Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. On the Judgment of History by Joan Wallach Scott Columbia University Press, 2020 xxiii + 117 pages Joan Wallach Scott, a historian who is a professor emerita at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, has come up with a most valuable insight. She is decidedly not “one of us,” but
In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West by Wendy Brown Columbia University Press, 2019 viii + 248 pages Wendy Brown, a well-known political theorist who teaches at UC Berkeley, does not like Friedrich Hayek very much. She in part blames him and others as well, including Milton Friedman and James Buchanan, for
In a famous lecture delivered in August 1819, the great classical liberal Benjamin Constant contrasts the ancient and modern conceptions of liberty. By the “ancient conception,” Constant means the liberty of the citizens of a state to rule themselves, as opposed to rule by despots, whether foreign or domestic. He has primarily in mind the ancient
The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society by Joseph E. Stiglitz W.W. Norton, 2023; xxiv + 356 pp. The economist Joseph Stiglitz is an enemy of the free market. To Stiglitz, his own doctoral advisor, Paul Samuelson, far from being the leading post–World War II American Keynesian, is a compromiser who watered down Keynes when he created
Trump’s War on Capitalism by David Stockman Hot Books, 2024; xi + 245 pp. David Stockman is, to say the least, no admirer of Donald Trump, but even those inclined to a more favorable view of the former president than his will find much of value in this book. Stockman, who served in Congress in the 1970s and was budget director during Ronald
The British philosopher Antony Flew is best known as a leading “ordinary language” philosopher. In reaction to the attempt by the logical positivists and others to settle philosophical disputes through resort to an “ideal language,” the ordinary language movement contended that philosophical muddles often arise through lack of attention to the
In last week’s column, I discussed Christophers Coyne’s excellent book In Search of Monsters to Destroy , a cogent account of America’s endeavor to build a “liberal” informal empire. Coyne shows the inherent contradiction of using brutal means to achieve humane values. This week, I’d like to discuss an even more deplorable part of American foreign
Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction (2006) has remained since its publication one of the most influential studies of the Nazi economy. Tooze, an economic historian who teaches at Columbia University, writes from a leftist perspective and does not appear to be familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises, but the interpretation he offers of the
Ludwig von Mises tries in Human Action to reconcile two arguments about charity that pull in opposite directions. The first of these is that some people cannot survive without receiving help: unless they are guaranteed such help by law, they are dependent on charitable donations from the better-off. Within the frame of capitalism the notion of
Murray Rothbard rejected patents, and other writers, following and extending his views, have developed a wide array of arguments against patents in particular and intellectual property (IP) in general. Stephan Kinsella’s Against Intellectual Property is the most detailed and carefully argued of these studies. Not all of those inclined in a free
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.