23. Last Years

0:00Chapter 23 – Last Years Mises remained vigorous until about 1962. In the early 1960s he completed four major writing projects and gave several public lectures per year. At his public appearances, the frailty of his condition became increasingly obvious. More and more his feeble voice and his virtual For deafness weighed against his legendary reputation, he had become a living icon of liberty, yet a fading icon after all. In 1962 he still had a substantial number of speaking engagements, addressing for example the remnant, a group associated with Edmund Orpitz, a hundred and fifty student audience at the Nathaniel Brandon Institute, the Young Americans for Freedom, YAF, at Madison Square Garden, the Coast Federal Savings and Loan Association, the NYU Faculty Club, the American Management Association, and the Free Enterprise Institute, in the same year on the night of May 16th. His voice was heard for the first time no long while at Harvard University. As one might guess, it was not the university who had invited him. He was not even physically present. The United States Steel Corporation

1:17had sponsored a series of radio shows featuring a six-minute taped speech on economic subjects. Mises spoke on the conflicts of interest between workers and employers. He was on the air simultaneously at Harvard, Brown and Cornell universities. The next day the speech was aired at Dartmouth and Yale. After 1962, public appearances became less frequent and Mises focused on his regular teaching activities. Until May 1969, he taught his NYU seminar. He had lectured at FEE seminars until 1972. In these very last years only his most faithful friends and admirers, most notably Percy Graves and Bettina Bean, continued to take part in his regular seminar sessions. They had become used to the shortcomings of the presentation and still wrote diligent notes of each meeting.

2:08Graves always sat right next to Mises to facilitate all communication between the old master and his seminar. When a student asked a question, Graves would shout this question into Mises's Receive the answer from the old man's feeble lips and then repeat Mises' words with his booming voice to the audience. New people showed up from time to time out of curiosity, but did not stay because it was difficult to follow the lectures and impossible to engage the speaker. Such newcomers often wondered why the seminar had such visible success with the regular participants. Some had the impression of a prayer meeting, involving a bunch of fervent disciples around an enigmatic guru, with Percy Graves as the high priest and Bettina Bean as the devoted abbess of a Mises cult. Mises did not ignore his physical condition and true to his nature prepared well in advance for the approaching end. He started skipping Montpellier society meetings which usually took place in Europe. The last one Mises attended was in 1965 in

3:10and Strasa, Italy. He saw his beloved Vienna for the last time in September 1964. At the end of July 1964, he gave a talk at the Walter Eucken Institute in Freiburg. He followed an invitation by Hayek. He then attended the Demolpillerer Society meeting in Zimmering and also went to Vienna. There he visited the Institute for Business Cycle Research, now Institute for Economic Research, which recognized him as its founder. He began selling In October 1958, he parted with his collection of Econometrica, the complete sets, volumes 1 through 26, and in July 1965 cancelled his membership in the Royal Economic Society. In other correspondence, Mises emphasized that he was a member of the Econometric Society only to receive its periodical. Eventually, by the end of 1968, Percy Graves assisted Mises preserved his health almost until the end of his long life. In February 1962 he had to undergo surgery. In the spring of 1966, Mises must have suffered for a long time from a viral infection. On July 3, 1966, Ludwig and Margit had a car accident. Margit later

4:30Mises had to undergo surgery. At the end of October she was recovering well. In January 1968, Mises had at least one tooth pulled. In June 1969, he and Margit were sick most of the month. He slowed down smoothly and was still around after many of his younger American friends and associates had already gone. Neumeier died in 1967, Courtney in 1971, Harper in April 1973. Just when Mises was starting to feel really old and somehow left over, it was time to congratulate Richard Schiller on the occasion of his 100th birthday. The last habitant of Carl Menger was still around. During a 1971 summer vacation in Manchester, Vermont, Ludwig fell ill with a serious infection. Even though he recovered physically, he had lost the ability to Concentrate and was incapable of doing any work from then on. His wife recalled him saying, The worst is that I still have so much to give to people, to the world, and I can't put it together any more. It is tormenting. During the last two years of his life, Mises

5:42was no longer himself and needed assistance and supervision. In this critical phase, to In July 1973, Margit took Ludwig for a last trip to Europe, to a spa up in the mountains, Last Writings In the last phase of his life, Mises completed four major writing projects, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, 1962, The Second Edition of Human Action, 1963, a booklet on the historical setting of the Austrian School of Economics, 1969. This work was first published in a Spanish edition in Argentina in 1962. It was probably an outgrowth of the lecture he gave on May 2nd 1962 to the NYU Faculty Club on the Austrian School of Economics at the University of Vienna and the 3rd edition of Human Action 1966. Apart from this, Mises produced a few articles.

