The philosophy of Roy Bhaskar, who died November 19, would ordinarily hold little interest for readers of the Mises Blog . Bhaskar was a Marxist, who in his later years veered off toward a fuzzy spirituality. It is worth taking note of him, though, because he was an extreme example of a besetting sin of the contemporary academic world. His prose
Nathaniel Branden died today. He was for many years the leading follower of Ayn Rand and lectured widely on her philosophy of Objectivism. He and Rand split in 1968, and after that his main work was in the psychology of self-esteem. He was by all accounts a dynamic and effective lecturer. For a brief time, Murray Rothbard and his followers in the
[ This is David Gordon’s introductory essay to Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s new book From Aristocracy to Monarchy to Democracy . ] Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a master of theoretical history. He tells us that it is not my purpose here to engage in standard history, i.e., history as it is written by historians, but to offer a logical or sociological
Socialism: A Logical Introduction Scott R. Sehon Oxford University Press, 2024; 268 pp. This is a better book than I expected it to be, but it is not without its problems. Scott Sehon, a philosophy professor at Bowdoin College, is strongly inclined to believe that socialism is better than capitalism, but in the book, his main aim is to set forward
Today is Lew Rockwell’s birthday, and this is a fitting time to reflect on his significance for Austrian economics and for libertarianism. Lew has been the foremost advocate and promoter of the work of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. He founded the Mises Institute in 1982 in order to bring to the attention of a wide scholarly and popular
A recent article in Bloomberg Markets by Michelle Jamrisko brings welcome news. “The gold standard is one of the oldest ideas about money, but the hardest of hard-money hawks sense an opening to breathe new life into it.” Unfortunately, those in search of information about the gold standard and its supporters will find little of use in the
William Weld, a former Governor of Massachusetts, has recently announced his intention to run for Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket, in concert with Gary Johnson. Weld has been since the 1990s greatly in favor at the Cato Institute, but Murray Rothbard viewed him with disdain. He often referred to Weld in the pages of The Rothbard
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.