Mises Himself: Quotations from His Works

The keystone of Western civilization is the sphere of spontaneous action it secures to the individual. There have always been attempts to curb the individual’s initiative, but the power of the persecutors and inquisitors has not been absolute. It could not prevent the rise of Greek philosophy and its Roman offshoot, or the development of modern science and philosophy. Driven by their inborn genius, pioneers have accomplished their work in spite of all hostility and opposition. The innovator did not have to wait for an invitation or order from anybody. He could step forward of his own accord and defy traditional teachings. Then came the emancipation of the individual in the field of business, an achievement of that new branch of philosophy, economics. A free hand was given to the enterprising man who knew how to enrich his fellows by improving the methods of production. A horn of plenty was poured upon the common men by the capitalistic business principle of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses.

Theory and History Liberalism is no religion, no world view, no party of special interests. It is no religion because it demands neither faith nor devotion, because there is nothing mystical about it, and because it has no dogmas. It is no world view because it does not try to explain the cosmos and because it says nothing and does not seek to say anything about the meaning and purpose of human existence. It is no party of special interests because it does not provide or seek to provide any special advantage whatsoever to any individual or group. It is something entirely different. It is an ideology, a doctrine of the mutual relationship among the members of society and, at the same time, the application of this doctrine to the conduct of men in actual society.

Liberalism The customary terminology misrepresents things entirely. The philosophy commonly called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus. On the other hand, the application of the basic ideas of collectivism cannot result in anything but social disintegration and the perpetuation of armed confiict.

Human Action The characteristic feature of the market economy is the fact that it allots the greater part of the improvements brought about by the endeavors of the three progressive classes—those saving, those investing the capital goods, and those elaborating new methods for the employment of capital goods—to the nonprogressive majority of people. Capital accumulation exceeding the increase in population raises, on the one hand, the marginal productivity of labor and, on the other, cheapens the product. The market process provides the common man with the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of other peoples’ achievements. It forces the three progressive classes to serve the nonprogressive majority in the best possible way.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality He who says: The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

Omnipotent Government The vain arrogance of the literati and the Bohemian artists dismisses the activities of the businessmen as unintellectual money-making. The truth is that the entrepreneurs and promoters display more intellectual faculties and intuition than the average writer and painter. The inferiority of many self-styled intellectuals manifests itself precisely in the fact that they fail to recognize what capacity and reasoning power are required to develop and to operate successfully a business enterprise.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality Today millions are fascinated by the plan to transform the whole world into a bureau, to make everybody a bureaucrat, and to wipe out any private initiative. The paradise of the future is visualized as an all-embracing bureaucratic apparatus. The post office is the model for the construction of the New Jerusalem. The post-office clerk is the prototype of future man. Streams of blood have been shed for the realization of this ideal.

Bureaucracy Liberalism starts from the premise that not war, but peace is the father of all things. What alone enables mankind to advance and distinguishes man from the animals is social cooperation. It is labor alone that is productive: it creates wealth and therewith lays the outward foundations for the inward flowering of man. War only destroys; it cannot create. The liberal abhors war, not, like the humanitarian, in spite of the fact that it has beneficial consequences, but because it has only harmful ones. With the triumph of liberal principles, people no longer took seriously the idea that a great war could ever again break out. But events have turned out quite differently. Liberal ideas and programs have been supplanted by socialism, nationalism, protectionism, imperialism, statism, and militarism. Whereas Kant and von Humboldt, Bentham and Cobden had sung the praises of eternal peace, the spokesmen of a later age never tired of extolling war, both civil and international. And their success came only too soon. The result was the World War, which has given our age a kind of object lesson on the incompatability between war and the division of labor.

Liberalism There can be no freedom of the press where the government owns every printing office. There can be no free choice of profession or trade where the government is the only employer and assigns everyone the task he must fulfill. There can be no real freedom of scientific research where the government owns all the libraries, archives, and laboratories. There can be no freedom in art and literature where the government determines who shall create them. In a socialist community the individual citizen can have no more freedom than a soldier in the army or an inmate in an orphanage.