7:26The most important publication of this period, and in fact the only book-length work, was The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science. The culmination of more than thirty years of meditation on the epistemological problems of the social sciences, it deals with the and the most difficult problems in this field, written, as were all of his works, in accessible language and with a clear presentation. In many ways, it is one of Mises' finest books, and clarifies important points that he had introduced in his previous work. The central thesis is one, that there is such a thing as economic law that cannot be identified with the methods of the natural sciences, and two, that the arguments of those who advocate These methods in economics have no scientific foundation whatever, but are based on metaphysical speculation.

8:16In short, Mises's last book was an all-out frontal attack against positivism. This attack concerned not only the verificationist positivism of the Vienna Circle, Schrick, Canop, Funk and others, but also Karl Popper's falsificationist positivism. Popper's theory made ample room for the use of deduction, whereas the Vienna Circle advocated and its strict induction. He also claimed that only falsifiable statements can be scientific while the Vienna Circle posited that all non-verifiable statements are simply nonsensical. Such differences are certainly important in many respects, however, they are irrelevant as far as Mises' critique is concerned, because it aims at the common ground of both versions of positivism.

9:01He stressed in particular that the positivist precept, testing economic theories by confronting to explain them with observed data is not itself derived from any empirical knowledge, rather this precept is an a priori postulate that contradicts the most elementary empirical facts known about human action, in particular that human beings make choices and that there are no known laws that determine those choices. It follows that the observed data in the social sciences have a completely different nature from the data used in the natural sciences. The latter are elements in an exhortable chain of cause and effect. Every single one of them can therefore be used to verify or refute the theories of physics, chemistry and so on. Mises accepts Popper's theory in this regard. The positivistic principle of verifiability as rectified by Popper is unassailable as an epistemological principle of the natural sciences. But the observed data in the social sciences do not stand in such a universally the present chain of cause and effect. More precisely, the only thing that is known about

10:06them is that they are not part of such a chain. They are singular events and must therefore be interpreted on a case-by-case basis. They cannot be used to derive any general laws. They are not a benchmark for verifying or refuting economic theories. Observation-based testing simply makes no sense in economics. Just as the Marxists claim to have knowledge Mises goes to great lengths to bolster his thesis.

10:57He shows that the existence of non-Euclidean geometry does not invalidate the case for an a priori economic science. Similarly, he argues that the development of probability theory cannot possibly be a device to avoid the case for determinism, and in discussing the implications of the theory of evolution for a priori disciplines such as economics, he comes to conclusions very different from those of his friend Roger and others. Mises Mises stresses the hard fact that nothing is known about the future evolution of the human mind. Therefore, the logical and praxeological structure of this mind must be considered as if it were unchanging. For all practical purposes, it is an a priori for the social sciences. In clarifying the logical nature of economic science, Mises stressed that pure reasoning can give us empirical knowledge about the Following in the wake of Kant's analysis, philosophers raised the question, how can the human mind, by aprioristic thinking, deal with the reality of the external world?

12:13As far as praxeology is concerned, the answer is obvious. Both a priori thinking and reasoning on the one hand and human action on the other are manifestations of the human mind. The logical structure of the human mind creates the reality of action. Reason and action are congeneric and homogenous, two aspects of the same phenomenon. In this sense we may apply to praxeology the dictum of Empedocles, knowledge of the same through the same. Mises stressed that the questions whether the judgments of praxeology are to be called analytic or synthetic, and whether or not its procedure is to be qualified as merely tautological, are of verbal interest only. The point had been overlooked in traditional epistemology because the philosophers dealt with thinking as if it were a separate field cut off from other manifestations of human endeavour. They dealt with the problems of Mises argued that because economic theorems were deducted from the praxeological a priori, they provide knowledge of apodictic certainty. Every theorem of praxeology is deducted by

13:33logical reasoning from the category of action. It partakes of the apodictic certainty provided And he emphasized that even the most radical skepticism cannot affect this conclusion precisely because acting and thinking stem from the same source and are in this sense homogenous. There is nothing in the structure of action that the human mind cannot fully explain. In this sense, praxeology supplies certain knowledge. And yet, right on the next page of his book, he was quick to emphasize that praxeological knowledge is but one ingredient of information necessary to succeed in the world. Future choices cannot be determined in advance, and for this reason alone there is therefore an all-pervading uncertainty in human affairs that the apodictic certainty of praxeology cannot alter or diminish.

