“The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding”by William HogelandNew York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2024; x + 575 pp.Most readers of the Mises Wire will be familiar with the account of American history developed in many books by Mises Institute President Thomas J. DiLorenzo. According to him, American history since our founding as a nation has been shaped by two conflicting traditions: one, begun by Alexander Hamilton, favoring a centralized government and the other, best personified in Thomas Jefferson, supporting decentralized government and the rights of the states and local communities. Hamilton favored building up American industry artificially through high tariffs, as well as a national bank and a system of costly “national

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.

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Woodrow Wilson is no longer the left-wing icon he once was owing to his role in promoting segregation in federal employment, and this revised view is much evidenced in Corey Brettschneider’s work “The Presidents and the People.” Those of us already inclined to a negative view of Wilson will find much of value in the book.According to Brettschneider, beginning with his time as a graduate student in political science at Johns Hopkins University, Wilson believed throughout his academic career in a strong state based on hierarchy.“Wilson attended lectures about how history could be theorized in systematic terms that describe a progressive improvement of the human condition. He became absorbed by the philosophy of Georg Hegel. … In Hegel’s works, personal freedom was

The economist and social critic Glenn C. Loury has written a book sure to attract attention, but in what follows, I don’t propose to address what is likely to be the principal source of that attention. In Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (W.W. Norton, 2024), Loury has offered an account of his life that reads like a romantic thriller. Readers in search of salacious gossip will find it in abundance. It transpires, for example, that both Loury and the Nobel-Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling led “double lives.” At the risk of losing my readers’ interest, I’ll discuss a problem in the way Loury argues that is distressingly common nowadays.Loury, I claim, is guilty of argument by fiat. In setting up a problem, he treats certain premises as

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.

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Many people argue in this way: The 1964 Civil Rights Act was fine. No one should be discriminated against because of his race or sex. Because blacks and women have suffered such discrimination in the past, it may be that programs like affirmative action are justified, at least temporarily. However, the purpose of these programs should be to promote equality of opportunity. Everybody deserves an equal chance to live a good life or, at any rate, a fair chance.The problem that has arisen since the passage of the 1964 act, it is further alleged, is that “equality of outcomes or results” has come to replace “equality of opportunity.” This is a socialistic measure that is incompatible with the free market. In short—equality of opportunity, good; equality of results,

Ludwig von Mises tries in Human Action to reconcile two arguments about charity that pull in opposite directions. The first of these is that some people cannot survive without receiving help: unless they are guaranteed such help by law, they are dependent on charitable donations from the better-off.Within the frame of capitalism the notion of poverty refers only to those people who are unable to take care of themselves. Even if we disregard the case of children, we must realize that there will always be such unemployables. Capitalism, in improving the masses’ standard of living, hygienic conditions, and methods of prophylactics and therapeutics, does not remove bodily incapacity. It is true that today many people who in the past would have been doomed to life-long

Ludwig von Mises tries in Human Action to reconcile two arguments about charity that pull in opposite directions. The first of these is that some people cannot survive without receiving help: unless they are guaranteed such help by law, they are dependent on charitable donations from the better-off.Within the frame of capitalism the notion of poverty refers only to those people who are unable to take care of themselves. Even if we disregard the case of children, we must realize that there will always be such unemployables. Capitalism, in improving the masses’ standard of living, hygienic conditions, and methods of prophylactics and therapeutics, does not remove bodily incapacity. It is true that today many people who in the past would have been doomed to life-long

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.

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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.

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Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction (2006) has remained since its publication one of the most influential studies of the Nazi economy. Tooze, an economic historian who teaches at Columbia University, writes from a leftist perspective and does not appear to be familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises, but the interpretation he offers of the aims of Nazi economic policy is the same as that of Mises. In what follows, I will first discuss Mises’s analysis and then show how Tooze confirms and supplements what Mises says.Mises’s account of Nazism is contained in his book Omnipotent Government, published in 1944 while World War II had not yet ended. In Mises’s view, the fundamental fact that confronted all major German political figures after World War I was that

Adam Tooze’s The Wages of Destruction (2006) has remained since its publication one of the most influential studies of the Nazi economy. Tooze, an economic historian who teaches at Columbia University, writes from a leftist perspective and does not appear to be familiar with the work of Ludwig von Mises, but the interpretation he offers of the aims of Nazi economic policy is the same as that of Mises. In what follows, I will first discuss Mises’s analysis and then show how Tooze confirms and supplements what Mises says.Mises’s account of Nazism is contained in his book Omnipotent Government, published in 1944 while World War II had not yet ended. In Mises’s view, the fundamental fact that confronted all major German political figures after World War I was that

