Making economic sense phần 10 docx

only journal in the field. It serves to expand and develop the truths of Austrian economics. But it also nurtures Austrians, encourages new, young Austrians to read and write for the jour- nal, and finds mature Austrians heretofore isolated and scat- tered in often lonely academic outposts, but who are now stim- ulated to write and submit articles. These men and women now know that they are not isolated, that they are part of a large and growing nationwide and even international movement. Any of us who remember what it was like to find even one other person who agreed with our seem- ingly eccentric views in favor of freedom and the free market will appreciate what I mean, and how vitally important has been the growing role of the Mises Institute. The Institute’s comprehensive program in Austrian educa- tion also includes publishing and distributing working papers, books, and monographs, original and reprinted, and holding conferences on a variety of important economic topics, and later publishing the conference papers in book form. Its monthly policy letter, the Free Market, provides incisive commentary on the world of political economy from an Austrian perspective. Furthermore, the Mises Institute now has its academic headquarters at Auburn University, where M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics are being granted. The Mises Institute also provides a large number of graduate fellowships, both res- ident at Auburn University, and non-resident to promising young graduate students throughout the country. Last but emphatically not least, the Institute sponsors a phe- nomenally successful week-long summer conference in the Aus- trian School. This program, which features a remarkable fac- ulty, has attracted the best young minds from the world over, and gained deserved recognition as the most rigorous and com- prehensive program anywhere. Here, leading Austrian econo- mists engage in intensive instruction and discussion with stu- dents in a lovely campus setting. Participants are literally the best, the brightest and the most eager budding Austrians. From there they go on to develop, graduate, and themselves teach as 460 Making Economic Sense Austrian scholars, or become businessmen or other opinion leaders imbued with the truth and the importance of Austrian and free-market economics. In addition, the Institute is unique in that instructors avoid the usual academic practice of giving a lecture and quickly retir- ing from the scene; instead, their attendance at all the lectures encourages fellowship and an esprit de corps among faculty and students. These friendships and associations may be lifelong, and they are vital for building any sort of vibrant or cohesive long-run movement for Austrian economics and the free soci- ety. The basic point of this glittering spectrum of activities is twofold: to advance the discipline, the expanding, integrated body of truth that is Austrian economics; and to build a flour- ishing movement of Austrian economists. No science, no disci- pline, develops in thin air, in the abstract; it must be nurtured and advanced by people, by individual men and women who talk to each other, write to and for each other, interact and help build the body of Austrian economics and the people who sus- tain it. The remarkable achievement of the Mises Institute can only be understood in the context of what preceded it, and of the conditions it faced when it began in 1982. In 1974, leading Mises student F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics, a startling change from previous Nobel awards, exclusively for mathematical Keynesians. 1974 was also the year after the death of the great modern Austrian theorist and champion of free- dom, Ludwig von Mises. Hayek’s prize sparked a veritable revival in this long-forgotten school of economic thought. For several years thereafter, annual scholarly week-long conferences gathered the leading Austrian economists of the day, as well as the brightest young students; and the papers delivered at these meetings became published volumes, reviving and advancing the Austrian approach. Austrian economics was being revived from 40 years of neglect imposed by the Keynesian Revolution—a Our Intellectual Debts 461 revolution that sent the contrasting and once flourishing school of Austrian economics down the Orwellian memory hole. In this burgeoning Austrian revival, there was one fixed point so obvious that it was virtually taken for granted: that the heart and soul of Austrianism was, is, and can only be Ludwig von Mises, this great creative mind who had launched, estab- lished and developed the twentieth-century Austrian School, and the man whose courage and devotion to unvarnished, uncompromised truth led him to be the outstanding battler for freedom and laissez-faire economics in our century. In his ideas, and in the glory of his personal example, Mises was an inspira- tion and a beaconlight for us all. But then, in the midst of this flourishing development, something began to go wrong. After the last successful