[cross-posted at Liberty & Power]
Two nifty recent releases from the Mises Institute:
First there’s Guido Hülsmann’s massive 1143-page Ludwig von Mises biography Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism. (Or the first of their return, as Francisco said of Hugh Akston.) It looks fascinating!
For a very funny video clip of Guido discussing the book and reading some passages from it, click here. And you can read the preface here.
Then there’s the new two-volume Bastiat Collection.
For a video clip of Mark Thornton being interviewed by Jeff Tucker on the Bastiat book, click here.
Unfortunately, this new collection does not completely supersede the older three-volume FEE collection; each has some material the other lacks. The FEE trilogy has “Property and Law,” “Justice and Fraternity,” “Property and Plunder,” “Protectionism and Communism,” “Plunder and Law,” “Academic Degrees and Socialism,” “Declaration of War Against the Professors of Political Economy,” “On the Suppression of Industrial Combinations,” “To the Democrats,” “Balance of Trade,” “The Utopian,” “Salt, the Postal Service, and the Tariff,” and the originally unpublished preface of Economic Harmonies, all of which are lacking from the Mises edition. The Mises edition has Capital and Interest and “What Is Money?,” both of which are lacking from the FEE edition; plus the Mises edition is prettier. (And of course there are many Bastiat works absent from both.) Hence the definitive Bastiat collection still lies in our future; but in the meantime both the FEE and the Mises editions are must-haves.
P.S. – Mark Thornton’s introduction to The Bastiat Collection is also online.
Errr… with the Bastiat, a wee bit more that the intro is online:
http://www.mises.org/books/bastiat1.pdf
http://www.mises.org/books/bastiat2.pdf
Roderick
In case you don’t know, Liberty Fund is translating the complete works of Bastiat in 6 volumes, based upon the mid-19thC French Guillaumin editon which is available online at the OLL in PDF only . Jacques de Guenin is the general editor and I am the academic advisor for the project. Volume 1 containing Bastiat’s letters (never before published) is getting close to the copy editing stage. There are dozens of never before translated economic essays, newspaper and journal articles, book reviews, political speeches and election manifestos. All the old classics like Economic Harmonies will be translated afresh and lots of editorial notes and glossaries explaining the political and economic context in which Bastiat lived and wrote will be included as well. It should be a “must have” purchase for your library!
David
Out of all of these collections of Bastiat material does anyone know if he spoke about intellectual property?
I hope you didn’t know about the Liberty Fund project. It would be a very good idea to have a translation of Bastiat’s complete works.
David Hart,
No, I hadn’t heard. Glorious news!!!
I should have the Molinari Institute version of the Bastiat-Proudhon debate (12 letters translated by Benjamin Tucker, the other two by myself) online before the LF version appears, I reckon.
Black Bloke,
I seem to recall that he was favourable toward copyrights but skeptical of patents (which also Rothbard’s position — Henry George’s too).
I would love to see a biography on Bastiat? I there one out there, or in the works?