Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World without Democracy by Quinn Slobodian Metropolitan Books, 2023; 336 pp. Quinn Slobodian, a professor of the history of ideas at Wellesley College, has a good deal to say about Murray Rothbard, and I have attempted to respond to that in a review that is to be published in the next issue
The United States and Israel have each had (and are having) their experiences with socialism. One country learned its lesson (at least once upon a time), while the other did not. The experiences these two countries have had with socialism are practically mirror opposites. The US was officially founded almost 250 years ago, with the signing of the
In January 1956, the iconoclastic leftist American poet Allen Ginsberg wrote “ America ,” a prose poem that laments the state of the country and the poet’s place in it. “America” was included in the short poetry collection entitled Howl , published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Publishers in November of the same year. In 1957, Howl became
Review of Kathryn Tanner: Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism An old professor told our class decades ago to believe nothing from the popular press about economics and only half of what the financial press writes. I would add that if a theologian tries to teach you economics, hide your wallet and lock up your daughters! Kathryn Tanner’s
[From the Rothbard Archive, originally published in The New York Times , September 4, 1971.] On Aug. 15, 1971, fascism came to America. And everyone cheered, hailing the fact that a “strong President” was once again at the helm. The word fascism is scarcely an exaggeration to describe the New Economic Policy. The trend had been there for years,
[Excerpted from Murray Rothbard, The Progressive Era , Patrick Newman, ed. (Auburn, Al.: Mises Institute, 2016), chap. 11.] The Rockefellers and their intellectual and technocratic entourage were, indeed, central to the New Deal. In a deep sense, in fact, the New Deal itself constituted a radical displacement of the Morgans, who had dominated the
The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 Austrians call it high time preference. In psychology it’s an area of research called future orientation. Hall of Fame football coach George Allen expressed it as “The future is now.” Almost everyone seems born with it,
In the mid-nineteenth century debates over the virtues and evils of slavery, the arguments from the pro-slavery southerners evolved from a claim that slavery was a “necessary evil” to arguments that it was a “positive moral good.” A large part of this evolution in perspective was a reaction to the growing moral antipathy toward slavery by the
Few people outside New York City noticed that Bill de Blasio was sworn in for a second term as mayor of the Big Apple, as the Usual Luminaries did not show up for the occasion. However low-key the ceremony might have been on that freezing January day, it was significant one thing: the political leadership of New York once again is looking to
March is Women’s History Month. Among the women who have been remembered and honored, however, one who has clearly not received enough attention is Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder). Among the past century’s most ardent proponents of liberty, she developed the inseparable connection between life and liberty and the importance of
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.