This essay offers something spectacular: an intellectual history of Mises’s own tradition, with first person accounts of conversations with the greats. And truly, Mises turns out to have written the best single account of the origin and early growth of the Austrian School.
Mises discusses the intellectual milieu in which the Austrian School began, and recalls a conversation he had with Carl Menger. He writes about it with vivid recall, as if were only yesterday.
He tells how the enemies of the Austrians gave it the label, and how it came to backfire on the historical school. He shows that Austrian economists have always been “independent economists,” unconnected with the leviathan state and its approved institutions.
The essay was first published in 1969--one of his last pieces of writing--and remains a crucial text for understanding the history of a tradition.
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Ludwig von Mises was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian school of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’s writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science that he called praxeology.
If one does not stop in time the pernicious policy of increasing the quantity of money and fiduciary media, the nation's currency system collapses entirely.
"Politically there is nothing more advantageous for a government than an attack on property rights, for it is always an easy matter to incite the masses against the owners of land and capital."
If one looks at the catastrophic consequences of the great paper-money inflations, one must admit that the cost of making and holding gold is the minor evil. It would be futile to retort that these catastrophes were brought about because the regime merely used fiat money improperly.
Copyright © 1984 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. [1969] by Arlington House.
