Against Politics

Against Politics: 15 book recommendations

Aschwin de Wolf — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:15:15 PST

One of the best ways to communicate the general outlook of a website is to recommend a set of books that embody its perspectives on a variety of topics. Since its inception in 2000 the outlook of Against Politics has undergone some changes but there are a number of core interests that have remained the [...]

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Voting anarchists

Aschwin de Wolf — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:35:47 PST

One of the longest ongoing debates in anarchism concerns the morality of voting. Thomas Woods has weighed in and not only believes that it is not immoral to vote, but that there are good reasons to vote for a candidate such as Ron Paul. He writes: If you were stuck in a prison camp, and [...]

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Humans are still evolving

Aschwin de Wolf — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:15:50 PST

A defining characteristic of ideologies is an implicit or explicit theory of human nature. For example, modern libertarians like Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard derived bold normative conclusions from the fact that humans are endowed with reason. In such attempts, an abstract theory of human nature is made to do more work than it can [...]

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The Psychology of Liberalism

Aschwin de Wolf — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:09:32 PDT

Modern liberalism is characterized by a set of beliefs that stand in such strong contradiction to what we know about human nature and society that some authors believe that a psychological assessment of this movement will give insights that cannot be gained by simply identifying its claims and demands. In this tradition, the Catholic reactionary...

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Richard von Mises: Positivism – A Study in Human Understanding

Aschwin de Wolf — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:21:42 PDT

Unlike his rationalist brother Ludwig von Mises, Richard von Mises had strong empiricist leanings, which found expression in his frequency interpretation of probability and his qualified endorsement of logical positivism (or logical empiricism). His Kleines Lehrbuch des Positivismus was published in 1939 and translated and revised in English in...

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Survival of the unfittest

Aschwin de Wolf — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:20:29 PDT

Reading the book today, Survival of the Unfittest (1927) by Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, it has all the elements that ensured its descent into completely obscurity: concerns about human degeneration, advocacy of eugenics, and classical liberal views on state and political economy. Authors such as Charles Wicksteed Armstrong, who posit that...

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Interviews with Anthony de Jasay

Aschwin de Wolf — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:16:01 PDT

There are not a lot of (English) interviews with the social philosopher Anthony de Jasay. An hour-long spoken interview was conducted by Hartmut Kliemt in 2000 as part of Liberty Fund’s Intellectual Portrait Series. In March 2010, the Gary Johnson for President blog featured a brief written interview with Anthony de Jasay – a...

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Given that market monetarism exists

Aschwin de Wolf — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:28:33 PDT

One of the most passionate debates among American free market advocates concerns the question whether one should focus on the abolition of government institutions or incremental reform. Murray Rothbard is closely associated with the “abolitionist” outlook and Milton Friedman is closely associated with the “given that it...

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The social cage

Aschwin de Wolf — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:02:15 PDT

With all the current interest in the paleolithic lifestyle and the paleo-diet it is not surprising that some people will wonder what kind of social-political environment is most suited for hunter-gatherer descendants. One attempt to answer this question is provided in Alexandra Maryanski and Jonathan H. Turner’s The Social Cage: Human Nature...

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Anthony de Jasay on poverty and inequality

Aschwin de Wolf — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:43:33 PDT

A recent collection of essays in honor of H.S.H. Prince Philipp of Liechtenstein contains Anthony de Jasay’s article ‘Against Poverty and the Misuse of Language that Helps to Perpetuate it.” In this piece, Jasay argues against the “self-evident” view that economic growth comes with undesirable inequalities of wealth...

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