MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Ludwig von Mises’

« Previous Entries

What Mises Understood about Prices and Trade That Socialist Economists Did Not – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted by M. C. on February 14, 2023

However, when the utter failure of socialist economics was definitively exposed for all to see in the demise of the Soviet Union, Robert Heilbroner, who had spent most of his career as an unabashed socialist, raised the white flag and admitted that Mises was correct about socialism in a September 1990 New Yorker article entitled “After Communism.” 

https://fee.org/articles/what-mises-understood-about-prices-and-trade-that-socialist-economists-did-not/

Walter Block
Walter Block
Robert Batemarco
Robert Batemarco

Socialism is a very popular system. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders attracts thousands of fellow economic innocents on college campuses, and even professional economists of the ilk of Paul Samuelson were taken in by the siren song of this ineffective and evil system. (He predicted in his economics textbook that the USSR would overtake the American economy).

There stood Ludwig von Mises, like the Rock of Gibraltar, standing in the path of socialists of all types and varieties. He laid down the line: under socialism without free market prices, planning would necessarily be irrational. How and why, then, the existence of this pernicious system in Russia from 1917 to 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. How is it that socialism still exists in places like Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela? That is because market prices, generated elsewhere, were available to the economic dictators. During the period of USSR socialism, there was the Chicago board of trade and Consumers’ Reports. They made market prices available to the Soviet planners; they were a not-totally-unreasonable approximation to Russian realities. Nowadays, at least quasi-market prices are available in many areas of the world (they are only quasi since every government, bar none, engages in taxes and subsidies, price ceilings and floors, etc., which would not exist in the pure free market, and thus still misallocate resources on their basis).

Without prices that reflect consumer desires and relative scarcities, it is impossible to determine whether platinum or steel should be used, for example, for rails for locomotives. The former is more efficient, but is needed elsewhere in the economy. But to what degree? Or, should a tunnel be dug through a mountain; or should the new road go all around it? The former is much more expensive, now, but will save gigantic transportation costs for years to come. Without accurate prices and interest rates, it is impossible to make a rational calculation of the relevant benefits and costs. Should rowboats be constructed of wood, metal or plastic? A rational decision, again depends upon free market prices, which are to the economy what maps are to geography.

It is no accident that there was virtually one-way traffic between East and West Germany, and between North and South Korea. The latter in each pair instituted systems that were at least within sight of the free enterprise, private property, limited government system advocated by Mises. The former were—and now are in the case of last mentioned—economic basket cases.

But Mises’ contribution to the socialist calculation debate—in his 1922 book Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis—was but the tip of the iceberg in terms of his overall accomplishments. He also made important contributions to the theory of money in his 1912 book The Theory of Money and Credit. There, he demonstrated that whichever monetary commodity arises from the free interplay of market forces is the only path to soundness. He must be credited with a critique of interventionism (small interventions escalate); he did so in his 1977 book A Critique of Interventionism. In many of his publications he made the case for private property rights and economic freedom (the two are necessarily intertwined). His sterling contribution to the Austrian business cycle theory (an artificial lowering of the interest rates creates an unsustainable boom, which necessarily ends in a depression) can be found in his 1912 book, The Theory of Money and Credit.

Perhaps his most profound contribution concerns praxeology (in his 1962 book, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science and especially in his magisterial 1949 book, Human Action). This is the view that there is such a thing as economic law, which can only be illustrated, not tested. 

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

TGIF: Where Socialists Go Wrong | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on January 17, 2023

Here Hayek extended Ludwig von Mises’s fatal critique of socialism; namely, that

  1. without tradeable private property in the means of production, markets for resources and producers’ goods don’t exist;
  2. without such markets, true prices can’t exist; and
  3. without prices, rational economic calculation is impossible;
  4. therefore, socialism is impossible; it’s “planned chaos.”

