Fighting like a State: Lessons from the American Revolution

Tags: Inflation, U.S. History, War and Foreign Policy

11/07/2026 Joshua Mawhorter

Joshua Mawhorter revisits the American Revolution and shows how fighting the war on state-centric terms, with inflation and price controls, fed a nationalist counterrevolution.

Recorded in San Antonio, Texas, on October 24, 2026. Sponsored by Ray and Carol Cunningham.

The slides used in this talk are available: Mises.org/SS26-11-A

The notes used in this talk are available: Mises.org/SS26-11-B

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.