– 4 March 1909) was a German-born businessman and economist who settled in Melbourne, Australia, where he became the recognized intellectual leader of the Australian Georgist movement and, briefly, a member of the Victorian Parliament.

Young Hirsch was educated at a high school and also did some work at the University of Berlin, but aged 19 began a career as a commercial traveller.

These were followed in 1901 by Social Conditions: Materials for Comparisons between New South Wales and Victoria, Great Britain, United States and Foreign Countries.

These were subsequently published as a pamphlet by Francis Neilson,[9] who wrote in his introduction: "No sounder, no fairer analysis of the proposals and conceptions of socialism is to be found in the literature on the subject."

Hirsch made several attempts to enter political life without success, but in 1902 was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly for Mandurang (near Bendigo, Victoria).

Hirsch had become the recognized leader of the single tax movement, and his ability in both handling this question in public debates and in his writings brought him many supporters.

In his fight for free trade, then a live question in Australia, Hirsch met with much hostility from vested interests, and his opponents did not forget to remind the public that he was German and a Jew.

Land Values Taxation in Practice, a survey by Hirsch of recent legislative reforms in multiple jurisdictions, was substantially completed by 1908, but was published posthumously in 1910.

When the third American edition appeared in 1940, Albert Jay Nock wrote in the Atlantic Monthly:Of the innumerable books on economics ... published in the last seven years the one which is most important at just this moment ... is a reprint of Democracy versus Socialism by Max Hirsch ... it presents the complete case against every known form and shade of state collectivism, from Marxism ... to the New Deal.