The Last Knight of Liberalism

Chapter 23. Last Years

1 See documents and correspondence in Grove City Archive: Karras file.

2 Mises to Harry Hoiles, letter dated February 25, 1969; Grove City Archive: “H” files. At the end of July 1964 he gave a talk at the Walter Eucken Institute in Freiburg. He followed an invitation by Hayek (Eucken file). He then attended the Mont Pèlerin Society meeting in Semmering and also went to Vienna. There he visited the Institute for Business Cycle Research (now Institute for Economic Research), which recognized him as its founder (see Franz Nemschak to Mises, and Franz Nemschak to Libertarian Press, letters dated September 3, 1964; Grove City Archive: Österreichisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung files).

3 Mises to Swets & Zeitlinger, correspondence of October 1958; Grove City Archive: Swets & Zeitlinger file. In other correspondence Mises emphasized that he was a member of the Econometric Society only to receive its periodical. See Mises to Nymeyer, letter dated May 14, 1953; Grove City Archive: Nymeyer files.

4 Letter to Robinson; Grove City Archive: “R” files.

5 International University Booksellers to Greaves, letter dated February 1, 1969; Grove City Archive: Greaves files.

6 In February 1962, he had to undergo surgery (see Mises to Muthesius, letter dated February 21, 1962; Grove City Archive: Muthesius files; see also March 1962 correspondence with Magnus Gregersen; Grove City Archive: Gregersen file). In the spring of 1966, Mises must have suffered for a long time from a viral infection. See Thieberger to Mises, June 6, 1966; Grove City Archive: Thieberger file. On July 3, 1966, Ludwig and Margit had a car accident. Margit later had to undergo surgery. At the end of October, she was recovering well. See Mises to Nymeyer, letter dated October 25, 1966; Grove City Archive: Nymeyer files. In January 1968, Mises had at least one tooth pulled. See Thieberger to Margit von Mises, January 18, 1968; Grove City Archive: Thieberger file. In June 1969, he and Margit were sick most of the month. See letter to Rougier, June 23, 1969; Grove City Archive: Rougier files.

7 In June 1970; see Grove City Archive: Schüller file.

8 Fertig files, “S” files, letter from Schiff. See also American Whig-Cliosophic Society to Mises, letter dated July 25, 1971; Margit from Mises to the same society, letter dated August 1, 1971; Grove City College: “A” files.

9 Margit von Mises, My Years with Ludwig von Mises, 2nd enlarged ed. (Cedar Falls, Iowa: Center for Futures Education, 1984), p. 180.

10 After the end of the Mises seminar at NYU they had offered help: “We consider ourselves deeply indebted to you. If either of us can be of any assistance at any time—to you or to Margit—we hope you will feel free to call on us. We shall always be at your service.” Greaves and Bien to Mises, letter dated June 6, 1969; Grove City Archive: Greaves files.

11 This work was first published in a Spanish edition in Argentina in 1962. See Mises, El Establecimiento Histórico de la Escuela Austriaca de Economía (Colección Investigaciones No. 43, La Plata: Universidad Nacional de la Plata, 1962), pp. 691–727. It was probably a outgrowth of the lecture he gave on May 2, 1962 to the NYU Faculty Club on “The Austrian School of Economics at the University of Vienna,” printed in Bettina Bien Greaves, Austrian Economics: An Anthology (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996), pp. 77–82.

12 This attack concerned not only the “verificationist” positivism of the Vienna Circle (Schlick, Carnap, Frank, and others), but also Karl Popper’s “falsificationist” positivism. Popper’s theory made ample room for the use of deduction, whereas the Vienna Circle advocated strict induction; he also claimed that only falsifiable statements can be “scientific,” while the Vienna Circle posited that all non-verifiable statements are simply nonsensical. Such differences are certainly important in many respects. However, they are irrelevant as far as Mises’s critique is concerned, because it aims at the common ground of both versions of positivism. For more detail see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Economic Science and the Austrian Method, 2nd ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006); Jörg Guido Hülsmann, “Facts and Counterfactuals in Economic Law,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 17, no. 1 (2003).

