/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2397939]

These novels (and other books) have libertarian themes such as human freedom, voluntarism, individualism, or anti-statism. Many other themes are present too. Some of the authors are themselves libertarians, some are not.

[Anonymous No.2397944]

Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966). This is the critically acclaimed book that inspired a young David Friedman to write Machinery of Freedom in 1969. All libertarian themes are at the forefront, told by a skilled writer at the peak of his creative powers.

[Anonymous No.2397946]

Yo Hua’s To Live (1993). A most human book on life in Maoist China. We shouldn’t forget the lives destroyed by total statism in such a recent history, when that fanatic death cult controlled much more than North Korea.

[Anonymous No.2397950]

[3] Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day (1970). Here, Ira Levin, author of The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby, gives us a false-utopia vision of the future where the State attempts to manage everyone’ lives through a supercomputer. Great book, very libertarian, and a nice antidote to utopian technocrat Zeitgeisters

[Anonymous No.2397952]

[4] Albert Camus’ The Plague (1947). This is the most political novel Camus wrote. Deserves its extremely good reputation. Individualism, freedom, community, and voluntary self-sacrifice are everpresent themes; libertarians will want to pay close attention to the character Raymond Rambert.

[Anonymous No.2397956]

[5] Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House (1968). This is actually a collection of short stories by the legendary Vonnegut. All are good, but of special interest here is “Harrison Bergeron,” the story of a society in which the State has succeeded in making everyone equal… almost.

[Anonymous No.2397957]

[6] Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953). A classic on statism, government censorship, mass apathy, and individual dissent.

[Anonymous No.2397958]

[7] Mario Vargas Llosa’s Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973). Very funny satire on government bureaucracy. Masterfully uses humor to get serious points across. Llosa won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work last year and he’s an outspoken libertarian - he’s even written articles for Reason magazine.

[Anonymous No.2397960]

>Robert Heinlein’s Widely Known And Celebrated Work (1966). This is the critically acclaimed book that inspired Some Other Guy to write Something You Probably Haven't Heard Of in 1969.
Most bizarre way to go about recommending books that I ever saw.

[Anonymous No.2397963]

[8] Czeslaw Milosz’ The Captive Mind (1953). This novel gives you total statism from the perspective of true believers. Milosz (a Polish poet who won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature) wanted to get inside the heads of the communists, to expose their thought processes, and he does so brilliantly.

[Anonymous No.2397966]

>>2397960
David Friedman's book (which is about political economy) is well-known among libertarians. David Friedman is the son of Milton Friedman and co-founder of anarcho-capitalism.

[Anonymous No.2397970]

[9] J. Neil Schulman’s Alongside Night (1979). Excellent novel describes the last two weeks before the collapse of the US government, and its happy aftermath.

[D/Gen !ONuNxgYHI2 No.2397971]

Can we have the link you took this from?

And also, inb4 this.

[Anonymous No.2397973]

I approve of this thread.

[Anonymous No.2397974]

[10] George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945). If you’re a libertarian and you haven’t read this, you probably should.

[Anonymous No.2397976]

>>2397946
>Yo Hua’s To Live (1993).
Been a few years, but I really enjoyed the Zhang Yimou film. Didn't realise it was based on a novel.

>A most human book on life in Maoist China. We shouldn’t forget the lives destroyed by total statism in such a recent history, when that fanatic death cult controlled much more than North Korea.
Sounds like it's just being mentioned as a peg to hang an opinion on, rather than as a suggestion for something interested people should actually read.

Cheers for posting these anyway, Anon.

[Anonymous No.2397977]

>>2397971
http://whakahekeheke.tumblr.com/post/5997202535/these-20-novels-have-libertarian-themes-such-as

[Anonymous No.2397980]

[11] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Another Nobel winner. One day in the life of an individual in the Soviet gulag. Devastating and hopeful.

[Anonymous No.2397983]

[12] Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (1844). Themes in this classic are clear: retribution, freedom, fate, and the corruption of the State. “It seems to me the first care of government should be to set at liberty those who have suffered for their adherence to it.”

[Anonymous No.2397984]

[13] Young-ha Kim’s I Have the Right to Destroy Myself (2007). South Korean novel touching on suicide, its criminalization by the State, and the primacy each individual has over knowing “what’s best” for him. A slightly depressing but very very well-written, thought-provoking book.

[Anonymous No.2397986]

>>2397983
>posting the cover of the abridged version

what r u doiin

[Anonymous No.2397989]

[14] J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1955). Tolkien was a libertarian anti-statist and couldn’t help reflecting that in his epic, as he put it: “The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion that has long lost any object save mere power.”

[Anonymous No.2397991]

>>2397952
>rambert
You mean the guy who moves away from his initial fruitcase beliefs?

