Happy Birthday, Ludwig von Mises: The Greatest Enemy of All Socialists
Ludwig von Mises was born 145 years ago today. The world is a very different place than it was back then, but Mises’s impact continues to be felt to this day.
Mises was “the preeminent theorist” of the twentieth century, as his student Murray Rothbard described him: He was, and still is, the greatest intellectual threat to socialism in all its forms. This is why the Mises Institute needs your support to continue to spread Mises’s ideas today for a better future.
His treatise Socialism outlined the practical impossibility of the entire socialist economic system, a fact that most Western political regimes refused to acknowledge for decades. In explaining the essential nature of economic calculation and property rights in production and the maintenance of capital, Mises posed a challenge that even the most devout Soviet leaders were forced to confront.
In 2026, a new threat is rising. Would-be authoritarians suggesting that AI can finally bring about a true and lasting socialist revolution. Anyone who believes this has not read their Mises.
Just as important, however, is the emphasis being placed on all forms of credit expansion. In The Theory of Money and Credit, Mises introduced the Austrian theory of the business cycle, which remains the best lens for understanding how the financial bubbles inflated by central banks are doomed to collapse, at great expense to the economy. This theory is uniquely relevant in 2026, given private credit creation outside of central banks and traditional finance, such as shadow banking, has expanded significantly in global financial markets. The fintech revolution is here, and Mises’s theory holds the answers.
Of course, his masterpiece remains Human Action, which in its time was a bold rebellion against the Keynesian hijacking of economics. To the surprise of Mises and his publishers, a large theoretical treatise became a remarkably popular work and the intellectual foundation of Americans who rejected FDR’s legacy and the rise of the welfare state.
Today, the interventionist economics preferred by politicians and universities is in a state of intellectual crisis. The costs of its policies has become impossible to mask. Its models continue to fail. Its intellectual sterility has provided a dangerous opportunity for socialists on both the left and the right to appeal to the masses with various new shades of authoritarianism.
As Mises knew, the justifications for capitalism and free markets put forth by neoliberals like Milton Friedman could never stand on their own in the long run. It is the students of Mises who now take a stand.
This is the role of the Mises Institute: to arm those who are committed to fighting this ideological crusade around the globe. This is why we need your support.
Help us celebrate Ludwig von Mises’s birthday today and receive a free copy of War, Peace, and the State by Murray Rothbard, a man whose life was forever altered when he encountered Mises’s work. Your investment can help others have the same experience and come to the side of liberty.
There will ever be only one Ludwig von Mises. But we can create ever new generations of Misesians.
