Everything about Ludwig Von Mises totally explained
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (
September 29,
1881 –
October 10,
1973) was an
Austrian Economist,
philosopher, and a major influence on the modern
libertarian movement.
Because of his
Jewish origin and his opinions, he'd to emigrate to
Switzerland and then settle in the
USA.
The
Ludwig von Mises Institute is named after him.
Biography
Early life
Ludwig von Mises was born on
September 29,
1881 in the city of
Lemberg,
Austria-Hungary, (now
Lviv,
Ukraine), to
Jewish parents Arthur Edler von Mises and Adele von Mises (
née Landau). Arthur was stationed there as a construction engineer with Czernowitz railroad company. Mises had two younger brothers:
physicist Richard von Mises, and later Karl von Mises, who died in infancy from scarlet fever. When Ludwig and Richard were small children, his family moved back to their ancestral home of
Vienna.
In 1900, he attended the
University of Vienna, becoming influenced by the works of
Carl Menger. Mises' father died in 1903, and in 1906 he was awarded his
doctorate.
Professional life
In the years from 1904 to 1914, Mises attended lectures given by the prominent Austrian economist
Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk. Mises taught as a
Privatdozent at the Vienna University in the years from 1913 to 1934, while also serving as a principal economic adviser to the Austrian government during the
Austrofascist regime of
Engelbert Dollfuss.
To avoid the influence of
Nazis in his Austrian homeland, and fearing repression due to his
Jewish ancestry, in 1934 Mises left for
Geneva,
Switzerland, where he was a professor at the
Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940. In 1940, he emigrated to
New York City. He was a visiting professor at
New York University from 1945 until he retired in 1969, though he wasn't salaried by the university. Instead, he earned his living from funding by businessmen such as
Lawrence Fertig. For part of this period Mises worked on
currency issues for the
Pan-Europa movement led by a fellow NYU faculty member and Austrian exile,
Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. He received an honorary doctorate from Grove City College.
Despite his growing fame, Mises listed himself plainly in the New York phone directory and he welcomed students freely to his home. Mises died at the age of 92 at St Vincent's hospital in
New York.
Contributions to the field of economics
Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of
classical liberalism and is seen as one of the leaders of the
Austrian School of economics. In his
treatise on economics,
Human Action, Mises introduced
praxeology as the conceptual foundation of the science of human action, establishing economic laws of
apodictic certainty rejecting
positivism and material
causality. Many of his works, including Human Action, were on two related economic themes:
- monetary economics and inflation;
- the differences between government controlled economies and free trade.
Mises argued that money is demanded for its usefulness in purchasing other goods, rather than for its own sake and that any significant credit expansion causes business cycles. His other notable contribution was his argument that socialism must fail economically because of the economic calculation problem — the impossibility of a socialist government being able to make the economic calculations required to organize a complex economy. Mises projected that without a market economy there would be no functional price system, which he held essential for achieving rational allocation of capital goods to their most productive uses. Socialism would fail as demand can't be known without prices, according to Von Mises. Mises' criticism of socialist paths of economic development is well-known: The only certain fact about Russian affairs under the Soviet regime with regard to which all people agree is: that the standard of living of the Russian masses is much lower than that of the masses in the country which is universally considered as the paragon of capitalism, the United States of America. If we were to regard the Soviet regime as an experiment, we'd have to say that the experiment has clearly demonstrated the superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism.
These arguments were elaborated on by subsequent Austrian economists such as Hayek.
In
Interventionism, An Economic Analysis (1940), Ludwig von Mises wrote:
The usual terminology of political language is stupid. What is 'left' and what is 'right'? Why should Hitler be 'right' and Stalin, his temporary friend, be 'left'? Who is 'reactionary' and who is 'progressive'? Reaction against an unwise policy isn't to be condemned. And progress towards chaos isn't to be commended. Nothing should find acceptance just because it's new, radical, and fashionable. 'Orthodoxy' isn't an evil if the doctrine on which the 'orthodox' stand is sound. Who is anti-labor, those who want to lower labor to the Russian level, or those who want for labor the capitalistic standard of the United States? Who is 'nationalist,' those who want to bring their nation under the heel of the Nazis, or those who want to preserve its independence?
Bibliography
The Theory of Money and Credit (1912, enlarged US edition 1953)
Nation, State, and Economy (1919)
(online version
) (1922, 1932, 1951)
Liberalism (1927, 1962)
Critique of Interventionism (1929)
Epistemological Problems of Economics (1933, 1960)
(1944) Preview
Bureaucracy (1944)
Planned Chaos (1947, added to 1951 edition of Socialism)
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (1949, 1963, 1966, 1996)
Planning for Freedom (1952, enlarged editions in 1962, 1974, and 1980)
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956)
Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution (1957)
The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science (1962)
Notes and Recollections (1978)
Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979, lectures given in 1959)
Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1998)
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ludwig Von Mises'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://ludwig_von_mises.totallyexplained.com">Ludwig von Mises Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
