[This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 11 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995). An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .] Despite Marx’s claim to be a “scientific socialist,” scorning all other socialists whom he dismissed as moralistic and “Utopian,”
[This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 12 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995). An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .] Marx desperately sought a materialistic dialectic of history, a dialectic that would account for all basic historical change and
[From Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market ] Up to this point we have discussed the case in which the owners of land and labor, i.e., of the original factors, restrict their possible consumption and invest their factors in a production process, which, after a certain time, produces a consumers’ good to be sold to consumers for money.
[This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 12 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995). An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .] There is no place in his system where Marx is fuzzier or shakier than at its base: the concept of historical materialism, the key
[ Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market ] The analysis in chapter 1 was based on the logical implications of the assumption of action, and its results hold true for all human action. The application of these principles was confined, however, to “Crusoe economics,” where the actions of isolated individuals are considered by themselves.
Even Marx must dimly recognize that not “material productive forces,” not even “classes,” act in the real world, but only individual consciousness and individual choice. Even in the Marxian analysis, each class, or the individuals within it, must become conscious of its “true” class interests in order to act upon pursuing or achieving them. To
Editor’s Note: Although negotiations concerning the “fiscal cliff” seem to be at an impasse, the one thing both Democrats and Republicans agree on is their desire to close tax loopholes. That is bad news for the economy, because as Ludwig von Mises said, “Capitalism breathes through those loopholes.” Closing loopholes to “broaden the tax base” has
[From chapter 23 of The Case Against the Fed .] Having examined the nature of fractional reserve and of central banking, and having seen how the questionable blessings of Central Banking were fastened upon America, it is time to see precisely how the Fed, as presently constituted, carries out its systemic inflation and its control of the American
[ The Free Market , May 1988] The Mises Institute comes at both economic scholarship and applied political philosophy from a very different perspective. It believes that “policy analysis” without principle is mere flim-flam and ad-hoc ery—murky political conclusions resting on foundations of sand. It also believes that policy analysis that does
[Editor’s Note: Is the Iraq War over oil? Chuck Hagel, who was just nominated for Secretary of Defense, thinks so; or at least he did in 2007. And, for neocon Bill Kristol, that’s a big problem . Michael Moore responded to Kristol , quoting several conservative pundits who basically agreed with Hagel. One of the pundits quoted was Ann Coulter, who
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.