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-where-socialists-go-wrong/

by Sheldon Richman 

r

R

Since socialism is “in” today — even though many people who say they favor it have no idea what it is — F. A. Hayek’s last book, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), is worth checking out. Hayek, the late great Nobel-laureate economist of the Austrian school, begins this way:

This book argues that our civilisation depends, not only for its origin but also for its preservation, on what can be precisely described only as the extended order of human cooperation, an order more commonly, if somewhat misleadingly, known as capitalism. To understand our civilisation, one must appreciate that the extended order resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection — the comparative increase of population and wealth — of those groups that happened to follow them. The unwitting, reluctant, even painful adoption of these practices kept these groups together, increased their access to valuable information of all sorts, and enabled them to be ‘fruitful, and multiply…’ This process is perhaps the least appreciated facet of human evolution.

Socialists take a different view of these matters.

Well, that last sentence is quite an understatement. By socialism Hayek didn’t mean the welfare state or continuing government efforts to manipulate market outcomes according to some notion of equity. That would be interventionism or the mixed economy. No, socialism is the abolition of the market order and its necessary condition, private property: the replacement of free private enterprise with centralized bureaucracy. Let’s cut to the chase:

The main point of my argument is, then, that the conflict between, on one hand, advocates of the spontaneous extended human order created by a competitive market, and on the other hand those who demand a deliberate arrangement of human interaction by central authority based on collective command over available resources is due to a factual error by the latter about how knowledge of these resources is and can be generated and utilised. As a question of fact, this conflict must be settled by scientific study. Such study shows that, by following the spontaneously generated moral traditions underlying the competitive market order (traditions which do not satisfy the canons or norms of rationality embraced by most socialists), we generate and garner greater knowledge and wealth than could ever be obtained or utilised in a centrally-directed economy whose adherents claim to proceed strictly in accordance with ‘reason’. Thus socialist aims and programmes are factually impossible to achieve or execute; and they also happen, into the bargain as it were, to be logically impossible.

Hayek is saying that once we understand how information about resources is produced and transmitted, we realize that central planners can’t deliver the goods. Socialism can’t keep its (earlier) promises of plenty. (Nor of justice, but that’s for another time.)

Here Hayek extended Ludwig von Mises’s fatal critique of socialism; namely, that

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

“Classical Liberalism” Will Never Satisfy the Left | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on December 7, 2022

Mises and Hayek used “classical liberal” to distinguish themselves from the Left. Today the term is used primarily to appease the Left. Self-proclaimed classical liberals today mostly seek to distance themselves from MAGA Trumpism and the hated Deplorables, to convince progressives they are not like those awful right-wingers! 

https://mises.org/wire/classical-liberalism-will-never-satisfy-left

Jeff Deist

“Today the tenets of this nineteenth-century philosophy of liberalism are almost forgotten. In the United States “liberal” means today a set of ideas and political postulates that in every regard are the opposite of all that liberalism meant to the preceding generations.”

—Ludwig von Mises, 1962 (emphasis added)

F.A. Hayek is back in the public eye, thanks to a promising and weighty new biography from Professors Bruce Caldwell and Hansjörg Klausinger. Predictably, the book has brought Hayek’s critics out of the woodwork. Consider the recent backhand in The Spectator by Lord Robert Skidelsky, titled “Friedrich Hayek: A Great Political Thinker Rather than a Great Economist.” Readers quickly understand the author actually thinks Hayek was neither. This is perhaps not a surprise coming from Skidelsky, the fulsome biographer of John Maynard Keynes who clearly imagines that his subject “won” the debate against Hayek over planning versus markets (“He more or less gave up technical economics after his battles with Keynes and the Keynesians”).

But the ongoing criticisms of Hayek’s “neoliberalism”—i.e., his supposed political program1—ring very hollow even in hopeless outlets like Jacobin. Hayek and his mentor Ludwig von Mises were old liberals of the nineteenth-century variety. Neoliberalism, by contrast, is a derogatory catchall term used by the Left today to police what it sees as undue respect for markets and private capital among the Clintonite and Blairite factions pushing global social democracy.

But fundamentally there is only liberalism and illiberalism. Hayek and Mises steadfastly called themselves “classical liberals” out of necessity—to distinguish themselves from the modern liberal program.

