1.3 & 1.4 Vienna and the Soviet Union

Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy

Hayek explores socialism
The Austrian School's critique
What Lenin learned
Stalin's totalitarian plan

Watch all of Commanding Heights at PBS.org

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/hi/story/index.html

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Commanding
• Heights
• Economics
• Friedrich
• Hayek
• Luwig
• von
• Mises
• Lenin
• Stalin
• Capitalism
• Communism
• Central
• Planning

[BeanGene]

Collectivism = the Dark Ages. Central control over every aspect of life. It is oppressive; It is murderious; it is a few masters and fearful slaves. It is lies and distortions greed and corruption wrapped in a pretty package of warm fuzzies for good of all.

Individualism = Enlightment natural law, free trade, little government, free thought, truth, power structures built on many levels to oppose one another and stop tyranny from consintration into a few hands.

[TheWilliamcale]

lenin was a power hungry sociopathic narcissist

[FletchforFreedom]

@Lillymill Funny that you would bring up naivete considering your assertions. That they mockingly referred to it as underground work is a surprise to no one. That anyone could seriously believe that this constituted an active attempt to bring down communism ... requires reference to naivete again.

Since no "imperial family" is involved and since "the invisible hand is not a "belief" but a term used to describe an empirically established phenomenon, you're simply undermining yourself.

[Lillymill]

@FletchforFreedom

I guess that's why these "warning efforts" are described as "underground work" by their very perpetrators.

What's far more puzzling is the fact that after all this efforts invested into the noble cause of bringing down the old red scarecrow, these anarcholiberal benevolent activities are still kept away from the public.

Liberalism lead by an European would be imperial family??

I guess that's the kind of naivety that makes people believe in Invisible Hand 0.o

[FletchforFreedom]

@Lillymill The fairy-tale of the "subversive" activities (LOL!) is a new one. Their efforts amount to a warning so that the inevitable (and spectacular) failures harm fewer people. None of those organizations were responsibe for 50 years of economic stagnation by the Soviets and their client states; nor were they responsible for the correlation between the adoption iof capitalism and improved living standards.

And someone might read socialist nonsense and accidentally fall for it.

[Lillymill]

@FletchforFreedom

Why bother responding to my comments if its nonsensical? 0.o

[Lillymill]

@FletchforFreedom

If Socialism was bound to fail, there would be no need for the subvertive activities of Mont Pelerin Society and Pan-Europa to undermine European socialism.

It seems like a lot of hard work to take down something that was supposedly about to fall anyways.

[FletchforFreedom]

@Lillymill Actually, in the real world, socialistic intervention in the economy caused, among other things, the Great Depression and the current economic crisis. And blaming war, which is, by definition, a state action on "individualism" (particularly the one precipitated by National Socialism) is just too nonsensical to be treated at all seriously.

[FletchforFreedom]

@Lillymill They didn't mention his shoe size either ... and for the same reason.  Socialism has failed in every case for clear and easily discernable economic reasons.

[Lillymill]

I wonder why is it that the authors forgot to mention that Mises was Rotarian, a close friend of Otto Habsburg (Crown Prince of the dissolved Autro-Hungarian Empire and also a member of Hayek's Mont Pelerin Society, later a "cofounder" of Paneuropean movement - European federalist and Cold War era anti-communist subversionary network).

Monarchist liberals - what a joke! :))

Socialism did not fail because of its inefficiency but because of these rats who undermined it for decades!

[Lillymill]

@BeanGene

Collectivism never brought about the global economic crisis and world war.

Individualism did - TWICE!

[blahhhk]

he wasn't narcissist..