Front Matter

Chapter 1

The Struggle for Liberty

The Mises Institute dedicates this volume to all of its generous

donors and wishes to thank these Patrons in particular:

Steven R. BergerJon CarnesMichael CollinsProf. and Mrs. James M. CoxDr. Matthew DesmondJerry T. DowellWilliam EatonCharles F. HanesJanna HarmonShaun E. HerringKenneth KingWilliam S. Klocek, Esq.

Randolph D. LoveNathan MaddenRalph MartinsJohn MatthewsMark and Mirella MonoscalcoDaniel A. RankinDr. and Mrs. Murray SabrinCurtis SjolanderEmanuel Mark StrategosReginald VictoriaWenguang WangKyle WoleryDominique Yarnell

The Struggle for Liberty

A Libertarian History of Political Thought

Ralph Raico

A Series of Ten Lectures

Delivered at the Mises Institute, June 2004

Edited with Annotations and Introductionby Ryan McMaken

Forewordby T. Hunt Tooley

MI S E SIN S T I T U T E

AUBURN, ALABAMARALPH RAICO (1936–2016) was professor emeritus in European history at Buffalo State College and a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He was a specialist on the history of liberty, the liberal tradition in Europe, and the relationship between war and the rise of the state. He is the author of The Place of Religion in the Liberal Philosophy of Constant, Tocqueville, and Lord Acton, Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal, Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School, The World at War.

T. HUNT TOOLEY is the A.M. Pate, Jr., Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He specializes in modern European history, war, revolution, and peacemaking. He is the author of The Great War: Western Front and Home Front, National Identity and Weimar Germany, and the historical novel, Anima and the Goat.

RYAN MCMAKEN is executive editor at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a former economist for the State of Colorado, and the author of more than a thousand articles on topics ranging from state building to secession to public finance. He is author of two books: Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radi-cal Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

THE MISES INSTITUTE is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.The Mises Institute is funded entirely by voluntary contributions from individuals, businesses, and foundations. We do not accept any government money. For more information, see mises.org, write us at contact@mises.org, or phone us at 1.800.OF.MISES.

Published 2025 by the Mises InstitutePublished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Mises Institute

518 W. Magnolia Ave.

Auburn, AL 36832mises.org | contact@mises.org

ISBN: 978-1-61016-781-9

CONTENTS

Foreword by T. Hunt Tooley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Lecture 1 The European Miracle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Lecture 2 Classical Liberalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Lecture 3 John Stuart Mill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Lecture 4 Class and Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Lecture 5 War, Peace, and the Industrial Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Lecture 6 The New World of Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Lecture 7 The Anticapitalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Lecture 8 The Planned Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187

Lecture 9 The First World War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Lecture 10 Classical Liberalism and the Welfare-Warfare State . . . . 237

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

5