FEBRUARY 1994 Obiectivism in Academia
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Review of George Reisman's Capitalism
LIBERTARIAN PAPERS VOL. 1, ART. NO. 14 (2009) A TREATISE FOR A NEW AGE IN ECONOMIC THEORY: REVIEW OF GEORGE REISMAN’S CAPITALISM WLADIMIR KRAUS* CAPITALISM: A TREATISE ON ECONOMICS. By George Reisman. Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 1996. THE BOOK UNDER REVIEW, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics,1 has been in print since 1996. Its enormous size and the vast array of topics covered suggest enormous scholarship and devotion. Its expressed purpose is a thorough integration of leading economic phenomena into one unified theory of the market process. Yet virtually no serious attention on the part of academic economists has been paid to its many highly original contributions and bold challenges to received orthodoxy. This review aims at a compressed presentation and analysis of some of the book’s main contributions to political economy, and hopes thereby to kick off a rigorous discussion of its substantive ideas. To put the extent of George Reisman’s intellectual achievement into a single sentence: for a full understanding of economic institutions of capitalism the reading and very careful studying of his Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics is absolutely essential. Nowhere will one find a clearer, more comprehensive, more rigorous, more persuasive and thus exactly for these reasons absolutely enthralling description and explanation of all leading economic institutions of capitalism. *Wladimir Kraus ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in Institutions, Economics, and Law at IEL-International Programme in Institutions, Economics, and Law, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Italy. CITE THIS ARTICLE AS: Wladimir Kraus, “A Treatise for A New Age in Economic Theory: A Review of George Reisman’s Capitalism,” Libertarian Papers 1, 14 (2009). -
Ayn Rand? Ayn Rand Ayn
Who Is Ayn Rand? Ayn Rand Few 20th century intellectuals have been as influential—and controversial— as the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. Her thinking still has a profound impact, particularly on those who come to it through her novels, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead—with their core messages of individualism, self-worth, and the right to live without the impositions of others. Although ignored or scorned by some academics, traditionalists, pro- gressives, and public intellectuals, her thought remains a major influence on Ayn Rand many of the world’s leading legislators, policy advisers, economists, entre- preneurs, and investors. INTRODUCTION AN Why does Rand’s work remain so influential? Ayn Rand: An Introduction illuminates Rand’s importance, detailing her understanding of reality and human nature, and explores the ongoing fascination with and debates about her conclusions on knowledge, morality, politics, economics, government, AN INTRODUCTION public issues, aesthetics and literature. The book also places these in the context of her life and times, showing how revolutionary they were, and how they have influenced and continue to impact public policy debates. EAMONN BUTLER is director of the Adam Smith Institute, a leading think tank in the UK. He holds degrees in economics and psychology, a PhD in philosophy, and an honorary DLitt. A former winner of the Freedom Medal of Freedom’s Foundation at Valley Forge and the UK National Free Enterprise Award, Eamonn is currently secretary of the Mont Pelerin Society. Butler is the author of many books, including introductions on the pioneering economists Eamonn Butler Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, F. -
GENERAL SESSIONS the METAPHYSICS of CONSCIOUSNESS: the What and the How of Cognition (3 Lectures) Harry Binswanger
- ' SECOND I RENAISSANCE CONFERENCES H PRESENTS I ~IDEAS FOR THE RATIONAL MIND Ill" I A PHILOSOPHICAL CONFERENCE I JUNE 28 TO JULY 11, 1998 THE NASHUA MARRIOTT NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE Dear Reader: there is no charge for parking. SECOND RENAISSANCE CONFERENCES is New Hampshire is noted for its tax-free shopping, proud to announce a philosophical conference featur and there are several large shopping malls within a ing new and exciting lectures on epistemology by Dr. ten-minute drive of the hotel. The proximity to his Harry Binswanger. Detailed descriptions of these and toric Boston will allow conferees to attend the city's other lectures, courses, and faculty follow, so let me renowned Independence Day celebrations (with the tell you something about the conference venue. Boston Pops concert and traditional fireworks) and The Nashua Marriott is a first-class hotel situated enjoy the city's many historic, cultural, and culinary in the rolling hills of southern New Hampshire, about attractions. 44 miles northwest of Boston. The scenic White Moun I'm sure you will appreciate the intellectual content tains and New Hampshire's Atlantic coast are both of the conference and enjoy the accommodations of about an hour's drive away. the hotel. Come and experience the joy of meeting The hotel offers numerous amenities, including an people who share your values. I hope you will attend, indoor pool, outdoor sundeck, fitness center, wooded and I look forward to seeing you. jogging trail, and volleyball and basketball courts. In room amenities include hair dryer, iron/ironing board, ~s~ voice-mail, PC dataport, and on-command movies (for a small charge). -
