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The author or concept searched is found in the following 12 entries.
| Disputed term/author/ism | Author |
Entry |
Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anarchism | Engels | Rothbard II 326 Anarchism/technology/production/Engels/Rothbard: Six years before Anti-Dühring, (…), Engels betrayed the entire Marxian vision in the course of a bitter polemic against the anarchists. In defending the idea of authoritarianism under communism, Engels reminded the self-styled anti-authoritarian anarchists that 'a revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population Rothbard II 327 imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannon-authoritarian means...'. But more importantly, Engels jeered at the idea that there will be no authoritarianism, and hence no division oflabour, in a communist factory. Engels pointed out that factory production requires both, and also demands that the workers subordinate themselves to technological necessity. Thus: 'keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products...'. Moreover, he pointed out, technology and the forces of nature subject man 'to a veritable despotism independent of all social organization'. 'Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry', Engels warned, 'is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel'.(1) Labour/Marx/Rothbard: Refreshingly sober words, no doubt, but totally alien to the spirit of Marxism and certainly to all that Marx said or wrote on the topic, as well as most other writings of Engels. To Marx, all labour in future communism is not economic, but artistic, the free and spontaneous creativity allegedly typical of the artist. For Marx in his economic magnum opus, Capital, communist man has been transformed from an alienated man into an aesthetic man who regards everything in artistic terms. >Labour/Marx, >Division of labour. 1. Friedrich Engels, 'On Authority', written in 1872 and first published in an Italian collection in 1874; quoted in Robert C. Tucker. 1961, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. note 12, p. 731. |
EconEngels I Friedrich Engels Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Autonomy | Liberalism | Gaus I 104 Autonomy/liberalism/Gaus: The theory of personal autonomy, interpreted widely to include Millian self-development, (>Individual/Mill, >Autonomy/Mill, >Perfectionism/Gaus) is not simply a view of the good life that has been held by liberals, or even a view of the good life that justifies liberal political institutions. It is a distinctively liberal conception of the good life: the good life is a freely chosen life, and so the good life is a free life. Raz: It is, as Raz (1986)(1) says, a morality of freedom; it puts a certain conception of a free life at the centre of morality. Gaus: This is not to say that the autonomist project succeeds; (...) freedom qua autonomy seems to teeter on the verge of justifying elitism and paternalism, and so invites the sort of critique famously advanced by Berlin in ‘Two concepts of liberty’.>Autonomy/Gaus. Berlin: As Berlin quotes Kant, ‘paternalism is the greatest despotism imaginable’(1969(2): 157). >Paternalism, >Liberalism/Ronald Dworkin. 1. Raz, Joseph (1986) The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon. 2. Berlin, Isaiah (1969) ‘Two concepts of liberty’. In his Four Essays on Liberty. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 118–72. Gaus, Gerald F. 2004. „The Diversity of Comprehensive Liberalisms.“ In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications. |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Bentham, Jeremy | Rothbard | Rothbard II 49 Jeremy Bentham/Rothbard: Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) began as a devoted Smithian but more consistently attached to laissez-faire. During his relatively brief span of interest in economics, he became more and more statist. His intensified statism was merely one aspect of his major - and highly unfortunate - contribution to economics: his consistent philosophical utilitarianism. This contribution, which opens a broad sluice-gate for state despotism, still remains as Bentham's legacy to contemporary neoclassical economics. Bentham's first and enduring interest was in utilitarianism (which we shall examine further below), and which he launched with his first published work at the age of 28, the Fragment on Government (1776)(1). Rothbard II 54 VsBentham: James Mill and David Ricardo have been considered loyal Benthamites, and this they were in utilitarian philosophy and in a belief in political democracy. In economics, however, it was a far different story, and Mill and Ricardo, sound as a rock on Say's law and the Turgot-Smith analysis, were firm in successfully discouraging the publication of the ‘The True Alarm’(2). RicardoVsBentham: Ricardo scoffed at almost all of later Benthamite economics and, in the case of money and production, asked the proper questions: ‘Why should the mere increase of money have any other effect than to lower its value? How would it cause any increase in the production of commodities... Money cannot call forth goods... but goods can call forth money.’ Bentham's major theme... ‘that money is the cause of riches’ - Ricardo rejected firmly and flatly. 1. Bentham, J. 1776. Fragment on Government. Being an Examination of What Is Delivered, on the Subject of Government in General, in the Introduction to Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries. London. 2. Bentham, J. 1801. The True Alarm. |
Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Classes | Marx | Rothbard II 381 Classes/society/Marx/Rothbard: There is a grave inner contradiction at the heart of the Marxian system, in Marx's crucial concept of class. In the Marxian dialectic, two mighty social classes face each other in inherent conflict, the ruling and the ruled. In the first two ofhistory's major conflicts: 'oriental despotism', and 'feudalism', the social classes are defined by Marx (…) as classes privileged or burdened by the state. Thus, in 'oriental despotism', or the 'Asiatic mode ofproduction', the emperor and his technocratic bureaucracy run the state, and constitute its 'ruling class'. Problem/RothbardVsMarx: But then, suddenly, when Marx gets to capitalism, the class categories change, without acknowledgement. Now the ruling class is Rothbard II 382 not simply defined as the class that runs the state apparatus. Now, suddenly, the original act of rule or 'exploitation' is the voluntary market wage contract, the very act of a capitalist hiring a worker and a worker agreeing to be hired. This in itself, to Marx, establishes a common 'class-interest' among capitalists, exploiting a 'common class' of workers. It is true that Marx also believed that this 'capitalist class' runs the state, but only as 'the executive committee of the ruling class', that is, of a ruling class that previously existed on the free market, because of the wage system. So that what Marx, as analyst of oriental despotism or feudalism, would consider ruling-class exploitation still exists under capitalism, but only as an addendum to the preexisting capitalist exploitation of the workers through the wage system. Ruling-class exploitation under capitalism is unique in exercising a double exploitation: first, on the market as part of the wage contract, and second, the alleged exploitation by the state as executive committee of the ruling class. RothbardVsMarx: It should be evident that Marx's analysis of class is by this point a mishmash, in total disarray; two contradictory definitions of class are jammed together, unfused and unacknowledged. Why should capitalism, of all systems, be able to levy a 'double' exploitation that no other ruling class in Marx's historical schema can ever enjoy? Problems: How can 'capitalists', even in the same industry let alone in the entire social system, have any thing crucial in common? Similarly, there can be no 'working class' With common class-interests on the free market. Workers compete with each other, just as capitalists or entrepreneurs compete with each other. Once again, if groups of workers can Rothbard II 383 use the state to exclude other groups, they can become a ruling class as against the excluded groups. Thus, if government immigration restrictions keep out new workers, the native workers can benefit (at least in the short run) at the expense of incomes of immigrants; or if white workers can keep black workers out of skilled jobs by state coercion (as was done in South Africa), the former becomes a privileged or ruling class at the expense of the latter. Rothbard:(…) any group that can manage to control, or gain privileges from, the state can take its place among the exploiters: this can be specific groups of workers, or businessmen, or Communist Party members, or whatever. There is no reason to assume that only 'capitalists' can acquire such privileges. >Class conflict/Marx. Rothbard II 384 Definition of classes/def class/Marx/Rothbard: (…) in Marx's theoretical magnum opus, Capital, there is no attempt at a definition of class. Only an incomplete Volume I was published in Marx's lifetime (1867), at which point he had substantially finished working on the book. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels worked up, edited and published the remaining manuscript in two further volumes (1885 , 1894).