A socio-psycho-cultural analysis informed by economic theory. Mises's enduring study seeks to explain why intellectuals so often loathe the free market. He explores answers from a wide variety of angles, and discusses the nature of academic institutions, popular culture, and how vices like jealousy and envy affect theory. All play a role in preventing people from seeing the self-evident benefits of economic freedom relative to controls. Mises shrewdly teases the anti-capitalist bias out of contemporary fiction and popular culture generally.
The contents of this volume include:
- I. The Social Characteristics of Capitalism and the Psychological Causes of Its Vilification
- 1. The Sovereign Consumer
- 2. The Urge for Economic Betterment
- 3. Status Society and Capitalism
- 4. The Resentment of Frustrated Ambition
- 5. The Resentment of the Intellectuals
- 6. The Anti-capitalistic Bias of American Intellectuals
- 7. The Resentment of the White-Collar Workers
- 8. The Resentment of "Cousins"
- 9. The Communism of Broadway and Hollywood
- 10. The Non-Economic Objections to Capitalism
- 11. Ant-Communism vs. Capitalism
- II. The Ordinary Man's Social Philosophy
- 1. Capitalism as it is and as it is Seen by the Common Man
- 2. The Anti-capitalistic Front
- III. Literature Under Capitalism
- 1. The Market for Literary Products
- 2. Success on the Book Market
- 3. Remarks about the Detective Stories
- 4. Freedom of the Press
- 5. The Bigotry of the Literati
- 6. The "Social" Novels and Plays
ISBN 978-0-86957-670-2
72pp Hardcover