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See also:
Table of Contents
I. Classical Liberalism vs. Socialism/Marxism: Critique and Counter-CritiqueThe Fundamental Antagonism between Classical Liberalism and Socialism/Marxism↩There is a fundamental antagonism between Classical Liberalism and Socialism/Marxism concerning many aspects of their social, political, and economic views. CLs believe in individual liberty, free markets, voluntary exchange, the division of labour, laissez-faire economic policies, free trade, limited government, property rights, and the rule of law. The primary focus is on the individual who has the right to dispose of themselves and their property as they see fit, without the intervention of government or other bodies, so long as they do not initiate the use of force against other individuals and thereby violate their rights to life, liberty, and property. If a government or other body takes an individual’s property or restricts their liberty, that individual should have consented to this (either individually or through their elected representative). Socialists/Marxists on the other hand reject most of the above and believe that “society” (or the “working class”, or “the nation”) should be the primary concern of the government, which should have the power and the duty to remake or reform society in order to serve the needs of the community (however they define it) rather than to allow individuals to pursue their own (“selfish”) interests. They believe that the government or the people’s representatives have the right to use “die Gewalt” (the force or power of the government) to override the interests of private individuals in the name of “the people” or “the workers.” In his “Critique of the Gotha Program” (1875) of the newly formed German Social Democratic Party, Marx encapsulated the socialist program as
In 1851 the French socialist Louis Blanc said much the same thing in Plus de Girondins (No More Girondins!):
A CL or libertarian version might go something like:
Furthermore, socialists and Marxists believe that, if left “unchecked,” the fee market would lead inevitably to inequality, an unjust distribution of profits and wealth, an increase in the number of monopolies, and catastrophic economic recessions or depressions. Socialist differ on how best to achieve their goals. Some advocate voluntary socialist experiments, others working within the democratic parliamentary system to achieve incremental reforms, while others advocate the violent revolutionary overthrow of the "capitalist” system and the seizure of power by a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” In spite of these stark differences, there are several areas in which CLs and S&Ms do agree, such as the desire for peace between nation states, an end to exploitation of one class by another (they differ of course on what a “class” and “exploitation” is), the use of economic resources for productive activity which will benefit all people, and confidence that progress is possible if impediments to it are removed. From the beginning of the emergence of socialist thinking and organisation in the early 19th century up until the present, classical liberals, political economists, and radical individualists have opposed the changing forms taken by socialism. These forms include the following:
A Summary of the S&M Critique of the Free Market↩The socialists’s critique of free market and wage labour which emerged during the 1840s in France, England, and Germany and continues to this day (in various versions), included the following points. We have categorised them as follows:
Economic Criticism
Moral and Philosophical Criticism
Political Criticism
A Summary of CL Criticisms of S&M↩The following is a list of some common arguments used by economists and CLs against their socialist critics. The economists argued that the socialists ignored or misunderstood the following problems which have been organised into the following categories (some of which are theoretical and others historical):
Economic Arguments
Moral and Philosophical Arguments
Political Arguments
Historical Arguments In addition to the above listed theoretical problems in socialism there are a number of historical facts which undermine the socialist position:
II. A Brief History of CL opposition to S&M↩Introduction↩Modern socialism emerged in the 1830s and 1840s in France and England at a time when classical liberalism was beginning to have an impact with reforms such as the First Electoral Reform Act of 1832 and the success of the Anti-Corn Law League (1846). The spread of socialist ideas before and during the revolutions of 1848 meant that classical liberals increasingly had to turn their attention to combatting calls for government intervention in the economy from the “Left” as Frederic Bastiat did in the last few years of his life. As classical liberalism began to decline in the late 19th century it fell to a handful of radical individualists like Thomas Mackay and Herbert Spencer to oppose the gradualist, Fabian school of socialism in Britain, and to strict laissez-faire advocates like Eugen Richter in the German parliament to oppose the growing influence of the Social Democratic Party (i.e. a Marxist party). It was only after the rise of the Bolsheviks to power in Russia after the First World War that the most coherent and devastating critique of socialism appeared in the work of Ludwig von Mises and later in that of Friedrich Hayek. We can thus identify four broad historical periods when socialism and CL clashed:
Many of the works we have in the OLL collection were written to oppose the different forms of socialism which were being advocated at these times. In addition, we also have a number of socialist works online in order to better understand the intellectual and political context of these debates. French Socialism during the 1840s and 1850s↩The Rise of Socialism in France↩
The decades between 1830–1860 were a key period in the development of political ideology when CL began to form as a distinct “worldview” which applied basic ideas about individual liberty, private property, free markets, limited government to a full range of problems (economic, political, social). The culmination of this was the formation of the Liberal Party in England in 1859. The 1830s and 1840s were also a key period in the development of socialism as a distinct “worldview” and French socialists played a very important part in this, such as the following individuals and texts:
What is important for our purposes here is that is was during this period that the basic socialist criticisms of the free market were first expressed at some length and with some coherence, and solutions proposed (usually involving state ownership, regulation or economic activity, and transfer payments to the poor and unemployed) which would remain essentially the same for the next hundred years or so. The French socialists had an opportunity in the early months of the February Revolution of 1848 to put some of their ideas into practice with the National Workshops scheme run by Louis Blanc. This was the first attempt to create a modern welfare state, and was the precursor of what would emerge after WW2 in western Europe, UK, and later USA. The idea was for the state to provide tax-payer funded employment for those who were out of work as the first step towards a universal state-guaranteed "right to a job” (droit au travail), a measure which they also tried to make part of the new French constitution which was debated over the summer of 1848. This is how Louis Blanc in 1841 conceived the role of government in running the “ateliers sociaux” (social workshops) which would replace private firms operating in a free market and which he attempted to put into practice in 1848:
Source: “Conclusion. De quelle manière on pourrait, selon nous, organiser le travail” in Louis Blanc, Organisation du travail. Association universelle. Ouvriers. - Chefs d’ateliers. - Hommes de lettres. (Paris: Administration de librairie, 1841. First edition 1839), pp. 76–93. In the same year of 1848 Karl Marx was in Paris when the revolution broke out, distributing copies of his newly written Communist Manifesto to a group of German workers who lived in Paris. Here is his list of reforms he wanted to see introduced in order to begin building a communist society:
Source: Marx und Engels, “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” (1848) /pages/marx-manifest#Maaßregeln. Source: Manifesto of the Communist Party. By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Authorized English translation: Edited and Annotated by Frederick Engels (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1888, 1910) in PDF < /titles/2753 > and /pages/marx-manifesto#measures. The French economists and classical liberals responded to the socialist critique throughout the 1840s and early 1850s with the following works:
Frédéric Bastiat’s Anti-Socialist Pamphlets (1848–1850)↩ Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) was one of the leading advocates of free markets and free trade in the mid–19 century. He was inspired by the activities of Richard Cobden and the organization of the Anti-Corn Law League in Britain in the 1840s and tried to mimic their success in France. Bastiat was an elected member of various French political bodies and opposed both protection and the rise of socialist ideas in these forums. His writings for a broader audience were very popular and were quickly translated and republished in the U.S. and throughout Europe. His incomplete magnum opus, Economic Harmonies, is full of insights into the operation of the market and is still of great interest to economists. He died at a young age from cancer of the throat. In his brilliant Economic Sophisms (1845–50) Bastiat focussed mainly on debunking protectionist fallacies and sophisms but he also occasionally referred to the socialists of his day. After the February Revolution of 1848 he turned his attention to the socialists and over a period of two years wrote over 12 major anti-socialist pamphlets in order to directly refute their ideas. In a very comprehensive critique of socialist ideas over the previous one hundred years Bastiat addressed the criticisms of Rousseau, Robespierre and several other 18th century thinkers, along with his contemporaries Charles Fourrier, Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Victor Considerant, Proudhon, and Alexandre Ledru-Rollin.
The following quotes comes from Bastiat’s essay “Individualism and Fraternity” (June 1848) in which he attacks Louis Blanc and the Montagnard group of socialists:
Source: Frédéric Bastiat, The Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat. Vol. 2: The Law, The State, and Other Political Writings, 1843–1850 (2012). /titles/2450#Bastiat_1573-02_631. In one of the last things Bastiat wrote, “The Law” (June 1850) , he attacks socialism more extensively as the following quotes indicate:
And:
Source: Revised translation of “The Law” /pages/bastiat-the-law-revised-lf-edition. Gustave de Molinari↩ Gustave de Molinari was born in Liège on March 3, 1819 and died in Adinkerque on January 28, 1912. He was the leading representative of the laissez-faire school of classical liberalism in France in the second half of the 19th century and was still campaigning against protectionism, statism, militarism, colonialism, and socialism into his 90s on the eve of the First World War. As he said shortly before his death, his classical liberal views had remained the same throughout his long life but the world around him had managed to turn full circle in the meantime. In his 1849 book Evenings on Saint Lazarus Street: Discussions on Economic Laws and the Defence of Property (1849) he pits a “Conservative” and a “Socialist” against an “Economist” who defends the free market against all their criticisms. In each “soirée” or chapter Molinari argues for a policy of complete laissez faire,” exposes the folly of socialism and other forms of government intervention in the economy, and supports the idea of the private provision of all public goods. See especially the 11th conversation in which Molinari argues for the first time that public goods such as police and defence services, might be provided voluntarily by the free market. In the very first Soirée Molinari has the Economist have this conversation with the Socialist on the issue of the ownership of property:
Source: Gustave de Molinari, Les Soirées de la Rue Saint-Lazare: Entretiens sur les lois économiques et défense de la propriété (Paris: Guillaumin, 1849). /titles/1344#Molinari_0383_186. Source: From the Draft English translation /pages/gdm-soirees See also:
The Ambivalent Position of John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)↩The English classical liberal and political economist John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) wrote one of the basic works of classical political economy in 1848 with the Principle son Political Economy (1848). He was the precocious child of the Philosophical Radical and Benthamite James Mill. Taught Greek, Latin, and political economy at an early age, He spent his youth in the company of the Philosophic Radicals, Benthamites and utilitarians who gathered around his father James. J.S. Mill went on to become a journalist, Member of Parliament, and philosopher and is regarded as one of the most significant English classical liberals of the 19th century. He was sympathetic to many arguments of the socialists of his day and thus had a soft spot for their conception of an ideal society. In an unpublished draft of a book on socialism (c. 1869) he points out many of “The Difficulties of Socialism” but nevertheless believes it should be given a chance to prove its viability. On sharing the benefits of communal work equally he notes:
Source: “Chapters on Socialism” (1879) in John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume V - Essays on Economics and Society Part II, ed. John M. Robson, introduction by Lord Robbins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967). /titles/232#lf0223-05_head_048. Yet he is willing to accept the fact that with proper education men might be able to live and prosper in a communist society:
But to be fair to JS Mill, he did believe that when comparing the system of Communism with that of the free market and ownership of private property the true comparison should be between “Communism at its best” and classical liberalism at its best, not the ideal of an unrealized and untested communism compared with the flawed practices of contemporary European society in 1848.
Source: JSM, PPE, Book II Distribution, Chap. 1: Of Property” in John Stuart Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume II - The Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy (Books I-II), ed. John M. Robson, introduction by V.W. Bladen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965). /titles/102#lf0223-02_label_1329. Quote <>. See the following works:
Socialist Parties↩ In chronological order the following socialist parties appeared in Europe during this period:
Key Works↩ Some important socialist texts from this period:
The Work of Karl Marx↩ The major theorist of socialist ideas in the mid- and late–19th century was Karl Marx (1818–1883). Marx prided himself on having discovered the “laws” which governed the operation of the capitalist system, laws which would inevitably lead to its collapse. His form of socialism, in which the socialist party leaders would guide the working class in a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (die Diktatur des Proletariats) in order to destroy the capitalist system by means of a revolution, should be distinguished from the “utopian socialists” (like Charles Fourier, Louis Blanc, and Proudhon), who wanted to create small, voluntary communities where socialism could be put into practise, and the “social democrats” or “labour parties”, which planned to work peacefully within the parliamentary system in order to bring about piecemeal socialist reform. Marx was born in Trier in Germany and studied philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He first worked as a journalist in the early 1840s but was forced to flee to Paris and then to London in order to escape the censors. Ironically, it was only in the liberal political environment of