Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was a theoretical Austrian School economist of
the classical liberal school. He became a prominent figure in the Austrian
School of economic thought and is best known for his work on praxeology, a
study of human choice and action. Mises emigrated to the United States in 1940.
Mises's thought has exerted significant influence on the libertarian movement in
the United States since the mid-20th century.
Biography = Early life=
Ludwig von Mises was born to Jewish parents in the city of Lemberg, in
Galicia, Austria-Hungary. The family of his father Arthur Edler von Mises had
been elevated to the Austrian nobility in the 19th century, and was involved in
building and financing railroads. Ludwig's mother, Adele, was a niece of
Joachim Landau, a Liberal Party deputy to the Austrian Parliament. Arthur was
stationed there as a construction engineer with Czernowitz railway
company. At the age of twelve Ludwig spoke fluent German, Polish, and French,
read Latin, and could understand Ukrainian. Mises was the older brother
of mathematician Richard von Mises, a member of the Vienna Circle. When Ludwig
and Richard were children, his family moved back to Vienna.
In 1900, he attended the University of Vienna, becoming influenced by the works
of Carl Menger. Mises's father died in 1903, and in 1906, Mises was awarded his
doctorate from the school of law. = Mises's life in Europe=
In the years from 1904 to 1914, Mises attended lectures given by Austrian
economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. He graduated in February 1906 and started a
career as a civil servant in Austria's financial administration, leaving after
a few months to take a trainee position in a Vienna law firm. During that time,
Mises began lecturing on economics, and in early 1909, he joined the Vienna
Chamber of Commerce and Industry. During World War I, Mises served as a front
officer in the Austro-Hungarian artillery and as an economic adviser to
the War Department. Mises was chief economist for the
Austrian Chamber of Commerce and was an economic adviser of Engelbert Dollfuss,
the austrofascist but strongly anti-Nazi Austrian Chancellor, and later to Otto
von Habsburg, the Christian democratic politician and claimant to the throne of
Austria. In 1934, Mises left Austria for Geneva, Switzerland, where he was a
professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940.
While in Switzerland, Mises married Margit Herzfeld Serény, a former actress
and widow of Ferdinand Serény, mother of Gitta Sereny.
= Work in the United States= In 1940 Mises and his wife fled the
German advance in Europe and emigrated to New York City. He came to the United
States under grants of the Rockefeller Foundation and, like many other
classical liberal scholars, received support by the William Volker Fund to
obtain a position in American universities. Mises became a visiting
professor at New York University, and held this position from 1945 until his
retirement in 1969 - though he was not salaried by the university. Businessman
and libertarian commentator Lawrence Fertig, a member of the NYU Board of
Trustees, funded Mises and his work. For part of this period, Mises studied
currency issues for the Pan-Europa movement, which was led by a fellow NYU
faculty member and Austrian exile, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. In 1947,
Mises became one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. In 1962,
Mises received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art for political
economy at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Mises retired from teaching at the age of 87, and died at the age of 92 in New
York. He is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery, in Hartsdale, New York. Grove
City College houses the 20,000 page archive of Mises papers and unpublished
works. At one time, Mises praised the work of
philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand and Rand's view of Mises was generally
favorable; however, the two had a volatile relationship with strong
disagreements, for example over the moral basis of capitalism.
Contributions and influence in economics Mises wrote and lectured extensively on
behalf of classical liberalism. In his treatise Human Action, Mises adopted
praxeology as a general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and
set forth his methodological approach to economics.
Friends and students of Mises in Europe included Wilhelm Röpke and Alfred
Müller-Armack, Jacques Rueff, Gottfried Haberler, Lord Lionel Robbins, Italian
President Luigi Einaudi, and Leonid Hurwicz, recipient of the 2007 Nobel
Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Economist and political theorist F. A.
Hayek first came to know Mises while working as Mises's subordinate at a
government office dealing with Austria's post-World War I debt. In 1956, while
toasting Mises at a party, Hayek said, "I came to know him as one of the best
educated and informed men I have ever known..."
Mises's seminars in Vienna fostered lively discussion among established
economists there, and the meetings were also visited by other important
economists who happened to be traveling through Vienna. In New York, at his NYU
seminar and at informal meetings at Mises's apartment, he attracted college
and high school students who listened reverentially while Mises recited
carefully prepared lectures from notes. Among those who attended his informal
seminar over the course of two decades in New York were Israel Kirzner, Hans
Sennholz, Ralph Raico, Leonard Liggio, George Reisman and Murray Rothbard.
Mises's work also influenced other Americans, including Benjamin Anderson,
Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt, Max Eastman, legal scholar Sylvester J.
Petro, and novelist Ayn Rand. In his years in America, Mises was surrounded
by followers who agreed with his views and did not press him to explain or
moderate his positions. He thus became increasingly isolated. Mises's New York
University seminar had little impact on the economics profession, and among the
attendees, only Israel Kirzner has achieved mainstream respectability among
economists. Criticisms
Economic historian Bruce Caldwell writes that in the mid-20th century, with the
ascendance of positivism and Keynesianism, Mises came to be regarded
by many as the "archetypal 'unscientific' economist." In a 1957
review of his book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, The Economist said of Mises:
"Professor von Mises has a splendid analytical mind and an admirable passion
for liberty; but as a student of human nature he is worse than null and as a
debater he is of Hyde Park standard." Conservative commentator Whittaker
Chambers published a similarly negative review of that book in the National
Review, stating that Mises's thesis that anti-capitalist sentiment was rooted in
"envy" epitomized "know-nothing conservatism" at its "know-nothingest."
In a 1978 interview, Friedrich Hayek said about Mises's book Socialism "At
first we all felt he was frightfully exaggerating and even offensive in tone.
