Yuri Nicholas Maltsev is an Austrian school economist and economic historian from Tatarstan. He earned his BA and MA degrees from Moscow State University and PhD in labor economics at the Institute of Labor Research in Moscow. Before defecting to the United States in 1989, he was a member of a senior Soviet economics team that worked on President Gorbachev’s reforms package of perestroika. He is currently professor of economics at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

There are two main philosophical and ideological schools of thought that include the problem of internationalism in their principles. The first is liberal internationalism, which developed within the framework of classical liberalism. The second is orthodox Marxism and its various derivatives that entertain the idea of proletarian internationalism. The concept of internationalism has different origins, meanings, and practical implementations in the two schools of thought.

Protectionism is reviving in Washington on both sides of the political aisle. Democrats are cheering proposals to restrict trade to benefit labor unions and save the environment while some Republicans are reviving Smoot-Hawley style salvation schemes. Protectionist advocates routinely seize the moral high ground—at least as it is scored in Washington—by promising that restricting imports will magically produce fair trade.

In late September surgeons successfully attached a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a human body, establishing a “proof of concept.” This is a large step in alleviating a massive shortage of cadaver or donated human body parts for those often desperate people in need of a transplant.

While Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell considers the ramifications of his $5 million stock sales prior to the market slump of last year, the rest of us should be left wondering: What else are they not telling us?  This week, some lesser-known members of the Fed offered some ideas worthy of consideration.

Monetary Policy and the Present Trend toward All-around Planning

The people of all countries agree that the present state of monetary affairs is unsatisfactory and that a change is highly desirable. However, ideas about the kind of reform needed and about the goal to be aimed at differ widely. There is some confused talk about stability and about a standard which is neither inflationary nor deflationary.

In his book Let’s Have Socialism Now! (Yale University Press, 2001), the French economist Thomas Piketty places great emphasis on “solidarity,” and his opposition to the free market rests to a large extent on its conflict with that purported value. In this week’s column, I’d like to examine what he says about solidarity, and, as you might expect, my conclusions are negative.

It is well known that socialism is a shortage economy. It is the economy of inefficiency and corruption, of indifferent workers and of bigwigs, of lacking spare parts, of lacking funds, of failure, of permanent reform needs and of constantly unsuccessful reforms. This concerns in particular total socialism, as it was realized in the Soviet Union or under National Socialism.

Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom
by Philip Hamburger
Harvard University Press, 2021, 320 pp.

Philip Hamburger has made a revolutionary contribution to American constitutional law. He shows that what is often regarded as a narrow topic, “unconstitutional conditions,” of interest only to specialists, is in fact fundamental to understanding our contemporary system of government and moreover that its abuse poses grave dangers to liberty.

Order and chaos (complete disorder) have long bookended people’s view of their circumstances. For instance, I have read that order versus chaos was the primary division in ancient Egyptian religion, where order also meant justice and chaos meant injustice. Much more recently, Henry Adams wrote that “Chaos was the law of nature; order was the dream of man.”