These are difficult times for those who love freedom. But they are nothing like what Mises faced during his life. He prevailed, and his Memoirs explain how.
“How one carries on in the face of unavoidable catastrophe is a matter of temperament,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in his private memoir of his life in Europe.
It was true in his time and it is true in ours. This new translation and edition of Mises’s moving account of his life, published by the Mises Institute, provides not only deeply fascinating personal history; it also functions as a moral and spiritual guide for any lover of liberty during times of despotism.
It was written during and after his immigration to the United States in 1940. Despite being driven from his home, seeing his country taken over by a foreign dictator, having his books burned and his papers stolen, and finally pushed out of the sanctuary he had for six years, he never lost determination and never doubted the truth of liberty.
“Again and again I had met with situations from which rational deliberation found no means of escape; but then the unexpected intervened, and with it came salvation. I would not lose courage even now. I wanted to do everything an economist could do. I would not tire in saying what I knew to be true.”
Mises wrote his memoirs and then promptly locked up the manuscript. He had good reason. Many of the politicians and intellectuals he exposed were still alive. Much of the jaw-dropping detail had never been revealed. He figured it would have to wait until after his death.
He was 59-years old, and a political exile, first from Vienna (fleeing the Nazi takeover) and then from Geneva. He had been camped out in Switzerland for six years, teaching and writing the masterpiece that would later become Human Action. But he had been warned that some people wanted him turned in. He had to find a new home.
Leaving Geneva, he and his wife Margit drove across France, just in front of the advancing German army. They barely made it out. There was no professorship waiting for him in the United States. He had lost everything. His library had been burned. His papers were missing. He had no money. He would have to start over, writing and speaking in a new language.
Making this transition would require all his moral courage. As he looked back over his life, he wrote the most moving, personal work ever to bear his name. It is one of the most inspiring books ever written by an intellectual–and it happens to be by one of the greatest intellectuals of all time.
There is anger in this book but also inspiration. What strikes the reader is how Mises never lost his focus on the battle of ideas. The enemies in this book are bad ideas. The answer, however, is not war or revolution or a new form of rule. For him, the path to liberty is through the right ideas. In this sense, this book is incredibly high minded, revealing his nobility and intellectual commitments to truth.
Mises writes about his time as an economic advisor to Austrian officials; his battles against Bolshevism and the inflationism; and his attempts to prevent New Deal-like policies in Europe. He talks about his teaching and his seminar. He discusses corrupt politicians and central bankers, and all the shills for statism in academia and the media.
He had almost singlehandedly stopped a Bolshevik takeover, and stopped Austrian from following Germany into the inflationist abyss. And here he even writes of his one regret–that he compromised more than he should have!
The vault that held Mises’s manuscript wasn’t opened until after his death. He died in 1973. A German translation appeared. F.A. Hayek wrote the introduction. Four years ago, we commission a new translation that preserves his idiom and precision. The results are spectacular. Mises’s memoirs have come alive as never before.
With all the interest generated by the Mises biography that came out in 2008, and with the current political trends in the United Stats, this is a perfect time to examine Mises’s own autobiography.
Mises inspires us with his moral example.
He tells of his strategy and teaching methods. “In my seminar, I seized every opportunity to refute popular errors.” Truth is it own standard, he believed.
He talks of his private seminar and the culture it fostered. “Outsiders knew nothing of our gatherings; they saw only the published works of individual participants.” They didn’t cultivate a sect or society; rather they were “united in the desire to further the sciences of human action. Each was free to go the way his own law guided him.”
He blasts the enemies of freedom. Of the German Historical School he writes that it “did not produce a single thought. It did not write a single page in the history of science. For eighty years it eagerly propagandized for National Socialism.” Further, its members were so unprincipled that “they would have become communists had the Bolshevists come to the fore.”
Finally, he admits to feelings of despair: “From time to time I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and point policy in the right direction…. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.”
Even with such feelings, he never gave in. He kept writing and teaching. And what a glorious legacy he left!
In this prose, we have profound determination–moral determination. It wasn’t enough that he was a genius of a scientist, that he made earth-shattering contributions to economics, history, philosophy, and more.
What made the difference for him was character. This is why Murray Rothbard wrote that he was not only a scholar but a hero, an example to us all. We need more like him. But in order to have that, his example needs to be there for everyone.
Guido Hulsmann writes the preface. F.A. Hayek writes the introduction. Arlene Oost-Zinner did the translation. But the book itself is pure Mises, writing his deepest and most private thoughts, now available to the world as an example, a model, and an ideal.
146 Pages, Hardcover, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-933550-26-8
{ 12 comments }
With what is going down now, many will need the strength and resilience of Mises.
This is so great.
What period does it cover? I gather that he wrote it when he was 59.
