A good example of how political philosophy is driven by ethics. Here is Engels, Karl Marx’s collaborator in writing The Communist Manifesto and other works, criticizing liberals — despite nineteenth-century liberalism’s great accomplishment in reducing war and promoting peace between nations: You have brought about the fraternisation of the peoples – but the fraternity is […]
Friedrich Engels against liberal peace Read More »
In his essay “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” Kant wrote that “the spirit of commerce, which is incompatible with war, sooner or later gains the upper hand in every state.” Yet Kant was not a friend of the spirit of commerce, which he associated with the Jews, whom he despised as “immoral and vile”
Is commerce rendering war obsolete? Read More »
A flotilla of ships is approaching your shore. Does it matter to you whether they are carrying smartphones and shoes — or rockets and soldiers? In his Economic Sophisms, Frédéric Bastiat makes this exasperated point: “A French ironmaster says: ‘We must protect ourselves from the invasion of English iron!’ An English landlord cries: ‘We must
War metaphors and trade — Bastiat Read More »
Reprising this anecdote about philosopher Bertrand Russell’s opinion that the world would be better off with a Nazi victory. As reported by Richard Jencks, who was one of Russell’s students at UCLA in 1940: “The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who had been jailed in World War I for his pacifism by a government of which
Bertrand Russell’s pacifism in the face of Nazism Read More »
FEE this month reprints Sarah Skwire’s good piece from 2017: “The Moral and Spiritual Blessings of Trade Among All Nations”: “Free trade doesn’t just make us better off. It makes us better people.” At PanAm Post this month, Maria Marty takes up the underlying collectivist premises of many anti-free-trade arguments: “La excusa colectivista para limitar
On the *moral* benefits of international trade: Skwire, Marty, and Hicks pieces Read More »
“A common misconception often quoted by media, politicians, activists is that violence is on the rise and has historically been much lower. Similarly, the trend in post-colonial anthropology has been to regard historically indigenous and tribal societies as more peaceful than contemporary Western society. However, archaeological evidence shows that previous societies had very high level
Modernity’s declining violence Read More »