Are there any good critiques of Ludwig von Mises’ life and work out there?
I noticed the need in Wikipedia, where there’s just one lousy piece digged out from some obscure book review. It shouldn’t be just positive reviews or comments (which I’m sure can be found in heaps), but also words from his opponents and critics, that strongly disagreed with him.
Oh, and it would be nice to have a good link/resource to the “Mises was right” note.
If you actually read the article from The Economist you would notice that there is not a single word of refutation in it, it is simply a hit piece against Mises.
As a general rule, most critisisms or “refutations” of (mostly philosophical) positions I have read were just missing the point/misunderstanding the original positions. Many times I thought “did they even read what they are arguing against or just a terrible college student summary?”. The best ones are in which the original premisses of an argument are granted and then to be shown to be self contradictory or just not leading to the conclusions (like Böhm Bawerks critic of Marxism).
Yeah, that’s what kind of bugged me as well.
So, are there somewhere at least halfway decent critiques of LvM? Anything? Bueller? Bueller?
I think Mark Skousen in Vienna & Chicago and Hulsmann in his biography of Mises do mention his “negative” traits, like his extreme stubborness and occasional harshness. Hulsmann also criticises and revises some of his ideas. For opponents like Mises, it’s hard to find any worth taking seriously; you usually get nuts like the LaRouche crazies.
Here Hayek talks about some differences between him and Mises. Hayek favors “selective evolution” over “rational construction” as an explanation of human conduct. There’s an article on the philosophy og that linked to in the comments below this recent posting:
http://blog.mises.org/archives/009657.asp
It seems to be an educated and relevant discussion, although on a rather abstract level.
That shows Hayek is wrong, not Mises =P
I don’t think Hayek understood the differences between himself and Mises really. Mises was not a constructivist nor did he overrate reason. In fact, the concept of rational he used was significantly deflated.
its not been mentioned yet that despite being in essence ‘misesian’ lots of the scholars associated with the Mises institute have critiqued various positions that Mises held. i.e. they reject mises’ minimum state (nightwatchmen/minarchy), critique of mises utilitarianism, critique of monopoly theory
im thinking of Rothbard etc.
Vaguely tangentally:
“Critics of the Austrian school contend that its methods consist of post-hoc analysis”
HOW CAN THEY SAY THAT? THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL?!
There - a critique from one of his most important students. That should do it for a start. Thanks ProudCapitalist!
Oh, and here’s one of the sources saying the famous “Mises was right”.
Critiques of Mises are going to fall into two categories:
The first, and most numerous are simply those that do not understand, and do not wish to understand Mises and as such will criticise him either plain wrongly, and are way out of their depth when doing so, or they will paint a false picture of his positions and then ridicule it.
On the other hand, you’ll have Austrians who will advance an extremely tentative criticism of Mises with great respect.
Funnily enough Hayek took a shot at Mises in a footnote in one of the essays in Individualism and Economic Order only, he claimed that it was aimed at Walras at the time, later he admitted it was aimed at Mises.
Lemme get this straight..
so NO ONE outside the austrian school has managed to logically slam Mises’ stuff down?
there is no logical argument against an a priori system. if you agree with the axioms you agree on the particulars. if you disagree on the axioms…
Despite I deeming any criticisms from outside Austrian Economics as hogwash, here is a link to an economist from George Mason criticizing Austrian Economics (namely rothbard and mises): http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/whyaust.htm
Nazgul, you’re overstating the case a little. Austrians adhere to fallibilist apriorism, so the arguments are revisable (at the level of deduction or concept-formation.) The point more properly put is that the only sound critics of Mises so far have been either Austrians or sympathisers of the school. Otherwise few critics get it right, and they mostly focus on Hayek anyway.
Hulsmann criticizes Mises’s Austrian Business Cycle Threory because it does not rely on a general theory of error, but a consequentialist view of human action in relation to changes in interest rates.
I’m interested in a critique of Caplan’s article. I recognised a bit of rational expectation in there, but on the whole I am unsure as to which points are simply misunderstanding and what are true disagreements.
feeling a bit too lazy to refute it all for you 
why not read through, find the most convincing bit you think Caplan has, and we’ll just do that?
Like this is absolutely THE best place to ask for good criticism of Austrian economics. [:D]