Omnipotent Government The present unsatisfactory state of monetary affairs is an outcome of the social ideology to which our contemporaries are committed and of the economic policies which this ideology begets. People lament over inflation, but they enthusiastically support policies that could not go on without inflation. The suggested reform of the currency system and the return to sound monetary conditions presuppose a radical change in economic philosophies. There cannot be any question of the gold standard as long as waste, capital decumulation, and corruption are the foremost characteristics of the conduct of public affairs. Cynics dispose of the advocacy of a restitution of the gold standard by calling it utopian. Yet we have only the choice between two utopias: the utopia of a market economy, not paralyzed by government sabotage, on the one hand, and the utopia of totalitarian all-round planning on the other. The choice of the first alternative implies a decision in favor of the gold standard.

The Theory of Money and Credit Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious object can be advanced against further encroachments. A good case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and nicotine. And why limit the government’s benevolent providence to the protection of the individual’s body only? Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs. If one abolishes man’s freedom to determine his own comsumption, one takes all freedoms away.

Human Action Behaviorism proposes to study human behavior according to the methods developed by animal and infant psychology. It seeks to investage reflexes and instincts, automatisms and unconscious reactions. But it has told us nothing about the reflexes that have built cathedrals, railroads, and fortresses, the instincts that have produced philosophies, poems, and legal systems, the automatisms that have resulted in the growth and decline of empires, the unconscious reactions that are splitting atoms. Behaviorism punctiliously avoids any reference to meaning and purpose. However, a situation cannot be described without analyzing the meaning which the man concerned finds in it. If one avoids dealing with this meaning, one neglects the essential factor that decisively determines the mode of reaction.

Theory and History It is certainly possible to stop the further progress of capitalism or even to return to conditions in which small business and more primite methods of production prevail. A police apparatus organized after the pattern of the Soviet constabulary can achieve many things. The question is only whether the nations that have built modern civilization will be ready to pay the price.

Theory and History Life is a process, not a perseverance in a status quo. Yet the mind has always been deluded by the image of an unchar existence. The avowed aim of all utopian movements is to end to history and to establish a final and permanen Conservatism is contrary to the very nature of human acti it has always been the cherished program of the many, of t who dully resist every attempt to improve their own cor which the minority of the alert initiate.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality History looks backward into the past, but the lesson it concerns things to come. It does not teach indolent qui rouses man to emulate the deeds of earlier generation dresses men as Dante’s Ulysses addressed his companion

Considerate la vostra semenza: Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, Ma per sequir virgude e conoscenza.

Consider ye the seed from ye sprang: Ye were not made to live like unto brutes, But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.

Theory and History The most amazing thing concerning the unprecedented change in earthly conditions brought about by capitalism is the fact that it was accomplished by a small number of authors and a hardly greater number of statesmen who had assimilated their teachings. Not only the sluggish masses but also most of the businessmen who, by their trading, made the laissez-faire principles effective failed to comprehend the essential features of their operation. Even in the heyday of liberalism only a few people had a full grasp of the functioning of the market economy. Western civilization adopted capitalism upon the recommendation on the part of a small elite.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality Society lives and acts only in individuals; it is nothing more than a certain attitude on their part. Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle [between capitalism and socialism], the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us. Neither God nor a mystical “Natural Force” created society; it was created by mankind. Whether society shall continue to evolve or whether it shall decay lies in the hand of man. Whoever desires that society should exist and develop must also accept, without limitation or reserve, private ownership in the means of production.

Socialism The exuberance and variability of human life and action cannot be fully seized by concepts and definitions. Some answered or even unanswerable questions always remain, some problems whose solution passes the ability even of the greatest minds.

Theory and History An ideology may sometimes also influence the minds of those who believe that they are entirely untouched by it, or who even consider themselves its deadly foes and are fighting it passionately. The success of Nazism in Germany in 1933 was due to the fact that the immense majority of the Germans, even of those voting the ticket of the Marxist parties, of the Catholic Centrum party, and of the various “bourgeois” splinter parties, were committed to the ideas of radical aggressive nationalism, while the Nazis themselves had adopted the basic principles of the socialist program. Great Britain would not have gone socialist if the Conservatives, not to speak of the “Liberals,” had not virtually endorsed socialist ideas.

Theory and History