I just finished Ludwig von Mises' Liberalism; it wasn't
quite what I was expecting. It's not clear to me why he's
beloved of libertarians and reviled to various degrees by progressives; both
camps should find things to agree (and disagree) with in his particular
philosophy. Though he's often mentioned in the same breath as
Hayek, both of them being of the Austrian school and the latter a student of the
former, I found Liberalism to be much less compelling than
The Road To Serfdom. Liberalism quite plainly
shows its age at times which, while Mises' has a lot of good ideas, makes it
hard to swallow the work as a whole.
The starting point of Mises philosophy is that the goal of "social
policy" is to increase the absolute material well-being of all members of
society:
Liberalism is a doctrine directed entirely towards the conduct of men in this
world. In the last analysis, it has nothing else in view than the advancement of
their outward, material welfare and does not concern itself directly with their
inner, spritual and metaphysical needs. It does not promise men happiness and
contentment, but only the most abundant possible satisfaction of all those
desires that can be satisfied by the things of the outer world.1
After reviewing the five possible systems of organization based around the
division of labor he concludes that capitalism represents the best means by
which humanity's aggregate material welfare may be increased. It is easy to see
why Mises appeals a to certain class of fiscal (and social) conservatives since
he, as a consequence of the philosophy sketched above, advocates a free market
system with zero government regulation/intervention.
However, I find the appeal he holds for many libertarians to be somewhat
mystifying. The policies which he advocates (unregulated markets, private
ownership of the means of production, etc.)
strongly coincide with those held by most libertarians,
but he arrives at them via some very non-libertarian assumptions.
Anticipating Rawls by several decades he says the following in the introductory
paragrpah of the section entitled "Private Property and Ethics":
In seeking to demonstrate the social function and necessity of private ownership
of the means of production and of the concomitant inequality in the distrubtion
of income and wealth, we are at the same time providing proof of the moral
justification for private property and for the capitalist social order based
upon it.2
Mises' dedication to private property is purely instrumental; private property
and the inequalities in wealth that it generates are justified because they
benefit society as a whole. He then goes on to say
Everything that serves to preserve the social order is moral; everything that is
detrimental to it is immoral. Accordingly, when we reach the conclusion that an
institution is beneficial to society, one can no longer object that it is
immoral. The may possibly be a difference of opinion about whether a particular
institution is socially beneficial or harmful. But once it has been judged
beneficial, one can no longer contend that, for some inexplicable reason, it
must be condemned as immoral.3
Perhaps in other works he has added qualifiers to such sentiments, but in
Liberalism they are presented without caveat. Though likely
unintentional on Mises' part the above nevertheless sounds somewhat
authoritarian in its absolutism. More important for this analysis, however, is
that Mises' formulation places the good of society over the rights of the
individual, essentially inverting the standard libertarian ethos.
Which is somewhat ironic considering the critiques that he levels at the
etatists. He rails against them4 for treating the state as an end in
itself, but it seems to me that he commits the same error with respect to
society as a whole. "Society" is no more real an entity than "the state"; it
has no independent interests of its own. Like government it is simply a
phenomena arising from the collective choices of individuals. Mises' reasoning
is ultimately flawed because it derives the rights of individuals on the basis
of what is good for society without ever demonstrating how society comes to have
a legitimate claim for perpetuation in the first place.
In the same vein progressives should not reject Mises' work out of hand. His
primary goal is to increase the material well-being of society as a whole,
a cause that progressives should be able to embrace with ease.
Consider some of the ideas that Mises endorses:
- Self-determination for any collection of individuals large enough to form an
administrative unit.
- Absolute freedom of movement for all individuals.
- Complete formal equality under the law for all individuals.
- Peace
That last one is a biggie since its a theme to which he returns over and over
again throughout the book. He contends that states should give up empire
building, give up colonialism, and instead embrace the cause of universal peace
as completely as possible. That stance places him firmly in the progressive
camp. Admittedly there are a few problematic bits about the white man's burden,
but even in that case he advocates turning administration of the colonies over
to the League of Nations with an end towards granting them full autonomy as
quickly as possible.
The conflict with contemporary progressives comes, I believe, from his
contention that unbridled capitalism is
the best system for achieving this end. As Mises points out that is largely an
empiric question; presumably he would accept another form of social
organization if progressives could demonstrate that it was more efficient in
accomplishing the same goal. As I noted above this is not, in essence, that
dissimilar from the position taken by John Rawls, so it's
hard to argue that Mises philosophy is inherently inimical to the interests of
progressive.
All of which leads me to wonder how many of the people, in both the pro- and
anti-Mises camps, have actually read anything that he's written and how many are
just repeating received wisdom.
1 P. xix
2 P. 14
3 P. 15
4 Pp. 17 - 19
