Author Archives: rg

What Ludwig von Mises Meant by “Democracy”

Article by Ryan McMaken.

Excerpt:

“Democracy” is one of those terms that is essentially useless unless the one using the word first defines his terms. After all, the term “democratic” can mean anything from small-scale direct democracy to the mega-elections we see in today’s huge constitutional states. Among the modern social-democratic Left, the term often just means “something I like.”

The meaning of the term can also vary significantly from time to time and from place to place. During the Jacksonian period, the Democratic party—which at the time was the decentralist, free-market, Jeffersonian party—was called “the Democracy.” By the mid twentieth century, the term meant something else entirely. In Europe, the term came to take on a variety of different meanings from place to place.

For our purposes here, I want to focus on how one particular European—Ludwig von Mises—used the term.

Although many modern students of Mises are often highly skeptical of democracy of various types, it is clear that Mises himself used the term with approval. But, Mises used the word in a way that was quite different from how most use it today. The Misesian view contrasts with modern conceptions of a “democracy” in which majority rule is forcibly imposed upon the whole population. Because modern democratic states exercise monopolistic power over their populations, there is then no escape from this “will of the majority.”

Misesian democracy is something else altogether.

Mises’s vision of democracy must be understood in light of his support for unlimited secession as a tool against majoritarian rule. For Mises, “democracy” means the free exercise of a right of exit, by which the alleged “will of the majority” is rendered unenforceable against those who seek to leave.

Continue reading here.

The Fatal Conceit

That’s the title of Friedrich Hayek’s final book (published 1988).

According to the Wikipedia page of the book, the title drives “from a passage in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), though the exact phrase does not occur in Smith’s book.”

Here is that Adam-Smith quote, according to Wikipedia:

‘The man of system … is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. … He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces on a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces on the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse [choose] to impress upon it.’ Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 1984, VI.ii.2.17: 233-4.

Prelude to ‘Lohengrin’

One of my favourite music pieces

This (mostly) serene yet powerful and profound piece of music was composed by Richard Wagner sometime between 1845 and 1848.

Here it is, with an orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle (9 minutes).

Here‘s the Wikipedia entry on the whole opera.

Here‘s the synopsis on the same page.

Summary of the synopsis:

The people of the Brabant are divided by quarrels and political infighting; also, a devious hostile power left over from the region’s pagan past is seeking to subvert the prevailing monotheistic government and to return Brabant to pagan rule. A mysterious knight, sent by God and possessing superhuman charisma and fighting ability, arrives to unite and strengthen the people, and to defend the innocent noblewoman Elsa from a false accusation of murder, but he imposes a condition: the people must follow him without knowing his identity. Elsa in particular must never ask his name, or his heritage, or his origin. The conspirators attempt to undermine her faith in her rescuer, to create doubt among the people, and to force him to leave.

Lessons from Watership Down: What Rabbits Can Teach the Church

Article by Christian Leithart.

From the conclusion:

The way to keep our senses sharp, says Hauerwas, is to constantly remind ourselves of danger through telling true stories. For the church, these true stories are about suffering, death, and resurrection. This is the good news with which we transform culture and bring life to the cities of men. A Christian—or a rabbit—can never be complacent. As the agents of God in the world, we too are called to take up the cross.

Reappropriating Feminism, Maternity, and the Woman’s Role

In this video, “Dr. Jordan Peterson sits down with author and columnist Mary Harrington. They discuss how women contributed to civil society before joining the workforce, the fatal flaw of a male-dominated system, the two fundamental reproductive strategies, the commodification of female sexuality, and the utility of radical loyalty and solidarity between partners.

Mary Harrington is an editor for UnHerd and the author of “Feminism Against Progress.” Harrington also runs a weekly Substack, “Reactionary Feminist.”

This episode was recorded on July 3rd, 2024.”

The Role of Intellectuals in Society

The concluding words in Murray N. Rothbard‘s book “The Case For a One Hundred Percent Gold Dollar” (pp. 71f):

There is no gainsaying the fact that this suggested program will strike most people as impossibly “radical” and “unrealistic”; any suggestion for changing the status quo, no matter how slight, can always be considered by someone as too radical, so that the only thoroughgoing escape from the charge of impracticality is never to advocate any change whatever in existing conditions.
But to take this approach is to abandon human reason, and to drift in animal- or plant-like manner with the tide of events. As Professor Philbrook pointed out in a brilliant article some years ago, we must frame our policy convictions on what we believe the best course to be and then try to convince others of this goal, and not include within our policy conclusions estimates of what other people may find acceptable. For someone must propagate the truth in society, as opposed to what is politically expedient. If scholars and intellectuals fail to do so, if they fail to expound their convictions of what they believe the correct course to be, they are abandoning truth, and therefore abandoning their very raison d’etre. All hope of social progress would then be gone, for no new ideas would ever be advanced nor effort expended to
convince others of their validity.