Epilogue
If ever it could be said that one man stood against the ideological tide of an era, that
was von Mises. But whether his efforts have turned that tide is a question to be resolved
in the future by those who understand his theories and share his love of liberty. Ludwig
von Mises was the last knight of liberalism, but to think of him as a political thinker
only is to underestimate his place in the history of ideas. He pioneered the integration
of monetary theory into value theory, macro and microeconomics, the theory of economic
calculation and the inquiry into the a priori foundations of economic science. Even more
than that, he excelled as a systematic thinker. He created a comprehensive system of economic
Economic Theory and also highlighted the place of economics among the sciences and its role
within human civilization. More than any other economist before or after him, he has clarified
its political, social and cultural implications. Economics was not merely the foundation of
a comprehensive political programme centred on private property rights, it was the scientific
cornerstone of an entire world view in which peace, cooperation and tolerance reigned supreme.
As he saw it, opting for a free society did not demand cold-heartedness or mistrusting
the intellect. It was the type of society that was demonstrably best at promoting the
material, cultural and spiritual well-being of the overwhelming majority of mankind, of
all those who did not aspire to live off spoliation. Human reason, despite its limitations, was
the most precious tool in a man's pursuit of happiness, and it led straight to the case
for classical liberalism and the market economy. Other thinkers, most notably F. R. Hayek,
had criticised socialism and statism as the fruit of excessive rationalism. For Mises,
the planning state and the interventionist state were not reasonable enough. Their intellectual
Several champions were quite simply wrong on the essential question, but rather than
admitting the case for liberty and capitalism, these advocates spent their time finding ever
new justifications for government interventionism by contesting the very existence of economic
laws if necessary. This was not so much an intellectual hubris as it was a moral one.
It was not, above all, an empty pretense of knowledge. It was a revolt against reason.
This expression is taken from the title of chapter 3 in Human Action. The chief contribution
of Human Action is to make this point. Ever since its first publication in 1949, Mises's
magnum opus has remained for our time what the inquiry into the nature and causes of
the wealth of nations was for the 18th and 19th centuries, a handbook of the science
of human liberty, a treatise of the scientific foundations underpinning political liberalism.
Just as Adam Smith's work was based on comprehensive acquaintance with the economic knowledge of
his day, Human Action portrays the grammar of modern economics. The foundation of modern
economic thought is the theory of subjective value, developed by Menger and others. Mises
complemented this theory by a general theory of economic calculation. Its central idea
is that economic rationality is logically and historically contingent. Contradicting
According on this point all economic literature since Adam Smith, as well as fellow Austrians
including Visa and Hayek, Mises stressed that calculation in terms of money prices is not
just one form of economic calculus, it is the only type of economic calculus there is.
It follows that human civilization is the fragile fruit of certain cultural conditions
that are necessary for the emergence of money and monetary calculus. Here economics comes
is again into play. Learning, developing and spreading the teachings of economic science
has brought about an unheard of increase of living standards after the 18th century, along
with the cultural achievements of a great number of people, who then became affluent
enough to dedicate their lives to the arts and the sciences. To preserve these cultural
standards it is necessary not to lose sight of their economic foundations, it is necessary
to Learn Economics, Mises stresses, this is in our age the primary civic duty, and he
insists that the matter is too important to be entrusted to public education and government
expert.
Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices, and must not be left
to esoteric circles.
It is the philosophy of human life and action, and concerns everybody and everything.
is the Pith of Civilization and of Man's Human Existence.
In the concluding chapters of his magnum opus, he emphasized the importance of private education.
It was an important lesson he had learned first-hand in his long life.
Government sponsorship introduces a pro-government bias into economic education and economic
research, thus undermining the social function of economic science.
He concluded Human Action with this statement.
The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization.
It is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological
and therapeutic achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether
they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides
them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage
When he wrote these lines, Mises could look back on a lifetime invested in the development
of economics. Little by little he had come to realise that his discipline was the intellectual
foundation of modern civilisation, and that all people who care about other people and
the progress of human civilization had to become acquainted with it. This was not a
conviction he had adopted in youthful exuberance when he first came across the writings of
Menger and the classical economists. It was an opinion that grew in him, even after he
had already reached a fairly advanced age. The passage just quoted is from Human Action.
Nine years earlier, in nationale économie, Mises could not bring himself to assign economics
was quite such an elevated place, but then he was only 58 years old. By economics, Mises
meant the science that came from classical figures, such as Hume, Smith, Ricardo, Say,
and Bastiat, that had been transformed by Menger and others in the light of the new
subjective value theory, which had further been transformed by Mises and others in the
of the 20th Century and which Mises expected to be transformed ever further by future generations.
It was the science that analyzed the logical implications of human action dealing with
scarce goods. It was the science that demonstrated again and again that government interventionism
could not work miracles but was bound by inexorable laws of cause and effect. This science came
to be supplanted in the course of the 20th Century, and in particular after the Second
World War, by a new discipline that, while being taught under the same name as the old
economics, set out to apply the methods of the natural sciences to elucidate phenomena
such as prices, income, employment, inflation and growth. Mises digested the challenges
that the various strands of this new discipline raised for the old economics. When he published
Human Action then, it was not merely a summary of his own previous works, but a new synthesis
developed in critical response not only to historicism and Marxism, but also to positivism,
experimental psychology and game theory, disciplines that still dominate the social sciences in
our day. Ironically, the very success of the ideas that Mises combated in a lonely struggle
more than 30 years ago now make for the lasting importance of his own system of thought.
Misesian economics is today a strong and fast-growing paradigm, as witnessed by the number of publications
The most surprising aspect of this growth is that it has virtually no institutional backing.
