Mises Search

[This excerpt from For a New Liberty was first printed in the Libertarian Review , 1978. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .]   Since World War II, American military and foreign policy, at least rhetorically, has been based upon the assumption of a looming threat of Russian attack — an assumption

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith .]   The system of mercantilism needed no high-flown “theory” to get launched. It came naturally to the ruling castes of the burgeoning nation-states. The king, seconded by the nobility, favored high government

[Reprinted from Libertarian Review , 1979.] “Left,” “Right,” and “center” have increasingly become meaningless categories. Libertarians know that their creed can and does attract people from all parts of the old, obsolete ideological spectrum. As consistent adherents of individual liberty in all aspects of life, we can attract liberals by our

[ Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy • By John A. Garraty. This review was first published in Inquiry , 1977.] A historian who doesn’t understand economics can only write about economic history or the history of economic thought like a behaviorist psychologist dealing with the human mind. He is limited to approaching his

[This article is excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought , vol. 1, Economic Thought Before Adam Smith . An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download .]   The first French mercantilist of note was Barthélemy de Laffemas (1545–1612), an uneducated son of a very poor

[ Libertarian Review , 1979]   After the great breakthrough events of 1978 — the victory of Proposition 13, the subsequent tax revolt, the election of the first Libertarian Party candidate in History (Dick Randolph to the Alaska State House), and Ed Clark’s fantastic 375,000 votes for governor of California — the Libertarian Party stands ready to

[ Libertarian Review , 1979]   For decades it was an axiom of conservative faith that international Communism was and must be a monolith, that Communism in all its aspects and manifestations was simply pure evil (because it was “atheistic” and/or totalitarian by definition), and that therefore all Communism was necessarily the same. For one thing,

[From Inquiry (1977); reprinted in Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy (1995).] The Panama Canal question has already established itself as the hottest political issue for the coming year. Ronald Reagan, who almost rode to the Republican nomination last year on a promise to keep the canal, is back again, leading the powerful forces

[ The International Monetary System • By Robert Solomon • Harper and Row, 1977 • 381 pages; and The Origins of International Economic Disorder • By Fred Block • University of California Press, 1977 • 282 pages]   At the end of World War II an all-powerful United States succeeded in imposing on the Western world its major economic war aim: the

[ A Dangerous Place • By Daniel P. Moynihan • Little Brown, 1978 • 297 pages. This review originally appeared as “Bill & Irving & Ken & Patrick” in Inquiry , Vol. 2, No. 4 (February 5, 1979), pp. 21–23.]   Once upon a time in America, there was a left and a right and a center, and within these clearly discernible segments of the ideological