Empire . By Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. (Harvard University Press, March 2000, 512 pages) $35.00. This is one of those books that is expected to take the middlebrow world by storm. What Empire claims to be is a readable text in post-modern Marxist analysis combined with a “thesis” that will tell the reader what the world will be like in the
Nike, the athletic gear purveyor, came under fire a few years ago for employing contract workers in emerging markets on allegedly onerous terms that supposedly included unsafe working conditions and subminimum wages. The complaints came from the usual left-wing beneficiaries of capitalism: media pundits (e.g. the Village Voice ) and statist
Some people and firms in the securities industry are cooperating with—or, should I say, surrendering to?—Jesse Jackson and his “Wall Street Project,” which pressures corporate America to adopt its own reparations program. The phenomenon reminds me of the aphorism attributed to Lenin: Capitalists will sell the rope by which they will be hanged.
In 1962, journalist Daniel Schorr interviewed East German leader Walter Ulbricht on television. In the final version, Schorr would ask a tough question, and Ulbricht would rail in anger. Reaction shots showed Schorr serenely nodding back, unshaken and in control. CBS Chairman William Paley praised Schorr for this interview, particularly Schorr’s
The $1.35 trillion tax cut probably is the most complex tax legislation ever passed. Some features are not only puzzling and confusing but even peculiar and weird. They offer minuscule tax relief at the present, a reduction of some 5 percent of federal revenue during the latter part of the decade, and, in an unprecedented quirk of legislation,
If one thing can be said in the favor of the Russian government today, it’s that at least it is honest when it comes to naming its agencies. It calls them “police”—the Tax Police and the Ecology Police, for example. The Russian government practices truth-in-advertising. If only CNN were as honest as the Russian government. The post-Soviet Russian
In her April 12, 2001, column in The Washington Post , ominously entitled “ Think of the Children ,” Mary McGrory concludes that the government should help out more. She relates the story Elizabeth “Cookie” Jones of Washington, a young single mother of three who was profiled by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Katherine Boo in the
In Time magazine’s August 10, 1992, issue, Ted Gup reported on newly disclosed plans that the federal government had developed for salvaging the state in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States by the Soviet Union. “Though the Soviet Union is gone,” the story went, “Washington was once convinced that World War III could break out
In response to the Code Red computer worm, CNET News Executive Editor David Coursey , in his column entitled Cure for Code Red: An Internet border patrol? advocates some measures that, while they may be intended to prevent future outbreaks, would instead ensure a further diminution of our freedoms. Stating that “if our homes were as much under
The tech-stock sector is a wasteland today, only a year after appearing invulnerable. There are economic lessons here that point to the folly of unsustainable, credit-fueled booms. But others want to draw moral lessons as well, as if the hand of justice is smiting all those cocky dot-com millionaires to show them that their good fortune was at
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.