The Free Market 30, no. 10 (Fall/Winter 2012)
This has been a time of anniversaries for the Austrian School of economics. One hundred years ago, Ludwig von Mises began his career as an intellectual leader and creative genius with his groundbreaking The Theory of Money and Credit. Fifty years ago, Murray Rothbard took his own place in the ranks of creative geniuses, and inaugurated the modern Austrian movement with his great treatise Man, Economy, and State. And thirty years ago, Lew Rockwell, with the help of Margit von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Ron Paul, and heroic donors, created the first institution solely dedicated to Austrian economics, the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
We are honoring the centennial of The Theory of Money and Credit with a new book, The Theory of Money and Fiduciary Media: Essays in Celebration of the Centennial, edited by Senior Fellow Jörg Guido Hülsmann. We also celebrated the book with a scholarly symposium at this year’s Austrian Scholars Conference, including 10 lectures from top Misesian scholars. And we published Gary North’s Mises on Money, which serves as an excellent guide to the ideas contained in this great work.
Man, Economy, and State’s semi-centennial was also celebrated at the Austrian Scholars Conference with an academic roundtable, including Mises Institute scholars Peter Klein, Joseph Salerno, David Gordon, Shawn Ritenour, Guido Hülsmann, and Jeffrey Herbener. And Robert Murphy wrote an excellent essay commemorating the milestone.
Our thirtieth anniversary was celebrated at our annual Supporters Summit, at Callaway Gardens, Georgia, in October. At a time in which other free-market institutions are becoming more hawkish, we spent our thirtieth birthday denouncing war. The title of the conference was “The Truth About War: A Revisionist Approach.”
The great libertarian author and news analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano kicked off the conference with the Louis E. Carabini Distinguished Lecture, a passionate speech on liberty and just-war theory. The Judge professed relief to be among so many like-minded friends, and to be able to truly speak his mind. And boy did he! At one point he proclaimed, “I agree with Lysander Spooner. As the country had the right to secede from Great Britain, we have the right to secede from the government!”
Senior Fellow Tom Woods gave the Jerry Pogue Lecture, an inspiring talk about how reading Rothbard converted him from neoconservatism to anti-war libertarianism. Tom closed by saying, “There are a lot of places on this earth that will generically cheer on the free market. And that’s wonderful. But how many of them are going to stand up to the entire regime, to its intellectuals, to its media, when the chips are down, and the war propaganda is flying? The number is vanishingly small. But right here, we are celebrating 30 years of the Mises Institute, which is among that very small number.”
At the conference, Butler Shaffer was awarded the Gary G. Schlarbaum Prize for 2012, which is awarded for a “lifetime defense of liberty in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises.” In his thoughtful acceptance speech, Shaffer talked about how “revisionism” can be thought of as another word for learning itself: the process of continually revising our understanding of the world.
In the Donald and Linda Miller Lecture, a moving speech reflecting on the past 30 years of the Mises Institute, Lew Rockwell said:
“We have flourished for these 30 years thanks to your help. But this is truly a critical moment in the history of the Austrian School. Thanks to Ron Paul, more young people than ever are interested in this venerable tradition of thought. More of them than ever are skeptical of what their professors are teaching them. And more of them than ever want to absorb everything they can of the Austrian School, even to the point of becoming teachers and professors themselves.
“Will we be able to help this huge cohort of budding Austrians? Will the renewed interest in Austrian economics continue and strengthen, or diminish and fizzle out?
“These are questions we have to answer together.
“A tremendous opportunity, greater than anything I have seen in my lifetime, lies in our hands. Many of the brightest young kids are committed to the world that Mises and Rothbard worked so courageously and without fanfare to bring about.
“We have already witnessed so many early victories. Help us build on them, and make the dream of these men a reality.”
And on a cool Southern evening, our Distinguished Counselor Ron Paul, surrounded by a host of friends, wrapped up the conference with the Harry and Anna Teasley Distinguished Lecture reflecting on the just-ended presidential campaign that he turned into a libertarian teaching moment for the whole country.
You can find video recordings of all the above speeches and more at youtube.com/misesmedia.
Earlier in the conference, as he was talking to his fans, Ron Paul had this to say:
“I’m delighted to be here for the 30th anniversary of the Mises Institute. I was delighted to help start this Institute with Lew Rockwell many years ago. Let me tell you, the work of the Mises Institute is crucial. This is important. This is more important than all political action. We have to change people’s hearts and minds, and their understanding of free markets and individual liberty. That’s how we can change the world.”
And in an October interview with Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul said this about the Mises Institute, Murray Rothbard, and the prospects for liberty:
“The groundwork has to be laid by the intellectual community. And that’s been done by the Murray Rothbards of the world and what the Mises Institute has done. And that has to happen. There may be a political figure that delivers the message, but you have to have an intellectual groundwork first. And that has been done.
“The Founders were good. They did their best, and they understood property rights better than any other group, and moved things along. But our understanding of liberty is much more advanced than the Founders had. Even some who objected to our Constitution had predicted that it probably wouldn’t work out all that well. So I think they made a great attempt. I think basically the intellectual community today in the libertarian camp have a much better understanding about what government shouldn’t be doing, and what responsibilities should be on the individuals.”
