Is Politics Insoluble?

Introduction*
During the ninth decade of a long and productive life,
Henry Hazlitt made plans to write a treatise on political sci-
ence.* In 1978 he prepared a provisional outline for a book
that would have the title Is Politics Insoluble? Hazlitt planned
to include chapters on legislation, government growth, cen-
tralization of power, and alternative forms of government.
Other chapters would touch on ideas of prominent political
thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, America's
Founders, James and John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, T.
H. Huxley, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Henry Maine, and Robert
Nozick.^
In a 1984 letter confirming the donation of his personal
library to The Foundation for Economic Education, Hazlitt
wrote: "one particular book that I am still planning ... is
already half written: Is Politics Insoluble? The title chapter
was published in Modern Age, and about four or five addi-
tional chapters in The Freeman. I hope to do up to perhaps a
half dozen more to make a complete book."^ Unfortunately,
Hazlitt never finished the project and eight of the outline's
fourteen chapters remained unwritten at the time of his
death.
Despite substantial gaps in a project never completed by
Hazlitt, there is value in making these writings available in
one collection."^ First, they clearly illuminate the need for gov-
ernment and the dangers of excessive legislation. Second,
*Felix R. Livingston, Dean of Institutional Research at Washington &
Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, was Vice President of The
Foundation for Economic Education from 1994 to 1997.