Review of Austrian Economics, Volumes 1-10

With the worldwide collapse of socialism as an economic system, Marxism today stands thoroughly discredited as an intellectual position. Made prophetically early in this century, Ludwig von Mises's claim that economic calculation is impossible in the absence of free markets has been vindicated by the manifest failure of Soviet communism. Decisively refuted by the facts of economic life, Marxism has been forced to retreat to the one place in the academy where empirical reality seems to carry no weight in an argument: the humanities departments. As has often been noted, the great paradox of academic life at the moment is that just when Marxism has lost all credibility in the practical world, it has come to dominate the study of the humanities in American universities. Deconstruction and other forms of poststructuralism prepared the way for this outcome. By calling into question any notion of truth and objectivity, these movements in literary theory left humanities departments vulnerable to the lingering bewitchment of Marxism in a way to which other disciplines more in touch with reality have been comparatively immune.