There’s no doubt that prosperity has smiled brighter and brighter on the last four generations. My grandparents, like many newly arrived from the Hell of Central Europe, lived in the attic above their ramshackle store. Their grandchildren however ramble around in what they would consider a mansion, fit for Polish nobility. My daughter, in the real
Money and economic calculation in terms of money receipts and money outlays are indispensable elements in our daily economic lives. It is simply inconceivable to go about producing and consuming without using money and economic calculation in terms of money. The motivations of businessmen to invest in a new line or enlarge the existing line of
Chapter 11 of the Last Knight is devoted to the intellectual origin, development and main themes of Mises’s second major book, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis . Socialism offers a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual case in favor of socialism as economic and political ideal. The book presents and examines virtually every
Chapter 12, Fresh Start , opens the Part IV of the book titled Mises in His Prime which deals with the period that was both academically productive and rewarding in a number of different respects. Chronologically, the period roughly spans the time after the WWI until Mises moved to Geneva and started lecturing there at the Institute of
Economics is a science that studies production of wealth, i.e. material goods to satisfy human needs, in a division of labor society. Behind this simple definition stands the desire to understand factors that are responsible for high and rising productivity of labor. The material comfort, indeed the very survival, of billions of people depends on
Chapter 18, Émigré in New York , opens the fourth and last part of the book, Mises in America . The outbreak of WWII and the rapid advance of German troops throughout Western Europe created an imminent threat to Mises’s freedom and very life even in neutral and relatively safe Geneva. He had to leave Europe almost immediately, leaving behind
The intellectual climate of the decades prior and after WWII was marked by enthusiastic plans loudly proclaiming statism and comprehensive large-scale social planning as the next panacea. These were considered the means to deliver humankind from superstition, moral depravity, economic chaos and misery to unprecedented heights of rationality and
The revival of Austrian economics and the spread of its distinctively consistent and uncompromising libertarian message would have been inconceivable in absence of Mises’s magnum opus Human Action: A Treatise on Economics . Chapter 20, Human Action and Its Consequences , is about the success and impact of this book -- on Mises himself, on his
In this entry I am going to comment on some aspects in one of Mises’s book-length monograph, Theory and History , on epistemology/methodology of social science as a whole, not just economics narrowly conceived. Last Knight’s chapter 21 deals comprehensively with a number of issues in Theory and History . As the book’s title suggests, the meaning
This is the last post of a quite long journey across the content of the book. I have decided to stop here, i.e. omit the discussion of the last two chapters, Fragmentation of the Movement and Last Years , not because they are uninteresting, in a number respects they certainly are, but because I am not particularly interested in personal matters.
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.