This book offers an account of Hegel that will surprise many readers—at least it surprised me. The political philosopher Leo Strauss often criticized “historicism,” the view that human beings do not have a fixed nature or essence. Instead, as José Ortega y Gasset put it, “Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is—history.” G.W.F. Hegel was one
Most contemporary political philosophers view free market capitalism with suspicion, if not outright loathing, but one exception is Gerald Gaus, who taught for many years at the University of Arizona. Gaus was by no means a Rothbardian but rather worked within the framework of “public reason” set forward by John Rawls, though Gaus greatly modified
[ The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism . By Matthew Continetti. Basic Books, 2022. 503 pages, Amazon Kindle Edition.] Why should we be interested in this book? At first glance, it appears that we shouldn’t be. Though the history of American conservatism is of great importance, and the author has amassed a great deal of
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 market undermines tradition and that those of us who resist the “woke” Left and want to preserve
Crack-Up Capitalism will be of interest to many readers of The Austrian because of what it says about Murray Rothbard; and for the most part, I shall limit my review to discussing this. The main point of the book is easy to grasp. In recent decades, the notion of a centralized state has come under fire in various ways, including attempts to
Capitalism—Its Nature and Its Replacement: Buddhist and Marxist Insights by Graham Priest Routledge, 2021; 312 pp. The title of this book seems at first sight puzzling: what has Buddhism to do with Marxism? When we learn that the author accepts Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism and also wishes to replace capitalism with a type of socialism, we
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. In my column last week, I said that Senator Josh Hawley’s book The Tyranny of Big Tech raises important issues, and I’d like this week to go into one of these. He notes that Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, YouTube, and Google Search have immense influence on the news and political opinions
On March 2, 1966, Murray N. Rothbard, the founder and twenty-year editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies , would have celebrated his seventieth birthday. This issue of the JLS , as well as a simultaneously appearing special issue of its sister publication, the Review of Austrian Economics , likewise founded and edited by Rothbard, is a
Steven B. Smith in Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes (Yale University Press, 2021) gives us an excellent example of a fallacious way of arguing. Once we see how Smith, a Yale political science and philosophy professor who should know better, falls into this pattern, we will get a clear idea of what the fallacy is and how to avoid it. The
I am sorry to have to report that Bob Wenzel has passed away. He was the editor and publisher of the popular websites Economic Policy Journal and Target Liberty and also published an investment newsletter. I met Bob many years ago at a Mises Institute conference and was immediately impressed by his enthusiasm for Austrian economics and libertarian
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.