[Anonymous No.2397994]

Source:
http://whakahekeheke.tumblr.com/post/5997202535/these-20-novels-have-libertarian-themes-such-as

[Anonymous No.2397998]

>>2397991
As I recall, Rambert has the chance to leave but voluntarily decides to stay in the plagued city. Hence voluntary self-sacrifice. Fits in squarely with libertarian ideals, and especially Camus' style of libertarianism which he called 'altruistic individualism' in The Rebel.

[Anonymous No.2398001]

[15] Franz Kafka’s The Trial (1925). Classic, bleak, mind-numbing, account of the individual human being lost in a mindless machine of government.

[Anonymous No.2398004]

[16] Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). Another classic, thoroughly libertarian, and amazingly well-written.

[Anonymous No.2398007]

>ignoring the inevitability of monopoly
PETITE BOURGEOISIE LOGIC

[Anonymous No.2398011]

Eumeswil by Ernst Junger

[Anonymous No.2398019]

>>2398007
Which is more likely to result in deleterious monopolies, do you think? (1) a mass ideological projection of onto a sacralized subgroup institution called the state or party or whatever or (2) numerous, dispersed interactions of individuals acting according to general rules of conduct applied to all? The institutional framework of voluntary interaction--civil society, free market competition, etc.---provides significant disincentives for behavior required for deleterious monopoly formation.

[Anonymous No.2398024]

>>2398004

>well written

[Anonymous No.2398027]

>>2398004
>Brave New World
Dat happy ending.

[Anonymous No.2398034]

[17] Ayn Rand’s We the Living (1936). Rand’s first novel. Anyone who doesn’t think Rand was a skilled writer should read this. It’s good. She wrote it before fully adopting her ‘Objectivist philosophy,’ which is not libertarianism and which I find seriously misguided.

[Anonymous No.2398053]

>The Man Who Was Thursday
G K Chesterton was a noted Libertarian thinker and dynamiter for the Second Amendment. Here he sets out the infighting and waste of government before exploring the horrors that occur when the state's illegitimate power is turned against the individual.

[Anonymous No.2398068]

>>2398053
Chesterton was a proto-libertarian liberal, interestingly, and his political distributism is pretty close to contemporary left-libertarian thought.

[Anonymous No.2398080]

HOWARDS END
E M Forster's rugged defence of individualism shows how the wealth of umbrellas must rightfully end up in the hands of the hardworking rich and coined his famous Libertarian maxim "Only collect".

[Anonymous No.2398107]

>>2398019
The point is that a free market doesn't exist any more and that emphasis on individuality is going to throw away the only chance at forcing class action that ever existed in the first place
>expectation of morality/responsibility in social relations rather than the fundamental logic of capitalism
>Meanwhile in the fairy kingdom...

I often wonder why I even respond to the paultards any more. The historical process is never going to incorporate your idealizations stemming from democratic rhetoric because they completely ignore the inevitabilites of economy. Genuine capitalism requires subjugation in the same way freedom or any other form of personal control requires subjugation - always at the expense of others because there is no such thing as individuality without warping of the social strata to suit oneself. Society is moving back towards a form of corporate feudalism, and it really doesn't matter what way you spin it, this particular form of narcissistic individuality is doomed. The existence of democracy/capitalism is entirely a historical flutter based on technological change destabilizing the feudal class structure. The bourgeoisie class have consolidated power through monopoly, and will gradually assume their natural position as kings. The peasant lifestyle of medieval ages was superstitious and unchanging, but it provided a reliable economic community without the ravages of capitalism. Before capital, people never cared about watches or time. Before it, desire for individuality did not exist. In a very real sense, this community of interests is likely closest we are ever going to get to socialism, and at best we should be seeking to curb its excess through class unity.

[D/Gen !ONuNxgYHI2 No.2398114]

>>2398107
>Shit's inevitable because it's inevitable.

Why you gotta bring down the mood, bro?

[Anonymous No.2398437]

Alot of John Steinbeck's books glorify the individual.. or rather continuing human dignity regardless of the circumstances.

However, his books not really blame these circumstances on the 'government' per se... so this probably won't suit your inflexible ideology

Sorry

[Anonymous No.2398441]

MOST 20TH CENTURY LITERARY FICTION IS THIS.

Do you seriously not read?

[Anonymous No.2398445]

>This new idealism ended, however, with the outbreak of war, when writers began to generate more cynical postwar works that reflected a prevailing sense of disillusionment and fragmented thought. Many modernist writers shared a mistrust of institutions of power such as government and religion, and rejected the notion of absolute truths. Like T.S. Eliot's masterpiece, The Waste Land, later modernist works were increasingly self-aware, introspective, and often embraced the unconscious fears of a darker humanity.[1]

Wikipedia is your friend. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernist_literature

[Anonymous No.2398447]

>>2398435
Harry Potter

The villain's an authoritarian, the main character must care for himself with disregard for the rules of adults, school, and state and members of the state are shown to be bureaucratically useless (like the minister of magic), prone to corruption, and cruel (like Hogwarts interim headmistress).

