by Benjamin Marks, Economics.org.au editor-in-chief

June 1974: The First U.S. Austrian Conference

A week-long Institute for Humane Studies conference on Austrian economics was held in South Royalton, Vermont in June 1974. There were 40-50 attendees, including: Armentano, Block, Blundell, Carol, Clayton, Dolan, Ebeling, Garrison, Grinder, Hayek (four months before he was a Nobel Laureate), Hazlitt, Henderson, High, Holcombe, Hutt, Kirzner, Lachmann, Lavoie, Letwin, Moss, North, O’Driscoll, Pearson, Pejovich, Peterson, Rizzo, Rothbard, Salerno, Shenoy, Templeton, Vaughn, White and Young. Also, according to Ebeling, Friedman “came to one of the conference dinners and attempted to slight the rationale for the gathering by saying in a brief after-dinner talk that there was no such thing as a Chicago or an Austrian school of economics, ‘only good economics and bad economics’ … it was obvious that Friedman considered his to be the ‘good economics,’ with the implication that the attendees were pursuing the ‘bad economics’ in taking the Austrian school too seriously.”

The proceedings of the conference are available here. The conference is often briefly and positively mentioned in histories of the modern libertarian movement (the list of attendees above is collated from many of these), but the only real reviews of the conference I can find are here and here. This is the conference when many of America’s libertarians first met each other.

January 1975: Workers Party Launch

On January 25, 1975, on the Australia Day long-weekend, in the just-built Sydney Opera House, the Workers Party was launched. The event was reviewed on the front cover of The Australian newspaper, and said that the party believed “taxation is theft.” Check it out. We have also made available two speeches from the event: Dr John Whiting’s Presidential Address and Lang Hancock’s speech notes. The best history of the Workers Party is here. More here.

If it wasn’t for the amazing success of the Workers Party, Australia would still have an income tax, a fiat currency and a growing government.

November 2011: The Mises Seminar

The Mises Seminar will take place on November 25-26 in Sydney. The surviving members of the Workers Party will be there. Also attending will be the favourite political theorist of Greg Lindsay and John Roskam: Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Hoppe will launch his first Australian tour at the Mises Seminar. I won’t talk about the other speakers yet, as I don’t want to further risk overloading the Mises Seminar website servers.

There are still tickets available. More information is at the Mises Seminar website: www.mises.org.au. Be quick to scalp the special combo price. Book your place in history.