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Brazil Protestors: Less Marx, More Mises

03/19/2015

From Monday's Foreign Policy:

Rousseff’s supporters have tried to paint the protesters as coming from a small segment of wealthy Brazilians resentful of the PT’s redistributive economic policies. But the size of Sunday’s demonstrations, and the fact that her center-right opponent won 48 percent of the vote in last year’s runoff, show that the conservative force may not be easy to write off.

Protesters chanted against Rousseff and the PT’s left-wing policies, raising comparisons with Venezuela, Argentina, and Cuba. In Rio they held signs that read, “Against the Bolivarian dictatorship,” referring to the colonial-era revolutionary figure held dear by Latin America’s left, and waved placards calling for “Less Marx, more Mises,” citing the late Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, whose work is influential in libertarian circles.

I guess someone thought, "who's the opposite of Marx?" And he or she (correctly) came up with "Mises."  Or it could have been the work of Helio Beltrao.

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is executive editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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