Twentieth-century liberalism, the bad kind, had its roots in the Progressive Era. It manifested in Wilsonian expansionism and Franklin Roosevelt’s criminal New Deal, both deeply illiberal developments opposed by the two Austrians-cum-Americans. “Liberal” had morphed into a proxy term for individuals advocating left-wing economic and social programs rather than markets and laissez-faire. So regardless of the earlier strands of classical liberalism flowing from Adam Smith, John Locke, David Hume, or even Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mises and Hayek used the term expressly in the context of midcentury Western politics.

After the Great Depression and two world wars, the old nineteenth-century liberalism was under open attack. But Mises and Hayek still advanced a liberalism of economic freedom and peace, in stark contrast to the central planning, interventionism, and positive rights (entitlements) promoted as scientific by Marxists and Keynesians. The quote at the top of this article, from the 1962 preface to the English translation of Mises’s foundational 1927 book, Liberalismus, demonstrates the critical distinction. The shift in the meaning of “liberal” over the thirty-five years between editions was clear and convincing. And it compelled the great economist to retitle the book The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth: An Exposition of the Ideas of Classical Liberalism to make sure Anglo-American audiences knew exactly which version of liberalism the book explained.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Lord Keynes and Say’s Law

Posted by M. C. on June 29, 2022

The unprecedented success of Keynesianism is due to the fact that it provides an apparent justification for the “deficit spending” policies of contemporary governments. It is the pseudo-philosophy of those who can think of nothing else than to dissipate the capital accumulated by previous generations.

https://mises.org/library/lord-keynes-and-says-law

umbrella

Ludwig von Mises

Lord Keynes’s main contribution did not lie in the development of new ideas but “in escaping from the old ones,” as he himself declared at the end of the Preface to his “General Theory.” The Keynesians tell us that his immortal achievement consists in the entire refutation of what has come to be known as Say’s Law of Markets. The rejection of this law, they declare, is the gist of all Keynes’s teachings; all other propositions of his doctrine follow with logical necessity from this fundamental insight and must collapse if the futility of his attack on Say’s Law can be demonstrated.1

Now it is important to realize that what is called Say’s Law was in the first instance designed as a refutation of doctrines popularly held in the ages preceding the development of economics as a branch of human knowledge. It was not an integral part of the new science of economics as taught by the Classical economists. It was rather a preliminary—the exposure and removal of garbled and untenable ideas which dimmed people’s minds and were a serious obstacle to a reasonable analysis of conditions.

Whenever business turned bad, the average merchant had two explanations at hand: the evil was caused by a scarcity of money and by general overproduction. Adam Smith, in a famous passage in “The Wealth of Nations,” exploded the first of these myths. Say devoted himself predominantly to a thorough refutation of the second.

As long as a definite thing is still an economic good and not a “free good,” its supply is not, of course, absolutely abundant. There are still unsatisfied needs which a larger supply of the good concerned could satisfy. There are still people who would be glad to get more of this good than they are really getting. With regard to economic goods there can never be absolute overproduction. (And economics deals only with economic goods, not with free goods such as air which are no object of purposive human action, are therefore not produced, and with regard to which the employment of terms like underproduction and overproduction is simply nonsensical.)

With regard to economic goods there can be only relative overproduction. While the consumers are asking for definite quantities of shirts and of shoes, business has produced, say, a larger quantity of shoes and a smaller quantity of shirts. This is not general overproduction of all commodities. To the overproduction of shoes corresponds an underproduction of shirts. Consequently the result can not be a general depression of all branches of business. The outcome is a change in the exchange ratio between shoes and shirts. If, for instance, previously one pair of shoes could buy four shirts, it now buys only three shirts. While business is bad for the shoemakers, it is good for the shirtmakers. The attempts to explain the general depression of trade by referring to an allegedly general overproduction are therefore fallacious.

