Liberty and the State,

by Charles K. Rowley (1993)

Majoritarian democracy can result in the tyranny of the majority. This tyranny generates a mercantilist rent seeking society that restricts personal liberties and trespasses on economic rights. However, this important insight of public choice is often ignored by social choice scholars who seek to overcome the occasional dislocations caused by the free market operations of markets through social engineering solutions which encourage majoritarian democracy and thereby erode the classical liberal order.

Charles Rowley retraces the history of social choice theory, identifying the errors that it has promulgaed and the corrective lessons that can be learned from the classical liberal philosophy that it has substantially ignored. He presents a classical liberal approach that relies upon the minimal state as referee and enforcer of property rights under the rule of law and outlines a road to freedom for those individuals whith the courage to embrace it. This book will be instructive for those who already sense that unlimited democracy is an unrelenting enemy of individual liberty, and a revelation for those who continue to dream of the myth of the benevolent and impartial government.

David N. Laband, Auburn University. Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XXXIII, 835-836 (June 1995)

"Rowley's analysis is incisive and merciless... By the time Professor Rowley is finished, the methodological seas within which the seemingly ubiquitous social planner fish (schoolers, not loners, obviously) swim have been exposed as barren salt flats. They (the fish) are left flopping; gills working feverishly to pump life-sustaining oxygen that simply does not exist."

David Schap, College of Holy Cross, Public Choice, 82: 193-196 (March 1995)

"The concluding chapter Liberty and the State is a hard-edged critique of the major works in the classical liberal perspective. ...Rowley applies ... high degree of scrutiny and deft analysis in his review of classical liberal papers."