13 Mises accepts Popper’s theory in this regard: “The positivistic principle of verifiability as rectified by Popper is unassailable as an epistemological principle of the natural sciences.” Mises, Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, [1962] 1996), p. 120. See also ibid., pp. 70f.

14 Mises, Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 43. The Greek phrase means “knowledge of the same through the same.” Mises stressed that the “questions whether the judgments of praxeology are to be called analytic or synthetic and whether or not its procedure is to be qualified as ‘merely’ tautological are of verbal interest only” (ibid., p. 45).

15 Ibid., p. 2.

16 Ibid., p. 45.

17 Ibid., p. 65.

18 Ibid., p. 66.

19 Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1936] 1997).

20 Mises, Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, pp. 66–67.

21 Quoted from Margit von Mises, My Years with Ludwig von Mises, p. 110.

22 Mises had probably first heard about Regnery through Nymeyer in 1953. See Nymeyer to Mises, letter dated April 13, 1953; Grove City Archive: Nymeyer files.

23 For an overview of the major changes and a discussion see Jeffrey M. Herbener, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Joseph T. Salerno, “Introduction to the Scholar’s Edition,” Mises, Human Action, Scholar’s edition (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1998). Mises sent exhaustive lists of the changes to Reig in Madrid, who sought to keep the Spanish translation up-to-date.

24 Mises, Human Action, p. 279.

25 Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 281–82. See also Human Action, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1966), p. 281.

26Human Action, 2nd ed., p. 280.

27 A typical example from about the same period:

A shallow-minded school of social philosophers, the anarchists, chose to ignore the matter by suggesting a stateless organization of mankind. They simply passed over the fact that men are not angels. They were too dull to realize that in the short run an individual or a group of individuals can certainly further their own interests at the expense of their own and all other peoples’ long-run interests. (Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 100)

28 Rothbard published Power and Market (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1970) only in 1970, but the manuscript of the book (which was originally conceived as a part of Man, Economy, and State (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1962) was certainly available for Mises in the early 1960s.

29 Mises to Bruno Leoni, letter dated February 15, 1965; Grove City Archive: Mont Pèlerin Society files.

30 Hoiles to Mises, letter dated May 7, 1962; Grove City Archive: Hoiles file. In a subsequent letter of May 21, Hoiles argued that the production of security in a free market would be organized by insurance companies, thereby anticipating an important argument in later analysis of this problem.

31 Mises to Hoiles, letter dated May 14, 1962; Grove City Archive: Hoiles file. Notice that in the 1860 election Lincoln received far less than a majority of the votes.

32 Mises to Salvador de Madariaga, letter dated September 9, 1952; Grove City Archive: Madariaga file. Mises had criticized Madariaga in Omnipotent Government (Spring Mills, Penn.: Libertarian Press, 1985). Still he had held the Spaniard in great esteem—until this correspondence led to their falling out. He said in fact in the same letter: “I think that I have never paid a higher tribute to the achievements of any living author than I did in speaking of you on page 15 of my book.”

33See Omnipotent Government. He probably owed the idea that nations result from the “construction” of ideologies to his friend Louis Rougier, who had argued that there are no objective or scientific criteria to delimit nations from one another. The true foundation of a nation is a specific “political myth.” See Louis Rougier, Les mystiques politiques contemporaines et leurs incidences internationales (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1935).

34 Mises to Salvador de Madariaga, letter dated September 9, 1952; Grove City Archive: Madariaga file.

35 Mises, Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, p. 94.

36 Mises to de Madariaga, letter dated April 1, 1953; Grove City Archive: Madariaga file.

37 See de Madariaga to Mises, letter dated March 11, 1953; Mises to de Madariaga, letter dated April 1, 1953; Grove City Archive: Madariaga file.

