Liberty Fund Books

Description

Ludwig von Mises, the author of such classics as Socialism and Human Action, is universally acknowledged as one of the most important classical liberals and economists of the twentieth century. In 1934, he left his native Austria in fear of the Nazis who seized all his papers in 1938 in Vienna and, Mises thought, destroyed them.

But the papers were not destroyed. In 1996, Richard Ebeling and his wife Anna discovered the papers in an archive in Moscow. This second volume in the resulting Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises series from Liberty Fund represents a treasure trove of important essays by the great free market economist.

Volume 1 of the series is scheduled for publication in September 2003.

Volume 3 of the series was published by Liberty Fund in 2000.

Richard Ebeling has been the Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College since 1988 and chairman of the economics and business administration department at Hillsdale since 1998. He has served as the editor or co-editor for twenty other books, including The Age of Economists: From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman and Human Action: a 50-Year Tribute.

Reviews

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
Richard M. Ebeling

Part I Monetary Disorder, Inflation, and Interventionist State (1918–32)
1 The Quantity Theory 3
2 On the Currency Question 10
3 Remarks Concerning the Establishment of a Ukrainian Note-Issuing Bank 23
4 The Austrian Currency Problem Prior to the Peace Conference 30
5 On the Actions to Be Taken in the Face of Progressive Currency Depreciation 47
6 The Reentry of German-Austria into the German Reich and the Currency Question 65
7 Foreign-Exchange Control Must Be Abolished 87
8 Direct Taxation in City and Country 91
9 Vienna’s Political Relationship with the Provinces in Light of Economics 97
10 Viennese Industry and the Tax on Luxury Goods 119
11 A Serious Decline in the Value of the Currency 122
12 The Abolition of Money in Russia 127
13 Inflation and the Shortage of Money: Stop the Printing Presses 132
14 The Return to the Gold Standard 136
15 Restoring Europe’s State Finances 154
16 Changes in American Economic Policy 160
17 Commercial and Bureaucratic Business Management 163

Part II The Political Economy of the Great Depression (1931–36)
18 The Economic Crisis and Capitalism 169
19 The Gold Standard and Its Opponents 174
20 The Myth of the Failure of Capitalism 182
21 Interventionism as the Cause of the Economic Crisis: A Debate Between Otto Conrad and Ludwig Mises 192
22 Planned Economy and Socialism 208
23 The Return to Freedom of Exchange 213
24 Two Memoranda on the Problems of Monetary Stabilization and Foreign-Exchange Rates 223

Part III Austrian Economic Policy and the Great Depression (1927–35)
25 The Balance Sheet of Economic Policies Hostile to Property 237
26 Adjusting Public Expenditures to the Economy’s Financial Capacity 241
27 Foreign-Exchange Control and Some of Its Consequences 251
28 An Agenda for Alleviating the Economic Crisis: The Gold Parity, Foreign-Exchange Control, and Budgetary Restraint 261
29 An International Loan as the “Breathing Room” for Austrian Economic Reform 266
30 On Limiting the Adverse Effects of a Proposed Increase in the Value-Added Tax 272
31 Foreign-Exchange Policy 276
32 The Direction of Austrian Financial Policy: A Retrospective and Prospective View 286

Part IV The Political Economy of Irrationalism, Autarky, and Collective Security on the Road to War (1935–38)
33 The Cult of the Irrational 297
34 Aut arky: The Road to Misery 302
35 The League of Nations and the Raw-Materials Problem 307
36 Guidelines for a New Order of Relationships in the Danube Region 315

Part V Austrian Economics
37 The Austrian Economists 323
38 Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk: In Memory of the Tenth Anniversary of His Death 329

Part VI Methodology of the Social Sciences
39 The Logical Problem of Economics 335
40 The Logical Character of the Science of Human Action 341

Part VII Economic Calculation under Socialism
41 New Contributions to the Problem of Socialist Economic Calculation 351
42 Recent Writings Concerning the Problem of Economic Calculation under Socialism 367
43 Economic Calculation under Commercial Management and Bureaucratic Administration 372

Appendix: A Soviet Response to Mises
44 F. Kapelush, “Anti-Marxism”: Professor Mises as a Theorist of Fascism 381
Index 393