Commodities, says Say, are ultimately paid for not by money, but by other commodities. Money is merely the commonly used medium of exchange; it plays only an intermediary role. What the seller wants ultimately to receive in exchange for the commodities sold is other commodities.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Why Mises Rejected Common Notions of “Progress” | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on October 31, 2021

He says: “The term progress is nonsensical when applied to cosmic events or to a comprehensive world view. We have no information about the plans of the prime mover.” I must say that Mises has given rather short shrift to claims of cosmic design, but to him his point was obvious, and one can see why he makes it. His fundamental aim in all his economic and social writing is to defend the system of social cooperation through the free market from all attacks against it.

https://mises.org/wire/why-mises-rejected-common-notions-progress

David Gordon

Ludwig von Mises has some characteristically acute and important comments on the idea of progress in history, and in what follows, I’d like to address some of these. In the way he develops his views, one of the key themes of his notion of ethics plays an important role.

In contrast to those, like Herbert Spencer, who think that human history is progressive because it forms part of larger process of biological evolution, also viewed as progressive, Mises says that in biological evolution, what develops later is not “better,” or for that matter worse, than what has gone before. If natural selection results in one species’ supplanting another, that does not make the second species superior, even if it has traits that we prefer to those of the first. Mises puts the point in this way:

It was one of the shortcomings of nineteenth-century philosophies to have misinterpreted the meaning of cosmic change and to have smuggled into the theory of biological transformation the idea of progress. Looking backward from any given state of things to the states of the past one can fairly use the terms development and evolution in a neutral sense. Then evolution signifies the process which led from past conditions to the present. But one must guard against the fatal error of confusing change with improvement and evolution with evolution toward higher forms of life. Neither is it permissible to substitute a pseudoscientific anthropocentrism for the anthropocentrism of religion and the older metaphysical doctrines.

In what he says about evolution, Mises is in accord with the understanding of most modern biologists.

When Mises speaks of “pseudoscientific anthropocentrism,” what he means is that we human beings project our own importance to ourselves onto the process of evolution, so that we take ourselves to be the goal of history. But, he says, this is not part of science, which is purely descriptive.

As the argument stands so far, it contains a gap. From the fact that science is limited to describing and explaining change and cannot, within its own terms, properly speak of “improvements,” it does not follow that evolution has no goal. That would be true only if the standpoint of scientific description were the only way to assess what has occurred in the historical development of life or if no other way of assessment allowed room for a goal. In speaking of “goal” here, I have in mind a goal of the whole process, rather than the goals of individual persons. It is not part of descriptive science that such goals are precluded but only that they are not included within it.

Mises has anticipated this objection. He says: “The term progress is nonsensical when applied to cosmic events or to a comprehensive world view. We have no information about the plans of the prime mover.” I must say that Mises has given rather short shrift to claims of cosmic design, but to him his point was obvious, and one can see why he makes it. His fundamental aim in all his economic and social writing is to defend the system of social cooperation through the free market from all attacks against it. If people were to say that they have access to God’s plans for history, this might lead them to support interference with the free market, and it is Mises’s opinion that almost all those who did claim such direct access propose interfering with the market. For that reason, he opposes them. It doesn’t follow from this that Mises rejects religion, but to the extent he views it positively, it is religion that confines itself to individual salvation and avoids social doctrines that oppose the free market.

Mises takes aim also at another doctrine of progress. During the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many intellectuals thought that the growth of science and reason made progress inevitable. Mises rejects this view also, as it overestimates the influence of reason on human conduct. He says,

Eighteenth-century social philosophy was convinced that mankind has now finally entered the age of reason. While in the past theological and metaphysical errors were dominant, henceforth reason will be supreme. People will free themselves more and more from the chains of tradition and superstition and will dedicate all their efforts to the continuous improvement of social institutions. Every new generation will contribute its part to this glorious task. With the progress of time society will more and more become the society of free men, aiming at the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Temporary setbacks are, of course, not impossible. But finally the good cause will triumph because it is the cause of reason…. All these hopes were founded on the firm conviction, proper to the age, that the masses are both morally good and reasonable. The upper strata, the privileged aristocrats living on the fat of the land, were thought depraved. The common people, especially the peasants and the workers, were glorified in a romantic mood as noble and unerring in their judgment. Thus the philosophers were confident that democracy, government by the people, would bring about social perfection.

