Smash the Plutocracy!

by Liberty and Power

[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]

I'm pleased to announce that I've received permission from Reason magazine to post Roy Childs' classic 1971 essay Big Business and the Rise of American Statism on the Molinari Institute website. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time this excellent specimen of radical libertarian social analysis has been made available online. Drawing on Austro-Randian methodology and New Left historiography, Childs develops a libertarian interpretation of the Progressive Era, showing that government regulations supposedly designed to curb the power of the big corporations were actually introduced at the instigation and for the benefit of those corporations. I find this essay quite useful for libertarian outreach to the left (as well as for left-libertarian outreach to recovering-Republican libertarians). Read it here.

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Kenneth R Gregg - 10/3/2004

I must echo your sentiments, Dr. Marina. Roy was quite good in historical analyses and followed the structure that Murray framed and I remember he wrote and lectured quite a bit on the subject (seems to me I remember a conference in San Francisco many years ago in which both you and Roy spoke on the subject).

There is also Butler Shaffer's recent book, "In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition" (Bucknell U. Press, 1997), but it would have a treasure to have had Murray's book completed.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com/

William Marina - 10/3/2004

It was nice of you to put Roy's essay online. Most readers will not have read Kolko, Weinstein, LaFeber or Rothbard. It is a pity MNR never completed his projected book on the Progressive Era beyond several essays.