[ This talk was delivered at the Mises Institute’s 2018 Ron Paul-Mises Circle In Lake Jackson, Texas. ] There is a crisis, and only you, and people like you, can get us out of it. What is this crisis? On the one hand, the statist order is collapsing all around us. America is mired in a futile war in Afghanistan. A belligerent policy toward Iran
JEFF DEIST: One issue discussed recently at our Supporters Summit is whether we’re winning or losing. So two questions: Who is “we,” and are we winning? LEW ROCKWELL: Well, the “we,” fundamentally, is everybody who believes in civilization, who is opposed to what’s been going on ever since the French Revolution, when the Left came to total power
When I met Ludwig von Mises, he was exactly as I had imagined him: kind, brilliant, dignified, beautifully mannered and dressed, a gentleman from what Murray Rothbard called “an older and better world.” His wife, Margit, had been an actress, and she had great beauty, intelligence, and presence as well. A genius, Mises was the greatest economist of
[Prepared for delivery in Hamburg, Germany, upon receiving the Roland Baader Prize.] Thank you very much for the great honor you have conferred on me. The Roland Baader Prize is named for an outstanding champion of the free market and disciple of Ludwig von Mises. As I am the founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, you will not be surprised to
Students of free enterprise usually trace the origins of pro-market thinking to Scottish professor Adam Smith (1723–90). This tendency to see Smith as the fountainhead of economics is reinforced among Americans because his famed book An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nation was published the year of American independence
Ludwig von Mises was the greatest economist and defender of liberty in the twentieth century. In scholarship and in passion for freedom, his rightful heir is Murray N. Rothbard. Rothbard was born in New York City in 1926. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, and studied for more than 10 years under Mises at New York University. However,
The Free Market 24, no. 7 (July 2004) T he psychology of the anti-market left can be a puzzle, but even more confounding is the mentality of the anti-market right. There are agrarians, medievalists, and nationalists, and, above all, the neoconservatives, who dread the market as much as any socialist from days of yore. Their critique differs, but
The Free Market 26, no. 9 (September 2005) [Originally written as an introduction to For A New Liberty] There are many varieties of libertarianism alive in the world today, and they owe a great debt to the work of Ludwig von Mises. His top American student was Murray N. Rothbard, and Rothbardianism remains the center of its intellectual gravity,
[ Originally published September, 2011. ] Several years ago, the police entered the office of a young professor at a reputable university and arrested him for an online crime. They took the professor away, booked him, and then offered him a deal: admit guilt and get off easy. The professor said to the few people to whom he was permitted to speak
[ Originally published August 02, 2003 .] For today’s generation, Hitler is the most hated man in history, and his regime the archetype of political evil. This view does not extend to his economic policies, however. Far from it. They are embraced by governments all around the world. The Glenview State Bank of Chicago, for example, recently
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.