This article argues that praxeology, as a general theoretical approach, can explain the emergence of the socialist doctrine. However, socialist laws of economics cannot be derived from praxeology. It is specifically shown that the immutability of market economic laws does not allow society to achieve a full-fledged communist reality. Using the Soviet Union as an example, this article demonstrates that the market economy cannot be eradicated, despite government efforts, but is omnipresent even if it is ostensibly outlawed. Also, this article demonstrates that Ludwig von Mises’s conclusion about the principal impossibility of economic calculation under socialism is fully applicable to the highest stage of communism, as theorized in Marxism. In relation to socialism in a broader sense, as the collectivization of the means of production grows, the magnitude of the impairment of economic calculation grows with it. Socialist thinkers failed to rebuff Mises’s reasoning because all their proposals violated the economic uncertainty principle: the exact price structures before the exchange are unknown and are in superposition.
Traditionally, scholars have portrayed British popular Liberalism as thoroughly laissez-faire, minarchist, and anti-imperialist before the late nineteenth century. After this point, many scholars claim, popular Liberals broke with their traditional policies for humanitarian and pragmatic reasons by funding social welfare programs, regulating the economy, and endorsing imperialism. This article disagrees, contending instead that British popular Liberalism was never sufficiently committed to classical liberalism. A misguided humanitarian impulse arose within the movement that permitted exceptions to laissez-faire at home and interventionism abroad. Popular Liberals believed that because these exceptions were rare and undertaken in good faith, they did not undermine the movement. However, these initial interventions advocated by popular Liberals established a precedent that was exploited whenever further interventions seemed expedient. In the end, this statist trend destroyed the movement.
Block (2022) takes issue with Slenzok’s (2021) argument against universal antipandemic restrictions (UAPR) developed in the context of COVID-19. He purports to have concocted a thought experiment that invalidates Slenzok’s analysis. In this brief reply, it is demonstrated that Block’s scenario is beside the point and that his (qualified) pro-UAPR position is premised on a notion of agnosticism which, if followed consistently, would render libertarianism utterly inapplicable to real-life conditions.
In this article the nature of private property rights in Nigeria is analyzed and a case is made for basing property rights in natural rights libertarian political philosophy. The issues of land and natural resource ownership and control in Nigeria are analyzed from a Rothbardian point of view. A Rothbardian framework of property ownership options is proposed and used. It is shown that neglect in the protection of property and the frequent abuse of property rights by the Nigerian government is the major reason for poverty in the country. Hence, using examples, a case is made for the reduction and possible elimination of government intervention in the ownership and control of land and natural resources within the Nigerian polity.
Herbert Spencer and F.A. Hayek developed bodies of liberal political thought that stress the importance of evolutionary social adaptation as a type of spontaneous order. An evolutionary social theory, properly understood, can form part of a liberal theory of politics. Improperly understood, it has been employed to form defenses of the modern nation-state, and nation-states are not products of spontaneous social evolution but rather are destructive of it. Hayek and Spencer both regard social evolution as a process that is progressive in nature, producing large, complex industrial societies. Their emphasis on the importance of our lack of knowledge needed to design social norms and of the destructive nature of efforts to do so generally supports the classical liberal values of limited government and personal freedom for which they argued. On the other hand, their evolutionary arguments to explain the emergence and persistence of freedom and limited government in mass societies are deficient, because the evolutionary arguments on which they rely depend upon social rules being established and sustained in smaller societies than the mass societies they imagine as the end of social evolution. A consistent liberal evolutionist, therefore, would not also defend the nation-state.
This retrospective, covering half a century, is a personal history of modern libertarianism. It provides some historical perspective on the growth of libertarianism and its impact on society, especially for those who were born into an existing libertarian movement, including political and academic paths. As outsiders, Austrians and libertarians can expect more than their share of difficult times and roadblocks, although that situation has improved over time. It also shows the limitations of the political path to liberty and the importance of the Austrian view that society changes via emphasis on sound economic science, its practicality, and its subsequent impact on ideology. Finally, it conveys the importance of solving practical problems and puzzles via the thin, radical version of libertarianism.
Rothbard’s principal conclusion that libel and slander laws have no place in libertarian law is correct. We build upon his brilliant insight on this matter and wrestle with the following questions: How does a reputational right operate? Who, properly, owns such a right? Is this property right alienable—transferable? How would this work in practice? Is recovery for damages precluded under libertarian law? We do take issue with Rothbard’s rejection of voluntary slavery contracts and relate this matter to reputation ownership.
This article is an evaluation of the General Theory largely on its own terms. Extensive quotations from The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money are used in order to allow Keynes himself to expound the theory. The goal of this article is to show that even on its own terms the General Theory must be considered a failure, for the problem it purports to solve, involuntary unemployment, does not exist. Many of the individual points made here have been made before, but no references are provided. Benjamin Anderson (1980), for example, remarks on the counter-intuitive (indeed, worthless) nature of Keynes’s “volume of employment,” and Henry Hazlitt points out that one parts with liquidity whenever one buys anything. I think at least two points here have not been made before: 1) that deficit-spending plays an insignificant or non-existent role in the General Theory, and 2) that involuntary unemployment (used in the manner in which Keynes uses the phrase) is incapable of being known to exist—which removes any justification for the assertion that full employment does not exist.
