Since Jews and anti-Semitism have become a popular topic here of late, I thought I’d point out Mises’ conclusion regarding the root cause of modern anti-Semitism.
“That they form everywhere a minority which can be legally defined in a precise way makes it tempting, in an age of interventionism, to discriminate against them.”
Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, Chapter 8: Anti-Semitism and Racism
The whole chapter is a must-read.
Great stuff. Hit the nail right on the head.
In addition, I would suggest that Jewish tradition teaches a moral/spiritual code that posits itself as supreme and a standard against which earthly agents are judged, even kings and agents of the state. Therefore, consider how those amongst us who criticise the state from the perspective of ‘natural law’ are regarded by those who elevate ‘pragmatism/Leviathan’ as a loftier ideal; and then imagine that we were identifiable along racial/cultural lines.
The problem with that theory is that those who persecuted the Jews generally also subscribed to heteronomous ethical codes themselves.
I always thought it was quite difficult to identify Jewish people. It seems to include ethnicity, citizenship and religion. Even Jews disagree as to who is and isn’t Jewish
Does this chapter supposed to somehow provide a rebuttal to anti-Semitism, or to Nazism? Is this article in regard to Nazi policies during WWII and the staging of the Holocaust? This has to be one of the worst things I’ve read from Mises.
The idiomatic congeniality of the Indo-European languages was once explained on the hypothesis of a common descent of all these peoples. This Aryan hypothesis was scientifically disproved long ago. The Aryan race is an illusion. Scientific anthropology does not recognize this fable.
What was disproved? Mises has no clue what he’s talking about anthropology, and this ignorance runs rampant through the chapter.
For more than a hundred years anthropologists have studied the bodily features of various races. The undisputed outcome of these scientific investigations is that the peoples of white skin, Europeans and non-European descendants of emigrated European ancestors, represent a mixture of various bodily characteristics. Men have tried to explain this fact as the result of intermarriage between the members of pure primitive stocks. Whatever the truth of this, it is certain that there are today no pure stocks within the class or race of white-skinned people.
There’s no evidence to support the theory that no pure stocks exist.
Finally people have tried, especially in Germany, to discover the physical characteristics of an alleged Jewish or Semitic race as distinguished from the characteristics of European non-Jews. These quests, too, have failed completely. It has proved impossible to differentiate the Jewish Germans anthropologically from the non-Jewish ones. In the field of anthropology there is neither a Jewish race nor Jewish racial characteristics. The racial doctrine of the anti-Semites pretends to be natural science. But the material from which it is derived is not the result of the observation of natural phenomena. It is the genealogy of Genesis and the dogma of the rabbis’ teaching that all members of their religious community are descended from the subjects of King David.
This was laughable at best. Are you saying you can’t differentiate between a Jew and non-Jew? Are you saying a Jewish race doesn’t exist?
Negroes and whites differ in racial—i.e., bodily—features; but it is impossible to tell a Jewish German from a non-Jewish one by any racial characteristic.
You can classify people/races. This is pretty known. If you’re good enough you’ll be able to nail exactly what someone is on physical characteristics.
They consider—with the exception of Jews and the offspring of Jews—all white men speaking German as Aryans. They do not discriminate among them according to bodily features. German-speaking people are in their opinion Germans, even if it is beyond doubt that they are the scions of Slavonic, Romanic, or Mongol (Magyar or Finno-Ugric) ancestors.
Do we have to go into the Germanic tribes?
Nazism wants to combat the Jewish mind. But it has not succeeded so far in defining its characteristic features. The Jewish mind is no less mythical than the Jewish race.
Not only does the Jewish race not exist, but apparently the Jewish mind doesn’t exist either?
Consistent anti-Semites must reject Christianity.
Most of them do. They’re called heathens.
We do not need to decide here whether or not Christianity itself can be called Jewish. At any rate Christianity developed out of the Jewish creed. It recognizes the Ten Commandments as eternal law and the Old Testament as Holy Writ. The Apostles and the members of the primitive community were Jews. It could be objected that Christ did not agree in his teachings with the rabbis. But the facts remain that God sent the Saviour to the Jews and not to the Vandals, and that the Holy Spirit inspired books in Hebrew and in Greek but not in German. If the Nazis were prepared to take their racial myths seriously and to see in them more than oratory for their party meetings, they would have to eradicate Christianity with the same brutality they use against liberalism and pacifism. They failed to embark upon such an enterprise, not because they regarded it as hopeless, but because their politics had nothing at all to do with racism.
Christianity was a Jewish invention.
I admit I am unfamiliar with the terminology ‘heteronomous ethical codes’
(and of course I have made no academic study of anti-semitism!)