14:29Man is at the mercy of forces and powers beyond his control. He acts in order to avoid as as much as possible what, as he thinks, will harm himself. But he can at best succeed only with a narrow margin, and he can never know beforehand to what extent his acting will attain the end sought, and, if it attains it, whether his action will in retrospect appear to himself or to the other people looking upon it, as the best choice among those that were open to him at the instant he embarked upon it. Most importantly, uncertainty also Mises did not at all share the conceit displayed by positivists such as Bertrand Russell that the natural sciences will ultimately penetrate all secrets of the world. In his view, human science barely scratches the surface of things. Important though it may be, and Mises was convinced that science was the most important tool for human progress, it is not an intellectual panacea and does not make superfluous the virtues of humility and religion. Although

15:30Although the progress of the natural sciences tends to enlarge the sphere of such scientifically directed action, it will never cover more than a narrow margin of possible events. And even within this margin there can never be absolute certainty. The result aimed at can be thwarted by the invasion of forces not yet sufficiently known or beyond human control. Technological engineering does not eliminate the aleatory element of human existence. It It merely restricts its field a little. There always remains an orbit that to the limited knowledge of man appears as an orbit of pure chance and marks life as a gamble. Man and his works are always exposed to the impact of unforeseen and uncontrollable events. He cannot help banking upon the good luck not to be hit by them. Even dull people cannot fail to realize that their well-being ultimately depends on the operation of forces beyond and Man's Wisdom, Knowledge, Prevision and Provision.

16:31With regard to these forces all human planning is vain. This is what religion has in mind when it refers to the unfathomable decrees of heaven and turns to prayer. Mises probably started working on the second edition of Human Action in early 1962. Percy Graves provided assistance and had already made suggestions for changes in the fall of 1961. While the two men worked together smoothly and productively, cooperation with the publisher was far less successful. For reasons that were never entirely clarified, Yale University Press butchered the book. Mises's life achievement now featured many misprints, different shades of print, displacement and omitted paragraphs and pages, and no more running heads.

17:17He was more than a little angry and suspected political motives. The present management of the press regrets for political reasons the fact that their predecessors published my book. They are especially angry about the great success of Human Action. If they had any sense of propriety at all, they would openly tell the author that they do not want any longer to publish his books, and that he is free to look for another publisher. Eventually Yale University Press did show that sense of propriety, and Mises went on Mises had probably first heard about Regnery through Nijmijer in 1953. This time things worked out as planned and he enjoyed a beautiful new edition. With one exception, the new editions did not feature any major changes or elaborations. Mises sent exhaustive lists of the changes to Reg and Madrid, who sought to keep the Spanish translation up to date. The exception One concerned the definition of freedom. This elaboration was prompted by the fact that in the 1950s some of Mises' most brilliant students, most notably Murray Rothbard and

18:26his Bastiat circle, had carried the case for the free market and against government interventionism to what they felt was its logical conclusion, political anarchism. Last Skirmishes with the Anarchists In 1949 Mises had defined freedom by stating The concept of freedom and bondage makes sense only when referring to the way in which government operates. As far as the government, the social apparatus of compulsion and oppression, confines the exercise of its violence and the threat of such violence to the suppression and prevention of antisocial action, there prevails what reasonably and meaningfully can be called liberty. Such coercion does not substantially restrict man's power to choose, if, however, the government does more than protect people against violent or fraudulent aggression on This elaboration of his position did not dissuade the anarchists, and it is not difficult

