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Gustave De Molinari
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Gustave de Molinari ( March 3 , 1819 - January 28 , 1912 ) was a Belgian -born Economist associated with the French " économistes ", a group of Laissez-faire Liberal s.

Throughout his life, together with the other économistes, Molinari defended peace, Free Trade , Freedom Of Speech , Freedom Of Association (including voluntary Trade Unions ), and liberty in all its forms, and opposed Slavery , Colonialism , Mercantilism , Protectionism , Imperialism , Nationalism , Corporatism , Economic Interventionism , government control of arts and education, and, in general, all of what he considered to be restraints on liberty. Living in Paris, in the 1840s , he took part in the "''Ligue pour la Liberté des Échanges''" (Free Trade League), animated by Frederic Bastiat . On his death bed in 1850 , Bastiat described Molinari as the continuator of his works.

In in justice and protection could advantageously replace the State . In ''Les Soirées'' he says:

::''"The monopoly of government is no better than any other. One does not govern well and, especially not cheaply, when one has no competition to fear, when the ruled are deprived of the right of freely choosing their rulers. Grant a grocer the exclusive right to supply a neighborhood, prevent the inhabitants of this neighborhood from buying any goods from other grocers in the vicinity, or even from supplying their own groceries, and you will see what detestable rubbish the privileged grocer will end up selling and at what prices! You will see how he will grow rich at the expense of the unfortunate consumers, what royal pomp tle will display for the greater glory of the neighborhood. Well! What is true for the lowliest services is no less true for the loftiest. The monopoly of government is worth no more than that of a grocer's shop. The production of security inevitably becomes costly and bad when it is organized as a monopoly. It is in the monopoly of security that lies the principal cause of wars which have laid waste humanity.''"

In the preface to the 1977 English translation Murray Rothbard called ''The Production of Security'' the "first presentation anywhere in human history of what is now called Anarcho-capitalism " though admitting that "Molinari did not use the terminology, and probably would have balked at the name." Political historian David Hart notes that Molinari rejected the term anarchism, believing it "was intimately linked with socialist and statist economic views."

In the 1850s , Molinari fled to Belgium to escape threats from France's Emperor Napoleon III . He returned to Paris in the 1860s to work on the influential newspaper, '' Le Journal Des Debats '', which he edited from 1871 to 1876 . Molinari went on to edit the ''Journal des Économistes'', the publication of the French Political Economy Society, from 1881 until 1909 . In his 1899 book, ''The Society of the Future'', he proposed a federated system of collective security, and reiterated his support for private competing defense agencies.

Molinari's grave is at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, France.


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