I think people just need something to hate. It’s a personal responsiblity thing; life sucks because of _____. It doesn’t suck because you are an a**hole, but because the other guy is (truth be told, it’s because you both are )
From Theory and History:
“Heteronomous” in this context means “outside the nexus of means and ends”.
If an ethical theory tries to refer to anything other than utility, it is “heteronomous” in this sense.
It’s a personal responsiblity thing; life sucks because of _____. It doesn’t suck because you are an a**hole, but because the other guy is (truth be told, it’s because you both are )
“It’s a personal responsiblity thing; life sucks because of The State.”
I know I’m not as big of an a**hole as the state.
The fact that you can make that comment without thinking it over leads me to question the assertion; states are controlled by people, regular people like you and I.
I don’t control any states.
Nir,
“Heteronomous” means “subject to a standard external to itself”. So an ethic is heteronomous if an individual’s conduct is held to the standard, not of the individual’s own personal, subjective values, but of an external standard like adherence to the Ten Commandments or Natural Law, or whether the conduct promotes the “goals” of “the nation”, “geist”, “history”, of some other holistic notion.
See Mises’ A Critique of the Holistic and Metaphysical View of Society, from Human Action.
“The historical role of the theory of the division of labor as elaborated by British political economy from Hume to Ricardo consisted in the complete demolition of all metaphysical doctrines concerning the origin and the operation of social cooperation. It consummated the spiritual, moral and intellectual emancipation of mankind inaugurated by the philosophy of Epicureanism. It substituted an autonomous rational morality for the heteronomous and intuitionist ethics of older days. Law and legality, the moral code and social institutions are no longer revered as unfathomable decrees of Heaven. They are of human origin, and the only yardstick that must be applied to them is that of expediency with regard to human welfare. The utilitarian economist does not say:Fiat justitia, pereat mundus. He says: Fiat justitia,ne pereat mundus. He does not ask a man to renounce his well-being for the benefit of society. He advises him to recognize what his rightly understood interests are.”
The fact that you can make that comment without thinking it over leads me to question the assertion; states are controlled by people, regular people like you and I.
You maybe. I’m pretty anti-violence myself, so the state obviously isn’t controlled by people like me.
I never said you do. I said they are controlled by people, not mythical creatures. Statists are regular people like you or I.
“They come from american homes and american schools, american neighborhoods, they shop at american stores… this is the best we have to offer… maybe it’s not the politicians that suck, maybe it’s the public… the public sucks; F** hope!” ~~George Carlin
You maybe. I’m pretty anti-violence myself, so the state obviously isn’t controlled by people like me.
You are anti-violent mostly (not fully, I will make no judgements upon you ethically) because others do your violence for you (namely the various states of the world which brutally oppress their people to uphold the capitlalist structure and property rights).
Trust me, were this a state of nature, you would either be violent, or starve to death. Pacifism is a product of human societies contrary to the natural order.
Thanks,
I find that paragraph difficult to assent to… I’m thinking the first sentence struggles in the face of the fact that all moral law’s geared as they are to guide conduct do concern themselves with means and ends. How else could they not. Taking Kant just for example; the principle against lying is against any/and all acts of lying, and the device which Kant promotes, of reflecting on the logical consequences of all acting in such a way, focuses ones attention on consequences. (Kants ‘objective imperative’ appears to ape the form of a particularly ‘rigid’ rule utilitarianism fore example)
I agree, that there is a spectrum of superficially more and less ‘consequentialist’ moral theories, but all moral theories have the core consequentialist attributes of concerning themselves with acts, and will almost certainly have been informed by some reflection on the likely consequences of the rule adoption would be for the individual and community of individuals concerned(if they are not merely uncritically assessed gifts of traditional wisdom - formed by accident and not perpetuated by the positive consequences of adopting the traditional mores)
I agree with Mises and some of the other pieces here, but there are also elements of Jewish culture that tend to aggravate those around them; such as their separatism, ethnic elitism and alien religious and social practices. Not that this is a good reason to dislike Jews as a class, but it can make many Jews especially annoying.
You are anti-violent mostly (not fully, I will make no judgements upon you ethically) because others do your violence for you (namely the various states of the world which brutally oppress their people to uphold the capitlalist structure and property rights).
Right. The capitalist structure that doesn’t exist and the property rights that are always undermined. Now I can blame The State for being lazy and/or stupid.
Trust me, were this a state of nature, you would either be violent, or starve to death. Pacifism is a product of human societies contrary to the natural order.
I never said I wanted to live in a state of nature or anything about pacifism.