Freedom, Society, and the State, by political philosopher and Austrian David Osterfeld (St. Joseph’s College) is a classic overview of the field of anarchist research, a sweeping book with a Rothbardian core. It is little known and just about impossible to obtain by any means.
It is now online at Mises.org. Yes, it is an awful edition, and, yes, it deserves a new edition. But there is a slight hitch.
Google Books says it was originally printed by the University Press of America (Lanham, MD). It was reprinted by Cobden Press in some unknown year, though this seems to be unmentioned. The edition we have posted is listed as copyright by the author (1986). Under the copyright law a title long out of print reverts all rights to the copyright holder which is Osterfeld himself. But he died tragically young, September 26, 1993 (born in 1949).
I’ve tried for years to find the heir to his estate but without any luck. We’ve sat on this book without putting it online for all this time. But finally it seems there is not much point to keeping a book under wraps that is not available online and not available in print. There is no value-added to the world by keeping valuable information under wraps forever.
I see a note online that Cobden Press hopes to put out another edition but that was two years ago, and nothing seems to be happening.
So we post this with a plea. If you know how the Mises Institute can obtain non-exclusive rights to this manuscript to retain this online edition or put it in print, please let us know as soon as possible. What we are not interested in is a copyright troll telling us that this is under copyright or hearing from some belligerent who claims to want to print it at some point in the future. We are only interested in hearing from someone who can demonstrate with documents and proof to be an heir to the Osterfeld estate, which clearly owns the rights to this book.
Again, our only interest here is getting this great thinker’s ideas out to the public.
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I note that there are some excerpts from this book in Anarchy and the Law. Presumably permission was required to reproduce those?
“Yes, it is an awful edition”
Heh, I remember reading this. Printed right from the typewriter!
Just browsing it now, I was struck by how good it actually is. I hope you do find a way to get it into print.
This is an excellent book. You need to get it back in print.
Magnificent!
Thank you LvMI, thank you Jeff!
Next stop:
John T. Sanders,THE ETHICAL ARGUMENT AGAINST GOVERNMENT, Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1980
David Osterfeld, PROSPERITY VERSUS PLANNING: How Government Stifles Economic Growth, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992
Richard & Ernestine Perkins, PRECONDITION FOR PEACE & PROSPERITY: RATIONAL ANARCHY, St. Thomas, Ontario: Richard & Ernestine Perkins, 1971
The Rothbard-Rockwell Report, 1985-1995
The WTO Reader
The NAFTA Reader
Anything ever published by the LvMI
Anything by Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Hazlitt, Sennholz, Kirzner, Robert LeFevre, Harry Browne…
Anything ever published by FEE, all the books! ;o)
The Collected Works of Baldy Harper
Anything…
… everything!
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