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[Excerpted from chapter 16 of Theory and History (1957).] From the 17th century on, philosophers in dealing with the essential content of history began to stress the problems of liberty and bondage. Their concepts of both were rather vague, borrowed from the political philosophy of ancient Greece and influenced by the prevailing interpretation of

From time immemorial, the living philosophy of the plain man has unquestioningly accepted the fact of status differences as well as the necessity of subordination to those in power. Man’s primary need is protection against malicious onslaughts on the part of other men and groups of men. Only when safe from hostile attacks can he gather food, build

All doctrines that have sought to discover in the course of human history some definite trend in the sequence of changes have disagreed, in reference to the past, with the historically established facts and where they tried to predict the future have been spectacularly proved wrong by later events. Most of these doctrines were characterized by

[From the Introduction to Mises’s Liberalism (1927).] A society in which liberal principles are put into effect is usually called a capitalist society, and the condition of that society, capitalism. Since the economic policy of liberalism has everywhere been only more or less closely approximated in practice, conditions as they are in the world

The emergence of economics as a new branch of knowledge was one of the most portentous events in the history of mankind. In paving the way for private capitalistic enterprise it transformed within a few generations all human affairs more radically than the preceding ten thousand years had done. From the day of their birth to the day of their

[Found among the papers of Bettina Bien Greaves and reprinted from Plain Talk (1949), Editor’s comment: Those millions of illiterate and semi-literate armed men now in action from the borders of the Yellow Sea to the mountains of Greece have been set in motion by a ponderous and little-read study of economics — Das Kapital — written nearly a

Institutionalism is used to ridicule the classical economists because they started with “Crusoe economics.” In the beginning a fisherman got the idea that he could catch more fish one day than he needed and then he could have some leisure time to manufacture fishing nets. These nets and saved fish are “capital goods”; I don’t call them “capital.”

Marxian doctrine doesn’t deny the possibility of absolute truth, but it maintains that absolute truth can be attained only in the classless society. Or in the proletarian class society. Lenin’s main book , or at least his most voluminous book (now available in the Collected Works of Lenin ), led some people to call him a philosopher. Most of

[ Advocates for tariffs and trade controls often claim that tariffs are good “for everyone” because they ultimately lead to more production and wealth creation for everyone in the economy. In Chapter 2 of Theory and History , Ludwig von Mises notes that interventionist policies designed to benefit a certain interest group (e.g., tariffs) fail to

[Also available to listen to as an Audio Mises Daily ] A superficial observer of present-day ideologies could easily fail to recognize the prevailing bigotry of the molders of public opinion and the machinations which render inaudible the voice of dissenters. There seems to be disagreement with regard to issues considered as important. Communists,