I am recently reading Schumpeter’s biography by McGraw, and I realize he had witnessed — and participated in — a lot even before WW2 came around.
Cheers
Mises is a true hero, but my issue is this: In his time, anyone seeking liberty had an obvious direction, the USA. However, I don’t see such an option today. China? India? Russia? Brazil? Europe? Mexico? Canada? not really. A few tiny island countries, or free banking based countries? All seem very vulnerable to the wrath of the big guys.
The nature of the internet secures some liberties, but those tend to be information based liberties, not property and wealth liberties. I just don’t see a clear exit strategy, nor do I see a clear fight to win strategy.
I hate to state the obvious, but Mises did not “prevail” in the sense that his ideas on sound money gained currency. He was right. But that was not enough. It’s never enough.
He left Germany after the country had been completely debauched by currency debasement and monetary anarchy, and then fell into national socialism, and in his adopted land he was isolated and then saw the total destruction of gold as money.
I can’t see how you can say he “prevailed”. He survived. That is all.
He prevailed because his followers are growing in ever increasing numbers. Every mind freed from the matrix is a devastating blow to Statism. Many people instantly recognise the truth when they hear it just once. Whilst the Austrian School is still in a minority of thought, the tidal wave of truth pouring from this website is pounding at the foundations of the State. I truly believe it is only a matter of time before man can live free. Keep on writing, explaining the ideas to friends and family, and live an honourable and virtuous life just like Mises did. It is the only way to be truly free.
“I would not tire in saying what I knew to be true.”
The essence of why Mises is a hero for the ages and ultimately will prevail.
I don’t know what everyone is talking about since Mises’s whole premise of “why socialism can never work” has been successfully and easily rebuked throughout the years.
In the real world, when markets are incomplete (always) and there are not infinite number of future markets (always), and when asymmetrical information is prevalent (extent varies but always) there is no reason to believe that the allocation of capital achieved through private means will be better than that through public. A weakness of market economies is the inability to adequately allocate capital for future investments due to ununified methods of forward looking and opportunism. The large majority of future investments in large capitals are undertaken, once again in the real world, as sorts of joint ventures or other non-individualistic methods that allow for cooperation and collaboration to ensure solidity. Government, among other things, can provide and attain security, stability, and, most importantly, information, that is unavailable in the private sector in this regard. Competition among capitals is all that needs be sustained, and the drivers of competition will not be hindered in the least – they perhaps will allow for MORE risk and be more competitive – with government involvement in the allocation of future investment.
Bob, The way you communicate your load of bull excrement, you have a great future in politics or the New York Times.
Matt:
Why don’t you try reading or studying a broad range of economic thought and understanding theories from their actual developers before you start opining on forums as to what is correct or incorrect? Since when have you shown that you understand Mises better than I to be able to judge my understanding of his work?
Bob: “Mises’s whole premise of “why socialism can never work” has been successfully and easily rebuked throughout the years.”
I have read several attempts at refuting Mises on that subject, but no successful ones. Usually critiques invent a straw man of Mises’s arguments and successfully bayonet it, but I have never seen a critic who bothered to understand Mises well enough to attack the real Mises.
Bob: “Government, among other things, can provide and attain security, stability, and, most importantly, information, that is unavailable in the private sector in this regard.”
Government can provide and should provide security, but Hayek proved many times that it cannot provide the array of information available to the private sector. The variables are too numerous, vast and spread out for that to ever be possible. That is one of the socialist’s greatest delusions.
…and, most importantly, information, that is unavailable in the private sector in this regard.”
Funny thing, govts. excel at hiding information or distorting it to suit political purposes… but hey, don’t let reality get in the way of your “sinners turn into angels once elected” fantasy.
Gee, Bob, there are so many buzz words and vague, cryptic phrases in your assertion that one hardly know where to start.
Can you tell me what crystal ball politicians and bureaucrats can use to capture the assymetrical information better than the market? Perhaps you mean individuals in the market cannot capture this information, which is true enough, but the market system itself, with inputs from each of the individual actors in the system, is what captures that information, and makes it available in the form of prices, interest rates. and profits (or lack thereof). Government interference in the marketplace interferes with this process and creates greater uncertainty in the validity of the market information, i.e, more instability, not stability.
Government can certainly allocate capital in different ways, but I fail to see how diverting capital away from consumer demand is somehow a better allocation of capital, unless you think that politicians and bureaucrats know better than private individuals what those individuals want and need.
Government can provide the security of poverty, the stability of restricted choices, and the information that we aren’t given much choice about the matter. Governments do allow for more risk, though, socializing the risks of capital ventures onto society at large instead of limiting that risk to voluntary entrepreneurs. But how is that a good thing?
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