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The Voluntaryist

“If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.” -Gandhi

Statement of Purpose: Voluntaryists are advocates of non-political, non-violent strategies to achieve a free society.
We reject electoral politics, in theory and in practice, as incompatible with libertarian principles. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy.

Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which State power ultimately depends.


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The voluntaryist email group is an occasional forum for announcements, short articles, and other items of interest to voluntaryists. If you would like to join our email group and receive notification when a new issue of our newsletter is posted, click the button below. All back issues of our newsletter are archived digitally with free access. Download the most recent issue, Issue 200. Here is the latest email newsletter.
Quote of the Day
Why Gold? – Because It Works
The use of gold [and] silver … predates the use of writing; … . When standardized in 2150 B.C. during the Akkadian Empire … the mina was about 504 grams – similar to the modern [avoirdupois] pound of 454 grams. The shekel was one-sixtieth of a mina, around 8.40 grams. … In Mesopotamia, for centuries, a shekel was a measure of actual weight. It was never “devalued.” Arguably, it could not be [devalued, any more than an inch could be “devalued” by deleting 1/8 of its length].
People [have] had different languages, different religions, different traditions of philosophy, different forms of economic organization, and different forms of government, but they did not have different money. We can only surmise as to why this was so. It was certainly not a “superstition,” “mania,” “obsession,” or “fetish.” The simplest reason is the same reason why the Japanese and Portuguese of the sixteenth century both carried swords made of steel: because it was the best thing for the job.
- Nathan Lewis, GOLD: THE FINAL STANDARD (2017), pp. 16, 22, 230.
Voluntaryist Musings
I meet with some friends on Thursday mornings and last Thursday, we were discussing three ideas which seem to me to be relatively easy to implement as a method of maintaining ongoing pressure on our species to live better:
1. Remember that cooperation is always preferable to coercion.
2. Don't take moral shortcuts.
3. Overcorrect for your errors.

These may need some qualifications:
1: When you discover or invent a situation in which cooperation fails, it's tempting to pretend that the coercion that could achieve the goal is therefore preferable. This neglects the complete set of results that coercion creates, which includes resentment, avoidance, future refusals to cooperate despite underlying agreement, anger, and a mutual loss of respect. It also neglects the benefits of accepting the failure of cooperation, which include increased respect, a sense of remorse in the uncooperative, and a lingering feeling of wanting to help “some other way.”
2: A “moral shortcut” is a choice to ignore your own conscience. Honoring the tiniest of things that your conscience says will make you proud of yourself and maintain your equanimity.
3: You have to be sure it was an error before overcorrecting for it or else you are in danger of doing more harm than good.

If you find a particularly voluntaryist musing in your messages, suggest it in an email to the editor!

Image of the Day – Feel free to copy, share, or hotlink these images!

Carl Watner, Voluntaryist, Father, Mentor, Husband, and Friend

With great emotion, I share with you the passing of my long-time mentor and friend, Carl Watner. He died peacefully, surrounded by his family, on December 8th after facing down cancer. One could say the cancer won, but this man represented the spirit of voluntaryism and that spirit has become more powerful than I had imagined. I believe that increase will only be accelerated as we realize that it’s all on us now. Thank you, Carl, for adding so much meaning to my life! –Dave the webmaster
THE VOLUNTARYIST COLLECTION

Carl Watner, long-time libertarian and proponent of a voluntary society based on private property, donated over 175 titles from his personal library to The Mises Institute’s Ward and Massey Libraries. The collection is dedicated to the literature of the voluntaryists, past and present. The collection includes a rare first edition of The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner (six volumes). To make it more special, Rothbard signed volume I, along with George Smith, Leonard Liggio, Joe Peden, Mike Coughlin, Charles Shively (editor of the series), Daniel Siegel, Wendy McElroy, Chuck Hamilton, John Mueller, and Bob LeFevre.

 

THE VOLUNTARYIST NEWSLETTER
The Voluntaryist was published continuously from October 1982 through December 2020. Each issue has been archived and can be found by accessing our Table of Contents. I MUST SPEAK OUT, a book-length anthology of articles from the first one hundred issues is available here or may be ordered via our BOOKS page. In addition. flash drives of Issues 1-190 may be ordered for $150 each postpaid. Volume II of I MUST SPEAK OUT contains the best articles from Issue 101 forward. Please click the link to purchase it from Liberty Under Attack.
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As you view our website, please remember that it is a labor of love and search for the truth. If you find anything of value here, please let us know by clicking on the Support Us button at the top. Your gifts to our work are not tax-deductible. Our efforts are bound by conscience and goodwill, not government regulation or political privilege. We refuse to be numbered or supervised by any government agency.