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Freedom Book of the Month for April 2000:
Reciprocia
by Richard G. Rieben
Berapa Press, January 2000, paperback, 393 pp.
$24.95
from Amazon.Com
It's difficult to describe my motivation in choosing Richard Rieben's "Reciprocia" as Freedom Book of the Month. It would be false to suggest that I agree with everything in the book, or that there aren't other works that handle many of the specific issues Rieben addresses as well or better ... but you don't come across something of this scope, handled with such élan, very often.
In a little under 400 pages, Rieben develops a theory of political liberty from the ground up and proposes a constitution that implements it. In the process, he demolishes Hobbes and Rousseau, while appropriating the idea of the social contract from them, rebuilding it into something that Lysander Spooner or Thomas Jefferson would find worthy of consideration, if not of adoption as a whole. He does all this in a comfortable style that makes the project enjoyable.
"Reciprocia" starts from the premise of the existence of rights, and defines them in a manner similar to Ayn Rand: Rights, Rieben tells us, are what entities have in respect to their identity. From this foundation, he moves into the ideas of sovereignty and liberty, defining the latter as something that exists "in the interstices" between free, sovereign people with rights. Liberty, says Rieben, is the fence that people must climb over to violate the rights of others. It's not an individual or collective possession, but a boundary created by the rights of the individual and the presence of the collective.
Drawing on all of these ideas, "Reciprocia" puts forth the idea of the state as a creation of, rather than a party to, the social contract, and explores some of the implications of that idea. The last half of the book is a sample constitution describing the makeup of a nation based on Rieben's ideas. It is here that many will begin to do exactly what the author asks them to do: object, and propose something better.
The Reciprocia Constitution cuts the Gordian knot on some of libertarian thought's most complex issues. From its principled but unlikely ban on polluting activities to its definition of the possession of certain weapons as a tangible violation of others' rights on the order of drunk driving, the book is full of ideas that are certain to raise hackles.
They should raise hackles. "Reciprocia" is a bold offering that will dramatically affect the design of future political experiments rooted in libertarian ideas -- not because of its specific solutions, but because of the fascinating and alluring framework which Rieben has built to make such solutions possible.
edited by Thomas L. Knapp
May 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith
April 2000: Reciprocia by Richard G. Rieben
March 2000: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand
February 2000: Addiction is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler
January 2000: Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood
Special December 1999 Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year: Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 by Vin Suprynowicz
November 1999: Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell
October 1999: A Way To Be Free by Robert LeFevre, edited by Wendy McElroy
September 1999: Assassins (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
August 1999: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet): 101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom by Claire Wolfe
July 1999: The Mitzvah by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman
June 1999: The Incredible Bread Machine by R.W. Grant
May 1999: Send in the Waco Killers by Vin Suprynowicz
April 1999: It Still Begins with Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille
March 1999: The Dictionary of Free-Market Economics by Fred Foldvary
February 1999: Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra
In December 2004 this page was modified significantly from its original form for archiving purposes.
, founded in 1995, is now a part of ISIL.
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