Laissez Faire Books

Laissez Faire Books (LFB) is an online bookseller that was originally based in New York City when it first opened in 1972. The bookstore's ownership was transferred to the International Society for Individual Liberty in November 2007.

From 1982 until the recent transfer to ISIL, Laissez Faire Books operated as a division of two separate non-profit corporations, the Center for Independent Thought from 1982-2004, and the Center for Libertarian Thought from 2005-2007.

Laissez Faire Books has long claimed to carry the "best selection of books on liberty." LFB sells books, CDs, and DVDs.

History

LFB was founded in New York City in 1972 by John Muller and Sharon Presley. Muller, a civil engineer who wanted to make a personal commitment to what he called "living liberty," was the originator of the idea of Laissez Faire Books. Muller found the location for the Laissez Faire Bookstore and Art Gallery in a tiny shop on Mercer Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, late in 1971. Together with Presley, a graduate student in psychology at CUNY Graduate Center, Muller mailed their first flyer to about a thousand people, names they had scraped together from their contacts around the country. During the mid-seventies, the Bookstore became a center for libertarian discussion in New York.

The official opening was March 4, 1972 with many local libertarian writers and thinkers in attendance, including Murray Rothbard, Roy A. Childs, Jr., and Jerome Tuccille.In "Radicals for Capitalism", a history of the libertarian movement, Brian Doherty writes "The store became an important social center for the movement in America's largest city, a place for any traveling libertarian to stop for company and succor..." []

In the first several years, many events were sponsored by LFB, including films with libertarian themes, talks by luminaries such as anti-establishment psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin and TV journalist Edith Efron as well as social gatherings. Events included not only book signings (for example, Rothbard and Tuccille) but entertainment with a libertarian angle, including showings of the pro-individual, anti-authoritarian cult TV series, "The Prisoner."

Its location in Greenwich Village attracted non-libertarians as well. They may not have purchased books but Bob Dylan, Jerry Rubin, Alger Hiss and Bella Abzug passed through its doors. Hiss remarked to a friend, "It’s a "clean" anarchist bookstore." Muller and Presley, who strived to make the bookstore attractive as well as useful, were amused by this ironic comment. Dylan asked if the store carried haiku poetry. Presley, pointing out that it was a libertarian and anarchist bookstore, directed him to a copy of the IWW Songbook.

From 1972 to 1977, Presley edited the "Laissez Faire Review", a combination book catalog and book review magazine. The books reviewed ran the gamut of libertarian and anti-authority thought from laissez-faire economics (e.g., Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises) and political philosophy (e.g., "For a New Liberty" by Rothbard, "Our Enemy the State" by Albert Jay Nock, "Concerning Women" by Suzanne La Follette) through anarchist philosophy, including books by Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Peter Kropotkin as well as native born American anarchists Lysander Spooner and Karl Hess; from libertarian science fiction (e.g., "The Great Explosion" by Eric Frank Russell and "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" by Robert A. Heinlein to antiauthoritarian psychology (e.g., "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram).

Employees at LFB who went on to create careers for themselves included Roy A. Childs, Jr. (see below). Presley went on to get her Ph.D. in social psychology and now teaches at California State University, East Bay. Muller returned to life as a civil engineer.

Muller sold the bookstore to Andrea Millen Rich in 1982. She served as president of Laissez Faire Books and its parent organization, the Center for Independent Thought, for 23 years, from 1982 until her retirement in January 2005. LFB's president from 2005 to 2007 was Kathleen Nelson.

Roy A. Childs, Jr., was the long-time editorial director of LFB, until his death in 1992. Author and historian Jim Powell served as LFB editor from 1992-2004. David M. Brown served as editor from 2004-2006. Ben Richman served as LFB editor from 2006-2007.

More about LFB

Laissez Faire Books' selections covers the whole range of libertarian thought and interest, from classically liberal writers such as John Stuart Mill to contemporary thinkers such as Milton Friedman and Thomas Szasz, market anarchism and libertarian socialism. Many movements within libertarianism are represented as well, from Christian libertarianism to freethought.

Fox & Wilkes Books

Before being taken over by ISIL, LFB had its own book publishing arm: Fox & Wilkes Books, named after two British libertarians, Charles James Fox and John Wilkes. Fox & Wilkes published over a two dozen classic works in paperback over the years, along with a few hardbacks.

ISIL was planning on re-establishing Cobden Press to publish and reprint libertarian work.

Quotes from its founders

"In the early '70s, I explored the libertarian movement and became immersed in the radical ideas of the time. Ideas of self-liberation, alternative institutions and a liberated lifestyle were very much on my mind. Liberty was not something you got from society or the government, Liberty was something you had to secure for yourself. I felt compelled to take some responsibility for the state of the world and do what I could to change it.

"...One of the problems I struggled with for a long time was what to call the store. I shied away from the word 'libertarian' as it seemed to imply a dogma of some kind, but I wanted something that would indicate the true nature of our beliefs.

"For me, the simple phrase 'Live and Let Live' has always been a beautiful summation of those beliefs, and that is why I settled on Laissez Faire as the name of the store."

—John Muller

“We saw ourselves as part of what Albert Jay Nock called The Remnant—a small minority who understood the nature of the State and who would be left when the current insanity became unworkable. Albert Camus once said in "Neither Victims Nor Executioners" that he was betting that the pen was mightier than the sword. We placed that bet too.”

—Sharon Presley

References

External links

* [http://www.laissezfairebooks.org Laissez Faire Books]
* [http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2008_01/ramsey-lf.html "Liberty" article on history of LFB]