confer- ence in the summer of 1976, the annual high-level seminars dis- appeared. Proposals to solidify and expand the success of the boom by launching a scholarly Austrian journal, were repeat- edly rebuffed. The elementary instructional summer seminars continued, but their tone began to change. Increasingly, we began to hear disturbing news of an odious new line being spread: Mises, they whispered, had been “too dogmatic . . . too extreme,” he “thought he knew the truth,” he “alienated peo- ple.” Yes, of course, Mises was “dogmatic,” i.e., he was totally devoted to truth and to freedom and free enterprise. Yes, indeed, Mises, even though the kindliest and most inspiring of men, “alienated people” all the time, that is, he systematically alienated collectivists, socialists, statists, and trimmers and opportunists of all stripes. And of course such charges were nothing new. Mises had been hit with these smears all of his valiant and indomitable life. The terribly disturbing thing was that the people mouthing these canards all knew better: for they had all been seemingly dedicated Misesians before and during the “boom” period. It soon became all too clear what game was afoot. Whether independently or in concert, the various people and groups 462 Making Economic Sense involved in this shift had made a conscious critical decision: they had come to the conclusion they should have understood long before, that praxeology, Austrian economics, uncompromising laissez-faire were popular neither with politicians nor with the Establishment. Nor were these views very “respectable” among mainstream academics. The small knot of wealthy donors decided that the route to money and power lay elsewhere, while many young scholars decided that the road to academic tenure was through cozying up to attitudes popular in academia instead of maintaining a commitment to often despised truth. But these trimmers did not wish to attack Mises or Austri- anism directly; they knew that Ludwig von Mises was admired and literally beloved by a large number of businessmen and members of the intelligent public, and they did not want to alienate their existing or potential support. What to do? The same thing that was done by groups a century ago that captured the noble word “liberal” and twisted it to mean its opposite— statism and tyranny, instead of liberty. The same thing that was done when the meaning of the U.S. Constitution was changed from a document that restricted government power over the individual, to one that endorsed and legitimated such power. As the noted economic journalist Garet Garrett wrote about the New Deal: “Revolution within the form,” keep the name Aus- trian, but change the content to its virtual opposite. Change the content from devotion to economic law and free markets, to a fuzzy nihilism, to a mushy acceptance of Mises’s ancient foes: historicism, institutionalism, even Marxism and collectivism. All, no doubt, more “respectable” in many academic circles. And Mises? Instead of attacking him openly, ignore him, and once in a while intimate that Mises really, down deep, would have agreed with this new dispensation. Into this miasma, into this blight, at the point when the ideas of Ludwig von Mises were about to be lost to history for the second and last time, and when the very name of “Austrian” had been captured from within by its opposite, there entered the fledgling Mises Institute. Our Intellectual Debts 463 The Ludwig von Mises Institute began in the fall of 1982 with only an idea; it had no sugar daddies, no endowments, no billionaires to help it make its way in the world. In fact, the powers-that-be in what was now the Austrian “Establishment” tried their very worst to see that the Mises Institute did not suc- ceed. The Mises Institute persisted, however, inspired by the light of truth and liberty, and gradually but surely we began to find friends and supporters who had a great love for Ludwig von Mises and the ideals and principles he fought for throughout his life. The Institute found that its hopes were justified: that there are indeed many more devoted champions of freedom and the free market in America. Our journal and conferences and cen- ters and fellowships have flourished, and we were able to launch a scholarly but uncompromising assault on the nihilism and sta- tism that had been sold to the unsuspecting world as “Austrian” economics. The result of this struggle has been highly gratifying. Thou- sands of students are exposed to the Austrian School as a radi- cal alternative to mainstream theory. For the light of truth has prevailed over duplicity. There are no longer any viable com- petitors for the name of Austrian. The free market again has principled and courageous champions. Justice, for once, has tri- umphed. Not only is the Austrian economic revival flourishing as never before, but it is now developing soundly within a gen- uine Austrian framework. Above all, Austrian economics is once again, as it ever shall be, Misesian. Z 464 Making Economic Sense Postscript 117 T HE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION . . . A ND W HAT TO DO ABOUT IT I n a famous lyric of a generation ago, Bob Dylan twitted the then-dominant “bourgeois” culture, “it doesn’t take a weath- erman to know the way the wind blows.” Indeed, and the sig- nificance of this phrase today has nothing to do with the group of crazed Stalinist youth who once called themselves “the Weathermen.” The phrase, in fact, is all too relevant to the present day. It means this: you don’t have to have to be a certified media pundit to understand the meaning of the glorious election of November 1994. In fact, it almost seems a requirement for a clear understanding of this election not to be a certified pundit. It certainly helps not to be a member of Clinton’s cadre of pro- fessional spinners and spinsters. The election was not a repudiation of “incumbents.” Not when not a single Republican incumbent lost in any Congres- sional, Senate, or gubernatorial seat. The election was mani- festly not simply “anti-Congress,” as George Stephanopoulos said. Many governorships and state legislatures experienced 467 Murray Rothbard wrote this essay one week after the November 1994 election. It circulated privately as a Confidential Memo. It is first pub- lished in this book. upheavals as well. The elections were not an expression of public anger that President Clinton’s beloved goals were not being met fast enough by Congress, as Clinton himself claimed. All too many of his goals (in housing, labor, banking, and foreign pol- icy, for example) were being realized through regulatory edict. No, the meaning of the truly revolutionary election of 1994 is clear to anyone who has eyes to see and is willing to use them: it was a massive and unprecedented public repudiation of Pres- ident Clinton, his person, his personnel, his ideologies and pro- grams, and all of his works; plus a repudiation of Clinton’s Democrat Party; and, most fundamentally, a rejection of the designs, current and proposed, of the Leviathan he heads. In effect, the uprising of anti-Democrat and anti-Washing- ton, D.C., sentiment throughout the country during 1994 found its expression at the polls in November in the only way feasible in the social context of a mass democracy: by a sweep- ing and unprecedented electoral revolution repudiating Democrats and electing Republicans. It was an event at least as significant for our future as those of 1985–1988 in the former Soviet Union and its satellites, which in retrospect revealed the internal crumbling of an empire. But if the popular revolution constitutes a repudiation of Clinton and Clintonism, what is the ideology being repudiated, and what principles are being affirmed? Again, it should be clear that what is being rejected is big government in general (its taxing, mandating, regulating, gun grabbing, and even its spending) and, in particular, its arrogant ambition to control the entire society from the political center. Voters and taxpayers are no longer persuaded of a supposed rationale for American-style central planning. On the positive side, the public is vigorously and fervently affirming its desire to re-limit and de-centralize government; to increase individual and community liberty; to reduce taxes, mandates, and government intrusion; to return to the cultural and social mores of pre-1960s America, and perhaps much ear- lier than that. 468 Making Economic Sense WHAT ARE THE PROSPECTS? Should we greet the November results with unalloyed joy? Partly, the answer is a matter of personal temperament, but there are guidelines that emerge from a realistic analysis of this new and exciting political development. In the first place, conservatives and libertarians should be joyful at the intense and widespread revolutionary sentiment throughout the country, ranging from small but numerous grassroots outfits usually to moderate professionals and aca- demics. The repudiation of the Democrats at the polls and the rapid translation of general popular sentiment into electoral action is indeed a cause for celebration. But there are great problems and resistances ahead. It is vital that we prepare for them and be able to deal with them. Rolling back statism is not going to be easy. The Marxists used to point out, from long study of historical experience, that no ruling elite in history has ever voluntarily surrendered its power; or, more correctly, that a ruling elite has only been toppled when large sectors of that elite, for whatever reasons, have given up and decided that the system should be abandoned. We need to study the lessons of the most recent collapse of a ruling elite and its monstrous statist system, the Soviet Union and its satellite Communist states. There is both good news and at least cautionary bad news in the history of this collapse and of its continuing aftermath. The overwhelmingly good news, of course, is the crumbling of the collectivist U.S.S.R., even though buttressed by systemic terror and mass murder. Essentially, the Soviet Union imploded because it had lost the support, not only of the general public, but even of large sectors of the ruling elites themselves. The loss of support came, first, in the general loss of moral legitimacy, and of faith in Marxism, and then, out of recognition that the system wasn’t working econom- ically, even for much of the ruling Communist Party itself. The bad news, while scarcely offsetting the good, came from the way in which the transition from Communism to Postscript 469 [...]