20:10In the above passage, Mises gives two definitions of freedom. According to the first, freedom prevails if force is limited to the suppression of antisocial behaviour. Mises gives only one example, robbery, to illustrate what he means by this term. If this was meant to imply that the use of force is legitimate if it concerns the protection of property rights, then Mises' definition of freedom was essentially compatible with the views of the anarchists, His occasional remarks on the question show that he believed the case for anarchism would only hold in a world inhabited by angels. A typical example from about the same period, A shallow-minded school of social philosophers, the anarchists, chose to ignore the matter by suggesting a stateless organisation of mankind. They simply passed over the fact that men are not angels. They were too dull to realise that in the short run an individual or a group of individuals can certainly further their own interests at the expense of their own and all other people's long-run interests. But, as Rothbard's writings on the question

21:31and show he was not that naive. Rothbard published Power and Market only in 1970, but the manuscript of the book, which was originally conceived as a part of Man, Economy and State, was certainly available for Mises in the early 1960s. Mises's second definition of freedom was equally unlikely to steer the anarchists away from their orientation, though for a different reason. According to this one, human action is said to be subject to two distinct influences, praxeological law and government intervention. The influence of the latter is presented as somehow adding to the influence of the former. But this does not square well with what Mises said in the rest of his book about praxeological laws. At all times, at all places, the impact that government intervention has on human beings is mediated through the laws of human action. Praxeological laws are not forces in the sense that human action, for example government action, is a force. Rather, they are the relations that tie up any given force in a chain of causes and consequences.

22:39In private correspondence with Bruno Leone, he regretted that anarchist ideas were supported by some of the most intelligent men of the American rising generation, but he had ready psychological explanation at hand. Anarchism was a reaction to the deification of the state. He had come in touch with the burgeoning anarchist movement already in the years leading up to the publication of Human Action, especially through his contacts with West Coast libertarians, but also in correspondence with Rose Wilder Lane. His debates with these American radicals had remained fruitless, but after some twenty years their extreme anti-statism had gained momentum. The best proof was the existence of the Cirque de Bastia, involving Rothbard, Rico and Lisio, Raymond Cyrus Hoyles, publisher of the Freedom newspaper chain, boasted of this growing impact in a letter to Mises, the first correspondent in 13 years.

23:34Answering Mises' contention that no rational man ever proposed that the production of security be entrusted to private associations, Hoyles said, I happen to know several people who so believe. Robert Lefevre, the founder of the Freedom School, I believe, believes that the market place is the best way to protect life and property. In a subsequent letter of May 21st, Hoyles argued that the production of security in a free market would be organized by insurance companies, thereby anticipating an important argument in later analysis of this problem.

24:20Mises replied in an Hobbesian manner, objecting that in the absence of a monopoly of the use of coercive force, everybody would have continually to defend himself against hosts of aggressors. He concluded, I think you err in assuming that your principles are those of the Declaration of Independence. They are rather the principles that led a hundred years ago the Confederate states to refuse to recognize the President elected by the majority. Wherever and whenever Notice that in the 1860 election Lincoln received far less than a majority of the votes. Now this point of view seems to be at odds with the principle of self-determination, at least in the form in which Mises had championed it for many years.

25:07Had Mises changed his mind? He had discussed this issue in correspondence from the early 1950s with Salvador de Madriaga in Oxford. In one of his letters, Mises held that Ernest Renan had settled the question unambiguously in his famous lecture on the nature of nations. Self-determination is the right of peoples to decide their own fate. However, according to Renan, a nation could be just any voluntary association of persons. What if a subgroup of an existing nation suddenly decided to go its own way? Would this not be an instance of self-determination? Mises was, of course, It is a fact that no ideology has been developed, which would have approved of the existence of a state composed of people speaking different languages. In the absence of such doctrine, There is no argument available against the ambitions of the majority of a territory's population asking for independent statehood. There is only the recourse to the Ultima Ratio Regum. Mises had criticised Madriaga in omnipotent government. Still, he had held the Spaniard

26:31in great esteem until this correspondence led to their falling out. He said, in fact, in the same letter, I think that I have never paid a higher tribute to the achievements of any living author than I did in speaking of you on page 15 of my book. And he concluded, to construct such an ideology of states, including various linguistic groups, is one of the great tasks left to coming generations. He probably owed the idea that nations result from the construction of ideologies to his friend Louis Auger, who had argued that there are no objective or scientific criteria to delimit nations from one another. The true foundation of a nation is a specific political myth. But this conclusion begged a question. Self-determination is relevant only if there are disagreements between individuals and groups on ideological questions. How should secessionist movements be handled at a time when no great overarching ideology exists? The only solution available for classical liberals relied on the principle of self-determination. But when Mises applied this principle to