Libertarianism tries to face the difficulties and inconsistencies of democracy. The paper aims to provide a better understanding of the relationship between libertarianism and democracy going back to the early seeds of libertarianism and highlighting the critical contributions by some of the major Old Right protagonists. Inquiring into the role of intellectuals like Albert J. Nock, Henry L. Mencken, Frank Chodorov, Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson, the article will unveil a well consolidated tradition of criticism of democracy within the libertarian political philosophy.
John Hasnas (2008) has famously argued that anarchy is obvious and everywhere. It is less well known, however, that Hasnas also argues that anarchy must be achieved gradually. But how can this work? In this paper, I show that directly confronting state power will never produce viable anarchy (or minarchy). Using the example of Soviet jurist Evgeny Pashukanis, I detail an episode in apparent anti-statism which, by relying on the state, ended in disaster for the putative anti-statist. I next show how combining the theories of Austrian legal thinker Eugen Ehrlich and American political philosopher William Sewell, Jr., can lead to a gradual undoing of state power via case law. Finally, I bring in the example of Japanese jurist and early anti-statist Suehiro Izutaro as a warning. Suehiro also attempted to decrease state power by means of case law, but because he lacked a clear anti-statist teleology he ended up becoming an accomplice of state power, even imperialism. The way to Hasnian anarchy/minarchy lies through the skillful application of case law with an eye always towards the attenuation, and eventual elimination, of the power of the state.
Gary Becker´s 1956 paper about free banking was originally intended as a reaction to the 100-percent reserve proposals that were then popular at the University of Chicago. Today the original paper clearly illustrates how considerably our views and theories about free banking have evolved in the past 50 years. This development is to a considerable extent the result of the work and the writings of economists of the Austrian School. Pascal Salin is one of the most prominent members of the Austrian Free Banking School. In a new introduction to the 1956 paper written especially for the Festschrift in honor of Pascal Salin, Gary Becker partly repudiates and mitigates some of his previous conclusions. This event offers a fitting opportunity to review some developments in the theory of free banking and related issues and to add a few clarifications concerning the present “state of the art” as regards an acceptable and adequate concept of free banking.
The economic paradigms of Ludwig von Mises on the one hand and of John Maynard Keynes on the other have been correctly recognized as antithetical at the theoretical level, and as antagonistic with respect to their practical and public policy implications. Characteristically they have also been vindicated by opposing sides of the political spectrum. Nevertheless the respective views of these authors with respect to the meaning and interpretation of probability exhibit a closer conceptual affinity than has been acknowledged in the literature. In particular it is argued that in some relevant respects Ludwig von Mises´ interpretation of the concept of probability exhibits a closer affinity with the interpretation of probability developed by his opponent John Maynard Keynes than with the views on probability espoused by his brother Richard von Mises. Nevertheless there also exist significant differences between the views of Ludwig von Mises and those of John Maynard Keynes with respect to probability. One of these is highlighted more particularly: where John Maynard Keynes advocated a monist view of probability, Ludwig von Mises embraced a dualist view of probability, according to which the concept of probability has two different meanings each of which is valid in a particular area or context. It is concluded that both John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig von Mises presented highly nuanced views with respect to the meaning and interpretation of probability.
IN ATTEMPTING TO PROMOTE the libertarian viewpoint, particularly in its anarchic variety, one is faced with a variety of problems. Some problems are theoretical and are well treated in the comprehensive literature; other problems, however, are practical or rhetorical and, while the theoretical problems (and their solution) are intrinsically the more important, it is vital that the practical/rhetorical problems be overcome if the
SUSAN MOLLER OKIN, IN her 1989 book Justice, Gender, and the Family, puts forth an objection to Nozick’s entitlement theory. In short, Nozick's entitlement theory states that unowned material resources can be legitimately acquired by labor in a certain sense. Okin argues that an advocate of Nozick’s entitlement theory must, on pain of contradiction, accept that a mother owns her offspring by virtue of being the creator, at least until the offspring has developed certain properties and capabilities. Okin’s argument in support of the claim that one is caught in a contradiction if one accepts Nozick’s entitlement theory and also cherishes the claim that mothers do not own their offspring by virtue of being their creators is presented in section 1. It will be shown here that her position, in its present formulation, does not establish that the entitlement theory is contradictory, though it has morally repugnant implications. And in addition, that it is possible to formulate a slightly different version of her position that is actually stronger in two respects. Section 2 is a discussion of two possible responses to the new stronger version of Okin’s argument and it also establishes that even though the slightly revised, stronger version of her argument undermines Nozick’s entitlement theory, there is a plausible version of the entitlement theory, which remains unaffected by her criticism.
THE THEORY OF THE emergence of the State both in public choice literature and in neoclassical economics assumes that social interaction is prone to “failure” on the model of neoclassical “market failure” theory. It assumes a state of nature, an anarchist utopia, as James M. Buchanan (1975, pp. 2 and 3) has termed it. In the language of game theory, three sorts of social dilemma must be solved to achieve a stable society: the coordination game, the prisoners’ dilemma, and the chicken game. 1
