[Excerpted from The Causes of the Economic Crisis ] The Marxian critique censures the capitalistic social order for the anarchy and planlessness of its production methods. Allegedly, every entrepreneur produces blindly, guided only by his desire for profit, without any concern as to whether his action satisfies a need. Thus, for Marxists, it is
[ Economic Freedom and Interventionism (1980)] About 60 years ago Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) the great French sociologist, dealt with the problem of the popularization of luxuries. An industrial innovation, he pointed out, enters the market as the extravagance of an elite before it finally turns, step by step, into a need of each and all and is
The Market for Literary Products Capitalism provides many with the opportunity to display initiative. While the rigidity of a status society enjoins on everybody the unvarying performance of routine and does not tolerate any deviation from traditional patterns of conduct, capitalism encourages the innovator. Profit is the prize of successful
[Excerpted from chapter 9 of Theory and History .] In their eagerness to eliminate from history any reference to individuals and individual events, collectivist authors resorted to a chimerical construction, the group mind or social mind. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, German philologists began to study German medieval
[This article is excerpted from chapter 15 of Human Action . Robert Murphy has written a study guide for this chapter, available in HTML and PDF .] The entrepreneurs are not omnipresent. They cannot themselves attend to the manifold tasks which are incumbent upon them. Economic calculation as practiced in the market economy, and especially the
The history of capitalism as it has operated in the last two hundred years in the realm of Western civilization is the record of a steady rise in the wage earners’ standard of living. The inherent mark of capitalism is that it is mass production for mass consumption directed by the most energetic and far-sighted individuals, unflaggingly aiming at
[ Economic Freedom and Interventionism (1980) ] Hace unos 60 años, Gabriel Tarde , el gran sociólogo francés, se ocupaba del problema de la popularización de los lujos. Una innovación industrial, apuntaba, entra en el mercado como la extravagancia de una élite antes de convertirse finalmente, paso a paso, en una necesidad de todos y cada uno y
[ The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956) ] El mercado de los productos literarios El capitalismo proporciona a muchos la oportunidad de mostrar iniciativa. Mientras que la rigidez de una sociedad de estatus conlleva para todos la invariable repetición de la rutina y no tolera ninguna desviación de los patrones tradicionales de conducta, el
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The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
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