Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert, born in 1838, was a classical liberal British philosopher and member of Parliament, famous for his brand of individualist anarchism centered on the relationship between coercive force and morality. His philosophy, which he dubbed ‘voluntaryism’, opposed the initiation of aggressive force against any human being, and from this simple premise built up an elaborate vision of a future society operating through free markets, conscientious cooperation, and voluntary association. The influence of anarchists such as Herbert - and the countless anarcho-capitalist philosophers whom he inspired - on the libertarian movements of the English speaking world has been a game-changer. Up until he began to publish his philosophy, it was tacitly acknowledged even by libertarian theorists that society could never fully function without some level of coercion. Until that point, government was near-universally seen as a necessary evil, and no philosopher had yet conceived a society organised in its entirety around voluntary association and exchange. Auberon Herbert, therefore, is to be credited with opening the door to a whole field of imaginative and fantastic conceptions of politics and economics founded on the free market.
To highlight the philosophy of this great English thinker, I have selected ten of the most quotable lines from the work of Auberon Herbert:
On Majorities
1) “How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed.”
On Dependency
2) “If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.”
On the Effects of Force
3) “There never yet has been a great system sustained by force under which all the best faculties of men have not slowly withered.”
On the Nature of Domestic Politics
4) “The career of a politician mainly consists in making one part of the nation do what it does not want to do, in order to please and satisfy the other part of the nation.”
On Might and Right
5) “How should it happen that the individual should be without rights, but the combination of individuals should possess unlimited rights?”
On Human Rights
6) “Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.”
On the Futility of Coercion
7) “If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force.”
On the TSA Before It Existed
8) “If we cannot learn, if the only effect upon us of the presence of the dynamiter in our midst is to make us multiply punishments, invent restrictions, increase the number of our official spies, forbid public meetings, interfere with the press, put up gratings — as in one country they propose to do — in our House of Commons, scrutinize visitors under official microscopes, request them, as at Vienna, and I think now at Paris also, to be good enough to leave their greatcoats in the vestibules … I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time.”
On Liberty and Property
9) “True liberty cannot exist apart from the full rights of property, for property is the only crystallized form of free faculties…The whole meaning of socialism is a systematic glorification of force… No literary phrases about social organisms are potent enough to evaporate the individual, who is the prime, indispensable, irreducible element.”
On Laissez Faire Capitalism
10) “It is not laissez-faire that has failed. That would be an ill day for men. What has failed is the courage to see what is true and speak it to the people, to point to the true remedies.”
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Thanks to Brainy Quote and Liberty Quote for the source material of this article
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