27:33It is of no avail for the discussion of our problem whether or not we qualify Lincoln's attitude as liberal. In denying to the Southerners the right to secede, the very right on which the existence of the United States was morally founded, he certainly did not behave as a liberal. But there was another problem in the case – slavery. One could argue the The real issue is not self-determination but slavery. In fact, most of the contemporary European liberals argued this way and sympathised with the Unionists. The quote shows how uneasy Mises was at discussing this problem. He just could not reach a clear conclusion. Ten years later he wrote, When every territory can, by majority vote, determine whether it should form an independent state or a part of a larger state, there will no The Liberals have always maintained that it does not matter for the people as a whole, and for individual citizens, whether their own state sovereignty stretches over a larger Mises ended their 1952-1953 correspondence rather abruptly, saying that the Madriagas

29:11point of view was the most anti-liberal proposition I have ever heard. He put an equally abrupt end to his 1962 correspondence with Hoyles, when the latter expressed his Mises regret to see Mises advocate any form of socialism or any form of tyranny. Two similar cases might be mentioned in which Mises did not pursue correspondence touching on the necessity of coercion, and Mr. Kuhlmann, who favoured an increase in inheritance taxes in order to decrease income taxes, reminded him, and remember you say taxes are necessary, and Mrs. Powell Moffat complained about his endorsement of conscription in the second Edition of Human Action. But this did not prevent his continued association with other members of the anarchist camp. In January 1964 he taught a course on money at Robert Lefevre's Freedom School. This was the same Lefevre who had praised Hoyer's succinct statement of the case for anarchism. Mises even served on the advisory board of the Freedom School and eventually also on the Council of Advisors for F. A. Baldry-Harper's Institute

30:15for Humane Studies, IHS in California. Baldi Harper had founded IHS in 1963, after leaving FEE, yet for some time worked for the Volcker Fund and then lectured at Wabash College. A champion of formal manners, Mises was close enough to Harper to address him as Baldi. In another letter he wrote that he could only stay for three days because he had to return for his NYU seminar. He also mentioned that his health was not very good. He also continued and his affiliation with Frank Chodorov's Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, which he had supported from the very beginning in 1952. Moreover, he praised the new individualist review that graduate student Ralph Reiko had established at the University of Chicago on behalf of a local chapter of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. He wrote for it a review of Rothbard's Man, Economy and State, and seemed to rate it higher than the Freeman or any other journal. He also praised the work in correspondence with one of the thinkers

31:13Mises also followed Rothbard's subsequent writings and activities, often to his chagrin. A 1968 letter that Furtick wrote to Mises probably conveys Mises's own feelings as well. Among the things which are really disturbing is the case of Murray Rothbard. I enclosed the current issue of National Review. Now he's allied with the New Left. Imagine that! Just a short while ago he was on the committee that favoured Castro and Cuba. It's sad to see a brilliant mind like his go to pot that way. Last skirmishes were the monetarists. Rothbard's apparent decline was not the main worry for of the Aging Mises. He followed with great concern how the American monetary system, and the global monetary system built on it, unraveled all through the 1960s. In the middle of the decade, the alarm bells were ringing at the headquarters of the US monetary authorities.

32:19Foreign central banks and individuals were following the lead of France in redeeming dollars in gold. The United States government's stock of gold shrank on a daily basis and at an Accelerating Rate. The new economists were quick to repeat their endless lamentation. Not all of this was the consequence of the unfavourable balance of payments, and they demanded measures against greedy businessmen driving up prices in the States. Some were even calling for controls of foreign exchange. Philip Courtney wrote to Mises, inquiring why he had not published anything on the present calamity. Mises replied that in his books The Theory of Money and Credit What a catastrophe if this happens to be a considerable part of the nation. The supporters of this doctrine are inconsistent as they think that this calamity can only occur in the mutual transactions of the inhabitants of sovereign nations and not also in the business relations of the administrative subdivisions. There prevails in the world the opinion that the inflationary policy of the American government will continue that sooner or later the gold

33:55The gold standard hoard in Fort Knox will be exhausted and the American administration will be forced to abandon its policy of selling the ounce to foreign governments and central banks at $35. This explains the drain upon the American government's gold holdings. If our civilization will not in the next years or decades completely collapse, the gold standard will be restored. Mises had already been informed by Machloupp himself. His former student asked him for hints about books or articles that may contain pertinent material to bolster his claim that the French monetary authorities in the 1920s had successfully abolished the gold standard.