London that Marx was able to write his most famous critique of the capitalist system. His first writings on political economy were written when he lived in Paris 1843–44 and are known as The Paris Manuscripts (which are not online). In late 1847 he wrote a “manifesto” for the Communist League of the Just which was published in February 1848 as The Communist Manifesto. An English and German version of this classic work can be found online here /pages/marx-manifest. After a hiatus when Marx worked as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune Marx published the first volume of what would become a three volume criticism of the capitalist system. Only vol. 1 appeared in Marx’s lifetime (1867); the other two vols. were published posthumously by Engels (1885, 1894). We have these works in both German and English versions. Of the many passages we could cite in his voluminous writings this one on the extraction of “Mehrwert” (surplus value) by the capitalist from the worker gives a good sense of Marx’s hostility to wage labour, or the “capitalist system” (des kapitalistischen Systems) as he called it:
Source: </pages/marx-k1-1890> Source: /titles/965#Marx_0445-01_1214 See also:
The CL Critique of German Socialism↩ Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914) When Friedrich Engels published posthumously the third and final volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in 1894 the the Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk wrote a devastating review of Marx’s magnum opus. It should be read in its entirety as it it a very important and ultimately unanswerable critique of the most advanced and thoughtful socialist theorist. See Böhm-Bawerk, “On the Completion of Marx’s System (of Thought)” (1896, 1898) /pages/completion. Böhm-Bawerk cut to the heart of Marxist economic theory by rejecting the validity (both theoretical and in practice) of his theory of “surplus value”. As he stated in the opening paragraph of his review of the final volume:
He also takes Marx to task for deliberately excluding from his analysis valuable things which are not the product of labour, such as “gifts of nature” which are valuable but upon which no human labour has been expended:
Eugen Richter (1838–1906) Eugen Richter (1838–1906) was one of the very few radical liberals in late 19th century Germany. As a member of the Reichstag, he consistently opposed the growing budget, German militarism and imperialism, and the rise of socialism. His book Pictures of the Socialistic Future (1893) /titles/295 is a satire of what would happen to Germany if the socialism espoused by the trade unionists, social democrats, and Marxists was actually put into practice. It is thus a late 19th century version of Orwell’s 1984, minus the extreme totalitarianism which Orwell had witnessed in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia but which was still inconceivable to 19th century liberals. The main point of the book is to show that government ownership of the means of production and centralised planning of the economy would not lead to abundance as the socialists predicted would happen when capitalist “inefficiency and waste” were “abolished”. The problem of incentives in the absence of profits, the free rider problem, the public choice insight about the vested interests of bureaucrats and politicians, the connection between economic liberty and political liberty, were all wittily addressed by Richter, much to the annoyance of his socialist opponents. In his satire about what would happen to Germany if a socialist revolution was successful Richter describes a speech the new socialist Chancellor gave to the Parliament on how the socialist regime was coping with the economic collapse the introduction of socialism produced, by cutting food rations and limiting consumer expenditure on “frivolous” items:
Source: Eugen Richter, Pictures of the Socialistic Future (Freely adapted from Bebel), trans. Henry Wright, Introduction by Thomas Mackay (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1907). /titles/295#Richter_0160_319. George Bernard Shaw and the Fabian Society↩ In the late 19th century the classical liberal, free market orthodoxy was beginning to be challenged by socialists like the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (GBS) (1856-1950), along with the writers and educators Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the feminist Emmeline Pankhurst, and the novelist H. G. Wells, who founded the Fabian Society in England in In 1884. Its aim was to bring about a socialist society by means of intellectual debate, the publication of books and pamphlets, and the “permeation” of socialist ideas into the universities, the press, government institutions, and political parties. Unlike the Marxists, who desired revolutionary change, the “Fabian socialists” advocated incremental change through the parliamentary system. GBS wrote the “manifesto” for the Fabian Society in 1884 and edited a collection of essays about their ultimate aims. Some of the main points in the fabian manifesto are the following:
See:
The CL Critique of English/Fabian Socialism in the 1880s and 1890s↩ Shaw’s anthology provoked a reply by supporters of private property and laissez-faire economics led by Thomas Mackay. See the Debate: “Fabian Socialism vs. Radical Liberalism” /groups/76. These writers were followers of the sociologist and political theorist Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) who was one of the leading 19th century English radical individualists. He began working as a journalist for the laissez-faire magazine The Economist in the 1850s. Much of the rest of his life was spent working on an all-encompassing theory of human development based upon the ideas of individualism, utilitarian moral theory, social and biological evolution, limited government, and laissez-faire economics. See in particular ”The Man versus the State” (1884) and “From Freedom to Bondage” (1891) in The Man versus the State (1884), with Six Essays on Government, Society and Freedom (LF ed.) /titles/330. Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) wrote the Introduction to Mackay’s collection of essays “A Plea for Liberty” which was entitled “From Freedom to Bondage.” in it he contrasted the “voluntary co-operation” of the free market with the “compulsory co-operation” which would result from a socialist form of economic organisation. He argued that what the socialists don’t tell the people is the sheer number of regulators they would need to run such a system, or what he called the “regulative apparatus” which would control the new “régime of industrial obedience”:
Source: Thomas Mackay, A Plea for Liberty: An Argument against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation, consisting of an Introduction by Herbert Spencer and Essays by Various Writers, edited by Thomas Mackay (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981). Foreword by Jeffrey Paul. /titles/313#Mackay_0071_121. Thomas Mackay (1849–1912) [We do not have an image of Mackay] Thomas Mackay (1849–1912) was a successful Scottish wine merchant who retired early from business so he could devote himself entirely to the study of economic issues such as the Poor Laws,
growing state intervention in the economy, and the rise of socialism. Mackay was asked by the individualist and laissez-faire lobby group, the Liberty and Property Defense League, to put together a collection of essays by leading classical liberals to rebut the socialist ideas contained in Fabian Essays in Socialism edited by George Bernard Shaw in 1889. The result was A Plea for Liberty (1891) and A Policy of Free Exchange (1894). Mackay took a great interest in the condition of the working class and in his essay on “The Interest of the Working Class in Free Exchange” in the second collection he attempted to show the average worker why he should be interested in a full free market society rather than a socialist one. This view was based on the notion that all workers were property owners, especially of their own bodies and the labour they could accomplish with their own body, and like any other property owner they had an interest in a system of property ownership in which their property was protected from theft, fraud, and coercion:
Source: Thomas Mackay, A Policy of Free Exchange. Essays by Various Writers on the Economical and Social Aspects of Free Exchange and Kindred Subjects, edited by Thomas Mackay (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1894)./titles/314#Mackay_0135_446. Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1847–1914) and Bruce Smith (1851–1937) Two other radical individualists contributed to this critique of Fabian socialism., the Englishman Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1847–1914) and the Australian Bruce Smith (1851–1937). Very little is known about Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1847–1914) other than his father was a prosperous textile manufacturer, that he was a barrister, and that he also had a private income income which enabled him to be active in promoting chess, inventing an early moving picture camera, and radical libertarian
politics. The latter included membership in the “Liberty and Property Defence League” (1882) founded by Lord Elcho and whose weekly newsletter “Jus: A Weekly Organ of Individualism” was edited by him. His main writings include Principles of Plutology (1876), Individualism, a System of Politics (1889), and Law in a Free State (1895). In his book Individualism: A System of Politics (1889) the second last chapter is devoted to exposing the errors of socialism, Chap. XI. An Analysis of Socialism” in which he examines a pamphlet by the socialist James Leigh Joynes, The Socialist Catechism (1885). Among its many faults he identifies the false distinction between the “use value” and the “exchange value” of an object which was a central concept for many socialists:
Source: Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Individualism: A System of Politics (London: Macmillan and Co., 1889). /titles/291#Donisthorpe_1233_673. Donsithorpe also wittily debunks the socialist idea of “surplus value” and the nature of exploitation (plunder):
Source: Individualism: A System of Politics (1889), /titles/291#Donisthorpe_1233_689. Bruce Smith (1851–1937) was an Australian Barrister and a Member of the Parliament of New South Wales in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Smith was one of the very few (perhaps the only one) Spencerite liberals in the Australian colonies. He was influenced by the writings of the English “Liberty and Property Defence League” which was a group of radical individualists and free traders who had among their members Thomas Mackay and Auberon Herbert. In his book Liberty and Liberalism (1888) Smith defends what he calls “True Liberalism” from the “Socialist school” which was gaining influence in Britain and the Australian colonies. The True Liberal sought only “equal opportunities” from the state, whereas the Socialists demanded “equal wealth or social conditions” as well:
Source: Smith, Liberty and Liberalism (1888) /titles/296#SmithB_0306_960. See:
Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) One of the last of the Spencerites in the 1890s and early 20th century was Auberon Herbert (1838–1906). With a group of other late Victorian classical liberals he was active in such organizations as the Personal Rights and Self-Help Association and the Liberty and Property Defense League. He formulated a system of “thorough” individualism that he described as “voluntaryism.” During the 1890s, Herbert engaged in lengthy published exchanges with two prominent socialists of his day, E. Belfort Bax and J. A. Hobson, as in “Salvation by Force” (1898).