You see, he hurt all our deepest feelings, but gradually he won us
around, although for a long time I had to – I just learned he was usually right
in his conclusions, but I was not completely satisfied with his argument."
Economist Milton Friedman considered Mises inflexible in his thinking:
The story I remember best happened at the initial Mont Pelerin meeting when he
got up and said, "You're all a bunch of socialists." We were discussing the
distribution of income, and whether you should have progressive income taxes.
Some of the people there were expressing the view that there could be a
justification for it. Another occasion which is equally
telling: Fritz Machlup was a student of Mises's, one of his most faithful
disciples. At one of the Mont Pelerin meetings, Machlup gave a talk in which I
think he questioned the idea of a gold standard; he came out in favor of
floating exchange rates. Mises was so mad he wouldn't speak to Machlup for
three years. Some people had to come around and bring them together again.
It's hard to understand; you can get some understanding of it by taking into
account how people like Mises were persecuted in their lives.
Economist Murray Rothbard, who studied under Mises, agreed he was
uncompromising, but disputes reports of his abrasiveness. In his words, Mises
was "unbelievably sweet, constantly finding research projects for students
to do, unfailingly courteous, and never bitter" about the discrimination he
received at the hands of the economic establishment of his time.
Mises's 1927 book Liberalism has been largely ignored, except for its comments
on fascism. Marxists Herbert Marcuse and Perry Anderson, as well as German writer
Claus-Dieter Krohn, criticized Mises for writing approvingly of Italian fascism,
especially for its suppression of leftist elements. More recently
economist J. Bradford DeLong and sociologist Richard Seymour, repeated
the criticism. Mises wrote in the book: It cannot be denied that Fascism and
similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full
of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved
European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will
live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the
moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism
was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal
error. Mises biographer Jörg Guido Hülsmann
calls criticism that Mises supported fascism "absurd", pointing to the rest
of the quote that called fascism dangerous and described as a "fatal
error" the view that it was more than an "emergency makeshift" against the
looming threat of communism and socialism as exemplified by the
Bolsheviks in Russia. After his death, Mises's wife quoted a
passage that Mises had written about Benjamin Anderson, and said that it best
described Mises's own personality: "His most eminent qualities were his
inflexible honesty, his unhesitating sincerity. He never yielded. He always
freely enunciated what he considered to be true. If he had been prepared to
suppress or only to soften his criticisms of popular, but
irresponsible, policies, the most influential positions and offices would
have been offered him. But he never compromised."
Bibliography The Theory of Money and Credit
Nation, State, and Economy "Economic Calculation in the Socialist
Commonwealth" Socialism: An Economic and Sociological
Analysis Liberalismus
A Critique of Interventionism A Critique of Interventionism
Epistemological Problems of Economics Epistemological Problems of Economics
Memoirs Interventionism: An Economic Analysis
Interventionism: An Economic Analysis Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total
State and Total War Bureaucracy
Planned Chaos Planned Chaos
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics Planning for Freedom
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality Theory and History: An Interpretation of
Social and Economic Evolution Theory and History
The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics
Notes and Recollections Clash of Group Interests and Other
Essays The Clash of Group Interests and Other
Essays On the Manipulation of Money and Credit
The Causes of the Economic Crisis, reissue
Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow
Money, Method, and the Market Process Money, Method, and the Market Process
Economic Freedom and Interventionism The Free Market and Its Enemies
The Free Market and Its Enemies Marxism Unmasked: From Delusion to
Destruction Ludwig von Mises on Money and Inflation
See also References
*Note regarding personal names: 'Edler' is a German title, in rank similar to
that of a baronet. It is not a first or middle name. The female form is 'Edle'.
Similarly, below, 'Ritter' is German for 'knight' and 'Graf' for 'count'.
Further reading Butler, Eamonn, Ludwig von Mises – A
Primer, Institute of Economic Affairs Ebeling, Richard M. Political Economy,
Public Policy, and Monetary Economics: Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian
Tradition, 354 pages, ISBN 978-0-415-77951-7.
Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises: The Political Economist of Liberty, Part
I", Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises:
The Political Economist of Liberty, Part II",
Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time, Part I",
Ebeling, Richard M. "Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time, Part II",
Ebeling, Richard M. "Austrian Economics and the Political Economy of Freedom",
Gordon, David Mises's Epistemology, Ludwig von Mises Institute
Rothbard, Murray N. "Mises, Ludwig Edler von," The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of
Economics, 1987, v. 3, pp. 479–80. Shelton, Judy. Money Meltdown: Restoring
Order to the Global Currency System. New York, NY: Free Press. p. 399. ISBN
978-0029291122. OCLC 797359731. Reviewed in: Dornbusch, Rudi. "Money
Meltdown". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 25, 2013. The hero in this
book is Ludwig von Mises. von Mises, Margit. My Years with Ludwig
von Mises. Arlington House Publishers. ISBN 0-87000-368-2.
Yeager, Leland. "Mises, Ludwig von". In Hamowy, Ronald. The Encyclopedia of
Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE; Cato Institute. pp. 334–6. ISBN
978-1-4129-6580-4. LCCN 2008009151. OCLC 750831024.
External links Ludwig von Mises Institute Europe
Mises.org, Ludwig von Mises Institute USA
Mises.de, Books and Articles in the original German versions by Ludwig von
Mises and other Authors of the Austrian School
Ludwig von Mises at DMOZ Audio of von Mises subtitled in Spanish
and English "Do wage earners and their employers have interests in conflict?"
"A Tribute to Ludwig Von Mises". A list of works by and on Ludwig Von Mises by
the Foundation for Economic Education Ludwig von Mises. The Concise
Encyclopedia of Economics. Library of Economics and Liberty. 2008.
Ludwig von Mises at Find a Grave