CAPITALISM a Treatise on Economics George Reisman
CAPITALISM CAPITALISM A Treatise on Economics Prepublication, Interim Edition George Reisman Jameson Books, Ottawa, Illinois Copyright © 1998, 1996, 1990 by George Reisman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. Mail order copies of this book may be purchased from the publisher by call- ing 800-426-1357. All inquiries should be addressed to Jameson Books, 722 Columbus St., Ottawa, IL 61350. (815)-434-7905. Fax: (815)-434-7907. Distributed to the book trade by MidPoint Trade Books. All returns to the MidPoint warehouse. Bookstores, please call 800-243-0138 to order. Photocopying of excerpts from Jameson Books editions are licensed through the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923. Call 508-750-8400 for information. ISBN: 0-915463-73-3 Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 96-78105 Manufactured in the United States of America 09 08 07 06 05 04 / 8 7 6 5 4 To Ludwig von Mises, my teacher, and Edith Packer, my wife. CONTENTS IN BRIEF PREFACE xxxix INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE THE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMICS CHAPTER 1. ECONOMICS AND CAPITALISM 15 CHAPTER 2. WEALTH AND ITS ROLE IN HUMAN LIFE 39 CHAPTER 3. NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT 63 PART TWO THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND CAPITALISM CHAPTER 4. THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND PRODUCTION 123 CHAPTER 5. THE DEPENDENCE OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR ON CAPITALISM I 135 CHAPTER 6. THE DEPENDENCE OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR ON CAPITALISM II: THE PRICE SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC COORDINATION 172 CHAPTER 7. -
Of the Ayiu Raiud Iiustttute
lmlract -r OF THE AYIU RAIUD IIUSTTTUTE fanuary 1996, Volume 2, lUumber I Peikoff Radio Show Now Daily Objectivist club at the university.According to Dr. Hull: "He noticed that the Objectiviststudents were the most knowledge. Show Airs Between Two Popular Talk Shows able and kept giving cogent argumentsfor their views-while "The Leonard Peikoff Show" now airs Monday through the other students,those interested in Continentalphilosophy, Friday from 2:30to 3:30p.m. (still on stationKIEV 870 AM, were confusedand continually appealedto emotions.Thus, he in Los Angeles),This time slot lies betweenKIEV's two most was impressedwith the qualii of the students,and attributed popular daily talk shows. this to Ayn Rand'sideas." The exceptionaltime slot becameavailable unexpectedly, when the previous host accepteda nationally syndicatedshow. Ayn Rand and.,. The station offered the slot to "The Leonard Peikoff Show." ...Professors The (November)newsletter of the Ohio and we moved quickly to secureit, Although a daily show chapter of the American Associationof University Professors dramaticallyincreases the demandson Dr. Peikoff'stime, he featured a quote attributed to Ar.n Rand. (A bit more evidenct saw it as an opportunity we could not passup. As Richard for that in the wall.) Ralston,the show'sproducer, remarked: "When Cecil B. "roik DeMille pulls up his car and offersyou a ride, either you get ...Doctors The President'sAddress at the annualmeet- in or you don't" (referring to Ayn Rand'schance introduction ing of the Associationof AmericanPhysicians and Surgeonsin to DeMille the day after she arrivedin Hollywoodin 1926). October,by Lois J. Copeland,M.D., containeda long quote ARI plansto seeknational syndication for "The Leonard from Atlas Shru.ggedon the evil of comproinise. -
Training the Next Generation
Newsletterof the Ayn Rand@Institute Volume6, Number 4, April 2OO0 Training the Next Generation Since 1995, ARI's undergraduate course on Objectivism: The asked to submit assignments-have included students from Philosophy of Ayn Rand (UPAR) has offered students compre- other disciplines as well as individuals well advanced in their hensive, systematic training in Objectivism-training available careers as lawyers, software engineers, physicists, architects, nowhere else. As the prerequisite course for the Objectivist teachers, businessmen. UPAR helps such individuals develop Graduate Center, UPAR is our means of finding and encour- their ability to think in essentials and to apply philosophy in aging new intellectuals. But UPAR alumni are not the only their own lives and professions. ones to benefit; teaching the course has helped sharpen the UPAR is two academic semestersof 15 weeks each. Stu- skills of the instructors too. dents attend classesby dialing in to ARI's teleconferencing sys- UPAR essentializes the key ideas of Objectlvism, integrates tem, which allows two-way communication between all the those ideas into their broader philosophic context, and con- participants. Thanks to inexpensive long-distance telephone cretizes their real-life personal importance. Students read Dr. rates, students from as far away as Australia and Israel have Peikoff 's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, the course been able to attend UPAR. (We are working to develop on-line textbook, and attend weekly lectures that help illumlnate the video courses.) practical, concrete application of philosophy in the students' This year Dr. Harry Binswanger shares the teaching of lives. UPAR with Dr. Onkar Ghate, who will teach the course alone "By emphasizing how the philosophy is lntegrated-week next year. -