Whatever other objections Herbert had to socialism, the one that concerned him the most was the socialist’s willingness to use force in order to achieve his social agenda.
Source: Auberon Herbert, The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, and Other Essays, ed. Eric Mack (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1978). /titles/591#Herbert_0146_271. The Critique of Frédéric Passy (1822–1912)↩
One of the last representatives of the radical free market “Paris School” of political economists, Frédéric Passy (1822–1912), was asked to give a lecture at a conference surveying the state of political economy in the French-speaking world in Geneva in 1890. He was the sole defender of the free market and was confronted by three other hostile speakers who defended three different forms of socialism and state intervention, Claudio Jannet who defended state socialism, Gaston Stiegler who defended the communism of Ferdinand Lassalle, and Charles Gide who defended a form of “cooperative socialism” based upon the ideas of the socialist Charles Fourier. See my translation of Passy’s lecture for a good summary of the state of free market thinking at this time and his criticism of these growing and influential socialist groups.
See the critique of “state socialism”:
In his lecture to the other socialist economists at the Conference Passy warned them of the dangers France would face if it adopted socialism. He believed that, whatever the intentions of the socialists reformers were, it would be the state itself not the people would be the ultimate beneficiary of any expanded powers:
Source: Frédéric Passy, “L’École de la Liberté” in Quatre écoles d’économie sociale (1890), p. 201–2. Source: My paper on Passy for Acton Institute: David M. Hart, “For Whom the Bell Tolls: The School of Liberty and the Rise of Interventionism in French Political Economy in the Late 19thC,” and Passy, “The School of Liberty” in Journal of Markets and Morality, vol. 20, Number 2 (Fall 2017), pp. 383–412. Online http://www.marketsandmorality.com/index.php/mandm/article/view/1298 and http://www.marketsandmorality.com/index.php/mandm/article/view/1299. The Critique of Yves Guyot (1843–1928)↩ Yves Guyot (1843–1928) was one of the leading French laissez-faire economists at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century. He began his career as editor of several Republican newspapers and journals in the late 1860s and early 1870s when France was wracked by the turmoil of the Paris Commune and Franco-Prussian War. In the Third Republic he was elected to the Paris Municipal Council and in 1885 to the national Chamber of Deputies. In 1889 he was appointed Minister of Public Works. He was active in classical liberal economic circles as editor of the Journal des Économistes, president of the Paris Société des Économistes, a member of the British Cobden Club and the Royal Statistical Society, and also a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Among his many interests were taxation policy and opposition to socialism in all its forms. In his book The Tyranny of Socialism (1893) Guyot taunted the socialists of his day by saying they were no better than the wealthy landowners and capitalists who wanted “protection” from foreign imports.
Source: Chap. VI. “Militarism, Protectionism, and Socialism” in Yves Guyot, The Tyranny of Socialism, ed. J.H. Levy (London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1894). 7/19/2018. /titles/91#Guyot_0166_891
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1843–1916)↩ We do not currently have any works by Paul Leroy-Beaulieu online but he is another strong anti-socialist voice in France in the late 19thC.