(1) Only in the famous very last chapter of the third volume does Marx finally arrive at an attempt to define what he and Engels had been talking and writing about for four decades. It is an unfinished chapter of startling brevity - five short paragraphs. In this chapter, 'Classes', Marx begins with the classical Ricardian triad: that the sources of income in the market economy are wages, profits and rents, and that the receivers of such income constitute the 'three big classes of modern society' - labourers, capitalists and landlords. Rothbard II 385 Marx: (…) [there is an] infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords -the latter, e.g. into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries.(1) Rothbard: Precisely. Marx has said it very well; his cherished two-class monolith (…) lies totally in ruins. >Classes/Mises. Rothbard II 392 Ricardo/Marx: As Karl Marx plunged into the economics of capitalism (…) he found ready at hand a marvellous weapon: Ricardian economics. In contrast to J.B. Say and the French tradition, Ricardo concentrated not on market exchange and its inevitable focus on individual actors and enchangers benefiting from exchange, but on 'production' followed by 'distribution' of income as a distinct and separate process. Ricardo's main focus was on how this social income from production is 'distributed'. Whereas Say or Turgot looked at individual factors of production and how their income emerges from production and exchange, Ricardo focused only on entire, allegedly homogeneous, 'classes' of producers: workers earning wages, capitalists earning 'profits' and landlords acquiring rent. For counter arguments against Marx see >Classes/Mises. 1. During the 1870s, Marx led Engels to believe that he was working hard and steadily on Volumes II and III of Capital, at Marx's death, Engels was astonished to find that Marx had done virtually no work on the manuscript since 1867, in short, that Marx had lied shamelessly to his friend and patron. See W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels (London: Frank Cass, 1976), 11, p. 563. |
Marx I Karl Marx Das Kapital, Kritik der politische Ökonomie Berlin 1957 Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Coercion | Ancient Philosophy | Gaus I 303 Coercion/Ancient philosophy/Keyt/Miller: the prime relation in the Greek world based on force was that of master to slave (Aristotle, Pol. 1.3.1253b20-3). >Slavery/Aristotle. The dread of slavery, which sprang from a very real fear, was a prominent feature of Greek life and thought. Greek cities were frequently at war, and it was a common practice to kill the soldiers and enslave the wives and children of a captured city (Thucydides III.62.2, V .32. l, V.116.3, and elsewhere). Governance: The Greeks regarded any relation of ruler to ruled based on force as akin to that of master to slave. Their word for such a relation was 'despotic' (despotiké, literally, 'of a master'). To be forcibly subjected to another was in their eyes to be no better than a slave. This idea seems to be the driving force behind the evolution of Greek democracy, the most important political innovation ofthe Greeks. >Democracy/Plato, >Democracy/Aristotle. Gaus I 304 Freedom: Freedom and equality were (as they still are) the defining marks of democracy (Plato, Rep. VIII.557a2-b6; Aristotle, Pol. V.9.1310a25-34, VI.1318a3-10). Freedom was popularly defined as living as one wishes (Herodotus III.83.3; Thucydides II.37.2; Plato, Rep. VII.557b4-6; Isocrates, Areop. 20; Aristotle, Pol. V.9.1310a31-2, VI.2.1317blO-12). Force: By this popular definition, to be forced to do something against one's will is to lose one's freedom, and to lose one's freedom is to be enslaved. Thus, to be forced by a ruler to do something one does not want to do is to be treated as a slave. Democracy/community: The Greek democrat, in consequence, was loath to be ruled at all. Wishing, however, to live in a political community, he sought to avoid the despotism inherent in the unequal power of ruler and ruled. >Community/Aristotle. Equality: Without equality there is, in his view, no freedom (Plato, Menex. 238el—239a4). So he invented a number of clever devices for eliminating or minimizing inequalities of political power: self-rule (every free man is a member of the assembly), rotation of office, short tenure of office, and the use of the lot. Ironically, Athenian democracy under Pericles was denounced by its enemies for trying to enslave all the other Greeks by establishing a universal empire (Thucydides I.124.3). >Equality/Aristotle, >Justice/Aristotle. Keyt, David and Miller, Fred D. jr. 2004. „Ancient Greek Political Thought“. In: Gaus, Gerald F. & Kukathas, Chandran 2004. Handbook of Political Theory. SAGE Publications |
