Ludwig von Mises
1881 – 1973
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’ writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation.
Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science which Mises called “praxeology”. Mises wrote many works on two related economic themes: 1. monetary economics, [inflation], and the role of government, and 2. the differences between government-controlled economies and free trade. His influential work on economic freedoms, their causes and consequences, brought him to highlight the interrelationships between economic and non-economic freedoms in societies, and the appropriate role for government.
See also our collection of extracts, essays, and other resources on Mises.
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See the Liberty Matters online discussions on The Misesian Paradox: Interventionism Is Not Sustainable and Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit at 101.
Read the Liberty Classics Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism: A Still Timely Case Against Marx, Liberalism versus the State, and Alternatives to a Burgeoning Bureaucracy: Lessons from Ludwig von Mises’s Bureaucracy from Econlib
Read the Liberty Classics Individualism Rightly Understood from Law & Liberty
Mises featured as the September 2020 OLL Birthday. Read it here
For additional information about Ludwig von Mises see the following:
- Essays on Mises
- at our sister website Econlib: the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics entry on Mises
See the Timeline of the Life and Work of Ludwig von Mises:
Key: events in the author’s life (blue); historical events (green); books & organisations (red).
Quotes from Ludwig von Mises:
- Ludwig von Mises on the division of labor
- Ludwig von Mises on the “boon” of a tariff privilege is soon dissipated
- Ludwig von Mises on cosmopolitan cooperation and peace
- Ludwig von Mises on wealth creation
- Ludwig von Mises on “interventionism”, free market, and socialism
- Ludwig von Mises on consumer and the economic ship
- Ludwig von Mises on liberalism and the battle of ideas
- Ludwig von Mises on the State Theory of Money
- Ludwig von Mises on the worship of the state
- Ludwig von Mises on the gold standard and peace on earth
- Ludwig von Mises on classical liberalism and the gold standard
- Ludwig von Mises how price controls lead to socialism
- Ludwig von Mises and the Emergence of Etatism in Germany
- Ludwig von Mises on the interconnection between economic and political freedom
- Ludwig von Mises on the gold standard as the symbol of international peace and prosperity
- Ludwig von Mises on human action, predicting the future, and who will win the World Cup Football tournament
- Ludwig von Mises on the impossibility of rational economic planning under Socialism
- Ludwig von Mises argues that sound money is an instrument for the protection of civil liberties and a means of limiting government power
- Ludwig von Mises lays out five fundamental truths of monetary expansion
- Ludwig von Mises identifies the source of the disruption of the world monetary order as the failed policies of governments and their central banks
- Ludwig von Mises shows the inevitability of economic slumps after a period of credit expansion
- Ludwig von Mises argues that monopolies are the direct result of government intervention and not the product of any inherent tendency within the capitalist system
- Ludwig von Mises argues that the division of labor and human cooperation are the two sides of the same coin and are not antagonistic to each other
- Ludwig von Mises laments the passing of the Age of Limited Warfare and the coming of Mass Destruction in the Age of Statism and Conquest
Titles from Ludwig von Mises:
