Mises Introduces the Austrian School
When I first came to the university, Carl Menger was nearing the end of his teaching career. There was little attention paid the Austrian School of economics at the university, and I had no interest in it at the time.
Around Christmas, 1903, I read Menger's Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre[1] for the first time. It was through this book that I became an economist. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (3)
Saku
I've got to read this book. I like the following passages very much.
Menger's depressingly true prognostication:
"The policies being pursued by the European powers will lead to a terrible war ending with gruesome revolutions, the extinction of European culture and destruction of prosperity for people of all nations."
Regarding arguments with socialists:
". . .Zweideneck, who had no sense of what was going on in economics."
". . .in the end even Bauer himself had to admit to the unsustainability of the Marxian labor theory of value. He abandoned his intention to write a reply to Böhm's critique of Marx. The first volume in this series on Marxian theory yielded a sensation-causing rejoinder from Hilferding. Bauer openly admitted to me that Hilferding did not grasp the problems at hand."
"Unfortunately, babblers sometimes abused the freedom to speak that was allowed participants. Especially disruptive was the nonsense that Otto Neurath asserted with fanatical force."
Published: June 26, 2009 2:52 PM
Econ Student
Wow, this was truly an amazing article. At the moment, I am reading Manger. As soon as I am finished, however, Mises will be studied.
Published: June 26, 2009 11:45 PM
Justin Jefferson
Yes, a fascinating article.
Hey isn't the internet just great? How's that sentence in the first paragraph: Mises saying "this book" made an economist of me - with a link to the book!
It would have been great to be a (German-speaking) fly on the wall of that debate between Bohm-Bawerk and Bauer, wouldn't it?
At least Bauer admitted that the LTV was unsustainable. Most Marxists, to this day, even after you have shown them more disproofs than they could possibly need, still "obstinately cling to their previous opinions", to use Mises expression to describe other clunkheads.
Published: June 27, 2009 9:31 AM