34:45This must have come as a shock for Mises. In the fall of the same year, he met Machloupp at the Mont-Balarin Society meeting in Strasa, only to witness him reiterating his new views. He got very upset and told Margit not to talk to Machloupp any more. Here's Machloupp's Philip Courtney made his customary plea for an immediate return to the gold standard with a substantial increase in the official price of gold. After listening to the reasons he gave for raising the price of gold, I used the chairman's prerogative to make a comment in the subject. I compared the plea of the gold boosters to the pleas of trade union leaders who want wage rates to be raised after a period of falling prices, The break in friendly relations lasted for several years.

36:05No wonder Mises was upset. His former student, an erstwhile champion of the gold standard, had now publicly reduced the issue to a question of special interest politics. Another year later, Mises sensed a seismic shift in the quality of the developing crisis. He wrote, What not so long ago could be called a monetary crisis is more and more, at least for the US, developing into a most serious political crisis. The Federal Government, as well as the states and the municipalities, have since 1960 wasted fabulous sums of money for more or less unnecessary expenditures and are now facing tremendous deficits. There cannot be any question of a serious monetary reform, because the ruling party, for many years probably leftists, thinks Mises planned to take part in an April 1968 conference on international monetary problems, Organised by the Graduate Institute of International Studies, the invitation came from Jacques Freymont, who then headed the institute, but had been extended at the behest of Philip Courtney.

37:32Mises was looking forward to the event, but then Courtney explained that the agenda and the conclusions were already set, and that academic discussion was to be kept to a strict minimum. For your guidance, we do not recommend putting an end to the IMF. Mises immediately declined Participation. Last Honours On October 20, 1962, Mises received the Austrian Medal of Honour, Ian Seichen, at the Austrian Embassy in Washington. He had the embassy invite Otto Kalier for the luncheon. They also asked some of his other former students, probably those residing in Washington. In June 1963, he obtained an honorary doctorate from NYU. In 1964, an honorary doctorate in political science from University of Heiburg, Hayek was there during those years. In March 1969, probably in anticipation of his retirement, he was elected a distinguished fellow of the American Economic Association. His election may have been an attempt to influence the Nobel Committee, which in the fall of the same year would grant the first Nobel Prize in Economics. The prize went instead to Ragnar

38:41Marfrisch and Jan Tinbergen, economists who are all but forgotten today. Mises would never receive the Nobel Prize, but one year after his death, Hayek won it for his elaboration of the Misesian business cycle theory. These official acknowledgments were gratifying, of course, but Mises did not pride himself too much on this type of recognition. Throughout his life, he remained dedicated more to his ideas than to the applause of of His Contemporaries. Thus he must have been even more pleased with the continued success of his books. Nymeyer had reprinted Planning for Freedom in 4000 copies by September 1965. Jonathan Cape republished Socialism in 1969 and FEE ordered 1000 copies. At the same time Yale University Press ceded its rights to bureaucracy, omnipotent government and theory History and History, which were now republished by Arlington House. A young Arlington House senior editor by the name of Llewelyn H. Rockwell Jr. was in charge of these projects.

39:46He had been a subscriber to the Freeman as a high school student, and in 1968 had moved to New York City, where he took part in FEE seminars and got in touch with George Roche. Rockwell followed Roche in 1971 to Hillsdale College to run its ideological and publications programs, which included a Mises Lecture Series, the newsletter Impromise, and Hillsdale College Press, and a few years later joined the staff of Congressman Ron Paul, a serious student of Mises, and a lifelong opponent of central banking. Rockwell only met Mises once, but he eagerly absorbed and digested his ideas. In 1982, he would establish the now-famous Ludwig von Mises Institute. A very different kind of recognition that he was happy to experience at the end of of His Life was the virtual vindication of his theory of economic calculation by the practitioners, the economists of the East Bloc. In the fall of 1967, a group of young economists in communist-rule Czechoslovakia had started reviving the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s in light of post-war experiences with centrally planned