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1843–1916) came from a well-connected Orléanist family in Paris and became an influential economist and journalist. He studied law in Paris before doing further study in Bonn and Berlin. In 1872 he was appointed a professor at the École libre des sciences politiques and later went on to the Collège de France where he was made a professor of political economy in 1880. It was during this period that he founded L’Économiste française in 1873 which came to rival the more orthodox classical liberal Journal des Économistes (founded 1842). Leroy-Beaulieu made a name for himself with a number of works during the late 1860s and 1870s on social questions, such as the working class, De l’État moral et intellectual des populations ouvrières (1868) and La Question ouvrière au XIXe siècle (1872), and women, Le Travail des femmes au XIXe siècle (1873). But much more controversial was his prize-winning work De la Colonisation chez les peuples modernes (1874) which alienated mainstream political economists with its support for French colonial expansion. In two later works he returned to a more anti-statist position in his critique of socialism, Le Collectivisme: Examen critique du nouveau socialisme (1884), and the expanding bureaucratic state, L’État moderne et ses fonctions (1890). Some of his work has been translated into English:
In the conclusion to his book on Collectivism (1884, 3rd. ed 1893) Leroy-Beaulieu argues that there is no real different between the “moderate” socialists working within the Parliamentary system and the radical, revolutionary socialists (Marxists, communists) who wanted to seize power in a revolution. Their goals were the same in his view, only the means to achieve the goals differed:
Source: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Collectivism; a study of some of the leading social questions of the day. Tr. and abridged by Sir Arthur Clay (London, J. Murray, 1908). Quote pp. 326–27. War Socialism and Bolshevism in WW1 and the 1920s↩The length and “total” nature of WW1 led many nations to introduce extensive controls of their economies which in many ways amounted to a form of “war socialism.” This was most pronounced in Germany where “Kriegssozialismus” (war socialism) was openly discussed and implemented by the conservative military controlled by Generals Erich Ludendorf and Paul von Hindenburg. To a lesser extent war socialism was also adopted in Great Britain and the United States (the War Industries Board).
It was also during WW1 that the communist Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin seized control in November 1917 and attempted to implement the first Marxist-inspired communist revolution. Lenin himself had thought little about how exactly a communist system would look like and how it would be organised (neither did Marx for that matter as he regarded it as unnecessary as the final stage of capitalism would “prepare” the ground for its own eventual replacement). For some idea of what Lenin had in mind see his pamphlet The State and Revolution (Aug.-Sept. 1917) especially the extraordinary sections where he talks about modeling the administration of complex economic entities such as factories and even the entire economy on that of the postal service.
Source: “4. The Higher Phase of Communist Society” in Lenin, The State and Revolution (Aug.-Sept. 1917). Online: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ Ludwig von Mises’s Critique of Central Planning under Communism↩ The Bolshevik experiment was closely observed by Ludwig von Mises who wrote Nation, State, and Economy (1919) immediately after the war and then the second devastating critique of Marxism, Die Gemeinwirtschaft (Socialism) (1922), in which he discussed the insoluble problem of the impossibility of rational economic calculation under socialism (since there were no free market prices, especially for capital goods, to tell factory owners what to produce and where). Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’ writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science which Mises called “praxeology”. He taught at the University of Vienna and later at New York University. Mises wrote many works on two related economic themes: 1. monetary economics, inflation, and the role of government, and 2. the differences between government-controlled economies and free trade. His influential work on economic freedoms, their causes and consequences, brought him to highlight the interrelationships between economic and non-economic freedoms in societies, and the appropriate role for government. Mises’s key insight was to realize that rational economic calculation would be impossible under complete socialism. In addition to the incentive problem of getting workers to work harder if all were paid the same, there was the problem of apportioning the contribution of many of the factors of production their correct share of the final product, especially for the different quality of skilled or unskilled labour , or hardworking or lazy workers. Mises would later apply this same insight into the much more problematic issue of the price of capital goods and the longer period of time it would take for capital owners to be rewarded for their contribution:
Source: Mises, Die Gemeinwirtschaft. (1932), pp. 150-53. Source: Mises, Socialism (LF ed.), pp. 115–16.
Source: Mises, Die Gemeinwirtschaft. (1932), pp. 110-11. Source: “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Community”, in Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, trans. J. Kahane, Foreword by F.A. Hayek (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981). /titles/1060#lf0069_label_349. See:
War Socialism, Interventionism, and Bureaucracy in WW2↩Ludwig von Mises (again)↩ Mises continued his attack on socialism, central planning of the economic, and what he called “interventionism” in several works, including:
In his magnum opus Human Action (1949) Mises discusses a third kind of economic system which called “interventionism”:
Source: /titles/1895#lf3843-03_label_322 Friedrich Hayek on Intellectuals on the Road to Serfdom↩ From his position at the London School of Economics Friedrich Hayek also could observe the economic and political problems caused by central planning under the Bolsheviks and the British government’s efforts to run the British economy during WW2. Unfortunately, we do not have the electronic rights to the books by Hayek which LF publishes. See the University of Chicago press The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, ed. Bruce Caldwell http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/series/CWFAH.html. See:
In 1950 Hayek pondered why so many intellectuals (or what he termed “the professional secondhand dealers in ideas”) of his era were attracted to socialism. He concluded that they are drawn to the “visionary” ideal of the possibility of an “entire reconstruction of society” along socialist lines, something which he believed classical liberalism was sorely lacking.
