The Free Market 14, no. 8 (August 1996) “We Russians are doomed to teach mankind,” wrote philosopher Grigory Chaadayev in 1848, “some awful lesson.” The lesson turns out to be more than proving socialism’s brutality and futility. It is also about the unlikelihood that elections alone will resolve a deep social and economic crisis. After the
The Free Market 27, no. 10 (October 2009) In 1918, the Soviet Union became the first country to promise universal “cradle-to-grave” healthcare coverage, to be accomplished through the complete socialization of medicine. The “right to health” became a “constitutional right” of Soviet citizens. The proclaimed advantages of this system were that it
The Free Market 8, no. 8 (August 1990) The Soviet Union was the first country to introduce a fully nationalized healthcare system. To the cheers of Western “progressives,” Lenin signed a decree in 1919 stating that every Soviet citizen had a right to free medical care. Looking at the history of Soviet health decrees, it appears as if the system
The Free Market 12, no. 7 (July 1994) Alexandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s return to Russia has engendered more than the usual amount of scaremongering. The author, we are told, is a Pan-Slavic nationalistic and religious fanatic whose views are outdated and irrelevant. Yet Solzhenitsyn used his first speech and press conference in Russia to promote two
The Free Market 13, no. 3 (March 1995) When a people rebels and declares its independence, a central state can let them go or beat them into submission. With the collapse of the Soviet empire, we’ve seen some of both. In Chechnya, and adjacent Ingushetia, however, the Yeltsin government chose mass murder to maintain its evil empire. Rather than
El Mercado Libre 27, no. 10 (Octubre de 2009) En 1918, la Unión Soviética se convirtió en el primer país en prometer una cobertura de salud universal “de la cuna a la tumba”, que se lograría a través de la socialización completa de la medicina. El “derecho a la salud” se convirtió en un “derecho constitucional” de los ciudadanos soviéticos. Las
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.