40:55economies. One of them, Dr. Karl Kuba, entitled his study Plan and Market in Socialism. This Mises was circulated for internal use of the Czechoslovak Academy of the Sciences. He studied Mises's original paper from 1920 and Hayek's later modification of the argument, as well as Oskar Lange's Scheme for Market Socialism, about which he wrote, Based on today's experiences, one can say that this is a purely theoretical demonstration. A colleague of Kubis, Aldrich Another Czechoslovakian economist, confided to Fritz Machlup, we have now learned that Mises and Hayek were right, and that Oskar Lange was an idealist. A few months later this intellectual rebellion ushered in the short-lived Prague Spring of 1968, almost Most eight months of political and economic liberalisation crushed by Soviet tanks.

42:00Most of all, Mises must have enjoyed the sort of recognition that comes from the concrete actions of people he had inspired. In April 1967, a man from Hollywood bound for the Vietnam War made FEE his life insurance beneficiary. In the event of my death, I would want this money, fifteen thousand dollars, to be used and only to place copies of Human Action by Ludwig von Mises in any libraries which will accept them. On a lighter note, after a libertarian conference in Orange County, California with Mises among the participants, local lefties carried around pictures of Marcuse, Mao and others at a May Day demonstration on the UC Irvine campus. Mises' host wrote and asked Mises for photos to use in an under attack.

42:51And on his 90th birthday, the CBS television show Spectrum featured a birthday special on Ludwig von Mises. The speaker, Jeffrey St. John, called Mises the de Tocqueville of modern economics and observed that he had explained long ago that Nixon-style price controls are economic dictatorship and have in the past produced communism, Nazism and fascism. On the same occasion, Harper's IHS had sponsored a two-volume festschrift, six copies of which were sent to Mises at the end of October. He was touched and commented to Market, The only good thing about being a non-agenarian is that you are able to read your obituaries while you are still alive. However, there were a few magnificent obituaries that Mises would not be able to read. The following obituaries were compiled by Petina Bean Graves and Robert W. McGee in Mises' Annotated Bibliography. American Economic Review In Memoriam, Ludwig von Mises, 1881, 1973, Volume 64, No. 3, June 1974. Drafted, but unsigned, by Fritz Machlup. Mises was certainly not a popular economist, by his blunt criticism of popular views

44:09and Policies, by his unrelenting attacks on inflationism, interventionism and socialism, and by his uncompromising steadfastness in arguing the case for private enterprise and free markets, he acquired as many intellectual enemies and detractors as any of the renowned economists of the 20th century. At the same time, Mises was a beloved teacher and friend of a host of students who came to appreciate the integrity and profundity of his teachings in Courses and Seminars, but particularly in his private seminar. Robert James Bidonado, Von Mises, The Final Salute, Unbound, Boston, Individuals for a Rational Society 2, No. 1, September-October 1973.

44:56Our age may well be labelled by future historians as the age of mediocrity. Nothing is so characteristic of this century as the ever-shrinking stature of men, yet But if these times are to be vindicated, it will be solely by the grace of a few lonely giants who stood tall and strode far, guided down unexplored paths by unflinching courage and unwavering vision. On October 10th, 1973, one of those giants fell. Dr. Ludwig von Mises is dead at the age of 92, and it is difficult to conceive of any Any person in our time who has given the world so much, yet been rewarded so little in return. John Chamberlain, Unsung Economist Who Was Profit, Chicago Tribune, October 13, 1973 Genuine innovators such as von Mises have to wait for death to gain their rightful recognition.

45:54It is all very unfair, but the truth does eventually catch up with the showmen, relegating With the death of Professor Ludwig von Mises yesterday, aged 92, the world's liberal Liberal economists lose their most prolific pen and Austria loses the last lingering reminder of the intellectual preeminence of Vienna at the turn of the century. As an authoritative exponent of liberal economics, he has enjoyed a popularity never foreseen in the Asian liberal economies of Japan, Hong Kong and Formosa, and respect never foreseen in the communist countries for his exposition of the impossibility of calculation in a full The Gentle, witty, but tenaciously logical teaching of von Mises in Europe and America earned him a loyal army of auxiliary writers and pamphleteers.

