Power Line

Phil Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) is one of the most productive—and provocative—working scholars today (with emphasis on working, as his output is prodigious).This classic format episode features Steve Hayward and Phil in a one-on-one conversation about three of Phil's major areas of current research, starting with his co-authored article that breaks new ground in the history of Marxism, "The Mainstreaming of Marx: Measuring the Effect of the Russian Revolution on Karl Marx’s Influence," published recently in the Journal of Political Economy, one of the premier journals in economics. The article is causing heads to explode on the left, which means he must have hit a nerve.From there we talk about the history of the intellectual left's favorite epithet today, "neoliberalism," but also about how the term has been embraced with almost the same pejorative meaning by some leading thinkers on the right. Is this a good idea?Finally, as Phil has been one of the pre-eminent critics of