The Freeman
Encyclopedia
The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty is one of the oldest and most respected libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...

 journals in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It is published by the Foundation for Economic Education
Foundation for Economic Education
The Foundation for Economic Education is one of the oldest free-market organizations established in the United States to study and advance the freedom philosophy. Murray Rothbard recognizes FEE for creating a "crucial open center" that he credits with launching the movement...

 (FEE). It started as a digest size
Digest size
Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately 5½ x 8¼ inches, but can also be 5⅜ x 8⅜ inches and 5½ x 7½ inches. These sizes have evolved from the printing press operation end...

d monthly study journal; it currently appears 10 times per year and is a larger-sized magazine. FEE was founded shortly after the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, who served as its president until his death in 1983. The Foundation was the first organization established after the war to present the principles of free market
Free market
A free market is a competitive market where prices are determined by supply and demand. However, the term is also commonly used for markets in which economic intervention and regulation by the state is limited to tax collection, and enforcement of private ownership and contracts...

s, limited government
Limited government
Limited government is a government which anything more than minimal governmental intervention in personal liberties and the economy is generally disallowed by law, usually in a written constitution. It is written in the United States Constitution in Article 1, Section 8...

, private property
Private property
Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...

, the rule of law, and libertarian philosophy and at the same time to oppose the many government interventionist programs introduced during the 1930s, especially under Roosevelt's New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

, and which had multiplied during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

.

History

During FEE's early years, it published essays, pamphlets and booklets, all dealing with some aspect of libertarian philosophy, by both classical liberals
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....

 of the past, such as Frédéric Bastiat
Frédéric Bastiat
Claude Frédéric Bastiat was a French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly. He was notable for developing the important economic concept of opportunity cost.-Biography:...

 and Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White
Andrew Dickson White was a U.S. diplomat, historian, and educator, who was the co-founder of Cornell University.-Family and personal life:...

, as well as the early work of contemporary authors such as Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...

, George Stigler
George Stigler
George Joseph Stigler was a U.S. economist. He won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1982, and was a key leader of the Chicago School of Economics, along with his close friend Milton Friedman....

 and Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....

. In 1955, FEE introduced a quarterly, Ideas on Liberty, which in January 1956 was merged with The Freeman, a bi-weekly free-market oriented news magazine which had been published in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 since 1950. As the market for free market journals was limited in the 1950s, it ran into financial problems and in 1956 was taken over by FEE, an educational, tax-exempt Foundation. At the time of its take-over, it was transformed from a bi-weekly into a monthly titled The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty.

The editors of The Freeman have included Henry Hazlitt
Henry Hazlitt
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American economist, philosopher, literary critic and journalist for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times...

, John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (journalist)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain was an American journalist, historian of business and the economy, and literary critic, dubbed "one of America’s most trusted book reviewers."-Early life:...

, Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne Clara La Follette was an American journalist and author who advocated for libertarian feminism in the first half of the 20th century. As an editor she helped found several magazines. She was an early and ardent feminist and a vocal anti communist.-Family:She was born in Washington state...

, Paul L. Poirot, Brian Summers, Charles Hamilton, and John Robbins. Henry Hazlitt
Henry Hazlitt
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American economist, philosopher, literary critic and journalist for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times...

, an economist and journalist, had been one of FEE's founders and his articles continued to appear regularly in The Freeman after its take-over by FEE. John Chamberlain
John Chamberlain (journalist)
John Rensselaer Chamberlain was an American journalist, historian of business and the economy, and literary critic, dubbed "one of America’s most trusted book reviewers."-Early life:...

 became FEE's regular book reviewer and his reviews appeared in The Freeman until his death in 1995. Leonard Read
Leonard Read
Leonard E. Read was an American economist and the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, which was the first modern free market think tank in the United States....

, FEE's President, was also a regular contributor, as was FEE's economic adviser, the noted Austrian School
Austrian School
The Austrian School of economics is a heterodox school of economic thought. It advocates methodological individualism in interpreting economic developments , the theory that money is non-neutral, the theory that the capital structure of economies consists of heterogeneous goods that have...

 economist, Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and classical liberal who had a significant influence on the modern Libertarian movement and the "Austrian School" of economic thought.-Biography:-Early life:...

. Other contributors in the 1950s included: Barbara Branden
Barbara Branden
Barbara Branden is an American Objectivist writer, editor, and lecturer, known for her relationship and subsequent break with philosopher Ayn Rand.-Life:...

, James Burnham
James Burnham
James Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years he left Marxism and produced...

, Frank Chodorov
Frank Chodorov
Frank Chodorov was an American member of the Old Right, a group of libertarian thinkers who were non-interventionist in foreign policy and anti–New Deal...

, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...

, Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...

, John T. Flynn
John T. Flynn
John Thomas Flynn was an American journalist best known for his opposition to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and to American entry into World War II.-Career:...

, F. A. Hayek, Frank Meyer, Raymond Moley
Raymond Moley
Raymond Charles Moley was a leading New Dealer who became its bitter opponent before the end of the Great Depression....

, Roscoe Pound
Roscoe Pound
Nathan Roscoe Pound was a distinguished American legal scholar and educator. He was Dean of Harvard Law School from 1916 to 1936...

, Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke
Wilhelm Röpke was Professor of Economics, first in Jena, then in Graz, Marburg, Istanbul and finally in Geneva, and the main spiritual father of the German social market economy, theorising and collaborating to organise the post-World War II economic re-awakening of the then destroyed German...

, Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...

, Morrie Ryskind
Morrie Ryskind
Morrie Ryskind was an American dramatist, lyricist and writer of theatrical productions and motion pictures, who became a conservative political activist later in life.-Biography:...

 and George Sokolsky
George Sokolsky
George Ephraim Sokolsky was a weekly radio broadcaster for the National Association of Manufacturers and a columnist for The New York Herald Tribune, who later switched to The New York Sun and other Hearst newspapers.-Biography:...

.

The Freeman is widely considered to be an important forerunner to the conservative publication National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

magazine, which was founded in 1955, and which from its inception included many of the same contributing editors.

FEE's Freeman is published monthly. During its more than half century of life it has published articles by economists, businessmen, professors, teachers, statesmen (domestic and foreign), students, housewives, free-lance writers, and budding libertarians. Many of its authors have gone on to become noted authors, teachers, and founders of other libertarian organizations. It continues to discuss current economic and governmental issues from the same pro-private property, free market, limited government, libertarian philosophy which sparked the founding of FEE and all its publications. Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 was photographed reading The Freeman on an airplane when he was running for the Republican Party's
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

 presidential nomination.

The current editor of The Freeman since 1997 is Sheldon Richman
Sheldon Richman
Sheldon Richman is an American political writer and academic, best known for his advocacy of libertarianism.He is the editor of The Freeman, a magazine published by The Foundation for Economic Education, a Senior Fellow at the Future of Freedom Foundation, a Research Fellow at The Independent...

. The writers whose work has appeared in The Freeman in recent decades include such libertarians as Charles W. Baird, Donald J. Boudreaux
Donald J. Boudreaux
Donald J. Boudreaux is professor of economics at George Mason University. He served as chairman from August 2001 and stepped down in August 2009. He previously served as president of the libertarian think tank Foundation for Economic Education, a post he accepted in May 1997...

, Stephen Davies, Richard Epstein, Burton Folsom, Jr., David R. Henderson, Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs is an American economic historian, economist combining the insights from the Public Choice, Institutional and Austrian schools of economics, and a classical liberal or libertarian in political and legal theory and public policy...

, David Kelley
David Kelley
David Kelley is an American philosopher, author, and advocate of Objectivism. He is founder and senior fellow of The Atlas Society. He lives in Washington, D.C..-Education and career:...

, Tibor Machan, Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy
Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of The Voluntaryist in 1982.-Sex-positive:...

, Lawrence W. Reed, George Reisman
George Reisman
George Gerald Reisman is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University and author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics . He is also the author of an earlier book, The Government Against the Economy , which was praised by F.A...

, Hans Sennholz
Hans Sennholz
Hans F. Sennholz was an economist of the Austrian school of economics who studied under Ludwig von Mises. After serving in the Luftwaffe in World War II, he took degrees at the universities of Marburg and Köln. He then moved to the United States to study for a Ph.D. at New York University...

, Bernard Siegan
Bernard Siegan
Bernard H. Siegan was a longtime law professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, libertarian legal theorist and a former federal judicial nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit...

, John Stossel
John Stossel
John F. Stossel is an American consumer reporter, investigative journalist, author and libertarian columnist. In October 2009 Stossel left his long time home on ABC News to join the Fox Business Channel and Fox News Channel, both owned and operated by News Corp...

, Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz
Thomas Stephen Szasz is a psychiatrist and academic. Since 1990 he has been Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. He is a well-known social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, and of the social...

 and Walter E. Williams
Walter E. Williams
Walter E. Williams, is an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his libertarian views.- Early life and education :Williams family during childhood...

.

Earlier publications called The Freeman

The Freeman has been a popular magazine name and FEE's Freeman had predecessors. There was a Freeman magazine published in the U.S. shortly after the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

. From 1920 to 1924, Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock was an influential United States libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...

, a noted literary figure and author, edited a magazine called The Freeman, and its contributors included Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken
Conrad Potter Aiken was an American novelist and poet, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, a play and an autobiography.-Early years:...

, Charles A. Beard
Charles A. Beard
Charles Austin Beard was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science...

, William Henry Chamberlin
William Henry Chamberlin
William Henry Chamberlin was an American historian and journalist. He was the author of several books about the Cold War, Communism and US foreign policy, the most famous of which was The Russian Revolution 1917-1921...

, John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...

, Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

, Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...

, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

, Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...

, Lincoln Steffans, Louis Untermeyer
Louis Untermeyer
Louis Untermeyer was an American poet, anthologist, critic, and editor. He was appointed the fourteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1961.-Life and career:...

 and Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...

. Nock's former assistant Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne La Follette
Suzanne Clara La Follette was an American journalist and author who advocated for libertarian feminism in the first half of the 20th century. As an editor she helped found several magazines. She was an early and ardent feminist and a vocal anti communist.-Family:She was born in Washington state...

 revived the periodical as The New Freeman in the 1930s, and, later, LaFollette was one of founding editors of the 1950s Freeman. In addition, the Henry George
Henry George
Henry George was an American writer, politician and political economist, who was the most influential proponent of the land value tax, also known as the "single tax" on land...

 School published a Freeman magazine during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. The immediate predecessor of FEE's The Freeman, however, was the bi-weekly New York City-published news magazine mentioned above.

External links

  • The Freeman
  • Online issues from the Mises Institute
    Ludwig von Mises Institute
    The Ludwig von Mises Institute , based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. Its scholarship is inspired by the work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises...

    .
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