47:08Henry Hazlitt, Remarks at Mises' Memorial Service, October 16, 1973 His outstanding moral quality was moral courage, the ability to stand alone, and an almost International Herald Tribute Economist Ludwig von Mises Advanced Libertarian Theory, October 12, 1973 Mr von Mises was recognised as a brilliant contributor to economic thought not only by his disciples but also by many who disagreed radically with his political and social philosophy.

48:01Israel M. Kirzner, Tribute in National Review 25, No. 45, November 9, 1973 To those who knew him, Ludwig Mises was, in the face of shocking neglect by so many of of his contemporaries, a living exemplar of incorruptible intellectual integrity, a model of passionate, relentless scholarship and dedication, it will not be easy to forget these stern lessons which he so courageously personified. John McFaul's Investment Advisor, The Passing of Ludwig von Mises, Broadcast Memorial to Ludwig von Mises, October 14-16, 1973, During Value Action Radio Programs. Mises was a master of synthesis. He brought wholeness out of the fractured field of economics.

48:51He was a scholar of great patience and integrity, who believed that the movement toward collectivism and state intervention posed a grave threat to Western civilization. Monatsblätter für freiheitliche Wirtschaftspolitik, der letzte Liberale, The Last Liberal, 11 November 1973, with the passing of the last liberal, a liberal of the old school who occasionally said liberalism, that is what I am. The last survivor of the epic-making Viennese school of economics is gone at 92 years of age. Now honoured by a diminishing band of followers, he has almost become a legend, on the one hand in the field of money and business cycle Theory, and on the other hand, and above all, in the world of economic and political theory.

49:39Translated from the German. William H. Peterson, Ludwig von Mises, in memoriam, The Wall Street Journal, October 12, 1973. Mr. von Mises believed in choice. He believed that choosing among options determines all human decisions, and hence the entire sphere of human action. While man could destroy himself and civilization, he could also ascend in a free society, that is, a free economy to undreamed of cultural, intellectual and technological heights. In any event, thought would be decisive. Mr. von Mises believed in the free market of not only goods and services, but of ideas as well, in the potential of human intellect. He held that a free society and a free market are inseparable. He gloried in the potential of reason and man. In some, he stood for principle in the finest tradition of Western civilization.

50:37La Prensa, Buenos Aires. Ludwig von Mises murió en Nueva York. Ludwig von Mises died in New York, October 18th, 1973. Mises's life, his works and his conferences were all all dedicated to rounding out the thesis that men are not automatons. They act rationally, and the ideas that motivate them are the original cause of the course of history. His concepts make clear that government intervention leads inevitably not only to conflicts within a country, but also to international conflicts. Leonard Reed, Remarks at Memorial Service, October 16, 1973 Ludwig Mises is truly, and I use this term in the present tense, a teacher. More than two generations have studied under him, and countless thousands of others have learned from his books. Books and students are the enduring monuments of a teacher, and these monuments are his. This generation of students will pass away, but the ideas set in motion by his writings will be a fountain source for new students for countless generations to come.

52:01Readers of Mises' majestic, formidable and uncompromising works must have often been surprised to meet him in person. Perhaps they had formed the image The image of Ludwig Mises is cold, severe, austere, the logical scholar repelled by lesser mortals, bitter at the follies around him and at the long trail of wrongs and insults that he had suffered. They couldn't have been more wrong, for what they met was a mind of genius blended harmoniously with a personality of great sweetness and benevolence. Not once has any of us heard a harsh or bitter word escape from Mises' lips. Unfailingly gentle and courteous, Ludwig Mises was always there to encourage even the slightest signs of productivity or intelligence in his friends and students, and always there as an inspiration and as a constant star.

52:56inserted by Philip M. Crane in Congressional Record, October 23, 1973. Murray Rothbard later added, When Mises died and I was preparing an obituary, Professor Reiko kindly sent me a deeply moving passage from Adonais, Shelley's great Eulogy to Keats, that as usual for Reiko struck just a right note in a final assessment of Mises. For such as he can lend, they borrow not glory from those who made to the world their prey and he is gathered to the kings of thought who waged contention with their time's decay and of the past are all that cannot pass away.