An Interview with David Gordon

0:00Okay, I'm sitting here with David Gordon, who is famously the editor of the Mises Review, the quarterly publication that reviews literature and economics and philosophy and politics and a million other subjects. Right, David, how do you decide what books you're going to review anyway? Well, I don't have any really systematic way of doing it. I just pick ones that seem interesting as they come up. Sometimes I run into problems in that I read books and then intend to review them and then by the time it's time to do an issue with a magazine, it's quite some time and I have to go back and look at the book again because I do all the reading first before I write the reviews.

0:52Do you read the whole book? Yeah. Yes. And then I read all the books, and then when it's time to do the review, then I just pick various ones, the ones I've read, and do the reviews from. You know, it's funny, people have different techniques, you know, sometimes a person can start a review, start to prepare a review and be so engaged in the book, so riveted by it that, well, at least for some of us, you inadvertently find yourself, well, some of the, one of the things is you adopt the voice of, in your review of the, of the writer, that you can't be objective about it anymore. Do you, do you have that temptation?

1:38That's occasionally happened. I remember I was reviewing the book by Garrett Garrett's essays and I sort of took over a little bit of a style. I was doing another review of a book I was writing negative on by Walter Burns and I put in a little Garrett-Garrett style in that. I was thinking about a case. Did you ever read Mises' letter to Ayn Rand? Oh, yes, yes. Do you agree that he seems to adopt something of a Randian style? Oh, yes, especially when he's saying how she stressed the elites and he thought this was a very good idea.

2:28Of course, Mises himself was funny, although you don't find this too much in writers from other countries who are writing in English, Do you think that his letter to her was even punchier than... Yes, I think that's a good point. I mean, I think he obviously read the... He was really swept up in it. I guess that's what happens when you read an hour-long novel this year. You get sort of wrapped up into the world where you're the writer. Do you ever do this... Before you read a book, you've got a title, you've got the back cover and everything, Do you ever write down, before you've read the book, what big points you're seeking to address, you're seeking to find, or what the big scheme is?

3:18Well, it sometimes happens, say, when I get a particular book, if I know something about the subject, I'll know that the author is, I want to see what the author has to say about certain arguments. For example, I reviewed one recently by Martha Nussbaum, so I wanted to see, in her previous work, she doesn't mention any of the libertarian items. I want to see, is she going to say anything at all about this? She tends very often to just assume her views to be correct and not argue for them. So I wanted to check, is she going to give any arguments this time for the few, of course she didn't.

4:05So you tend to think, you tend to have something in mind that you want to, in particular, that you want to look at. Not always. Sometimes it works out that way. I mean, sometimes there are particular points that I'm interested in. And I'll look for those in the book, one thing that comes up, say, in books on political philosophy is in most mainstream writing these days in political philosophy, there's an assumption that there's something wrong with inequality, and particularly the assumption is that it's It's unfair that people get much more income or wealth than others simply because they happen to be born with talents or abilities that are valued by the market.

5:01I very often will look, what does the author say about that point, and I try to relate it to earlier reviews that I wrote. Yeah, this comes through in your reviews, and your reviews can be sometimes so intimidating Thank goodness I never wrote a book. I mean, you're an exacting reviewer in the sense that it's not enough that people arrive at the right conclusions. That is really clear from your review that you're glad for people to write libertarian books, but what you're really interested in is whether they've justified the position they're taking. Oh, yes. One thing I'm very keen on is the structure of the argument. I want to see, does the person know how to reason properly?

5:47Sometimes it's gotten me into trouble. Actually, the reviews that I've gotten most criticism on are the ones where I've been critical of books that are more or less on our side, People are always glad if I attack the anti-capitalist one, but sometimes I've criticized ones that are somewhat free market, because I didn't care for some of the arguments, and then people don't like that. I tend to be, perhaps not a very good habit of mine, but I tend to be, if I can find slight mistakes in details, I tend to jump on those, especially if I don't like the author very much. It's always fun to get my minor points.

6:36You know, there are some books, though, that, well, let me ask you if you agree with this, that there's some books that don't do well in justifying the position they're taking, but the position that they assert without proof or analytical substance, they assert a worldview that's so inspiring that it's worth reading. Oh, yes, very much so. I mean, I don't, I mean, say if an author is not aiming to be a professional philosopher, just giving a popular treatment, I don't sort of insist that they have all the fine points. I mean, if somebody's writing a, I wouldn't say, well, for example, Garrett. Garrett didn't consider various academic writers at the time. He did a very good job with what he was doing.

