The Voluntaryist Creed

Auberon Herbert wrote that in “voluntaryism the state employs force only to repel force — to protect the person and the property of the individual against force and fraud; under voluntaryism the state would defend the rights of liberty, never aggress upon them.”

By the standards of modern libertarianism, Herbert would be considered a radical minarchist. But in an announcement of Herbert’s death, individualist anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker wrote, “Auberon Herbert … was a true anarchist in everything but name. How much better (and how much rarer) to be an anarchist in everything but name than to be an anarchist in name only!”

This volume consists of a lecture Herbert gave at Oxford University in 1906 in honor of Herbert Spencer and an essay he wrote just before his death outlining the principles of his philosophy of Voluntaryism.