Source: Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism” (IHS ed.), pp. 19–20. Post WW2 Communism↩The Experience of Ljubo Sirc (1920–2016)↩ To get some idea of what life was like under communism see this interesting interview with a free market economist who lived in Yugoslavia. Ljubo Sirc (1920–2016) was trained in both economics and law, and was thus able to unite the perspective of a scholar with personal experience to observe firsthand the dangers of communist regimes. Born in Kranj, Slovenia, he participated in the Resistance and served in the Yugoslav Army between 1941 and 1945. In 1947, due to his political opposition and friendship with Western diplomats, he was sentenced to death. His sentence was ultimately commuted to twenty years in prison, of which he served seven, much of it in solitary confinement. In his various teaching posts since then, including twenty years at the University of Glasgow, Sirc has been a leading expert on socialist economics and communist regimes. Since 1983, he has served as Director of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies in London. He is the author of numerous books and articles in a variety of languages. His autobiography, Between Hitler and Tito, was published in 1989. See an interview with him done in 2003: The Intellectual Portrait Series: A Conversation with Ljubo Sirc /titles/sirc-the-intellectual-portrait-series-a-conversation-with-ljubo-sirc. Revelations of the true Horrors of Communism↩
The Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) brought the crimes of the communist regime in Russia to the attention of intellectuals in the west (many of whom were socialist sympathizers) in his history of the labour camps, The Gulag Archipelago (1973). These were more fully documented in The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (1997) by Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Andrzej Paczkowski. Revisiting the Systemic Economic problems of Communism in the 1980s and 1990s: Lavoie and Boettke↩
A new younger generation of Austrian economists, Don Lavoie (1951–2001) and Peter Boettke, re-examined the weakness of planned economies on the eve of their collapse in 1991 in a series of works in the mid–1980s and early 1990s:
III. Modern Interpretations and Critiques of S&M↩In the OLL Collection↩H. B. Acton and John Passmore↩ The following books do not look at S&M from an economic perspective but from a broader philosophical one. Harry Burrows Acton (1908–1974) was an English academic who taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Edinburgh, and the University of Chicago. His book on Marxism as The Illusion of the Epoch (1949) focused on the philosophical incoherence of Marxist thought.
The Australian philosopher John Passmore (1914 - 2004), who taught for many years at the Australian National University in Canberra, explores the history of the idea of perfectibility - manifest in the ideology of perfectibilism - and its consequences, which have invariably been catastrophic for individual liberty and responsibility in private, social, economic, and political life. He situates socialist and Marxist ideas of the possibility of the perfectibility of the new “socialist man” in the historical context of other failed utopian views.
H.B. Acton in the conclusion of his book makes the excellent point that, in spite of all his protests to the contrary, Marx’s view of a future communist society was indeed a utopian one.
Source: /titles/877#Acton_6844_294, pp. 233–37. Not in the OLL collection↩Alexander Gray↩ Alexander Gray, The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin (London: Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co., 1963). 1st ed. 1946.
Typical of Gray’s witty and engaging style is this commentary of the French Socialist Louis Blanc with whom Bastiat clashed in 1848:
Source: “Chap. IX. Louis Blanc”, pp. 219–20. Murray N. Rothbard↩
In the essay “Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature” (1973) Rothbard attacks the “absurd fantasies” of the utopian Marxist views of equality under communism:
Source: pp. 11–12 Here are two snippets from his thorough demolition of Marxian economics, the first on the “immiseration of the workers” and the second his final summing up:
Source: HET, vol. 2, pp. 423–24. And his conclusion about “the Marxian system”:
Source: HET, vol. 2, p. 433. Richard Ebeling↩ Richard Ebeling has written extensively on S&M, especially in the anniversary years of 2017 (the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution) and 2018 (the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. See his numerous essays on Marxism for the Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF) and Foundation for Economic Education (FEE):
David Prytchitko↩ The Austrian economist David Prytchitko has written some important pieces for Econlib:
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