This prejudice was the fateful error of the humanitarians, the philosophers, and the liberals. Men are not infallible; they err very often. It is not true that the masses are always right and know the means for attaining the ends aimed at. ‘Belief in the common man’ is no better founded than was belief in the supernatural gifts of kings, priests, and noblemen.

You might think from all this that Mises has no use at all for the concept of progress, but that is not correct, and it is here that his view of ethics enters the scene. He thinks that ultimate ends cannot be rationally assessed. Nevertheless, almost everyone wants peace and material prosperity and these aims, we can show by strictly scientific, value-free argument, only the free market can achieve. To the extent that the free market is accepted, we can properly speak of progress; but we cannot say that the desirability of the market will lead to its general acceptance. That only time will tell.

In the foregoing, I have as usual confined myself to an account of Mises’s thought and have not sought to assess it critically. Author:

Contact David Gordon

David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Mises Review.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Why Everyone Should Read These Two Essays by Ludwig von Mises

Posted by M. C. on September 29, 2021

In “Liberty and Property” Mises explains how and why private property is essential to protecting our freedoms and minimizing our exposure to counterproductive social engineering schemes. The main contribution of the industrial revolution, Mises explains, was the great decentralization of wealth which gave rise to “consumer sovereignty.”

In “Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism” Mises pinpoints the essential problem with all forms of interventionism. Whether it is called communism, socialism, planning, state capitalism, or industrial policy, interventionism always signifies the same thing: “No longer should the consumers … determine what should be produced, in what quantity and of what quality. Henceforth a central authority alone should direct all production activities.”

https://mises.org/wire/why-everyone-should-read-these-two-essays-ludwig-von-mises

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Originally printed in Two Essays by Ludwig von Mises.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Watch “The Stage Is Set for A Crack Up Boom — Are You Prepared?” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on August 28, 2021

The late and great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises was the individual who logically conquered the impracticability and unworkability of Socialism, Communism & Fascism. But just because an idea can’t work, doesn’t mean that those with a lust for power won’t attempt to pull it off anyway. These bad ideas end in a catastrophe that Mises called a “Crack-up Boom.” Are you ready for it?

The crisis began when you sacrificed your liberty.

https://youtu.be/fXgP4jozYMw

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Secret Ronald Reagan Told Me about Gold and Great Nations | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2021

Ronald Reagan once told me that no nation has abandoned gold and remained great. As president, he supported the creation of the Gold Commission. However, he did not stop the establishment from stacking the commission with defenders of the monetary status quo.

https://mises.org/wire/secret-ronald-reagan-told-me-about-gold-and-great-nations

Ron Paul

Today [August 15] marks 50 years since President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window,” ending the ability of foreign governments to exchange United States dollars for gold. Nixon’s action severed the last link between the dollar and gold, giving the U.S. a fiat currency.

America’s experiment with fiat has led to an explosion of consumer, business, and—especially—government debt. It has also caused increasing economic inequality, a boom-bubble-bust business cycle, and a continued erosion of the dollar’s value.

Nixon’s closure of the gold window motivated me to run for office. Having read the works of the leading Austrian economists, such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, I understood the dangers of abandoning gold for a fiat currency and wanted a platform to spread these ideas.

When I first entered public life, support for restoring a gold standard, much less abolishing the Fed, was limited to so-called “gold bugs” and the then tiny libertarian movement. Even many economists who normally supported free markets believed the fiat system could be made to work if the Federal Reserve were forced to follow rules.

These rules were supposed to provide the Fed with clear guidance as to when to increase or decrease the money supply. This may sound good in theory, but a “rules-based monetary system” still allows the Federal Reserve to manipulate interest rates, which are the price of money, causing artificial booms and very real busts.

The stagflation of the Carter era did increase interest in monetary policy. The rise of the “supply-siders,” who supported a limited role for gold, helped increase interest in the issue.

Ronald Reagan once told me that no nation has abandoned gold and remained great. As president, he supported the creation of the Gold Commission. However, he did not stop the establishment from stacking the commission with defenders of the monetary status quo.

