Mises and the Production of Security

[filc]

Does Mises, after Human Action, ever make a consession or consideration regarding the production of Security as being a non-coerced market good, on the same level as every other market good? Does he ever hear the argument that it need not be coerced.

In Human action he seemed to take the standpoint that in order to keep a market functioning you need to make an acception to the production of security in order to foster the market’s health in general.

Making a distinction that security is somehow special seems awfully arbitrary for me. Not too mention the slippery slope. With all the insane amounts of wisdom and intellect spewing out of Mises’s head I find it hard to believe he didn’t stumble on this little paradox he had.

Also, When he refers to ‘Anarchists’ in Human Action what type of Anarchist is he specifically referring to?

[nirgrahamUK]

http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen198.asp

AEN: Yet Mises attacks anarchism in no uncertain terms.

HOPPE: His targets here are left-utopians. He attacks their theory that man is good enough not to need an organized defense against the enemies of civilization. But this is not what the private-property anarchist believes. Of course, murderers and thieves exist. There needs to be an institution that keeps these people at bay. Mises calls this institution government, while people who want no state at all point out that all essential defensive services can be better performed by firms in the market. We can call these firms government if we want to.

AEN: The strongest evidence against Mises as a radical anti-statist is the passage in Human Action that endorses conscription.

HOPPE: This passage is very peculiar. It, and the several paragraphs that precede it and the one that follows it, is not in the first edition. It makes its first appearance in the 1963 edition. It comes out of the blue, and has no foundation in his overall thinking. To me, this addition appears completely ad hoc.

You just have to remind yourself about his general position on government. Every group and, if it can be technically done, every individual, can secede from the government. Accordingly, conscription, in this sense, is completely illegitimate. If you read the 1949 edition of Human Action, there is nothing at all that would seem to lead to these particular funny conclusions.

AEN: Perhaps the Cold War explains it.

HOPPE: But the likelihood that he would make a statement like this is the greatest in prior editions. In 1940, he was in Switzerland, surrounded by Nazi forces. In 1949, he had just seen the old Europe smashed by war and imperialism; what better time to endorse the draft so it could be used to stop this type of thing in the future? But he did not. Why, then, does he do this in 1963? There is no major war going on. Vietnam was in its early stages. The Cold War is not at a peak, and the Soviet Union was in its post-Stalinist period. These passages cry out for explanation.

Hoppe writes similar in the intro to Rothbards’ ethics of liberty

also Hulsmann has a section towards the end of “Last Knight of Liberalism” called ‘last clash with anarchists’ (or something like that )

[Le_Master]

He seems to be addressing the anti-law anarchists whenever he speaks of anarchists, not anarcho-capitalists like many members of this site.

Anarchism to him is a society without a police force. He never engaged in anarcho-capitalism, which champions the existence of defense agencies.

Here are a couple of Murphy’s takes on Mises’s stance:

@Robert P Murphy

People often criticize this website for running articles on anarchism, on the grounds that Ludwig von Mises himself was quite hostile to anarchy in his own writings. Let me be clear: Mises did indeed criticize “anarchy,” but his analysis is really a critique of pacifism; Mises argued for the necessity of law enforcement, and assumed that this proved the necessity of government law enforcement. In any event, the principles underlying Rothbardian anarcho-capitalism are certainly consistent with Misesian economics.

@Robert P Murphy

People often ask, “Was Mises an anarchist?” As the discussion on pages 148–149
makes clear, the immediate answer is no. However, a closer reading shows that Mises
here uses anarchism to mean a lack of law enforcement. Nowhere does Mises discuss
why the state must provide law, police, and military defense. He simply assumes that
these are the proper functions of the state, and since they are necessary for society,
therefore (Mises argues) the state is necessary.

(The sources for those are here (endnote) and here (technical notes), respectively.)

[filc]

Thanks guys. [:)]

I need to read some Hoppe and I’ve had “Robert’s Chaos Theory Essay Two Essays on Market Anarchy” sitting here unopened. So much to read so little time!

[Stranger]

@filc

Does Mises, after Human Action, ever make a consession or consideration regarding the production of Security as being a non-coerced market good, on the same level as every other market good? Does he ever hear the argument that it need not be coerced.

I think the point is that any kind of security is by nature coercive, otherwise it would not be effective. If you shoot at invaders of your home, you are coercing them, even if only defensively and in your right.

Mises, however, clearly defines the legitimate government as being “democratic”, as in resting upon the popular opinion. This does not necessarily imply a democratic republic of elected politicians, as in his advice to emperor Otto von Habsburg he states that a return to monarchy in Austria should be the choice of the Austrian people (as opposed to being imposed by the conquering allies).

He never went into much details into the nature of democracy as he defines it, other than it must be possible to make a non-violent change of government when the government is no longer backed by public opinion. By that definition, most western governments are not democratic. (They rig the electoral system to keep themselves in power against public opinion.) As well, it is undefined who the public is, and what its boundaries are.

The Mises position is the old classical liberal stance, one that leads directly to natural-order/plurarchy/anarcho-capitalism with further elaboration.

[DD5]

According to Israel Kirzner in response to a question in the recent FEE “Advanced Austrian Economics” Seminar: in an Austrian economics conference just before Mises died, Rothbard tried to persuade Mises on the idea of Anarchy, in which Mises replied: “Write a book about it”. It’s in one of his two lecturers in the Q&A part, if anyone feels like searching the videos at FEE for the exact response.

[Conza]

@nirgrahamUK

http://mises.org/journals/aen/aen198.asp

Excellent!

I remember reading about as well, I am pretty sure, though not positive where - something about Mises and Human Action editions, the publishers screwed him around, didn’t send back final manuscript edits or something like that. He had no way of knowing if it was all correct.

[Le_Master]

@Conza88

I remember reading about as well, I am pretty sure, though not positive where - something about Mises and Human Action editions, the publishers screwed him around, didn’t send back final manuscript edits or something like that. He had no way of knowing if it was all correct.

There is talk about that in the intro to the Scholar’s Edition (beginning on pg xix).