Happy Birthday Herr von Mises

The Philosophy of Ludwig von Mises:

Classical liberalism believed in liberty and justice for all; it severely restricted the role of government and politics; it stood for the Rule of Law, private property, and the free market economy. It designed a set of rules which maximized every person’s opportunity to pursue his personal goals; it worked for equal freedom by abolishing the legal privileges which had hitherto given some groups in society unfair advantages over others. It got rid of serfdom and slavery.

Mises was a liberal in this old-fashioned sense, at a time when the intellectual currents in Europe and America were nearly all moving in other directions.

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Mises believed in the unhampered market economy, and with enormous erudition in several large volumes he expounded the operations of this intricate system. Starting with the self-evident truth that people would rather be more prosperous than less prosperous, other things being equal, Mises demonstrated with devastating logic that every political interference with the market hurts some people and makes the entire society poorer.

The ethical code is violated whenever you pick another person’s pocket or steal his purse, and the violation is compounded when you do it legally, that is, when you allow government to do your thieving for you. But only a people with larceny in their souls will write a form of theft into their statutes .. if people do covet their neighbor’s property they will surely find legal ways to get their hands on it, and conscience will bend around to approve.

Classical liberalism presupposes a religious philosophy which regards man as a created being who bears a unique relation to God, being formed in His image—meaning that man possesses free will and the ability to initiate and command his own actions. This free being is under the moral law laid down in the original constitution of things, responsible for discovering this law and obeying it. He is given dominion over the earth. He is commanded to work in order that he might eat; he is the steward of the earth’s scarce re sources and held accountable for their economic use.

Classical liberalism, in other words, is the secular projection of Christian philosophy.

When a nation’s cultural framework includes such spiritual ingredients as the rule of law, equal liberty, security for property, a high level of morality, and that respect for rationality which makes science and technology possible, then the impulses and incentives which everywhere produce the market will give rise to capitalism, or the market economy—which is the market institutionalized.