“The Experience of Flying”: the Rand Dogma and Its Literary Vehicle Camille Bond Submitted in the Partial Fulfillment Of
“The Experience of Flying”: The Rand Dogma and its Literary Vehicle Camille Bond Submitted in the Partial Fulfillment of the Prerequisite for Honors in English April 2017 © 2017 Camille Bond The greatest victory is that which requires no battle. Sun Tzu, The Art of War CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: 2 WHY STUDY RAND? CHAPTER ONE: 8 ON THE FOUNTAINHEAD AND CHARACTER CHAPTER TWO: 39 ON ATLAS SHRUGGED AND PLOT CONCLUSION 70 WORKS CITED 71 Bond 1 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To Bill Cain: Thank you for taking this project under your wing! I could not have asked for a more helpful advisor on what has turned out to be one of the most satisfying journeys of my life. To James Noggle and Jimmy Wallenstein: Thank you for your keen suggestions and advice, which brought new contexts and a clearer direction to this project. To Adam Weiner: Thank you for your assistance, and for the inspiration that How Bad Writing Destroyed the World provided. And to my family: Thank you for your support and encouragement, and for making this project possible. Bond 2 INTRODUCTION: WHY STUDY RAND? Very understandably, I have been asked the question “Why would you study Ayn Rand?” dozens of times since I undertook this project over the summer of 2016. In a decidedly liberal community, Rand’s name alone invokes hostility and disgust; even my past self would have been puzzled to learn that she would go on to spend a year of her life engaging academically with Rand’s work. Many of Rand’s ideas are morally repulsive; it can be physically difficult to read her fiction. -
Nietzsche: the Myth and Its Method Fred Seddon
Reason Papers Articles Nietzsche: The Myth and Its Method Fred Seddon As the number of Objectivist oriented academic philosophers continues to increase, the lenses under which the philosophy will be examined will undoubtedly grow more powerful. Likewise, Objectivist scholarship will become rigorously more intensive; forgoing the entertaining broadside for the well documented and exacting examination. As examples of this development, witness David Kelley's ate Evidence of the Senses and Allan Gotthelf s and James Lennox's anthology Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, to name but two recent efforts. I wish I could include John Ridpath's article "Nietzsche and Individualism," printed in Vol. 7, ##1 and 2 of the now defunct The Objectivist Forum, as another instance of this trend, but alas, I cannot. The reasons for my reservations constitute the body of this essay. What follows is divided into three parts: (1) a recapitulation of Ridpath's exposition of Nietzsche's philosophy along with a running commentary suggesting alternative interpretations, (2) a short catalogue of Ridpath's errors of scholarship, and (3) a short list of reasons for devoting time to the study of Nietzsche's thought. Exposition Why did Ridpath choose to author an article on Nietzsche? It was, Ridpath tells us, in an effort to ascertain whether Nietzsche is on the side of individualism. The purpose of this article is to examine Nietzsche's philosophy in order to ascertain which side Nietzsche is really on. Based on a study of the complete corpus of Nietzsche's works, this article will present Nietzsche's general philosophical outlook and then use this as the context for understanding his social views, and for judging whether or not he is a defender of individualism. -
Introduction 1 Money, Banking, and Inflation
Notes Introduction 1. Murray N. Rothbard, The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962). 1 Money, Banking, and Inflation 1. Brian Simpson, “Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle,” audio recording (Irvine, CA: Second Renaissance, Inc., 2005) and Brian P. Simpson, Trade Cycle Theory: A Market Process Perspective (Ann Arbor, MI: Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company, 2000), pp. 78–79. 2. George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, IL: Jameson Books, 1996), pp. 512–513. 3. See Chapter 4 of Brian P. Simpson, Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle, Volume 2: Remedies and Alternative Theories (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) for a discussion of this topic. 4. Lawrence H. White, “A Subjectivist Perspective on the Definition and Identification of Money,” in Israel M. Kirzner, ed., Subjectivism, Intelligibility and Economic Understanding (Washington Square: New York University Press, 1986), pp. 301– 314. See in particular pp. 310–311. 5. I ignore the existence of fractional-reserve banking here. The creation of money through credit-card loans under fractional-reserve banking (to the extent that it occurs) is not particular to credit-card loans. It is true of all loans made through the fractional- reserve process and thus is not a phenomenon of credit-card loans but of fractional- reserve banking. Fractional-reserve banking is discussed below in this chapter and in Chapter 4 of Simpson, Money, Banking, and the Business Cycle, Volume 2. 6. See Steven J. Pilloff, “Money Market Mutual Funds: Are They a Close Substitute for Accounts at Insured Depository Institutions?” The Antitrust Bulletin vol. -
