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NOTE J.R.R. Tolkien as Libertarian

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The Ludwig von Mises Institute presents The Libertarian Tradition, an audio series with Jeff Rigenbach.

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The third day of January was the 118th birthday of the English writer J.R.R. Tolkien, whose most celebrated work, the nearly 1500-page novel The Lord of the Rings,

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was one of the most influential literary creations of the 20th century.

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How influential?

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Listen to Hillsdale College historian Bradley Berzer

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from a lecture on The Lord of the Rings given in Seattle in 2003.

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It was interesting to see at the end of the 20th century

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how many people thought The Lord of the Rings was the best book of the 20th century.

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Poll after poll in both the United Kingdom and here in the United States

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Nor, according to Berzer, is Tolkien's popularity restricted to English-speaking countries.

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But, Tolkien, you may reply, why? What does J.R.R. Tolkien and his long tale of orcs and wars and magic rings have to do with libertarianism?

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isn't this podcast supposed to be on the libertarian tradition surely you're not

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calling Tolkien a libertarian on the basis of some interpretation of the

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symbolic meaning of the Lord of the Rings didn't Tolkien himself say that it

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had no meaning well in a word yes he did in 1965 in his forward to the second

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As for any inner meaning or message the Lord of the Rings has in the intention of the author, none. It is neither allegorical nor topical.

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He added a page later that he cordially disliked allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.

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Ten years earlier, in 1955, he said much the same thing in a letter to his American publisher.

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The Lord of the Rings, he said in 1955, is not about anything but itself.

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Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular or topical, moral, religious or political.

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Yet, nearly ten years before, in 1947, when his British publisher, Stanley Unwin, was

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reading the first two-thirds of the manuscript of The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien was

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busily writing the final third, he had voiced a far different opinion.

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"'You can make the ring into an allegory of our own time if you like,' Tolkien wrote

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wrote to Unwin, an allegory of the inevitable fate that waits for all attempts to defeat

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evil power by power.

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And in April of 1956, only about a year after publicly declaring that his tale of Middle

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Earth had no allegorical intentions, general, particular or topical, moral, religious or

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Literary critics used to warn against what they called the intentional fallacy, the fallacy

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of supposing that even in those cases where you can know for sure what the author's intention

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was, you can regard information about the author's intention as the key to understanding

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a work of literature.

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Similarly, Lysander Spooner used to argue that what the framers of the Constitution

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intended was irrelevant.

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What matters, he said, is what they wrote.

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What does what they wrote mean?

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That is the question before anyone, judge, juror or layman, who is trying to figure out

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what the Constitution does or does not provide.

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I submit, and I am far from the first to do so, that if we adopt this principle in reading

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J.R.R.

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Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, we will inescapably see that his novel is about something other

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The Theory of Money and Credit

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Lord Acton, as it happens, was born in January 2, a week later than Tolkien, but nearly sixty

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years earlier.

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The man who eventually came to be called Lord Acton was born on January 10, 1834, three

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years before Queen Victoria ascended the British throne.

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His name at birth was John Emerick Edward Dalberg Acton.

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He was born into an old, wealthy, but not noble family, a family which in fact faced

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a good deal of prejudice and bigotry in the England of the early 19th century because

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of their commitment to Roman Catholicism.

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Young John, though a brilliant student, was denied admission to Cambridge because of his

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membership in the Catholic Church, so he left England for eight years of higher education

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in Germany.

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On his return, at the age of 24, he began dabbling in intellectual journalism, writing

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about ideas and about historical topics for intellectual magazines, mostly monthlies and

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quarterlies.

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Shortly, he took a job as editor of The Rambler, a liberal Catholic monthly.

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A year later, at 25, he was elected to the House of Commons, winning the election by

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only 14 votes.

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During his six years in parliament, he continued to practice journalism on the side, transforming

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the monthly rambler into the quarterly home and foreign review.

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During these same years, he became a protege, friend and trusted advisor of one of the nineteenth

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century's greatest and most famous liberal politicians, William Ewert Gladstone.

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After young Acton left public office in 1865 at the age of 31, he stayed on in London,

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writing for liberal Catholic weeklies like the Chronicle and the North British Review,

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and as an advisor to Gladstone, who interceded for him with the Queen four years later and

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got him his new name, the one we know him by today, Lord Acton.

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Men devoted his late 30s, his 40s and his 50s, the 1870s and 1880s, plus the first

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few years of the 1890s, to his intellectual journalism, to advising Gladstone, who served

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four tumultuous terms as Prime Minister during those years, and to writing and delivering

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the occasional lecture.

