Ludwig von Mises

The record of theory and history shows that socialist planning is an impossible task.

When a small child runs around waving their arms saying, “I’m a bird, I’m a bird,” we often will say what a creative imagination they have.

Fifty years ago, in 1968, Austrian (and Austrian school) economist Friedrich A. Hayek published a monograph called The Confusion of Language in Political Thought.

One day in 1927 Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, stood at the window of his office at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, and said “Maybe grass will grow there, because our civilization will end.”

It is easy to overlearn the lessons of Albert Einstein’s story. A representative anthology of the great minds that fled central Europe during the mid 20th Century reveals a complex picture. Many, in their own ways, interesting. Each, human.

It is a bit jarring for me to point to economist, political theorist, and historian Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) as an example of American exceptionalism.

Mises’s ‘Human Action’ is considered brilliant, teaching the deepest truths about economic science to enlist the public in the defense of a free society. But Murphy distills its length and depth to eliminate the intimidation to many readers.

The prevailing political discourse seems to be consumed with the bromides of social justice, carefully tended by political and intellectual classes claiming special knowledge of its demands.

A man’s home, as the saying goes, is his castle. For socialists and even many progressives, however, private property is an obstacle to be overcome, the source of the capitalist’s power to exploit, a privilege that must yield to broader social justice concerns.

Ludwig von Mises’s majestic magnum opus, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, was published on September 14, 1949. In the nearly seven decades since its appearance, Human Action has come to be recognized as one of the truly great classics of modern economics.

Ninety years ago, on November 15, 1923, the Great German Inflation came to an end when the monetary printing presses were finally shut down, and the economic havoc came to an end. Its lessons are worth remembering.