History of the Austrian School of Economics

Rothbard worked his entire life to shore up this ideological apparatus — in economic theory, historical studies, political ethics, cultural criticism, and movement organizing.

The Spanish Scholastics also anticipated the Austrian school in applying value theory to money, thus beginning the integration of money into general value theory. As de Roover wrote of Aquinas, 'These passages are clear and unambiguous; value depends upon utility, usefulness, or human wants. There is nowhere any mention of labor as the creator or the measure of value.

It is not surprising that Mises was strongly opposed to the idea that central banks should impose "low" interest rates during a recession in order to keep the economy going.

In his early years at the university, Mises was a left-liberal and interventionist, although he quickly rejected Marxism.

Mises demonstrated that capitalism is an economic system rationally planned by the combined, self-interested efforts of all who participate in it. The failure of socialism, he showed, results from the fact that it represents not economic planning, but the destruction of economic planning, which exists only under capitalism and the price system.

"His outstanding moral quality was moral courage, the ability to stand alone, and an almost fanatical intellectual honesty and candor that refused to deviate or compromise an inch."

It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.

Koch organizations are no longer shocked to see us taking different views in areas like vouchers and trade treaties. They serve one agenda with a particular style, approach, and audience, and we serve another with a different style, approach, and audience.

If you are reading the book for the first time, and do not yet have the patience for detailed methodological argument, you can begin on page 200, while saving the material you skipped for the end. This is a profitable approach for many people.