and Healthy Economy 44
6. Property—The Great Problem Solver 54
7. Arbitration of Disputes 65
8. Protection of Life and Property 77
9. Dealing With Coercion 88
10. Rectification of Injustice 101
11. Warring Defense Agencies and
Organized Crime 109
12. Legislation and Objective Law 116
13. Foreign Aggression 126
14. The Abolition of War 136
PART III—How Do We Get There? 149
Chapter 15. From Government to Laissez Faire 150
16. The Force Which Shapes the World 160

PART I
THE GREAT CONFLICT
"Since late Neolithic times, men in their political capacity have lived almost exclusively by myths."—Dr. James J. Martin

If We Don't Know Where We're Going . . .
If we don't know where we're going, chances are we won't get there!

Our world is increasingly stirred with dissatisfication. Myriads of people on every continent are whispering or shouting or writing or rioting their discontent with the structures of their societies. And they have a lot to be dissatisfied with—poverty which increases in step with increasingly expensive anti-poverty programs, endlessly heavier burdens of taxation and regulation piled on by unmindful bureaucrats, the long death-agonies of meaningless mini-wars, the terrible, ironfisted knock of secret police . . .

Youth are especially dissatisfied. Many long to turn the world upside down, in hopes that a better, freer, more humane society will emerge. But improvements in man's condition never come as a result of blind hope, pious prayers, or random chance; they are the product of knowledge and thought. Those who are dissatisfied must discover what sort of being man is and, from this, what kind of society is required for him to function most efficiently and happily. If they are unwilling to accept this intellectual responsibility, they will only succeed in exchanging our present troubles for new, and probably worse, ones. ...

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