Help Us Publish Patrick Newman’s Newest Book on Cronyism

Dear Friend,

It is a very proud moment when we see one of our students fly. Patrick Newman first came to the Mises Institute in 2011 as a Mises University student. He returned as a graduate student for Rothbard Graduate Seminar, and then as a Fellow. We’ve watched him build his academic career, authoring books and mentoring his own students.

In 2021, Patrick published Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America, 1607–1849, which received great acclaim. James Grant wrote about the book, “Government by its friends and for its friends is not how the American story is ordinarily framed, but Patrick Newman’s deeply informed history of governmental favoritism in the early Republic may prompt a reconsideration. The late, great Murray Rothbard read history in terms of the conflict between power and liberty. Professor Newman is a worthy heir to that libertarian scholarly tradition.”

Patrick’s ability to carry on this Rothbardian tradition is almost uncanny. He even sounds like Murray when he speaks sometimes!

Patrick has just completed Cronyism: Rise of the Corporatist State, 1849–1929, which continues the story of the struggles between liberty-loving Americans and the elites trying to steal it for their own gain.

Professor Newman has acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of American economic and political history. In the Rothbardian revisionist tradition of economic and political history, he uses solid economic thinking to tell the true story of the eight decades leading up to the Great Depression.

Readers will learn how cronyism and special-interest politics exploded in the postbellum period. They will learn how corporations captured regulatory agencies and recruited intellectuals to invent “public interest” smokescreens to bamboozle the public into believing that policies that plundered them were in their best interest. They will learn about war socialism during World War I and about how favored industries sought even more regulation to monopolize their industries and to continue plundering their customers after the war. Newman reveals how regulatory agencies were captured by the very interests they were supposed to be controlling and teaches the foolishness of statists who constantly demand more regulation.

A fascinating part of the story is the pervasiveness of competition in the late nineteenth century, the opposite of the narrative traditionally preached by mainstream historians. It was strong competition, Newman explains, that drove privilege-seeking businessmen to advocate corporatism—the unholy alliance between government and corporations to cartelize markets—so politically connected businesses could restrict production and raise prices. Mainstream historians have turned the successes of cronyism into virtuous achievements: (1) the founding of the Federal Reserve, which benefited the largest Wall Street banks at the cost of blowing up the credit bubble that led to the Great Depression; (2) the American Medical Association’s cartelization of the medical profession, which resulted in higher prices and less choice for patients; and (3) the rise of the railroads, whose capture of government created the model for other industries to follow. Newman describes these and other cases in vivid detail.

This book is important because it teaches that there is a world of difference between real, free market capitalism and crony capitalism in all its forms. All too often, leftist agitators and the economically uninformed wrongly blame “capitalism” for the crimes and inefficiency caused by crony capitalism. As Mises wrote in Human Action, economics “must involve the rewriting of history” to tell the true story. This is exactly what Professor Newman has done.

It’s now more important than ever that students are introduced and exposed to Austrian economics. We all remember the first book we read that made us totally rethink what we had been told for years. For me, it was Economics in One Lesson. For thousands of students, that book might be Cronyism: Rise of the Corporatist State, 1849–1929.

But this book isn’t just for students. It’s for everyone. Our ideas are resonating on Main Street, and this is the moment to bring people a book that will prompt them to rethink American history.

Publishing books is expensive, so I am asking you to help. Every donation will go toward the production of this much-needed book. Your gift will help us carry on the great Rothbardian tradition of economic history. Donors who give $1,000 or more will be listed at the front of the book, on the Patrons page.

Your gift will help students get a great education in American history and in Austrian economics, the good kind of economics!

Best wishes, 
Tom DiLorenzo 
President

PS: Help a student rethink what they have been taught for years. Support this great work today!

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