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Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and liberal who had a major influence on the modern libertarian movement.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is named after him.
wig von Mises was born on September 29, 1881, in the city of Lemberg in Galicja, Austro-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine), to parents Arthur Edler von Mises from a recently ennobled Jewish family involved in building and financing railroads, and Adele von Mises (née Landau).
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Quotations
This time, it's different.
are the four most expensive words in the English Language.
Every specific tax, as well as the nation's whole tax system, becomes self-defeating above a certain height of the rates.
Government is the only institution that can take a perfectly good piece of paper, print some noble words on it, and make it perfectly worthless.
If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.
No wonder that all who have had something new to offer humanity have had nothing good to say of the state or its laws.
Profits are the driving force of the market economy. The greater the profits, the better the needs of the consumers are supplied.
Encyclopedia
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian economist, philosopher, and liberal who had a major influence on the modern libertarian movement.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is named after him.
Biography
Early life
Ludwig von Mises was born on September 29, 1881, in the city of Lemberg in Galicja, Austro-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine), to parents Arthur Edler von Mises from a recently ennobled Jewish family involved in building and financing railroads, and Adele von Mises (née Landau). Arthur was stationed there as a construction engineer with Czernowitz railroad company. At the age of twelve Ludwig spoke fluent German, Polish, and French, and could understand Ukrainian. Mises had two younger brothers: applied physicist Richard von Mises, and later Karl von Mises, who died in infancy from scarlet fever. When Ludwig and Richard were small children, his family moved back to their ancestral home of Vienna.
In 1900, he attended the University of Vienna, becoming influenced by the works of Carl Menger. Mises' father died in 1903, and in 1906 Mises was awarded his doctorate.
Professional life
In the years from 1904 to 1914, Mises attended lectures given by the prominent Austrian economist Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk. Mises taught as a Privatdozent at the Vienna University in the years from 1913 to 1934, while also serving as a principal economic adviser to the Austrian government during the Austrofascist regime of Engelbert Dollfuss.
In 1934 Mises left Austria for Geneva, Switzerland, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940. Fearing the prospect of Germany taking control over Switzerland, in 1940 Mises with other Jewish refugees left Europe and emigrated to New York City. There he became a visiting professor at New York University, from 1945 until his retirement in 1969, though he was not salaried by the university. Instead, he earned his living from funding by businessmen such as Lawrence Fertig. For part of this period, Mises worked on currency issues for the Pan-Europa movement led by a fellow NYU faculty member and Austrian exile, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. He received an honorary doctorate from Grove City College.
Despite his growing fame, Mises listed himself plainly in the New York phone directory and welcomed students into his home. He died at the age of 92 at St. Vincent's hospital in New York.
Contributions to the field of economics
Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism and is seen as one of the leaders of the Austrian School of economics. In his treatise on economics, Human Action, Mises introduced praxeology as a more general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and established that economic laws were only arrived at through the means of methodological individualism firmly rejecting positivism and materialism as a foundation for the social sciences. Many of his works, including Human Action, were on two related economic themes:
- monetary economics and inflation;
- the differences between government controlled economies and free trade.
Mises argued that money is demanded for its usefulness in purchasing other goods, rather than for its own sake and that any unsound credit expansion causes business cycles. His other notable contribution was his argument that socialism must fail economically because of the economic calculation problem the impossibility of a socialist government being able to make the economic calculations required to organize a complex economy. Mises projected that without a market economy there would be no functional price system, which he held essential for achieving rational allocation of capital goods to their most productive uses. Socialism would fail as demand cannot be known without prices, according to Mises. Mises' criticism of socialist paths of economic development is well-known: The only certain fact about Russian affairs under the Soviet regime with regard to which all people agree is: that the standard of living of the Russian masses is much lower than that of the masses in the country which is universally considered as the paragon of capitalism, the United States of America. If we were to regard the Soviet regime as an experiment, we would have to say that the experiment has clearly demonstrated the superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism. These arguments were elaborated on by subsequent Austrian economists such as Friedrich Hayek and students like Murray Rothbard.
In Interventionism, An Economic Analysis (1940), Ludwig von Mises wrote:
The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is 'left' and what is 'right'? Why should Hitler be 'right' and Stalin, his temporary friend, be 'left'? Who is 'reactionary' and who is 'progressive'? Reaction against an unwise policy is not to be condemned. And progress towards chaos is not to be commended. Nothing should find acceptance just because it is new, radical, and fashionable. 'Orthodoxy' is not an evil if the doctrine on which the 'orthodox' stand is sound. Who is anti-labor, those who want to lower labor to the Russian level, or those who want for labor the capitalistic standard of the United States? Who is 'nationalist,' those who want to bring their nation under the heel of the Nazis, or those who want to preserve its independence?
Criticism
In a 1957 review of his book, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The Economist said of von Mises: "...as a student of human nature he is worse than null and as a debater he is of Hyde Park standard."
Bibliography
- The Development of the Relationship Between Peasant and Lord of the Manor in Galicia, 1772-1848 (1902, never translated into English)
- The Theory of Money and Credit (1912, enlarged US edition 1953)
- Nation, State, and Economy (1919)
- Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis () (1922, 1932, 1951)
- Liberalism (1927, 1962)
- Critique of Interventionism (1929)
- Epistemological Problems of Economics (1933, 1960)
- Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War (1944)
- Bureaucracy (1944)
- Planned Chaos (1947, added to 1951 edition of Socialism)
- Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949, 1963, 1966, 1996)
- Planning for Freedom (1952, enlarged editions in 1962, 1974, and 1980)
- The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956)
- Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (1957)
- The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962)
- Notes and Recollections (1978)
- Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979, lectures given in 1959)
- Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1998)
See also
Further reading
External links
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- 1927 review by Mises on a lecture given by Keynes in Berlin
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- Rothbard on Mises
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Online e-books
- Lecture Series, Volume 1, with an introduction by Richard Ebeling. Copyright 2004 Foundation for Economic Education. All rights reserved.
- , made available online by the , publishers of the Complete Works of Ludwig von Mises
- 1949 (4th edition, 1996). San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes. ISBN 0-930073-18-5. Made available online by The Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Auburn, Alabama: Mises Institute, 1999. Re-issue of the classic 1949 Edition with new introduction and expanded index.
- , The Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- , Libertarian Press 1990.
- McCaine, Catamite. . Holland Revolutionary Press
- , The Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- Second Edition, with a New Introduction by Bettina Bien Greaves, The Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- , The Ludwig von Mises Institute.
- , English edition Copyright 1985 The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, NY. Translation by Ralph Raico. Online edition Copyright The Mises Institute, 2000.
- . 1912 integration of microeconomics and macroeconomics. ISBN 0-913966-71-1. Online edition Copyright The Mises Institute.
- Von Mises' critique of Socialism
- . 1957 treatise on social and economic evolution, with a preface by Murray N. Rothbard. Online edition Copyright The Mises Institute, 2000.
- by Margit von Mises. 1976. Memoir of their life together.
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