The Liberty Archive FREECAPITALISTS.ORG

First published 1950

Students of Liberty

Students of Liberty by Leonard E. Read is available as a free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle download at freecapitalists.org, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

Author
Leonard E. Read
First published
1950
Format
PDF, EPUB, and Kindle
Pages
62
ISBN
978-1-63069-664-1
Publisher
The Foundation for Economic Eduction, New York
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Liberty, ethics & philosophy

Leonard Read's 1950 primer on the free society, built on one distinction: which human relations rest on voluntary exchange and which rest on violence. Short chapters take up the proper work of government, the evil of tariffs, the uses and abuses of organization, and how minor coercion grows into major coercion.

Questions

About this book and this copy

Is Students of Liberty free to download?
Yes. The complete 62-page PDF, EPUB, and Kindle downloads directly from this page (2.2 MB). There is no signup, no account and no paywall.
How long is Students of Liberty?
62 pages, 48 chapters, and about 13,786 words in the edition this archive serves.
Can I reuse or republish Students of Liberty?
This edition is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, so yes, on that licence's terms. Check the deed for what attribution it requires.
Who wrote Students of Liberty?
Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) was an American founder and president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), and had a lifelong devotion to educating people about freedom in down-to-earth ways that would stick with them. This archive holds 39 of Read's works.

What's in it

48 chapters · 13,786 words · free to read here

  1. Students of Liberty
  2. Man is Independent
  3. The Principle of Violence
  4. Policemen with Guns
  5. Early American Experiment
  6. Communism Rejected
  7. The Reason for Government
  8. Officials Are Still Persons
  9. No Aggression
  10. Protection and Dependency
  11. A Vital Measure
  12. The Evil of Tariffs
  13. Violence Has Many Names
  14. A Measure of Lost Freedom
  15. A Sobering Comparison
  16. Violence Breeds Violence
  17. The Determination of Value
  18. Minor Violence Leads to Major Violence
  19. Alternative to Violence
  20. Intellectual Caesarism
  21. With Eyes to See
  22. Two Types of Action
  23. A Mania for Organizing
  24. Organization is Little Understood
  25. Organization Can Be Useful
  26. Organization Can Be Harmful
  27. On Selecting a Logical Source
  28. Danger of False Optimism
  29. False Supporters of Liberty
  30. Fear Is Not Understanding
  31. Self-Improvement
  32. Liberty Is the Absence of Coercion
  33. An Infinite Pursuit
  34. The Death of Creative Thought
  35. New Name for Lost Liberties
  36. A Student of Liberty
  37. Destruction and Creation
  38. Who Is a Teacher?
  39. In Search of Understanding
  40. Moral and Intellectual Attitudes
  41. Intellectual Integrity
  42. A New Insight
  43. Pre-Conditions to Understanding
  44. Search Here
  45. On Saving the World
  46. The Wave Theory
  47. Recommendations of Reason
  48. About this edition
Portrait of Leonard E. Read

About the author

Leonard E. Read 1898–1983

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) was an American founder and president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), and had a lifelong devotion to educating people about freedom in down-to-earth ways that would stick with them. Read more about Leonard E. Read.

Keep reading

More by Leonard E. Read