David Gordon

David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He was educated at UCLA, where he earned his PhD in history. He is the author of Resurrecting Economics, An Introduction to Economic Reasoning, An Austro-Libertarian View (three volumes), and Resurrecting Marx. He is also editor of Secession, State, and Liberty and coeditor of H.B. Acton’s Morals of Markets and Other Essays.

Dr. Gordon is the editor of the Mises Review and the Journal of Libertarian Studies, and a contributor to such journals as Analysis, the International Philosophic Quarterly, the Philosophical Quarterly, the Journal of Libertarian Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

Articles

The Missing Secret

12/13/2024 Friday Philosophy David Gordon

Princeton University Press released in September a new English translation of the first volume of Marx’s Capital. The editors, Paul Reitter and Paul North, tell us that the new translation is the...

The Bailout Fallacy

12/12/2024 The Misesian David Gordon

What Went Wrong with Capitalism by Ruchir Sharma Simon and Schuster, 2024; 384 pp. It is always encouraging when a non–Austrian School economist accepts through his own reasoning an essential tenet of...

Nock’s Enemy, the State

12/12/2024 The Misesian David Gordon

Our Enemy, the State by Albert Jay Nock This year the theme of the Institute’s Supporters Summit was “Our Enemy, the State.” What better book review for this issue of The Misesian, then, than a...

Publications

Deneen’s Common Good Statism

09/05/2023 David Gordon

It’s likely that many readers of The Austrian support the free market and also support “traditional” social values, but in Patrick Deneen’s opinion, this is an unstable amalgam. Deneen, a political theorist who teaches at Notre Dame, thinks that the

Review: Slouching Towards Utopia

07/13/2023 David Gordon

[ Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong, Basic Books, 2022 viii + 605 pp.] J. Bradford DeLong, who teaches economics at UC Berkeley and was a protégé of Larry Summer’s dislikes Austrian economics

Lost Continetti

07/22/2022 David Gordon

The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism By Matthew Continetti Basic Books, 2022 503 pp. Why should readers of The Austrian be interested in this book? At first glance, it appears that we shouldn’t be. Though the history of American

Media

What Is Consent?

12/09/2024 David Gordon

Buchanan and Tullock‘s The Calculus of Consent influentially applies economic ideas to politics, focusing on methodological individual. However, there are a few pitfalls about which readers should be aware.

The Indian Rope Trick

12/03/2024 David Gordon

The political theorist Anthony de Jasay takes on the left‘s ideas of equality, and David Gordon is there to agree—and disagree. Jasay likens the left‘s view of equality to the Indian Rope Trick.

Don’t Knock Nock

12/01/2024 David Gordon

Contrary to anti-freedom myths, "greedy" business owners don't decide what prices will be for goods and services.