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Gustave de Molinari (March 3, 1819 - January 28,
1912) was a Belgium|Belgian-born
economics|economist associated with the
France|French "économistes", a group of
laissez-faire liberals.

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 all 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 1849, shortly after
The_Revolutions_of_1848_in_France|the revolutions
of the previous year, Molinari published two
works: an essay, The Production of Security, and a
book, Les Soirées de la Rue Saint-Lazare,
describing how a free market in justice and
protection could advantageously replace the state.
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."

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 moderated his
position on defense slightly, calling for private
regional monopolies rather than competing defense
agencies.

==External links ==
* David Hart's
http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/personal/DHart/Cla
ssicalLiberalism/Molinari/ToC.html Gustave De
Molinari And The Anti-Statist Liberal Tradition
*
http://www.econlib.org/library/Molinari/mlnSoc.htm
l The Society of Tomorrow by Molinari, published
electronically by http://www.econlib.org/ The
Library of Economics and Liberty with annotations,
biography, etc.
* Some
http://herve.dequengo.free.fr/Molinari/Molinari.ht
m works by Molinari available in original French
from http://herve.dequengo.free.fr/ Hervé de
Quengo's site.
* The http://praxeology.net/molinari.htm Molinari
Institute