Will to Bondage | Etienne De La Boetie | Libertarian Broadsides No. 6

edited by: James J. Martinsize: 5.5×8.5″ | pages: 134 This classic of anti-statist and libertarian thought — orig­inally entitled Discours de la Servitude volontaire — is the best known and most enduringly influential work of Étienne de la Boétie (1530–1563), a French judge, writer and poet. Written when he was a student in his early twenties, Boétie is regarded as the father of non-violent anarchism and civil disobedience. This short but powerful work has influenced some of the world’s greatest social thinkers, from Leo Tolstoy to Ralph Waldo Emerson to Ayn Rand. James J. Martin, in his preface to this well-annotated edition, puts “this remarkable early libertarian treatise” in his­torical context. Edited, with annotations and an introduction, by Wm. Flyg­are. In English, with original French text on facing pages. Humans are free by nature, says the author, who then asks the key question: Why do people consent to their own enslavement? “It is indeed the nature of the populace,” wrote