The American Right Is Abandoning Mises
Ludwig von Mises, a foundational figure of modern libertarianism, was also for decades a hero of the American right. In George H. Nash’s magisterial 1976 history The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, the very first chapter stars the Austrian economist and his students and associates, saying that “it would be difficult to exaggerate the contributions of…Ludwig von Mises to the intellectual rehabilitation of individualism in America.”
Mises’ disciple Murray Rothbard complained that conservatives’ adoption of Mises occluded the more radical portions of the economist’s thinking: elements that were antistate, pro-peace, pro-immigration, even critical of the Christian tradition. In a 1981 essay in The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Rothbard gripedthat too many of Mises’ right-wing fans “have unwittingly distorted [his views] and made them seem at one with the modern conservative movement in the United States,” as though Mises were “a sort of National Review intellectual.”
Figures around National Review did admire Mises. In his introduction to National Review founder William F. Buckley’s first blockbuster book—1951’s God and Man at Yale, an attack on what Buckley saw as a leftist thrust to Ivy League education—the conservative journalist John Chamberlain named Mises as one of the social thinkers shamefully excluded from the typical Yale curriculum.
Yes, some conservative mandarins mistrusted Mises, fretting that his rationalistic, utilitarian focus on economic liberties failed to stress the importance of, as Russell Kirk put it, “supernatural and traditional sanctions.” But a Misesian take on the benefits of private property and minimal economic interference was one of the three legs of the American intellectual right from the rise of Buckley’s magazine to at least the end of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (the other two being Judeo-Christian traditionalism and militant anticommunism). Mises’ intellectual dominance was rooted in his masterfully detailed defenses of 19th century classical liberalism and free market economics, and also in his influence on other libertarian intellectual giants, such as Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, and Ayn Rand.
Among the most damaging changes Trumpism has wrought on conservatism has been the rejection of core elements of Mises’ thought—the parts that undermined the idea that a “national interest” should supersede individual choice and freedom in markets.
Mises was an ardent free-trader. President Donald Trump promotes autarky and calls himself “Tariff Man.” Mises was a devoted anti-inflationist, a promoter of hard currencies that government could not create and manipulate at will. Though Trump has given lip service to private cryptocurrency as part of his larger antiestablishment coalition, he also demanded in his first term that the Federal Reserve expand the money supply to goose the economy and give him a short-term political benefit. In his 1944 book Omnipotent Government, Mises condemned forceful territorial expansion as one of the causes of Europe’s terrible 20th century wars. Since the election, Trump has publicly mulled territorial seizures around the globe. Trump ardently supports a restrictionist immigration policy. Mises believed the free flow of people, goods, and capital were linchpins of the ideal international system. Trump favors industrial policy, in which government planners intervene to assist selected domestic industries. Mises understood that would lower, not raise, overall prosperity.
And when Trump’s interventionist policies fail, that will mean more danger—for as Mises pointed out, failed government interventions often lead to still moreintervention. Bureaucrats stubbornly continue to try to achieve their desired results through more interventions that also fail, spinning increasingly complex webs of ineffective controls. That dynamic made Mises deny the possibility of a viable “third way” between free markets and socialism. Once you start down the socialist road, he wrote, you tend to go further and further from freedom.
The Core Failure of Socialism—and of Industrial Policy
Mises was the core 20th century advocate of what is known as the Austrian school of economics. That tradition began with Carl Menger’s 1871 book Principles of Economics, which argued that the desires and valuations of individual consumers explain the formation of market prices. This idea has a natural appeal to libertarian-minded people, as it implies that the best results arise from allowing the free play of consumer desires to shape what producers produce, what things cost, and what overall shape the economy should take.
Mises was born September 29, 1881, in the Austro-Hungarian city of Lemberg. He received a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna in 1906. His interest in economics began when he read Menger’s Principles, which turned him toward classical liberalism. Mises worked with the Austrian chamber of commerce and lectured at the University of Vienna (not as a salaried employee, but paid directly by his students). During World War I, he served for three years as an artillery captain at the front. And
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