As usual Murray Rothbard was right. In his Classical Economics, he contrasts John Stuart Mill with his father James Mill: "Instead of possessing a hard-nosed cadre intellect, John Stuart was the quintessence of soft rather than hard core,
The attempt by government to collect information on citizens has a long and troubled history. The lesson is that power, once granted, will always be abused.
In 1940, Mises watched the rise of the total state and the destruction of Europe, and believed he had been "the historian of decline." But the designation doesn't apply to today's Misesians.
In The Foundations of Leninism, Stalin declared "For the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, we must have the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries." What he secured instead was the slavish devotion of Western intellectuals who claimed to represent the proletariat: left intellectuals. With some exceptions, these apologists either ignored or adamantly denied the atrocities of Stalinism. In doing so, they became accomplices to the bloodbath that was Soviet communism; that is, Marxism as popularized by Lenin.
In the last several decades, step by step, the system has become Diocletianized.
The last turn-of-the-century gave birth to Progressivism which was really statism in disguise. But after a century of the state, freedom still stands a chance.
Finally, at the end of the century, a group of French intellectuals tell the truth about the horrifying crimes of communism.
This is not a bad book, but almost every major thesis in it is wrong or unproved. According to our author, human society depends to a large extent on "social capital."
In the course of a largely appreciative review of Murray Rothbard's An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, David Prychitko, who has long positioned himself as an anti-Rothbardian, makes a few mistakes worthy of attention.
Thank goodness this bloody century, the era of communism, national socialism, fascism, and central planning-in short, the century of government worship-is coming to an end. May we use the occasion to re-pledge our allegiance to human freedom, which is the basis of prosperity and civilization itself, and to repudiate every ideological force that opposes it.
