Politics – Page 19 – Stephen Hicks, Ph.D.

Violent Politics — The Lesson of Marxist Philosophy [Open College transcript]

Leave a Comment / Philosophy, Socialism / Stephen Hicks

We’re now posting serially at thinkspot the transcripts of my Open College podcasts. Here’s the second: OC2: Violent Politics — The Lesson of Marxist Philosophy “For Marxism, the democratic process is a pointless sham.” Audio versions of the podcast are available free at my website, YouTube, Bitchute, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud. To cover additional production costs, the […]

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Anecdote: Socialism’s incentive problem

Leave a Comment / Socialism / Stephen Hicks

TEACHER FAILS ENTIRE CLASS: An economics professor said that she had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an entire class. That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich. Socialism is a great equalizer. The professor then said, “Okay, we

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Pajama-boy Nietzscheans — Thompson essay

Leave a Comment / Politics / Stephen Hicks

Excellent essay by Professor C. Bradley Thompson diagnosing prominent strains of the weird left and the sometimes-weirder right, both deeply anti-liberal, anti-Enlightenment, and anti-American-founding. Link. the principles and institutions of the American Founding are now under assault from the nattering nabobs of both the progressive Left and the reactionary Right. These two ideological antipodes share

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The New Socialisms

Leave a Comment / Socialism / Stephen Hicks

Three attempts to sort out the new-style socialisms of this generation: * Nathan Pinkowski’s “The Strange Rise of Bourgeois Bolshevism” (May 2020): “The task American socialists have set themselves is to achieve and sustain a culture of free self-creation. But this culture, the culture of individual autonomy, grows out of the bourgeois.” * My “Young

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Young People’s Socialism [Open College]

Leave a Comment / Socialism / Stephen Hicks

From my podcast series, produced by Possibly Correct out of Toronto. This generation’s young people express more positive attitudes toward socialism. But what does socialism mean to them? For most it does not seem to mean believing the Soviet Union or Mao’s Communist China is an ideal So does socialism mean free stuff? Ending crony

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Eight Socialists Define Socialism

Leave a Comment / Socialism / Stephen Hicks

Marx, Saint-Simon, Lenin, Harrington, Heilbroner, Attlee, Mao, Nehru. The eight socialists’ definitions that I discuss in the podcast are posted here in text form.

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Polarization — insight from Auberon Herbert

Leave a Comment / Socialism / Stephen Hicks

From 1884: “Time is a great logician, and succeeding generations will either press steadily on to the system that is the perfection of force, Socialism, or to the perfection of liberty, complete Individualism. If men believe that they may rightly use force to gain any of their objects, they will claim in their supposed interest

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Free association rejected — two variations

Leave a Comment / Politics / Stephen Hicks

Two recent sad results: 1. Freelancers want to work for companies, but government says No. 2. Women want a women-only club, but government says No. The right to free association has both a positive and a negative application. The positive right is to associate with whom you choose. The negative is not to associate with whom you

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