The commission’s two pro-gold members, Lewis Lehrman and myself, produced a minority report, written with the aid of Murray Rothbard, making the case for a gold standard. The report was published as The Case for Gold. It can be downloaded at Mises.org.

By the mid-1980s, any interest among the political and financial elites in questioning the Fed’s power had disappeared. This was due to acceptance of the myth that Paul Volcker tamed inflation. In the 1990s, a virtual cult of personality arose around the “Maestro” Alan Greenspan, who once told me that the Fed had learned how to “replicate” the results of a gold-backed currency.

While my warnings that the Fed was leading the American economy over the cliff were dismissed in Washington, they found a receptive audience outside the Beltway. The response to my 2008 presidential campaign led to a birth of a new liberty movement that put monetary policy front and center.

The 2008 meltdown, big bank bailouts, and the Fed’s subsequent failure to reignite the economy despite unprecedented money creation fueled the growth of the new movement. My Campaign for Liberty organization mobilized the new liberty movement to make Audit the Fed a major issue in Congress.

Fifty years after Nixon closed the gold window, prices are heading toward 1970s-era increases. Yet the Fed cannot increase interest rates as long as the politicians keep creating billions of new debts.

It is clear that America is heading toward another Federal Reserve–created economic crisis. The good news is the impending crisis gives us an opportunity to spread our message, grow our movement, and finally force Congress to audit and end the Fed.

Originally published by the New York Sun. Author:

Ron PaulDr. Ron Paul is a former member of Congress and Distinguished Counselor to the Mises Institute.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

A Brief History of Secession Referenda in Europe | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 16, 2021

But in all cases, plebiscites were employed to determine a question of secession, whether or not the end goal was ultimately full independence. In this, they have worked relatively well. In many cases, these plebiscites have helped to peacefully settle disputes and to send a message to central regimes about the prudence of granting independence to separatist regions that vote overwhelmingly for independence. 

Given all this it would be odd to regard a vote on independence in Scotland—or anywhere else—as some sort of outlandish or radical political strategy. 

https://mises.org/wire/brief-history-secession-referenda-europe

Ryan McMaken

Scotland still hasn’t given up on holding another independence referendum within the next several years. Although London opposes the measure, it is notable that the debate over Scottish secession is not over whether or not a secession vote is moral or legal. Rather, the question is over whether or not such a vote is prudent at this time.

This is quite a departure from American politics, in which any suggestion of independence for any region of the US—a country that is not even as old as the three hundred–year union between England and Scotland—is considered obviously illegal and beyond the pale of serious political discussion.

Moreover, in spite of the US’s (rather unwarranted) reputation for expansive local autonomy, we can find many cases in which European regimes were far more willing to compromise on local assertions of autonomy and independence than is the case in the United States.

Although fully or partially successful secession movements are not frequent occurrences in Europe, we can nonetheless look to a number of cases in which regions successfully carried forward independence movements at least to the point that a referendum was held. In some of these cases, independence won voter approval and was enacted.

Let’s look at some of these cases to learn more.

Local Autonomy and Plebiscites as a Component of Classical Liberalism

In his 1919 book, Nation, State, and Economy, Ludwig von Mises concludes that local independence is an assumed characteristic within a liberal (i.e., a “classically liberal” of “libertarian”) polity. He writes:

When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so…. no people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want.

Moreover, in his 1927 book, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition, Mises encourages the use of plebiscites in carrying this out. Mises writes:

[W]henever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with.

To some readers, this might seem a very radical position that Mises is taking. But, writing in the late teens and 1920s, Mises was working from what was becoming an established—albeit infrequently used—strategy for maintaining or increasing local autonomy within European states.

European Independence Plebiscites: A Quick History

Perhaps the earliest uses of plebiscites to win local support for secession movements occurred in the late eighteenth century during the French Revolution. In an effort to enlarge the French state, plebiscites were used in the Papal States enclaves of Avignon and Comtat Venaissin in 1791, in Savoy in 1792, and in the Belgian Communes, Nice, and the Rhine Valley in 1793.1

In none of these cases was full independence contemplated, and these plebiscites only gave the voters a choice between the status quo and joining the French Republic. Nonetheless, pro-French sentiment was high in many of these areas and voters did indeed in many cases chose to secede from their status quo polities (i.e., the Papal States, Belgium, Sardinia) and join the French state.

