David Gordon (philosopher)

David Gordon (born April 7, 1948) is an American libertarian philosopher and intellectual historian influenced by Murray Rothbard's views of economics. He is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and is the editor of ''The Mises Review.

Education
Gordon received degrees from University of California Los Angeles, including a doctorate in intellectual history.

Career
Gordon is a senior fellow of the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank.  He previously worked for another libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, from 1979–1980. He has written for the Rothbard-Rockwell Report published by Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell. He became a specialist in Rothbard's beliefs on political theory, history, economics, and other subjects.

He has contributed to Analysis, International Philosophical Quarterly, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Social Philosophy and Policy and Econ Journal Watch. He also has been published in the Orange County Register, The American Conservative and The Freeman.

In 1985 Gordon worked with Walter Block on a law review article, "Extortion and the Exercise of Free Speech Rights," which explores contradictions and paradoxes in laws against blackmail and the conditions under which such laws are acceptable.

Gordon’s 1991 book Resurrecting Marx: The Analytical Marxists on Freedom, Exploitation, and Justice was described by Mises Institute scholar Yuri Maltsev as "a refutation of neo-Marxist attempts to save the system from itself." The book, which answers the arguments of Marxist political philosophers, including G. A. Cohen, Jon Elster, and John Roemer, dismisses every form of Marxism as theoretically unviable. The American Political Science Review said Gordon's argument was "rather crude": capitalism could not be exploitative, and laissez-faire capitalism could serve a just world. Therefore, Gordon concludes, Marxism is "a complete failure." Contemporary Sociology said Gordon failed to show that analytical Marxists were "a formidable weapon in the hands of anti-Marxists" such as himself. Gordon was said to have shown little competency in anti-Marxist argument, falling into "easily avoided mistakes." Paul Gottfried in The Review of Metaphysics assessed the book more positively, writing that Gordon had demonstrated that Cohen, Elster and Roemer had failed to "rehabilitate Marx's economic theories". The review said Gordon's explanation of his own libertarian stance was "by far the most stimulating." Oxford political scientist David Leopold noted Gordon's thumbnail test regarding whether a writer could be classified as an analytical Marxist as part of a common "misleading and unfortunate" understanding of the school, Gordon writing that a favorable stance on dialectics meant that the writer must be "crossed off the list."

Gordon's book The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics (1992), which explores the philosophical origins of Carl Menger’s economic theories, was highly praised by Murray Rothbard. Writing in The Review of Austrian Economics, Barry Smith criticized the book for its over-simplistic division of philosophers into two camps—German (Hegelian, organicist and anti-science) and Austrian (Aristotelian, individualist and pro-science)—despite the philosophers having more complex interrelations. For instance Franz Brentano is exemplary of Austrian thought though he was born in Germany and was strongly influenced by German philosopher Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg. Gordon later wrote an essay, "Second Thoughts on The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics," to provide some additions and corrections to his book.

Gordon edited the collection Secession, State & Liberty (2002), eleven essays that suggest that secession should be given serious consideration. The essays examine United States history, look at theoretical issues, and apply theory to the modern world.

In 2011 Gordon and Swedish consultant Per Nilsson analyzed books published by Harvard University Press for their paper "The Ideological Profile of Harvard University Press: Categorizing 494 Books Published 2000–2010" in Econ Journal Watch. They presented a spreadsheet analysis that classified the books by unknown criteria, concluding the issue was not that Harvard press "is ideological, but that its ideology is predominately leftist." The authors acknowledged they had not read all the books they classified. A reviewer noted that one author did not consider his book "leftist," and that the reason other books were so characterized was not clear.

Assessments
Murray Rothbard described Gordon as a friend and "Mr. Erudition." In Hans-Hermann Hoppe's The Myth of National Defense, Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri described Gordon as the "semiofficial reviewer of the libertarian community." Reason journalist Brian Doherty, in his foreword to Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard (2010), which Gordon edited, wrote that Gordon was "the only man around who knows as much as Rothbard did when it comes to the historical, philosophical and economic background of libertarianism." The Orange Country Register in an editorial described Gordon as a "polymath."

Peter J. Boettke, in his Reason Foundation "Reason Papers," Issue No. 19, Fall 1994, describes Gordon as "a philosopher and intellectual historian who is deeply influenced by the Rothbardian strand of economics."

Books

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