Mises himself turned politically incorrect at an early stage of his career and later
on he felt even more out of fashion due to his epistemological views. The colleges and
These universities shunned him. The political parties in power did not listen and were certainly
glad that nobody else seemed to do so either. Mises enjoyed some personal backing by private
foundations most notably the Volcker Fund and the Earhart Foundation. After his death,
his legacy was promoted actively by the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama. But these
few and financially insignificant institutions had a hard time competing with organizations
that bore the stamp of official government approval. It was and still is an uphill battle.
Thus the main explanation of the present-day growth of the Misesian paradigm is the extraordinary
vigour of the ideas that inspire it. Mises is a classic, but in our day he is more than
that. A classic author has given mankind a timeless formulation of essential questions
and sometimes time-tested answers. Yet these questions and answers are not necessarily the
ones that move us today or are relevant to solve the problems that we confront. Not so
in the case of Mises. More than thirty years after his death, his writings still strike
the reader, academic and layman alike, as relevant and thought-provoking. His books
and articles are still bought by the thousands each year, and, most of all, read. How many
Many economics students today actually read something Adam Smith or David Ricardo have
written. Any teacher of economics knows the answer. The same answer holds true for the
writings of 20th century luminaries such as Gustav Kassel or Frank Knight. It holds
true even for the writings of John Maynard Keynes, the greatest champion ever of interventionism
is constantly referred to in the classroom and in the media, but few people have ever
What is it that makes for this continued relevance?
Looking back at the end of this volume on the life and work of Mises, many plausible
answers could be given to this question.
One could single out a substantial number of path-breaking contributions in various
and its fields of economic analysis. One could refer to his personal virtues, entailing admiration
and inspiration on the part of many close associates. But we would like to stress another consideration,
an aspect of overriding importance that helps explain both the fascination of his work and
his place in the history of thought, realist epistemology. Mises's work stands for the
The idea, or hypothesis, that some aspects of social reality cannot be adequately analyzed
with the methods used in the natural sciences and in historical investigation. Yet this
layer of the social world can be described with praxeology and economics. There are time
invariant causes and effects in human action. Praxeology is the descriptive knowledge of
It was this idea that attracted Mises to Menger and that turned him into an economist once
he convinced himself that Menger was on to something. It is the same idea that still
attracts people to Mises' writings as a radical alternative to the great number of
contemporary approaches that, while discarding the realist hypothesis from the outset, seem
to fail to deliver the goods. Whoever wishes to engage in the analysis of the causes and
and effects that prevail in the social world would do well to start with Mises, unless
he wishes to go even further back and find his own way from the classical economists
or from the school of Salamanca. As things stand today, Mises's writings provide the
only continuous link between modern economic thought and the long tradition of realist
Social Analysis that reaches back to Nicolas Oresme in the 14th century. This is not to
say of course that the Misesian paradigm defines some sort of perfection in the social sciences,
but it has given us the most recent system of social thought from a realist point of
view and thus it seems to be at present the most useful starting point to engage in that
and the great intergenerational venture that we call the social sciences.
It has also given us a most fruitful intellectual apparatus for understanding the workings of
society in all times and places.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute hopes that you have enjoyed this audiobook.
For a world of free market literature, media and discussion, visit Mises.org.
The Mises Institute dedicates this volume to all of its generous donors and wishes to thank these patrons in particular.
Chris Rufer, Art Schumer, Lloyd Alerbach, Wesley and Terry Alexander, Ross K. Anderson, Anonymous, Robert G. Beard Jr., J.D. CPA, L.C.K.H. Beakley, Mr. and Mrs. William M. Benton, Professor Walter Block, John Hamilton Ballstadt, Herbert Bob, Mr. and Mrs. J. Robert Bost, Philip G. Brumder, Aubrey
Professor T. Kuruth, Dan H. Courtney, Professor Jim Cox, Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy S. Davies, Mr.
and Mrs. Charles F. Ligonard, Michael H. and William E. Denier, Dr. and Mrs. George
G. Eddy, Dr. Larry J. Eshelman, Clyde Evans, Robert S. Ferguson, Mr. and Mrs. Willard
Richard Fisher, James W. Freeford, Henry Goetz, Stuart B. Gillespie, Brian J. Gladish, Charles
C. Grove, Charles F. Haynes, Keith M. Harnish, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Hayes, Jule R. Herbert,
Jr., Dr. Frederick Herman, Dr. James M. Herring, Adam L. Knott, David M. Kramer, Silvio O.
Arthur L. Loeb, James Mahanna, Ronald Mandel, Mr. and Mrs. William W. Massey Jr., Wesley
G. McCain, Joseph Edward Paul Melville, A-Jr., Dr. Dorothy Donnelly Moller, Kyle Heinz Moore,
The Orcas Bay Foundation, George A. Peterson, Professor and Mrs. Stanley E. Porter, Mr.
and Mrs. Wilfried A. Pusher, T. James Reynolds, David L. Richards, Willard A. Richardson,
Thomas Ross, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph P. Shurek, Conrad Schneiker, Norman K. Singleton, Andrew
Alexander S. Serkis, Henry Etel Skinner, Carleton M. Smith, David M. Smith, Mr and Mrs. Warren
C. and Georgia M. Spatz, Mr and Mrs. Dennis A. Spardudo, William V. Stevens, Richard and
Alicia Stevenson, Byron L. Strosser, Charles A. Strong, James E. Tempesta M.D., Kenneth
S. Templeton, Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Thatcher, Topdart TM, Chris and Carolyn Tormey, Polly
J. Townsend, Lawrence van Sommeren Sr., Guy M. Binks Walker, Dr. Thomas L. Wenk, Brian
J. Wilton, Malcolm F. Wittig, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Woodall III, Dr. Stephen Lee Yamshen,
Robert S. Young