he Battle against Socialism by les conomistes

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waxkgAEixwQ[/youtube]

This one is for Bordsilver. Description of the French liberal economists' (including Bastiat) struggles against socialism in revolutionary France.

 

Thanks. Was interesting. Apparently some of those debates got quite heated at times, nearly(?) leading to fisticuffs.

I liked lots of bits, but memorable was ~16mins where they spent two years arguing about the theory of the organisation of labour and rights. People have a right to work. It's not a right to a job, it's a right to engage in work, to seek for work or to take part in working activities.

I love the cartoon of Considerant mocking him saying that people may grow tails under Socialism due to evolution :lol:

I remember reading some of the letter correspondence between Proudhon and Bastiat where they were arguing about the labour theory of value and the right to own capital goods. Bastiat repeatedly refuted all of Proudhon's arguments but Proudhon kept on repeating the same old crap.

 

Glad you liked it! It's something I'll have to rewatch to refresh my memory of it all the time.

And yes adding in the humour/mockery of the time bring the situation closer to your understanding by making what could be dry, a more human topic.

And I just realised I stuffed up the subject of the thread...Eeeoops.

 

Am in the middle of reading Etienne La Boetie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude written around 1560. Recommended (especially the version with an introduction by Murray Rothbard).

 

^ I imagine it is rewarding but grammatically very difficult to plow through.

 

It is actually very readable (no doubt as a result of a good translator). Murray's introduction which is approximately half of the 80 pages is worthwhile in and of itself.

This is the basic gist:

 

Slaves, with a little bit of training will enslave each other. That's the way it's always been.

 

Warlords use force. That's why peasants volunteer to obey.