In the last sixty or eighty years in every country eminent citizens have become alarmed about the rising tide of totalitarianism. They wanted to preserve freedom and Western civilization and to organize an ideological and political movement to stop the progress on the road to serfdom. All these endeavors failed utterly; the parties and
In 1931, the International Rotary held its annual convention in Vienna, Austria. For the meeting, Rotary issued a tabloid. It contained information about Rotary’s agenda for that convention, its international activities, and articles by Rotary members in Vienna. One of these short articles was “by Rotarian Dr. Ludwig Mises, professor at the
[From “The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund” in Human Action , chap. 36.] The idea underlying all interventionist policies is that the higher income and wealth of the more affluent part of the population is a fund which can be freely used for the improvement of the conditions of the less prosperous. The essence of the interventionist policy is to
The Free Market 24, no. 8 (August 2004) [ The following is excerpted from The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality , a socio-psychological study of anti-market bias published by D. Van Nostrand (Princeton, N.J., 1956). It has been made available online by special arrangement with the Libertarian Press. ] Critics level two charges against capitalism:
The Free Market 24, no. 3 (March 2006) This essay is excerpted from Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow , newly published by the Mises Institute. The constitutional system that began at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century has disappointed mankind. Most people—also most authors—who have dealt with
The Characteristics of the Market Economy Capital Capitalism The Sovereignty of the Consumers Competition Freedom Inequality of Wealth and Income Entrepreneurial Profit and Loss Entrepreneurial Profits and Losses in a Progressing Economy Promoters, Managers, Technicians, and Bureaucrats The Selective Process The Individual and the Market Business
[This article is excerpted from chapter 15 of Human Action .] In speaking of underconsumption, people mean to describe a state of affairs in which a part of the goods produced cannot be consumed because the people who could consume them are by their poverty prevented from buying them. These goods remain unsold or can be swapped only at prices
“The nations must come to realize that the most important problem of foreign policy is the establishment of lasting peace, and they must understand that this can be assured throughout the world only if the field of activity permitted to the state is limited to the narrowest range. Only then will the size and extent of the territory subject to the
[The following essay originally appeared in Plain Talk, Volume 3, no. 4, January 1949, pp. 57-64, and has been widely reprinted since] 1. What the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences says about Laissez Faire For more than a hundred years the maxim laissez faire, laissez passer has been a red rag to harbingers of totalitarian despotism. As
[This is the last formal talk of Ludwig von Mises [1881–1973], delivered May 2, 1970 at an economic seminar sponsored by The Society of Praxeology in Seattle, Washington. It was attended by 600 students, teachers, and others. This text was transcribed from audiotape by Bettina Bien Greaves and edited, primarily for syntax and punctuation, by Percy
What is the Mises Institute?
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.