Gaus I Gerald F. Gaus Chandran Kukathas Handbook of Political Theory London 2004 |
| Emancipation | Beauvoir | Brocker I 306 Emancipation/Beauvoir: How could a way out of the epochal mutual entanglement of the sexes into an improper existence look like? >Gender Roles/Beauvoir, Subject-Object-Problem/Beauvoir. Beauvoir is not convinced of a concept of "equality in difference"(1), since this only threatens to conceal the despotism of men and the cowardice of women. For them, women are the ones who have to change and change their situation(2). In order to realize themselves as autonomous and active subjects in the world, it is indispensable that they secure their economic independence through work. Solution/Beauvoir: a liberation of both sexes(3). Instead of a demigod and his art object "woman", comrades, friends and partners meet who "recognize each other as equals and live the erotic drama in friendship"(4). 1. Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe, Paris 1949. Dt.: Simone de Beauvoir, Das andere Geschlecht. Sitte und Sexus der Frau, Reinbek 2005 (zuerst 1951), p. 20. 2. Ibid. p. 882-900 3. Ibid. p. 886 4. Ibid. p. 895. Friederike Kuster, „Simone de Beauvoir, Das andere Geschlecht (1949)“ in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Lenin | Kolakowski | Brocker I 44 Lenin/Kolakowski/Scherrer: Kolakowski claimed that Lenin never gave up his party theory and that his idea of the "party hegemony" on the "path of a natural development" depended on the idea of the "leading role of the party". Brocker I 45 "The party, which "has the 'right' theoretical consciousness", grew into a "despotic system of rule" in which the party always knows better than society what its interests and needs are (Kolakowski 1978, 437-439). (1) >Political parties, >Society, >Despotism, >Communism, >Socialism, >Dictatorship. 1. Kolakowski, Leszek, Die Hauptströmungen des Marxismus. Entstehung, Entwicklung, Zerfall, Band II, München/Zürich 1978. Jutta Scherrer, Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, Was tun?, (1902) in Brocker, Manfred, Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018. |
Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Lenin | Spengler | Brocker I 117 Lenin/Spengler: In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Spengler (...) believed that Lenin and Stalin's regime could be interpreted as a kind of Red Tsarist regime, later also as a modernized form of Asian despotism based on the model of Genghis Khan. >History/Spengler, >Historiography, >Philosophy of History, >Communism. Hans-Christof Klaus, Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918/1922) in: Manfred Brocker (Hg.) Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt/M. 2018. |
Spengler I Oswald Spengler Politische Schriften München 1932 Brocker I Manfred Brocker Geschichte des politischen Denkens. Das 20. Jahrhundert Frankfurt/M. 2018 |
| Minorities | Bakunin | Rothbard II 334 Majorities/minorities//communism/BakuninVsCommunism/Bakunin/Rothbard: maximum slavery. As perhaps the first of the 'new class' theorists, and anticipating the iron law of oligarchy of Michels and Mosca, Bakunin prophetically warned that a minority ruling class will once again, after the Marxian revolution, rule the majority: „But the Marxists say, this minority will consist of the workers. Yes, no doubt... of former workers, who, as soon as they become governors or representatives of the people, cease to be workers and start looking down on the working masses from the heights of state authority, so that they represent not the people but themselves and their own claim to rule over others. Anyone Who can doubt this knows nothing of human nature... The terms 'scientific socialist' and 'scientific socialism', which we meet incessantly in the works and speeches of the... Marxists, are suffcient to prove that the so-called people's state will be nothing but a despotism over the masses, exercised by a new and quite small aristocracy of real or bogus 'scientists'.... They [the Marxists] claim that only dictatorship, their own of course, can bring the people freedom; we reply that a dictatorship can have no other aim than to perpetuate itself, and that it can engender and foster nothing but slavery in the people subjected to it. Freedom can be created only by freedom...“.(1) 1. Bakunin, Statehood and Anarchy: quoted in Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), I, pp. 251-2. See also Abram L. Harris, Economics and Social Reform (New York: Harper & Bros, 1958), pp. 149-50. |
Bakunin I Michail Alexandrowitsch Bakunin The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State 1871 Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