7:29So you really do have a different standard for somebody who's purporting to do philosophy or economic theory than you would from somebody who's just in a position of a public advocate. Oh, very much so. I try to take them for what they're attempting to do. For example, you've I mentioned Ayn Rand, I never did any reviews of her, but I mean, if I reviewed one of her fictional works, I wouldn't criticize her for philosophical mistakes, but I mean, say, if I were, I did, now, see, this is an example of how one has to make distinctions here, I think, say, there are some of the objectivist philosophies I reviewed, this wasn't immediately, I did a review once of a book by David, I would kill the evidence of the sense that that was a very good book. But then others, say, Leonard Peacoff, I hadn't thought his book, I reviewed his book, Philosophy of Eye and Rand, I didn't care for it very much in ominous parallels.

8:39I mean, he's done some lectures I've read on history of philosophy, they were much better, but he's, what, one thing very much turned me off on his book on philosophy, but Rand, he started off saying in the first page, well, something like, I'm the greatest expository of this philosophy, this is the definitive philosophy, so that I said to myself, well, let's see how good he really is. Yeah, you do like a challenge, don't you? 2 books that come to mind as books that don't seem very analytically robust in some way but really are inspiring are Rose Wilder Lane's The Discovery of Freedom and another one is The Tanahill book that's getting a lot of new attention is written in the early 1970s called The Market for Liberty.

9:41These are two books. The Discovery of Freedom in particular. I remember reading as an undergraduate and thinking, well, that's not very compelling. And then I reread it recently and I thought, you know, this is a wonderful book. Yes, I think one thing that's very good on that is the style is very well written. I mean, I think one thing you bring out, I think is very right. Sometimes a writer can, by depicting a certain point of view, can really give you a sense of what it is to live in a world that would be organized in that way. I mean, they're not necessarily dealing with particular arguments, but you say if you read the Tannahills, you really get a sense of how a free market anarchist society might work.

10:33I think this is another book, when you mention Rose Wiley, say if you look at Isabel Patterson's God of the Machine, I think this is another book that has, she's really good at picturing certain episodes in history and showing how interferences with the market led to difficulties for the Societies, and how having a market freed up the energies of people. So I think, you know, I try in the review to give somewhat of a blend of popular and more scholarly works, you know, the kind that I'm, sort of, what I'm most interested in is doing refutations of scholarly works that I can attack, but that would be, I can't always do, that wouldn't be, that would be too narrow.

11:27I think this is good for me also, if I try to get some more popular books also. It's interesting, now that you mention this, I'm suddenly realizing that this is one strain that you pick up in your publication over time, is that you're actually easier on popular works than you are on scholarly works. Oh, yes, I mean, you know, I mean, it's... I haven't detected that before, but yeah. If someone isn't claiming to be a scholar, you really can't, you wouldn't be fair to really jump on. It strikes me that it is difficult for a writer, especially sitting down at a book, to strike the right balance between analytical proof.

12:22And you can really, I mean, it can be very dull, actually, if you're writing a book on political economy or politics or something, to go out of your way to demonstrate every point you're making. How do you strike the right balance between writing inspirational prose and writing analytically rigorous prose? Well, I think one thing that many people who are doing analytical writing could be made much more interesting than it is, so you can get it to be both analytical and somewhat inspirational. I think one way to do that is you do it kind of as dialectic, where you not only give your views but you get it as an argument, giving all the counterarguments on the other side.

13:15I think one failing in many analytical works or supposedly rigorous works is that the office will spend enormous amounts of time really repeating the same point or elaborating points that are very obvious over pages and pages and it gets to be very boring. Say, if you look, Nozick was one of the best at not doing this, although he went to the other extreme, where sometimes some of his most important points are just in the sides. But say, if you look at Rothbard and Man Economy and State's extremely interesting work, very rigorous, but you see what he does when he makes a point, he'll then go on to the next point and build it up systematically.