In recent days, we have had brought home to us what “show trials” are like. They are not confined to Soviet Russia and its satellite countries during the Cold War but are a very present reality to us in America today. Political opponents of Donald Trump charged him with felonies for acts that were entirely legal. The judge in the case was a political opponent of Trump and worked artfully to prevent the trial jury from hearing testimony that would have exposed the imposture.In view of what has happened, I think it would be interesting to discuss some earlier show trials, the Nuremberg trials held after World War II, as discussed in the important book by Danilo Zolo, Victor’s Justice (Verso, 2009).Should war crimes (i.e., violations of rights during a war) be

How to Run Wars: A Confidential Playbook for the National Security Eliteby Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. HallIndependent Institute, 2024; xvii + 198 pp.This is an excellent book, but I should like to begin, characteristically, with a complaint. Christopher Coyne and Abigail Hall, who are both economists favorable to the free market, present an excellent criticism of America’s pursuit of global hegemony, ably showing the immense costs of this policy. They do so satirically, as if they were writing a guide to American policymakers, urging on them the imperative need to act ruthlessly to suppress dissent, spend vast sums of money, and destroy lives and liberty, all in the name of promoting freedom. They say they were inspired to write in this fashion by Bruce

The Failure of American Conservatism and the Road Not TakenBy Claes G. RynRepublic Book Publishers, 2023; 468 pp.Claes Ryn, a leading conservative intellectual who taught politics for many years at the Catholic University of America, is by no means a libertarian, but readers of The Misesian can learn much from this book. I’d like to discuss two topics: first, the criticism of Harry Jaffa and his mentor, Leo Strauss; and second, the full-scale assault on the Wilsonian and neoconservative view that America is the “hope of the world,” and, as such, entitled to exercise global hegemony.Before addressing these topics, though, it is essential to say something about Ryn’s philosophical ideas. A key theme of the book is that conservatives, under the sway of William

Milton Friedman: The Last ConservativeBy Jennifer BurnsFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023; x + 587 pp.Imagine that you come across this about the “education premium” on someone’s blog: “By going to college, you are more than tripling your chances for success in after life.” The statement is buttressed by a calculation of the extra lifetime earnings that a college degree will provide. Wouldn’t you think that the author is an economist? In fact, the author was a high school student, and he wrote this in 1927, before ever studying economics. As you will by now have guessed, the precocious student was Milton Friedman.Jennifer Burns, a professor of history at Stanford, makes clear in her outstanding biography that many of Friedman’s characteristic intellectual traits were

The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Societyby Joseph E. StiglitzW.W. Norton, 2023; 356 pp.To say that Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner in economics who now teaches at Columbia University, opposes the free market is an understatement. He does not favor complete central planning, he tells us, but wants a balance between market and nonmarket arrangements. However, when it comes to his concrete proposals, the market seems always in his eyes to be deficient. Indeed, his title consciously echoes Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944), but while Hayek argued that central planning undermines freedom, Stiglitz says that only an economy dominated by a “democratic” state results in freedom.Stiglitz’s book contains a number of interesting arguments, and I

The Spring 2024 issue of the Independent Reviewfeatures a symposium on Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, which was published some fifty years ago. One of the contributions, by the philosopher Matt Zwolinski, stands out from the others in that it is not favorable to Rothbard. To the contrary, Zwolinski argues that Rothbard’s case for liberty is unsound. In my view, he has failed to show this, but a number of his arguments are interesting, and in what follows, I’ll have a look at two of them. I met Matt Zwolinski many years ago when he attended some of my lectures at the Mises University. He has gone on to become a very able philosopher, but he ought to be a Rothbardian!Philosophical arguments often turn on competing judgments about the weight to be accorded

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.

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Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Againby Robert KaganAlfred A. Knopf, 2024; 243 pp.Robert Kagan, a senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, has acquired over several decades a well-deserved reputation as a defender of war. Like Woodrow Wilson, he believes the world must be made safe for democracy. He strongly supported George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, and though the war is widely regarded as a failure, Kagan disagrees. Bush was right, and to Kagan, that hapless incompetent is a figure to admire, in large part because of Bush’s support for expanded immigration from non-European countries.In a statement that, as [the historian Gary] Gerstle notes, would have gotten him “tossed out of the GOP” in 2016, Bush declared in his 2000 campaign,

Life after Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and the Time Theory of Moneyby George GilderRegnery Gateway, 2023; 212 pp.George Gilder looks at things in an original way, but this is not always a virtue. There is much good sense in Life after Capitalism, but to find it readers will have to wade through a great deal of mumbo jumbo. Let’s start with the good sense.Gilder contends that the contemporary American economy is dominated by an elite group of bankers who greatly impede the efforts of creative entrepreneurs to promote prosperity. Here he finds himself in agreement with his longtime debating opponent Robert Reich: “Reich has become a relentless critic of what I call the ‘hypertrophy of finance’ in the U.S. economy. . . . Banking

