The collapse of socialism didn’t deter the Marxists, who moved on to invent new rationales for their system. But David Gordon has caught up with them, and used the knife of the Austrian School to cut their theories to pieces. A masterful demonstration of philosophical technique. The book in particular addresses the arguments of the analytical Marxists: G.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, and John Roemer.
David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Mises Review.
Reading this book confirms Charles Tansill’s emendation of a familiar saying: “The paths of military glory lead but to the grave.” When one considers the horrors of war for the combatants, Rothbard’s argument that the costs of war are virtually never worth paying is strengthened.
In today's Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon revisits The Calculus of Consent by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, considered a "classic" by mainstream economists. Murray Rothbard, however, dissented loudly.
Murray Rothbard, like other Austrian economists, believed that the heavy use of mathematics in economic analysis damaged economic understanding instead of enhancing it. This wasn’t science, he said; it was “scientism.”
