Notes on Democracy
If there really were a banned book list in the annals of American statescraft, this would surely be on it. It is not for the faint of heart. Read it, and pass it around, as a revolutionary act.
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From his miraculous rainbow-filled birth during the fiery conflict of World War II, Kim Jong Il watched as his beloved Korea finally earned its freedom from the cursed Japanese. Mere years later, the wicked US imperialists took their chance at conquering the liberated nation—with devastating results. But that's only the beginning of the Dear Leader's story.
It is among the most famous of the great defenses of victimless crimes and controversial economic practices, from profiteering and gouging to bribery and blackmail. However, beneath the surface, this book is also an outstanding work of microeconomic theory that explains the workings of economic forces in everyday events and affairs.
Murray Rothbard explains why:
"Defending the Undefendable performs the service of highlighting, the fullest and starkest terms, the essential nature of the productive services performed by all people in the free market. By taking the most extreme examples and showing how the Smithian principles work even in these cases, the book does far more to demonstrate the workability and morality of the free market than a dozen sober tomes on more respectable industries and activities. By testing and proving the extreme cases, he all the more illustrates and vindicates the theory."
F.A. Hayek agreed, writing the author as follows: "Looking through Defending the Undefendable made me feel that I was once more exposed to the shock therapy by which, more than fifty years ago, the late Ludwig von Mises converted me to a consistent free market position. … Some may find it too strong a medicine, but it will still do them good even if they hate it. A real understanding of economics demands that one disabuses oneself of many dear prejudices and illusions. Popular fallacies in economic frequently express themselves in unfounded prejudices against other occupations, and showing the falsity of these stereotypes you are doing a real services, although you will not make yourself more popular with the majority."
Rothbard's great treatise and its complementary text combined into a single 4.5"x7" pocket edition!
Murray N. Rothbard's great treatise Man, Economy, and State and its complementary text Power and Market, are here combined into a single edition as they were written to be. It provides a sweeping presentation of Austrian economic theory, a reconstruction of many aspects of that theory, a rigorous criticism of alternative schools, and an inspiring look at a science of liberty that concerns nearly everything and should concern everyone.
The Mises Institute's new edition of Man Economy, and State, united with its formerly sundered companion volume Power and Market, is a landmark in the history of the Institute. It takes this book out of the category of underground classic and raises it up to its proper status as one of the great economic treatises of all time, a book that is essential for anyone seeking a robust economic education.
This new edition will take your breath away with its beauty and quality. It's remarkable that a book this thick could lay so flat and be so durable with super-solid binding. It somehow turns out not to be unweildy. Get it with the Study Guide(from mises org or amazon) and you will have what you need.
The captivating new introduction by Professor Joseph Salerno that frames up the Rothbardian contribution in a completely new way, and reassesses the place of this book in the history of economic thought. In Salerno's view, Rothbard was not attempting to write a distinctively "Austrian" book but rather a comprehensive treatise on economics that eschewed the Keynesian and positivist corruptions. This is what accounts for its extraordinarily logical structure and depth. That it would later be called Austrian is only due to the long-lasting nature of the corruptions of economics that Rothbard tried to correct.
For years, the Mises Institute has kept it in print and sold thousands of copies in a nice paperback version. Then we decided to take a big step and put out an edition worthy of this great treatise. It is the Scholar's Edition of Man, Economy, and State -an edition that immediately became definitive and used throughout the world. The footnotes (which are so brilliant and informative!) are at the bottom of every page. The index is huge and comprehensive. The binding is impeccable and its beauty unmatched.
Students have used this book for decades as the intellectual foil for what they have been required to learning from conventional economics classes. In many ways, it has built the Austrian school in the generation that followed Mises. It was Rothbard who polished the Austrian contribution to theory and wove it together with a full-scale philosophy of political ethics that inspired the generation of the Austrian revival, and continues to fuel its growth and development today.
From Rothbard, we learn that economics is the science that deals with the rise and fall of civilization, the advancement and retrenchment of human development, the feeding and healing of the multitudes, and the question of whether human affairs are dominated by cooperation or violence.
Economics in Rothbard's wonderful book emerges as the beautiful logic of that underlies human action in a world of scarcity, the lens on how exchange makes it possible for people to cooperate toward their mutual betterment. We see how money facilitates this, and allows for calculation over time that permits capital to expand and investment to take place. We see how entrepreneurship, based on real judgments and risk taking, is the driving force of the market.
What's striking is how this remarkable book has lived in the shadows for so long. It began as a guide to
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