Author Archive | Ludwig Von Mises

Excerpt is from “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920) by Ludwig von Mises. Conclusion It must follow from what we have been able to establish in our previous arguments that the protagonists of a socialist system of production claim preference for it on the ground of greater rationality as against an economy so constituted [...]

Excerpt is from “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920) by Ludwig von Mises.   5. The Most Recent Socialist Doctrines and the Problem of Economic Calculation Since recent events [in 1920] helped socialist parties to obtain power in Russia, Hungary, Germany and Austria, and have thus made the execution of a socialist nationalization program [...]

Excerpt is from “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920) by Ludwig von Mises. 4. Responsibility and Initiative in Communal Concerns The problem of responsibility and initiative in socialist enterprises is closely connected with that of economic calculation. It is now universally agreed that the exclusion of free initiative and individual responsibility, on which the [...]

Excerpt is from “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920) by Ludwig von Mises. 3. Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth Are we really dealing with the necessary consequences of common ownership of the means of production? Is there no way in which some kind of economic calculation might be tied up with a socialist [...]

Excerpt is from “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920) by Ludwig von Mises. 2. The Nature of Economic Calculation Every man who, in the course of economic life, takes a choice between the satisfaction of one need as against another, eo ipso makes a judgment of value. Such judgments of value at once include [...]

Excerpt is from “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920) by Ludwig von Mises. There are many socialists who have never come to grips in any way with the problems of economics, and who have made no attempt at all to form for themselves any clear conception of the conditions which determine the character of [...]

As the popular philosophy of the common man sees it, human wealth and welfare are the products of the cooperation of two primordial factors: nature and human labor. All the things that enable man to live and to enjoy life are supplied either by nature or by work or by a combination of nature-given opportunities [...]

Many people believe that the coming of totalitarianism is inevitable. The “wave of the future,” they say, carries mankind inexorably toward a system under which all human affairs are managed by omnipotent dictators. It is useless to fight against the unfathomable decrees of history. The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and [...]

Many people all over the world assert that the Soviet “experiment” has supplied conclusive evidence in favor of socialism and disproved all, or at least most, of the objections raised against it. The facts, they say, speak for themselves. It is no longer permissible to pay any attention to the spurious aprioristic reasoning of armchair [...]

The philosophy of the Nazis, the German National Socialist Labor Party, is the purest and most consistent manifestation of the anticapitalistic and socialistic spirit of our age. Its essential ideas are not German or “Aryan” in origin, nor are they peculiar to the present-day Germans. In the genealogical tree of the Nazi doctrine such Latins as [...]