One of my absolute favourite lectures from mises.org is Hans-Hermann Hoppes lecture on Marxist contra Austrian class analysis (can also be read from http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_5.pdf). I was just wondering, have any marxist ever set out to argue against Hoppe on this perticular subject?
Also I’ve been meaning to ask, do people on this board, like me, have any perticular lectures that opened their eyes, or in any way meant a lot to them in their further understanding of economics and politics?
Hoppe’s paper on international banking was a real eye-opener, as was his work on the evolution of the city. Another essay that influenced me greatly was Rand’s essay on the rights of man from VOS.
Ralph Raico also has a great lecture on that same topic: Classical-Liberal Roots of Marxist Class Analysis.
I would have to say Livingston’s The Rise of the Nation-State was an eye-opener for me. I had always taken Hobbes ideas as more or less self evident truths. My interest in libertarianism was mainly because I supported of capitalism, but I didn’t support anarchism.
Marxists don’t address the arguments of their critics. They don’t need to. Logic itself is a product of class consciousness. Only proletariat insight can successfully guide one’s thinking.
I’m sure some of them have issued responses to more well-known Austrian criticisms, e.g. that of Boehm-Bawerk’s. However, I’d be surprised if they managed to even scratch them. Analytical Marxists are less dogmatic than their predecessors, but I’ve not been impressed by what I’ve read by them, e.g. G. A. Cohen. Furthermore, David Gordon has a book refuting most of their claims, and Eric Mack and Thomas Palmer (loathesome though he may be) have both disposed of Cohen’s claims on property. If they focus on libertarianism at all, it tends to be on those such as Nozick or Narveson, rather than the Austrians, and most definitely not Hoppe. I think Hoppe is one of those best placed to criticize their theory though, as he was once a Marxist himself, and has read up extensively on their works. I think Chris Sciabarra also has some good pieces on Marxism.
One thing I love about old Marxists is how various classes have their own logic, but most Marxists belong(ed) to the bourgeoisie or even the aristocracy…
Could you be a bit more precise mr_anonymous? I’d love to know more.
Also, I just got reminded of 2 other lectures with Hans-Hermann Hoppe as the teacher that I would really recommend, especially to people who are/have studied Political Science.
The Origin and Nature of International Conflict - I myself studied political science for a year at the university in Lund (a city in Sweden), we talked a lot about the theory of democratic peace (which is the central theme in this lecture with Hoppe) , this theory was indeed critizised by some of my techers and in some of the course literature but I could never really get my head around why exactly it seemed so wrong until I two years later listed to this lecture.
Praxeology: the Austrian Method - In this lecture Hoppe attacks positivism - once again, this was a major issue for me studying political science because so much of todays research in that subject draw from the philosophy of positivism. I never liked the idea of creating theorys the way positivists do (When will they ever understand - these observations don’t have a value in themself!) but it wasn’t until I started to comprehend praxeology that I realised to full extent, the absurdity behind positivism.
Sure. The lectures I listened to by Walter Block that I thought were very good, were “Socialism and Facsism: A politico-economic spectrum”, “Health Economics” and “Plumb line Libertarianism”. I have found that Walter Block has a very good way of explaining economic and political issues in ways that are very easy to understand and relate too. Robert Higgs has some very nice pieces too: “The Song that is Irrestible: How the State Leads People to Their Own Destruction” and “War and the Leviathan State”. These are very good political lectures about expanding government power. Thomas DiLorenzo (who is pretty humorous as well as smart) has a lot of good lectures on Lincoln that I enjoyed. My favorites by him are: “Lincoln Unmasked” and “Wages and Labor” which is a good Austrian view on wages and labor economics. Hope I could help. If you have anymore questions just ask.
It started off pretty good, until page 6, when I got to the following:
It is precisely through counter-establishment economic (counter-economic for short) activity that the state must be brought down. This need not be consciously libertarian to be successful, as presently demonstrated in Zimbabwe, where most transactions are counter-economic. That said, I think Hoppe’s lecture and Wally Conger’s Agorist Class Theory (pdf) complement each other quite well.
In Zimbabwe the state is bringing itself down. But it really isn’t . There’s been hyperinflation in a lot of places and it seldom if ever leads to a freer society.
A consciously libertarian counter-economy is needed to prevent a new set of parasites from reforming the state, but a counter-economy by itself is all that’s required to bring down a presently existing state, which was my point.
Another Higgs lecture that I recommend is The Complex Path of Ideological Change. It goes a long way towards explaining why people adhere to doctrines that others are able to recognize as plainly false.