Announcing the Winner of the 2010 Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest
Volume 17, Number 1, January 2011 Objectivist Summer New York Friends New Format for Conference 2011 of ARI Sponsors Forbes.com Column Objectivist he Objectivist Sum- ast September Impact announced that Forbes Summer Debate Series Conference 2011 Tmer Conference L .com had started featuring a biweekly 2011 is set to take place column by ARI’s Yaron Brook and Don Watkins. he New York July 2–8 at the Marriott We are pleased to announce that Forbes has Friends of Harbor Beach Resort and New York T made it easier for readers to follow Dr. Brook TM ARI, a charitable Objectivist Conferences Spa on the beach in Fort Friends of ArI ® and Mr. Watkins’s work; their columns will now organization dedi- July 2–8, 2011 Marriott Harbor Beach Resort Lauderdale, Florida. The be accessible at http://blogs.forbes.com/objectivist/ Fort Lauderdale, Florida General Session Lectures (see page 4) cated to spreading Events Barry Colvin, President under the title “The Objectivist.” The new page (see page 5) schedule is still in devel- Optional Courses (see pages 6–9) awareness of Ayn Rand in the New York area, is Conferences for the rational mindTM opment, but most coursesTel: 914-661-3600 • e-mail: [email protected] includes an RSS feed and other tools for tracking ® launching a debate series this February titled “First and special events have the column. Principles: The Moral Debates That Drive Today’s been set, and Impact is excited to share with you The first column in the new format Politics.”Ayn rand Partnering Institute (A rwithI) New York Friends of some highlights. -
The Jefferson School of Philosophy
The Jefferson School of Philosophy. F.conomics. aod Psychology announces a summer conference THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF A FREE SOCIETY VI to be held at the Clarion Hotel, San Francisco Alrpod, August 1 - 15, 1993 The Jefferson School has been created to advance and dissemin'1e the Jlhilosophical and scientific knowledge that is nec;essary to the existtnce of a flee society. Accordingly, the School's primary mission is the further development, application, and teaching of the 1deu of the pto-:r~ pro-individualist phil,010phers and the pro-freedom, pro-capitalist economists, and of compatible ideu in the field of psychology. ~ of 1t1 activities and programs feature the relevant doctrines of Objectivist and Aristotelian philosophy and of "Austrian" and Classical econorrucs. PRF.SmBNT . ~-- .J ---- VICB--PRESIDE:N'f-----'---~-ooNFERENeE COORDINAreR- George Reisman, Ph.D. Edith Packer, I.D., Ph.D. Diane LeMont, M.A. THE CORE PROGRAM: Thirty-three and a half hours of instruction Leonard Pelkoff, Seven Great Plays a, Philosophy and a, LHerature (seven two-hour Nlllona and one hour-and-a-half INllon devoted entirely to questions and answers) This course is a unique exercise in two skills: philosophic detection and rational esthetic judgment Dr. Peikoff analyus seven great plays from ancient Greece to the 20th Century (works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Corneille, Schiller, Ibsen, Shaw and-a favorite of Ayn Rand's-Maeterlinck's Morma Vanna). In each case, he sho~s how to discover the essence of the Splot and the motivation of the central characters. He then demonstrates how to identify a play's th~e and deeper abstract meaning. -
Installing Ayn Rand's Books in Classrooms Across the Nation
Volume 10, Number 9, September 2004 Installing Ayn Rand’s Books in Classrooms A New Semester at the Across the Nation Objectivist Academic Center This month a group of 37 new students will join Teachers in at least 12 states, 50 counties, curriculum committees decide what is taught in the undergraduate program of the Objectivist Aca- and dozens of cities across the nation will be scores and sometimes thousands of classrooms. demic Center. The OAC’s mission is to find and offered free classroom sets of Anthem and The Second, if a school district or a state board of train new Objectivist intellectuals, and to support Fountainhead this academic year—thanks to education officially adopts the novels, it will their work in disseminating Ayn Rand’s ideas. support from ARI donors (see map). also provide the necessary funding for schools The OAC’s undergraduate curriculum, In the first two years of this program we have to buy copies of the books on their own. Thus, which was launched in 2000, operates on a distributed more than 65,000 books. This year we in time, ARI can help introduce more students to cycle that takes four years to complete. This expect to distribute 100,000. Anthem and The Fountainhead, but with far less spring will see the first batch of students to We are raising funds in order to provide free expense—allowing us to invest the Institute’s graduate from the program. classroom sets of Ayn Rand’s novels to teachers precious resources in growing our other projects. The courses offered in each year of the who would like to teach the books but who lack Because there is no uniform way in which undergraduate program are integrated around a the means to obtain enough copies.