A specter continues to haunt the world, the specter of Karl Marx. Two hundred years ago, on May 5, 1818, the father of twentieth century totalitarian communism, the guidebook writer of revolutionary mass-murdering dictatorship, and the inspirer of disastrous socialist central planning was born in Trier, Germany. Looking over the political and
“Freedom from want” is one of the most frequently invoked notions of freedom in our time. However, it is a bogus freedom that politicians and socialists offer to lull people into accepting policies that destroy true freedom. Freedom from want has been most loudly advocated in this century by those who favored removing almost all limits from
Lenin’s main book , or at least his most voluminous book (now available in the Collected Works of Lenin ), led some people to call him a philosopher. Most of Lenin’s critique of the ideas of his adversaries consists of calling them “bourgeois.” Lenin’s philosophy is merely a restatement of the philosophical ideas of Marx; to some extent it is not
Ludwig von Mises’s Nation, State, and Economy is a rationalist-utilitarian analysis of the three manifestations of German imperialism: past German imperialism for the sake of national greatness, economic central planning in World War I (war socialism), which accelerated the introduction of full-blown socialism, and the blossoming imperialism of
Paul Krugman has butchered numbers when writing about fiscal policy in nations such as France , Estonia , Germany , and the United Kingdom . Today, we’re going to peruse his writings on Denmark. Here’s some of what he wrote earlier this month. Denmark can teach usabout the possibilities of creating a decent society. Denmark, where tax
The abject practical failure of the Marxist revolutionaries in the post-WWI period had done much harm to their image as the vanguard of social progress. The explanation for this failure in the writings of Mises, Max Weber, and Boris Brutzkus had led many economists to revise their views about the suitable scope of government within society. But
[ Full issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 20, no. 4 (2017)] Scandinavian Unexceptionalism: Culture, Markets, and the Failure of Third-Way Socialism by Nima Sanandaji London: Institute for Economic Affairs, 2015, 132 pp. The Scandinavian countries, and primary among them Sweden, are commonly referred to as anomalies or
[ Full issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 20, no. 4 (2017)] The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Economic Growth, and Increase Inequality by Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, viii+ 221 pp. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Progressives
[ Full issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 20, no. 4 (2017)] Anti-Piketty: Capital for the 21st Century Edited by Jean-Philippe Delsol, Nicholas Lecaussin, and Emmanuel Martin Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2017, xxvii + 272 pp. When Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century was published in 2014 (the French edition had
The following points of desocialization must necessarily be written or read sequentially, but they need not be carried out in that manner: all the following points could, and should, be instituted immediately and all at once. Legalize the Black Market The first two planks are implicit in the previous part of this paper. One, is to legalize the
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.