38 Two similar cases might be mentioned in which Mises did not pursue correspondence touching on the necessity of coercion: a Mr. Kuhlmann, who favored an increase in inheritance taxes in order to decrease income taxes, reminded him: “And remember you say ‘Taxes are necessary’.” (Kuhlmann to Mises, letter dated April 7, 1962; Grove City Archive: Kuhlmann file.) And a Mrs. Powell Moffit complained about his endorsement of conscription in the 2nd edition of Human Action. See Virginia Powell Moffit to Mises, letter dated February 21, 1964; Grove City Archive: “M” files.

39 Grove City Archive: Freedom School files.

40 McLeod to Mises, letter dated March 10, 1965; Grove City Archive: IHS files. Baldy Harper had founded IHS in 1963. After leaving FEE, he had for some time worked for the Volker Fund and then lectured at Wabash College.

41 See Mises’s letter to Harper dated May 8, 1969; Grove City Archive: Farmand file. In another letter he wrote that he could only stay for three days because he had to return for his NYU seminar. He also mentioned that his health was not very good. Mises to Harper, letter dated June 5, 1969; Grove City Archive: IHS files.

42 Mises to Meehl, letter dated July 25, 1963; Grove City Archive: “M” files. He also praised the work in correspondence with one of the thinkers he most admired, the French philosopher Louis Rougier. See his letter to Rougier, dated December 6, 1962; Grove City Archive: Rougier files. The letter ends with: “But, please, first of all read the book of Rothbard. It is very interesting also from the epistemological point of view.”

43 Fertig to Mises, letter dated July 12, 1968; Grove City Archive: Fertig files.

44 Mises, typewritten manuscript, probably of February 17, 1965; Grove City Archive: Cortney files.

45 Cortney to Mises, letter dated April 24, 1965; Grove City Archive: Cortney files.

46 Machlup to Mises, letter dated March 22, 1965; Hoover Institution: Machlup-Mises correspondence file. Mises apparently never replied.

47 Margit von Mises, My Years with Ludwig von Mises, p. 146.

48 He went on: “When the session was over, I tried to talk to Professor Mises, but he abruptly turned around and marched away. The break in friendly relations lasted for several years.” Machlup, “Ludwig von Mises: The Academic Scholar Who Would Not Compromise,” Wirtschaftspolitische Blätter 28, no. 4 (1981): 13.

49 Mises to Cortney, letter dated June 27, 1966; Grove City Archive: Cortney files.

50 Cortney to Mises, letter dated March 26, 1968; Grove City Archive: Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales files.

51 Wilfried Platzer to Mises, letter dated September 25, 1962; Grove City Archive: Österreichische Botschaft files.

52 Nymeyer to Mises, letter dated September 28, 1965; Grove City Archive: Nymeyer files.

53 Grove City Archive: FEE files.

54 Rockwell followed Roche in 1971 to Hillsdale College to run its ideological and publications programs, which included a Mises Lecture Series, the newsletter Imprimis, and Hillsdale College Press, and a few years later joined the staff of Congressman Ron Paul, a serious student of Mises, and a lifelong opponent of central banking.

55 Karel Kouba, Plan a trh za socialismu (Prague: Economic Section of the Czechoslovak Academy of the Sciences, 1967); Oldrich Kyn, “Vyzva marxisticke ekonomicke teorii,” ekonomicka revue 7 (1967): 289ff.

56 Machlup to Mises, letter dated April 18, 1967; Hoover Institution: Machlup-Mises correspondence file.

57 William S. Cushman to FEE, undated letter; Grove City Archive: “C” files. Mises wrote to Cushman on May 1, 1967.

58 Schureman to Mises, May 2, 1969; Grove City Archive: “S” files.

59 Grove City Archive: “D” files.

60 Quoted from Margit von Mises, My Years with Ludwig von Mises, p. 181.

61 The following obituaries were compiled by Bettina Bien Greaves and Robert W. McGee in Mises: An Annotated Bibliography (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1993) pp. 315ff.

62 Murray N. Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises—Scholar, Creator, Hero (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1988) p. 74. The original cites Ralph Raico, “The Legacy of Ludwig von Mises,” The Libertarian Review (September 1981): 22.