How Nations Escape Poverty: Vietnam, Poland, and the Origins of Prosperityby Rainer ZitelmannEncounter Books, 2024; xiii + 212 pp.Rainer Zitelmann has a well-deserved reputation as a defender of the free market; few, if any, can match his immense capacity for amassing relevant facts and using them effectively to support his arguments. This capacity is much in evidence in his latest book, How Nations Escape Poverty. They do so, Zitelmann says, by moving from socialism to capitalism, and in the book, he offers a powerful illustration of his thesis. After the Indochina War, Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in the world, but dramatic freemarket reforms have made this formerly socialist country prosperous. In like fashion, Communist Poland was among the poorest

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.

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America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictatorsby Jacob HeilbrunnLiveright, 2024; 249 pp.Jacob Heilbrunn, who is the editor of The National Interest, is dismayed that some leading figures on the American Right show an affinity for European dictators; he has in mind especially the “Hungarian strongman” Viktor Orbán and the Russian president Vladimir Putin. This admiration, not the foreign policy realism they claim to champion, leads these figures on the Right to sympathize with Putin’s expansionist war against Ukraine rather than defend democracy by coming to the victim’s aid. The affinity is nothing new, Heilbrunn argues, but has been a pattern for over a century. Heilbrunn writes:A variety of politicians on the Right, too, have regularly

The Prophets of Doomby Neema ParviniImprint Academic, 2023; 227 pp.It was to be expected that Neema Parvini would give us an excellent book, and he has not disappointed us. Parvini is an outstanding Shakespeare critic and has written an important book on property rights, The Defenders of Liberty. In The Prophets of Doom, he discusses with marvelous concision a number of thinkers who have rejected the notion of universal historical progress, advocating instead a cyclical view, according to which separate cultures arise, grow, flourish, and decline. Further, these thinkers see our own civilization as in the stage of decline, beset by forces it cannot withstand.Why do they think so? Many of them, not all, criticize the free market from a right-wing point of view: it

Who’s Afraid of Gender?by Judith ButlerFarrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024; 308 pp.Judith Butler is a well-known feminist theorist, and one approaches her latest book with interest, all the more so because of its puzzling title. By “gender,” Butler means the view that the roles of men and women in society are not determined by biology but vary in different cultures and times and, further, that there are some people who do not fit within the “binary” categories of men and women at all. If this is what she means by gender, why does she think that people are afraid of it? No doubt some people have been critical of gender, in particular to the suggestion often drawn from the stress on variability that the nonbinaries should be celebrated rather than condemned, but is it

Abundance, Generosity, and the State: An Inquiry into Economic Principlesby Jörg Guido HülsmannLudwig von Mises Institute, 2024; 452 pp.It is rare to encounter a book that has the potential to reshape the way we look at economics, but Guido Hülsmann has done exactly that in Abundance, Generosity, and the State. Hülsmann is one of the leading theorists of the Austrian School, but he has always looked at issues in an original way, and that quality is manifested “abundantly” in this outstanding book.In what way is this so? The free market is often portrayed as the realm in which people make exchanges to their mutual benefit. Ludwig von Mises constantly emphasized this theme, viewing social cooperation in the free market as a major advance from the struggles pervasive

The Political Thought of David Hume: The Origins of Liberalism and the Modern Political Imaginationby Aaron Alexander ZubiaNotre Dame 2024; 366 pp.The central thesis of Aaron Zubia’s very scholarly book will be of interest to students of Ludwig von Mises. Zubia argues that the thought of David Hume underlies contemporary liberalism. He intends “liberalism” broadly, so that it encompasses not only twentieth-century liberalism, but classical liberalism as well. According to liberalism, the state should not be guided in its policies by theories about what is objectively good or bad. These are inevitably controversial, and attempts to impose one of these theories on those who dissent from it will lead to unrest and, quite possibly. open war. In particular, the state

Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nationby Joshua ZeitzViking, 2023; 313 pp.Joshua Zeitz, a contributing writer to Politico, has written a very useful book. It belongs to an increasingly common genre: books that are very favorable to Abraham Lincoln, in some cases approaching a deification of him, which nevertheless present material that show Lincoln in a less-than-flattering light.Lincoln’s God is just such a book. Zeitz has done substantial research on Christianity in America during the nineteenth century and offers valuable insights about Lincoln’s religious beliefs. Lincoln grew up in a Calvinist home, but in his teenage years, he rejected Christianity and indeed scoffed at it. This did not prevent him from lying about his religious doubts

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