...470 Making Economic Sense freedom and free markets was bungled Essentially there were two grave and interconnected errors First, the reformers didn’t move fast enough, worrying about social disruption, and not realizing that the faster the shift toward freedom and private ownership took place, the less would be the disturbances of the transition and the sooner economic and social recovery... moderate,” “bipartisan,” pseudo-opposition to the collectivist and leftist program of the Democratic Party Unlike the more apocalyptic and impatient Bolsheviks, the Mensheviks (or social 472 Making Economic Sense democrats, or corporate liberals, or “responsible” liberals, or “responsible” conservatives, or neoconservatives—the labels change, but the reality remains the same) try to preserve an illusion... defiance of the manifest will of the rank-and-file (e.g., Willkie over Taft in 1940, Dewey over Taft in 1944, Dewey over Bricker in 1948, Eisenhower over Taft in 1952) Such was their power that 474 Making Economic Sense they did not, as usually happens with open party traitors, lose all their influence in the Republican Party thereafter It was the specter of the stunning loss of Goldwater that probably accounts... periodic exercise of their much-lauded “democratic” franchise How do the elites get away with this, year after year, decade after decade, without suffering severe retribution at the polls? 476 Making Economic Sense THE RULING COALITION A crucial means of establishing and maintaining this domination is by co-opting, by bringing within the ruling elite, the opinion-moulding classes in society These opinion-moulders... be they blacks, women, Hispanics, American Indians, the disabled, and on and on ad infinitum, the voting power of the Left is ever expanded, again at the expense of the American majority 478 Making Economic Sense CONNING THE MAJORITY Still, despite the growing number of receivers of government largess, the opinion-moulding elites must continue to perform their essential task of convincing or soft-soaping... impossible The ruling elite must do the following First, it must make sure that, whatever their rhetoric, the Republican leadership in Congress (and its eventual presidential nominee) keep matters 480 Making Economic Sense nicely centrist and “moderate,” and, however they dress it up, maintain and even advance the big-government program Second, at least for the next two years, they must see to it that Clinton... consequence, former immigration official Harold Ezell helped frame a ballot initiative, Prop 187, which simply called for the abolition of all taxpayer funding for illegal immigrants in California 482 Making Economic Sense Prop 187 provided a clear-cut choice, an up-or-down referendum on the total abolition of a welfare program for an entire class of people who also happen to be lawbreakers If we are right... Bennett were “persuaded” to take this foolhardy stand by the famed William Kristol, in dynastic and apostolic succession to his father Irving as godfather of the neoconservative movement 484 Making Economic Sense It is intriguing to speculate on the means by which Kristol managed to work his persuasive wiles Surely the inducement was not wholly intellectual; and surely Kemp and Bennett, especially... twisted and totally transformed the Constitution into a “living” instrument and thereby a crucial tool of its own despotic and virtually absolute power over the lives of every American citizen 486 Making Economic Sense One of the highly popular measures among the American people these days is term limits for state and federal legislatures But the tragedy of the movement is its misplaced focus Liberals are... their necks No doubt that the federal judiciary would find nothing unconstitutional about this But it is ready to manufacture all sorts of constitutional “rights” which appear nowhere in the 488 Making Economic Sense Constitution and are soundly opposed by the electorate These include the right to an education, including the existence of well-funded public schools; the right of gays not to be discriminated . themselves teach as 460 Making Economic Sense Austrian scholars, or become businessmen or other opinion leaders imbued with the truth and the importance of Austrian and free-market economics. In addition,. groups 462 Making Economic Sense involved in this shift had made a conscious critical decision: they had come to the conclusion they should have understood long before, that praxeology, Austrian economics,. framework. Above all, Austrian economics is once again, as it ever shall be, Misesian. Z 464 Making Economic Sense Postscript 117 T HE NOVEMBER REVOLUTION . . . A ND W HAT TO DO ABOUT IT I n a famous