When The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression appeared originally in France in 1997, it caused a firestorm of controversy.
Richard M. Ebeling
Dr. Richard M. Ebeling is the recently appointed BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel. He was formerly professor of Economics at Northwood University, president of The Foundation for Economic Education (2003–2008), was the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College (1988–2003) in Hillsdale, Michigan, and served as vice president of academic affairs for The Future of Freedom Foundation (1989–2003).
The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century
Why did so many people turn their backs on the Western ideal of democratic, limited government and a market economy based on private ownership of the means of production?
The Meaning of the Berlin Wall
On this 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we should remember all that it represented as a symbol of tyranny under which the individual was marked with the label: property of the state.
Jean-Baptiste Say: An Economist in Troubled Times
To consume, men must first produce.
Max Weber on Politics as a Vocation
Max Weber’s essay on “Politics as a Vocation” reinforces all the reasons why it is important to restrict the powers of government, while enabling those in government to secure each individual’s right to their life, liberty and honestly acquired property.
Book Review: The Invention of the Passport
How and why governments have used the power of issuing official travel documents as a means of restricting the free movement of people during the last 200 years.
Jean-Baptiste Say, Capitalism and Say’s “Law of Markets”
Say’s Law of Markets already included the answers to the questions against free markets with which the Keynesians attempted to challenge the efficacy of capitalism a century later.
NBA Kneeling To China Demonstrates That Freedom of Speech is Imposible Without a Free Market
The difference between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is that Donald cannot command companies doing business with the NFL to stop doing so until every football player who has kneeled during the national anthem publicly apologize for “offending the American people.” China can.
Interventionism: An Economic Analysis by Ludwig Von Mises
Interventions inevitably generate imbalances in the market that will force the government to either repeal the existing interventions or extend them in the futile attempt to use new interventions to compensate for the distortions its prior interventions have created, until finally the market has been supplanted by the command economy through a process of incremental expansion of the regulations and controls.
Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution: How Macroeconomic Theory Lost Its Way by Steven Kates
Steven Kates refutes Keynes’s caricature of the classical economists. Ultimately it is always goods that are traded for goods. Say’s Law, properly understood, explains both what causes unemployment and how to solve it..
My Life as an Austrian Economist and a Classical Liberal
Ayn Rand’s writings brought about an ethical and practical revolution in my thinking
Price Controls Attack the Freedom of Speech
We increasingly live in a new “dark age” of economic ignorance, and even stupidity. Few things exemplify this trend as much as the call for price controls over the interactions of multitudes of people in the marketplace of supply and demand. There are few government...
History of the Monopolization of Welfare by the State
Throughout the 19th century, a primary means for the provision of what today we call the “social safety nets” was by the private sector outside of government.
Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: Marking 70 Years of Continuing Relevance
Mises’s brilliant treatise continues to be read and taken seriously as a cornerstone for understanding the nature of the free society and the workings of the market economy.
“L’etat C’est Moi”: The Presidency of Donald Trump
It was French king Louis XIV who declared, “L’etat c’est moi” (“I am the state”), indicating his insistence that he possessed absolute power over his subjects. This attitude is shared by Donald Trump, president of the United States.
How Much Damage Will Come from this Trade War?
First, the good news: the U.S. and world economies have not imploded, so far, as fallout from the rising trade tensions between the Trump administration and Xi Jinping’s government in China. Now, the bad news: there is no certainty that this will not play itself out...
Hazony’s Tradition-Based Society Is Social Engineering
At any moment in time, the world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket. Manners are missing; ethics are being eliminated; culture is corrupted; social attitudes are supercilious; virtues are vanishing; literature is mostly licentious; industry and commerce are...
Capitalism is the Solution to the Problem of “Asymmetric Information”
It is capitalism and the competitive market process that generates solutions to the knowledge problems of the society, including the “informational asymmetry” that naturally follows from any developed social system of division of labor.
Like Socialism, Conservative Nationalism Is Not About Liberty
American “nationalism,” if we are to call it this, is neither identity-politics socialism nor this newly proclaimed “conservative” national socialism. It was, and should be, an allegiance to individual liberty and unlimited economic freedom of trade and association for all things peaceful.
The Let-Alone Principle
“[T]he political system is most conducive to the public good in which the rightful liberty of the individual is least abridged.”
Democratic Party “Progressive” Promises and the Cost To Liberty
Keep in mind what “progressive” means in this political context: an increase in the size, scope, and cost of government in American society.
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