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When he was 61 years old in 1895, he was offered a professorship in modern history

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at Cambridge.

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Noting the irony that Cambridge had rejected him as a student applicant some 45 years earlier,

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he accepted the offer.

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Seven years later, in 1902, at the age of 68, just a few months after a very young J.R.R.

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Tolkien celebrated his tenth birthday, Acton was dead.

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Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote of Acton fifty years after his death that those who met him were

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unfailingly impressed with his fabulous erudition, and it was commonly said of him that he not

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only knew everyone worth knowing, but had also read everything worth reading.

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His friends estimated that he read, annotated and practically committed to memory an average

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of two books a day.

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Inevitably his friend suggested that he himself should write a book.

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And Acton meant to.

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He really did.

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He decided when he was 21 years old to write a book.

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And he decided at that same time what the subject of his book would be.

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A hundred years after Acton's death, the contemporary libertarian historian Ralph

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Professor Ralph Reiko chose the same subject for a series of lectures and credited Acton in his opening remarks.

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History as a struggle for liberty.

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This conception of history, of what history is, goes back to Lord Acton,

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a famous 19th century historian who spent all his life accumulating notes and materials

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or what would be, he thought, his great history of liberty, the greatest book never written, people say.

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Nonetheless, Acton wrote many essays on the subject, and he's a historian well worth consulting.

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Those essays Professor Reiko refers to are, of course, drawn from among Acton's contributions to the magazines of his day.

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The time he spent writing them took away from the time he had available to him to write

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his book.

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So did the time he devoted to preparing lectures, the time he spent writing letters, the time

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he spent writing in his journal.

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He never got his book written because of all this other writing.

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And yet we can scarcely begrudge Acton the time he chose to devote to these lesser kinds

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of Writing, for it is on such writing, and especially on his journals and letters, that

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his formidable reputation chiefly rests.

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The most famous passage he ever wrote appears, not in any of his magazine work, nor in any

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of his lectures, but in a letter he wrote in 1887 to Mandel Creighton, author of a multi-volume

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History of the Papacy in the Period of Reformation

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Acton had reviewed the first two volumes of this work when they were published in 1882.

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Creighton had written to him in reply to his review, and the two men had struck up a correspondence.

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Power tends to corrupt, Acton wrote to Creighton in April of 1887, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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As I said a few minutes ago, I can think of no better short statement of the symbolic meaning

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The magic ring that Frodo Baggins inherits from Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of The

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Lord of the Rings is one of twenty rings of power manufactured centuries before.

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It is the one ring, the ring that gives its possessor power over not only the possessors

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The One Ring is a daunting one, however, for the One Ring corrupts its possessor, no matter

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A mortal who keeps one of the great rings, the wizard Gandalf tells Frodo, does not die,

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but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute

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is a weariness.

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And sooner or later, later if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither

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Neither strength nor good purpose will last.

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Sooner or later the dark power that rules the rings will devour him.

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And when Frodo asks Gandalf why he, a powerful wizard, cannot take the ring and destroy it,

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Gandalf cries out, No!

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With that power I should have power too great and terrible.

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And over me the ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.

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Do not tempt me, for I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself, yet the way of

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the ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and desire of strength to do good.

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Do not tempt me, I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused.

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The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength.

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Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Even Lord Acton couldn't have said it better.

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Tolkien distrusted power with every fiber of his being.

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He wrote to his then 19-year-old son Christopher in 1943 while he was writing The Lord of the

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Rings, that my political opinions lean more and more to anarchy, philosophically understood,

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meaning abolition of control, not whiskered men with bombs.

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The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men.

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Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all, those who seek the opportunity.

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Does this make Tolkien a libertarian? I'd say it does.

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In the prologue to The Lord of the Rings, in a section called Of the Ordering of the

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Shire, Tolkien describes the political organization of the hobbits. He wrote,

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The Shire at this time had hardly any government. Families, for the most part, managed their

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own affairs.

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One is reminded of the American transcendentalist Bronson Alcott, friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson

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and Henry David Thoreau and father to Louisa May Alcott, who asked, Why would I employ

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a state to govern me? Why not govern myself? In The Lord of the Rings, in the character

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first known as Strider and later known as Aragorn, Tolkien portrays a man who does

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Does Not Want to Be King, The Type of Man Tolkien Believes Would Make a Good Ruler,

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The Man Who Does Not Want Power.

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Does this make The Lord of the Rings, perhaps the most culturally influential novel written

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in English in the 20th century, a libertarian work?

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I'd say so.

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How about you?

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This is Jeff Rigenmaier.