14:05He won't just keep on and on with the same point. Some authors, I think, must have taken inspiration from the character in The Hunting and the Snark, who says, what I tell you three times is true, although usually for a much higher number. You do get the sense when you read Rothbard that he's got so many thoughts, he's so creative, that he's in a rush to finish it in a wonderful way. I mean you sort of get swept along I mean you can't wait to finish making one point so you can make another point then make another point oh yes very much I met my greatest teacher Walter Starkey used to say that he's talking about the PhD thing he said it should be packed with matter you have it filled with different ideas yeah this is the way but a lot of writers don't do it that way so yeah just have the same point over and over the muses to seem to strike the

15:06I'm thinking about two books that are so different, Theory of Money and Credit, which is really this kind of comprehensive, careful look at monetary institutions, just point by point, and then in total contrast, liberalism. Oh, yes. Well, one thing I think Mises is one of the best, one gets the impression reading him and that he had the whole discipline of economics and social thought in his mind. He had exactly where he wanted each point to be. He had everything planned out exactly. He read everything and he had everything in order. I remember when I was an undergrad at UCLA, I had a course with Friedrich Hayek, philosophy of social science, he was a visiting professor, he would let, when he gave lectures, which he gave entirely without notes, you could, he was very systematic in this way, you couldn't print what he said, he was extremely...

16:11Really? Isn't there a German word that describes the capacity to sort of speak in publishable paragraphs? Yeah, yes, that's right, I think the, I forget what the word is, the Pope is supposed to have that. Yeah. Yes, you ask the Pope something, he'll just give you a page. A possible paragraph. That's brilliant. When choosing books to review, does the consideration of how popular this book is enter into things? I mean, there's so many books now that are published by academic presses that are so expensive nobody's ever going to read them, you know. Where as there are other books that are published by commercial houses or independent publishers like Mises Institute, that does that influence you?

16:57To some extent, say if a book has gotten an enormous amount of attention then I'll say well maybe I have to review it. I do try, I sometimes try to promote books, especially academic books that are not as well known as they should be and I think this is important. Now although the magazine is published by the Mises Institute, I think I'm still justified in featuring Mises Institute books, even though some people might say, well, I shouldn't do that because I'm writing for the Mises Institute, but I think these are very good books, so I try to emphasize them. It is interesting and a point worth making that you tend to review Mises Institute books not because they're published by the Institute, but despite the fact that they're published by the Institute.

17:53Yes. I mean, I think these are very important scholars. I think, say, if people were concentrating, if people in general academic life read, say, Hans Hoppe or Tom Woods rather than Rawls or Eric Foner would be much better off. I recall reading one time some book, it was a book about what books to read and the only thing I really was left with was the opening section of the book that said there are almost an unlimited number of books that you can read in a lifetime. We have to pick and choose, so we have to have a system for doing so.

18:38Oh, yes, it is, unfortunately, I tend to read quite a lot, but I find there are many more books that I want to read that I just can't get around to. There are just so many interesting titles that come out. I tend to look, I go very much by publishers' catalogs. I, if, say, there's certain books that are arousing a lot of scholarly interest, especially in philosophy, I'll tend to look at those and go through them. Do you remember that time we were hanging around in acres of books? Oh yes, yes, that was one of the very good, I have everything there.

19:24Yeah, that was a funny moment, and I'll just say it, that we were, you were kind of tagging

20:00So I played a little game with you and I said, I just grabbed a book randomly off the shelf. You don't remember this, do you? No. And I said, oh yeah, have you read this one? And you said, yes, actually on, I think it's footnote 415 on page 212, he makes an interesting point about something. And I opened it up and sure enough, that's exactly what I said. And I know the listener's not going to believe this story, but I was there. If you were going to tell people what books in the history of liberal ideas are out there, what are the ones that you would most want to draw attention to, given that everybody knows about, say, Human Action, Man Economy and State, or Atlas Shrugged, or these kinds What books do you think are really important but haven't received enough attention?

21:03Let me see. Well, I think one that of course at one time was very much studied is Herbert Spencer's Principles of Ethics. I think that has a lot of good stuff. Sometimes people tend to dismiss Spencer as a philosopher now, but that's an extremely good book. Book. One I think is that what a Mises shorter very short book called bureaucracy is extremely good because you really get really shows the difference between the market and the bureaucratic management. It gives it a very good brief presentation of its ideas. Now Omnipotent Government is an extremely good book. I mean, it gives you a real sense of the development of origins of the Nazi system, fascism in the 20th century. I think that's...