| Socialism | Nietzsche | Höffe I 377 Socialism/Nietzsche/Höffe: NietzscheVsSocialism(1): Its eventual victory, determined as the uprising of those oppressed for millennia, is not a question of right but of power, and likewise not an outflow of justice but of covetousness. The criticism culminates in the assertion that (...) socialism is the "younger brother of the almost extinct despotism," for it desires an abundance of state power that amounts to the "annihilation of the individual". >Politics/Nietzsche, >Society/Nietzsche. 1. F. Nietzsche Ein Blick auf den Staat. In: F. Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, 1878 |
Nie I Friedrich Nietzsche Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe Berlin 2009 Nie V F. Nietzsche Beyond Good and Evil 2014 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| State (Polity) | Humboldt | Mause I 43 State/Society/Humboldt: Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) sums up the "free work of the nation among themselves" in his ideas written in 1792 as an attempt to determine the limits of the effectiveness of the state, "it is actually which preserves all goods whose longing leads people into a society. The actual state constitution is subordinate to it, as its purpose, and is always chosen only as a necessary means and, since it is always associated with restrictions of freedom, as a necessary evil". (1) >Freedom, >Society. 1.W. v. Humboldt, Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen, Hrsg. Robert Haerdter, Stuttgart 1967, S. 192. Höffe I 322 State/Humboldt/Höffe: In his ideas(1) (...) and in other political writings, Humboldt sets narrow limits on all state activity. As a liberal thinker of the state, whom Mill holds in high esteem, he pleads for a free and functional constitutional state, but rejects the paternalistic welfare state. For a government that is committed to the physical and moral well-being of the population would fall into the "worst and most oppressive despotism". Freedom: [Humboldt] calls for the fight against feudalism. Equal rights: He stands up for the equal rights of the Jews, not only gradually, but immediately. For it was against the "true concept of human dignity" to treat someone not as an individual but as a member of a race. >Rule of law, >Welfare state, >Racism. 1.Humboldt, Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen (1792) |
Mause I Karsten Mause Christian Müller Klaus Schubert, Politik und Wirtschaft: Ein integratives Kompendium Wiesbaden 2018 Höffe I Otfried Höffe Geschichte des politischen Denkens München 2016 |
| Technology | Engels | Rothbard II 326 Anarchism/technology/production/Engels/Rothbard: Six years before Anti-Dühring, (…), Engels betrayed the entire Marxian vision in the course of a bitter polemic against the anarchists. In defending the idea of authoritarianism under communism, Engels reminded the self-styled anti-authoritarian anarchists that 'a revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population Rothbard II 327 imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannon-authoritarian means...'. But more importantly, Engels jeered at the idea that there will be no authoritarianism, and hence no division oflabour, in a communist factory. Engels pointed out that factory production requires both, and also demands that the workers subordinate themselves to technological necessity. Thus: 'keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products...'. Moreover, he pointed out, technology and the forces of nature subject man 'to a veritable despotism independent of all social organization'. 'Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry', Engels warned, 'is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel'.(1) Labour/Marx/Rothbard: Refreshingly sober words, no doubt, but totally alien to the spirit of Marxism and certainly to all that Marx said or wrote on the topic, as well as most other writings of Engels. To Marx, all labour in future communism is not economic, but artistic, the free and spontaneous creativity allegedly typical of the artist. For Marx in his economic magnum opus, Capital, communist man has been transformed from an alienated man into an aesthetic man who regards everything in artistic terms. >Labour/Marx, >Division of labour. 1. Friedrich Engels, 'On Authority', written in 1872 and first published in an Italian collection in 1874; quoted in Robert C. Tucker. 1961, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. note 12, p. 731. |
EconEngels I Friedrich Engels Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des Staats Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 |
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