Mises' Centennial Tribute

by Cam Osborne
July 1981

September 29 marks the 100th anniversary of he birth of Ludwig von Mises, one of this century's great champions of individual liberty. His ideas, as reflected in his numerous articles and lectures, remain a formidable intellectual bulwark against the advocates of big government.

Born in Vienna in 1881, he studied law and economics and soon came under the influence of the so-called "Austrian School" of economic thought which studied the market by focussing on the actions of the individual. The fresh and much-needed insights of his teachers were great intellectual achievements in themselves but it was Mises who developed and refined them to a powerful and integrated whole.

His pioneering work, the Theory of Money and Credit (1912) demonstrated beyond all doubt that it was government and not the free market which created inflation and the accompanying boom-bust cycle in the economy. This work alone was enough to establish his reputation, but in the two decades after World War I he went on to publish books and articles which demonstrated such truths as the chaos inherent in "planned economies", the destructiveness of bureaucracy and government intervention in the market, and the liberty, progress and prosperity of a free economy, to name only a few.

Interest in his thought reached a pinnacle around the mid-1930s. But just as a substantial following was being formed, the high-taxation, big spending, pro-deficit policies of the "Keynesian Revolution" of the 1930s and 40s rolled over the economics profession like a tidal wave. Amid this disaster and the equally disastrous World War II, Mises' influence virtually vanished.

Nevertheless, in 1940 he completed his monumental Nationalokonomie (1400 pages) translated finally into English in 1949 as Human Action. In the words of his foremost student, Murray Rothbard, "Human Action is it; it is economics whole, developed from sound [principles;] a work completely isolated and alone, deserted by virtually all of his own followers, in exile from ... Austria, amidst a world and a profession that had deserted all of his ideals, methods and principles..."

Mises moved to New York in 1940 where, to the enduring disgrace of the American academic world, he was never offered a full-time paid teaching position in his field. Nevertheless, he did teach Business Administration and managed to influence a small group of economics students who, over the last 20 years, have been largely responsible for reviving an interest in his ideas and works.

He died in 1973, unfortunately never living to see the dramatic refutation of Keynesian thought which the recessionary "stagflation" of 1974 provided, a phenomenon which he had long predicted. With the economics profession currently in disarray and helplessly grasping at straws like "supply-side principles" the rationality and soundness of the Misesian thought offers virtually the only solid ground on which to stand. All who stand in opposition to the state owe him an immense debt of gratitude.