22:06Written the same year as Road to Serfdom. Yeah, yes, that's right, 1944. I mean, it's not, it didn't, it wasn't as popular as Road to Serfdom, but I think it's much more detailed in the economics in Road to Serfdom, and it much easier reading. Also, let me see, something that I was trying to think on, Murray Rothbard, I think, I don't know, I wouldn't describe this as neglect, but I think people, probably not as many people have read it as they should because it's at least somewhat expensive.

22:54Murray's history of economics, you see, I think many people might first say, well, I'm not a technical economist, I'm not that interested in the history of economics, but it's really, besides being a history of economics, a history of thought, really, a general intellectual Social History, and I think especially if you read his chapters on Marxism, it's really outstanding in showing the same pseudo-religious background of Marxism and Hegelian philosophy out of which Marxism came. So I think that's an extreme one that really more people should have a look at. What about Hayek?

23:39The Constitution of Liberty is very famous. What other books, what other works by Hayek do you think are worth? Well, the one I like very much is the Counter-Revolution of Science, you know, because it gives you sort of the background of the French positivist thought under Auguste Comte. And the first part is one of his most detailed statements of his views on methodology of social sciences and individuals. You know, there's a view nowadays that's, I think, wrong that Hayek somehow abandoned methodological individualism. He was sort of interested, became interested in complexity and studying methodological individualism. But I don't think he ever, he ever changed his real views.

24:25There's more of a continuity in Hayek than most people, most people think. One book, Oberon Herbert is a very good writer. Fowler Spencer, who extended him. I think Liberty Fund has a volume of his essays. It's very good. I think he's certainly a good one to read. What is the name of that?

25:25Bertrand de Chouvenel on power is very good. Some of his later stuff isn't as good, but on power and ethics of redistribution is very good. Yeah, ethics of redistribution, that's right. Yeah, I think we're carrying, I think we carry both those tiles, unfortunately they're in print. Felix Morley is, I'm not sure that it's in print, actually. Now, he's an interesting guy, right? Because wasn't he an editor at the Washington Post? Yes, he was. Yes, and he was, I think he was a supporter of non-intervention. Non-intervention is foreign policy, and then he became, he was one of the founders of Human Events, I think, also.

26:14But he was also, see he had studied at Oxford, he studied, Sir Ernest Barker was his tutor, he was a very good writer, he was from a quite famous family, you know, Christopher Morley was his brother. It's part of that whole generation, along with John T. Flynn, that they seemed to, in their youth, I don't know if Morley was among them, but in their youth they thought of themselves as progressives and liberals, and then the New Deal came along and this regimented society, authoritarianism, imposed from the top down, a new planning style regime, and they considered The Theory of Money and Credit

27:32What was more of a watershed in terms of the history of liberalism in the progressive era and American liberalism in the progressive era or the New Deal? I would say more of the progressive period because I think Murray Rothbard was very good at pointing this out that really the New Deal just continued and extended the trends, especially in World War I extended all the various programs but it really carried them out much further and I think sort of had a split in some of the progressives where some of the progressives recognized that they centralized, that they wanted to go more towards centralization and there were other, another part of the progressive movement was simply kind of favored some sort What books are you planning for the next issue?

28:51Can you tell us, what are you working on? Well, I'm not fully, I mean, there was a very good book, probably going to the next issue, although not absolutely. Certainly one by Doug Rasmussen and Doug Denial.

29:39This one chapter, a couple chapters give a very revisionist account of American entry into World War II and also discussion of Fritz Fischer in thesis on Or is the World One that's very critical. So it's ostensibly just a guidebook but it has some very interesting new stuff in there so that would probably be one of them. Good. And if an author wanted to get his or her book reviewed by you, what would he or she do? Well, I've had a few people write to me asking me for book reviews. If they do that, then I'll generally read the book. I don't always review, but I do read them.

30:25I've had authors complain that I haven't reviewed them. I sometimes wonder why anyone would do that if they read my review. What about an affectionate inscription on the title page? Does that help? Not as much as money, but it never hurts. Okay, I'll keep that in mind. Thank you very much, Dr. Gordon.