In his excellent new book In Defense of Capitalism (Republic Book Publishers, 2023), the historian and political scientist Rainer Zitelmann asks a vital question about inequality. In asking this question, he makes a move characteristic of his work. Demands to reduce inequality of wealth and income are widespread, and often debates about proposals
The Global Currency Plot: How the Deep State Will Betray Your Freedom, and How to Prevent It by Thorsten Polleit Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2023; 190 pp. Thorsten Polleit’s outstanding new book is packed with insights about both the philosophy of economics and economic policy, and as he shows, his philosophical standpoint enables him to grasp the
A Nation So Conceived: Abraham Lincoln and the Paradox of Democratic Sovereignty by Michael P. Zuckert University Press of Kansas, 2023; 416 pp. Michael Zuckert, a political philosopher who teaches at the University of Notre Dame, tries to make the best case he can for Abraham Lincoln, but in doing so he offers substantial material that supports
Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness by Charles R. Kesler Encounter Books, 2021 xviii + 451 pp. Charles Kesler, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books , has presented in this important new book a carefully conceived interpretation of the
Murray Rothbard and other libertarians support self-ownership. Part of being a self-owner is that no one may physically harm your body without your consent, unless you first violate someone else’s rights. David Friedman raised a famous objection to this principle, and the problem has also been discussed by Walter Block. In his book The Machinery
Today would have been Murray Rothbard’s ninety-fifth birthday. He was an unforgettable friend whose immense knowledge of many different fields was unsurpassed in my experience. In a lecture on the Austrian theory of the business cycle, he mentioned the common objection that the expansion of bank credit might have no effect if investors anticipated
Leo Strauss is one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century, and like him or not, we need to understand his ideas. Murray Rothbard, by the way, had a mixed verdict on Strauss. He says, for example, [H]is work exhibits one great virtue and one great defect: the virtue is that he is in the forefront of the fight to
The historian Quinn Slobodian presents us in his article “ Perfect Capitalism, Imperfect Humans: Race, Migration, and the Limits of Ludwig von Mises’s Globalism ,” Contemporary European History (2018), with a surprising interpretation of Ludwig von Mises. According to Slobodian, Mises was a racist who favored colonial wars of subjugation to open
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a name to reckon with. He has for over forty years made outstanding contributions to Austrian economics, philosophy, history, and sociology, all from a Rothbardian perspective. Murray Rothbard was his great mentor and friend, and no one among his Rothbardian contemporaries has had so wide a public impact. For this reason, the
Raghuram Rajan has written a surprising book. Now teaching finance at the University of Chicago, he is an international bureaucrat in good standing, and not a minor one at that; he was chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Yet far from calling for an increase in “global governance,” as one might expect from someone with his
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.