Mises, Kant, and Worker Exploitation

Most of my readers are likely to think that socialism is morally wrong in that it violates people’s rights; but in this week’s article, I’d like to discuss an argument by one philosopher who thinks just the contrary, that morality requires socialism, as well as Ludwig von Mises’s refutation of this argument. The philosopher who came up with this argument is Hermann Cohen, a German Jewish philosopher who flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Progressives’ Liberal Democracy Has Failed. Radical Decentralization Is the Answer.

So-called liberal democracies have characterized the West for the past century and are viewed as the pinnacle of political development. So much so that Western elites are firmly convinced that this system of governance should be spread far and wide—be it indirectly (color revolutions) or directly (economic sanctions, kinetic military actions, or nation-building expeditions).

The Supreme Court Uses Twisted Logic to Protect US Agents Committing Torture

The Supreme Court declared last week that Americans have no right to learn the grisly details of CIA torture because the CIA has never formally confessed its crimes. The verdict symbolizes how the rule of law has become little more than a form of legal mumbo-jumbo to shroud official crimes. Why should anyone expect justice from a Supreme Court that covers up torture?

Free Markets Are Not Violent “Social Darwinism”

The ideas of “natural selection” or “Darwinism” are familiar to almost everyone who has an elementary understanding of the natural sciences. It invokes the notion of constant struggle for survival and competition. Only those who are strong will stay alive. Might makes right, in the most literal sense of the term. Even though it is the “Law of the Jungle”, it is commonly believed today that mankind lives outside this jungle, and has escaped the clutches of natural selection.

J.W. Rich is an independent scholar in Charlotte, North Carolina.