Toxic textbooks? How does this differ from what the German Student Association denounced in 1933? Is “toxic textbooks” not just a new name for the books that the anti-intellectuals intend to burn?
Ludwig von Mises writes:
Economics in the second German Reich, as represented by the government-appointed university professors, degenerated into an unsystematic, poorly assorted collection of various scraps of knowledge borrowed from history, geography, technology, jurisprudence, and party politics, larded with deprecatory remarks about the errors in the "abstractions" of the Classical School.
After 1866, the men who came into the academic career had only contempt for "bloodless abstractions." They published historical studies, preferably such as dealt with labor conditions of the recent past. Many of them were firmly convinced that the foremost task of economists was to aid the "people" in the war of liberation they were waging against the "exploiters."
This was the position Gustav Schmoller embraced with regard to economics. Again and again he blamed the economists for having prematurely made inferences from quantitatively insufficient material. What, in his opinion, was needed in order to substitute a realistic science of economics for the hasty generalizations of the British "armchair" economists was more statistics, more history, and more collection of "material." Out of the results of such research the economists of the future, he maintained, would one day develop new insights by "induction."
Does Gustav Schmoller remind you of anyone alive today?
In the defining manifesto of the Post-Autistic Movement, James Devine writes:
The original statements by the rebellious French economics students define autistic economics in terms of its one-sided and exclusionary interest in "imaginary worlds," "uncontrolled use of mathematics" and the absence of pluralism of approaches in economics. The hard-core autistic walling off from the societal environment can be seen most strongly in the specific, highly abstract, axiomatic school that the students protested against.
More recently, they have grown bold enough to demand that federally-funded economics associations censure anybody who displays “axiom-happy behavior,” as this is considered symptomatic of autism.
The Real-World Economics Review writes:
It is accepted fact that the economics profession through its teachings, pronouncements and policy recommendations facilitated the Global Financial Collapse (GFC). To date, however, the world’s major economics associations have declined to censure the major facilitators of the GFC or even to publicly identify them. This silence, this indifference to causing human suffering, constitutes grave moral failure. It also gives license to economists to continue to indulge in axiom-happy behaviour.
Since these associations are funded entirely by the Federal Government, this is tantamount to government censorship. Indeed, their use of the word censure, rather than censor, implies a formal reprimand issued to an individual by an authoritative body. This is highly reminiscent of the Soviet practice of denouncing dissidents as mentally ill. If preventing autistic people from getting published becomes government policy, it is only a short step to forcibly institutionalizing anybody who has studied geometry or otherwise shown an aptitude for the axiomatic method.
If this comparison seems unimportant, recall what the German Historical School led to.
Ludwig von Mises writes:
The political significance of the work of the Historical School consisted in the fact that it rendered Germany safe for the ideas, the acceptance of which made popular with the German people all those disastrous policies that resulted in the great catastrophes. The aggressive imperialism that twice ended in war and defeat, the limitless inflation of the early 1920s, the Zwangswirtschaft and all the horrors of the Nazi regime were achievements of politicians who acted as they had been taught by the champions of the Historical School.
Only forty years passed from the time of Gustav Schmoller to that of Adolph Hitler. How many years will it take for the Post-Autistics to find their own Hitler?
Do you want to fight the Nazis again? Or would it be more effective to denounce the Post-Autistic movement now, before they arm themselves? I remind you: Rifles and bullets alone do not win wars; it takes ideas to press rifles into the hands of men. Win the war of ideas and you will have won the war before a single shot has been fired.
“To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” – Sun Tzu
At this early stage of the Post-Autistic Movement, the most obvious point of comparison with the Nazis is their campaign to ban academic papers. Click here and here to see two blatant examples of a post-autistic economist banning me for ideological reasons. Also, observe that the Wilmott forum banned me for a post almost identical to this page, calling it “self promotion,” though it does not actually link to my website or mention me or my book.
Just because it is not the government, in the sense of actual federal agents, who are burning books does not mean that it is any less wrong or any different than Nazi book burning. That was not done by the government either. It was the German Student Association.
In the Wikipedia article on Nazi book burnings we read:
The German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) proclaimed a nationwide"Action against the Un-German Spirit," to climax in a literary purge or "cleansing" ("Säuberung") by fire.
Placards publicized the theses, which attacked "Jewish intellectualism," asserted the need to "purify" German language and literature.
On May 10, 1933 the students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of "un-German" books, presaging an era of state censorship and control of culture. On the night of May 10, in most university towns, nationalist students marched in torchlight parades "against the un-German spirit."
