In this book Alan Haworth, of the University of North London, attempts to take on libertarianism. Some might say that this hardly needs further elaboration. But Haworth makes a good case that some of the libertarian tenets, such as the "invisible hand" theory of Adam Smith, are far more widespread and far too often considered self-evident than they deserve.

His criticism, however, is sorely lacking in understanding of his opponents. His dissection of Hayek's internal inconsistencies is excellent, but he never makes clear why Hayek's criticism of planned economies is necessarily relevant to libertarianism. Haworth also fails to properly understand the modern views of libertarian economic arguments, such as the necessity of "internalizing" things like pollution, instead ridiculing the libertarians for presumably forgetting all about this obvious rejoinder. Last but not least, his tone is condescending and childish, and this does not really help anyone's case, even if I feel (as one strongly opposed to libertarianism) that it might be deserved.

On the plus side, Alan Haworth's book is very useful for a memory refresher on the central tenets of libertarianism's conception of freedom (a conception too little attacked generally), and his destruction of Robert Nozick's mystifications of "innate rights" is well-done.

All in all, worthwhile, but certainly not the book you should get if you aren't familiar with libertarianism already, since there's a lot of straw in Haworth's version of it. ( )