[Anonymous No.2400177]

>>2398441
Most? I doubt it.

[Anonymous No.2400359]

Few of these novels are 'libertarian' in any sense. Poor show.

[Anonymous No.2400521]

>>2398007
there is not a single example of a monopoly forming in a free market.

[Anonymous No.2400552]

>>2398007
Logic hating marxist scum detected.

[Anonymous No.2400554]

>>2400521
>because the free market can't have monopoly or else it wouldn't be free!!!

paultards first babby

[Anonymous No.2400565]

>>2397950
>implying the world in This Perfect Day isn't wonderful
>implying I wouldn't live in this world

[Anonymous No.2400568]

>>2400521
There is not a single example of a free market. Also, libertarians can't into power structures. They will form. Inevitably. Enlightened totalitarianism is the only way towards utopia.

[Anonymous No.2400572]

>>2400554
>mad brainwashed marxist cultist is mad

http://mises.org/daily/5266

You're the only one who wants a monopoly you anti-intellectual genocide supporting waste.

[Anonymous No.2400580]

>>2397950
I would gladly live in TPD's world. If I remember well everyone has sex every week from the age of 14.

[Anonymous No.2400592]

Spaghet.

[Anonymous No.2401295]

“No cry of torment can be greater than the cry of one man. Or again, no torment can be greater than what a single human being may suffer.”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, CV§45

“My own view is that rule-following may be conceived, as I think it is pre-theoretically, in entirely individualistic terms. I should emphasise that I do not believe Wittgenstein himself would have dissented from this conclusion: insofar as he has a view on the individual/social opposition, he is an individualist.”
-Colin McGinn, Wittgenstein on Meaning (1987) p.200

[D/Gen !ONuNxgYHI2 No.2402087]

Hello thread;

Did I already tell you how much I love you?

I didn't?

I love you thread.

[Anonymous No.2402101]

Worst thread on /lit/.
OP reported to moot, police, FBI and CIA. Thread hidden and bombed with napalm. Face and brain torched to cleanse them of the filth they have come in contact with.

[Anonymous No.2402102]

This board requires users to be over the age of 18.

[Anonymous No.2402105]

>>2398107
"Communities of competence" and local action that eliminate reliance on experts and bureaucrats is what is needed. Bureaucracy is the most sinister thing to penetrate the general society since Hitler. It removes the need for education and general competence (just call up A/B/C agency, A//B/C doctor, A/B/C expert, etc.). It results in a stupider, more useless population or society. Capitalism ELIMINATES and ERODES individualism, and freedom. That's the ironic thing about these fucking "libertarians".
Monopoly capitalism is responsible for all of this.
However we have to be realistic. We're not going to have a "revolution" or eliminate capitalism, and communism hasn't ever really worked better than capitalism.
The thing is, people are stupid, ignorant, uneducated, vulgar bastards. Democracy doesn't work (not that it's even a real democracy).

[Anonymous No.2402121]

>>2402102

The fuck is "under eighteen" on this thread? The only age reference is to content;

>>2400580

Didn't mean to be rude :)
Have a happy trip, wise and powerful sage.

[Anonymous No.2402157]

>>2397939
120 Days of Sodom fits those criteria.

Who's up for self-satisfaction to the level of absurdity?

[Anonymous No.2402177]

itt: libertarian high schoolers project babby's first internet ideology onto their favorite bedtime stories.

[D/Gen !ONuNxgYHI2 No.2402178]

>>2402177

I'm glad you're being mature about this.

[Anonymous No.2402203]

Whoever it is who constantly, reflexively uses the words
>babby's first
in your post---and has done for months and months on /lit/---you might as well get a fucking tripcode. Because with a verbal tic as obsessive and repetitive as that, it's always you anyway. And with the faintly Caledonian nature of the verbal tic, I half expect you to exclaim "hoots, mon" or declare a passion for tatties and mashed neeps whilst roamin in the gloamin.

Get a new catchphrase, why don't you.

[Anonymous No.2402221]

>>2402203
You seem to have mistaken internet vernacular for a single person.

[Anonymous No.2402317]

Where the fuck is Max Stirner in this thread?

[Anonymous No.2402328]

Libertarianism's become such a gross term since it's been co-opted by Paultards and made synonymous with worshipping the free market and reading Ayn Rand.

I'll take an old-school left libertarian work like Animal Farm or Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread or anything by Emma Goldman, any day.

[Anonymous No.2402330]

>>2402317
Sitting silently in the corner, smoking a cigar, smirking at the libertarians childlike naivety and lack of courage to drive their thought to it's logical end, namely egoism.