1881-1973: Ludwig von Mises Bibliography

LUDWIG VON MISES (1881-1973)

Omnipotent Government

This work presents a detailed account of the rise of German aggressive nationalism, culminating in the onset of the Third Reich and its F?hrer. Mises stresses the role of state-granted monopolistic privileges through the organization of cartels. Because of high protective tariffs, these cartels could practice price discrimination by selling their products at much lower prices abroad than domestically.

To support these and other measures, ideological weapons were necessary. Here the "socialists of the chair," who dominated the economics and politics faculties of the Prussian university system, played a vital part. Their denigration of classical liberalism and economics paved the way for the statist measures which adherence to correct economics would have averted.

Mises elaborately shows the parallels between the teachings of those prominent in the Bismarckian era and the Wilhelmine Reich and the more blatant aggressive nationalism of Hitler and his followers. Mises is thus a "continuity" theorist as regards German history, stressing the similarities rather than the differences between the Nazis and predecessor regimes. His views closely resemble those of F. A. von Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, also published in 1944.

An earlier version of this work, dealing only -with Germany and Austria, was published in 1978 in German. (See Murray N. Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988, pp. 30-31.)

Ludwig von Mises:
An Annotated Bibliography
David Gordon