By the nineteenth century, plebiscites were being increasingly used as part of the political process of changing which regime controlled certain districts and regions:

[Plebiscites] were held in the transfer of control of Rome from the Papal State to Italy in 1870, in Denmark’s sale of St Thomas and St John to the United States in 1868, and in Sweden’s cession of St. Bartholomew to France in 1877.2

The Ionian Islands were transferred to Greece by Great Britain after the move was approved by voters in an 1863 plebiscite.

Plebiscites were also used—beginning with the aftermath of the Treaty of Prague in 1866—in attempts to settle the so-called Schleswig question over the borderlands between Denmark and the German Confederation.

Secession in the Twentieth Century

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea of holding local elections to settle border disputes or the inclusion of a region within a certain polity was anything but novel.

In a 1905 plebiscite, nearly 100 percent of Norwegian voters approved dissolving Norway’s union with Sweden. Norway became a fully independent state three months later.

In a 1918 plebiscite, Iceland’s voters approved independence for the country in a personal union with Denmark under the Danish king. (The king would remain the head of state; Iceland became a republic after another plebiscite in 1944.)

In 1919, the Austrian region of Vorarlberg held a plebiscite to determine if the region should secede from Austria and join Switzerland as a new canton. Eighty-one percent of Vorarlberg voters approved the measure, but the movement failed due to opposition from the Swiss and Austrian governments, among others.

A plebiscite was held in Carinthia in October 1920 to resolve an ongoing border dispute between Yugoslavia and the new Austrian republic. Fifty-nine percent voted to attach Carinthia to Austria. In spite of opposition from Yugoslavian forces, the region ultimately became Austrian.

After World War I, several plebiscites were held as a means of implementing the Treaty of Versailles. These plebiscites, unlike locally driven plebiscites in, say, Vorarlberg and Iceland, were conducted under significant pressure from outside great powers—namely, the victorious Entente powers. Where plebiscites were actually held in German territory—such as in East Prussia—the results favored the Germans, but the Entente powers also simply transferred some areas of Germany to Poland and Czechoslovakia. (The Third Reich would later employ plebiscites in Austria and the Sudetenland as retribution for these territorial transfers.)

In 1946, a plebiscite was held to determine if the Faroe Islands should secede from Denmark. It narrowly failed.

In 1955, voters in the Saar, a French protectorate, voted to join Germany.

In 1964, Maltese voters approved independence from the United Kingdom in a plebiscite.

In 1990, Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia via plebiscite. The new Slovenian republic ultimately won independence after the nearly bloodless Ten-Day War. 

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, plebiscites were held in several Soviet republics including Ukraine and the Baltic states. 

(Outside Europe, of course, many more secession plebiscites were held throughout the twentieth century as part of the process of decolonization in Africa and Asia.)

Plebiscites in Perspective

As we can see from these examples, Mises’s position in favor of plebiscites to implement self-determination plans through secession were not especially radical in the context of the late 1920s. After all, by the early twentieth century, they had come to be used a tool for settling border disputes and as a means of allowing for local vetoes on international agreements involving attempts at changing which state controlled certain regions. In many cases, plebiscites did not offer the option of total independence, but provided an option to attach the region in question to a different sovereign state. But in some cases, plebiscites were used to establish the creation of new sovereign states such as Slovenia, Estonia, Iceland, and Norway. In many cases, the results of plebiscites were not carried out or were short lived even when implemented. For example, the Ionian Islands changed hands more than once after the 1863 vote.

But in all cases, plebiscites were employed to determine a question of secession, whether or not the end goal was ultimately full independence. In this, they have worked relatively well. In many cases, these plebiscites have helped to peacefully settle disputes and to send a message to central regimes about the prudence of granting independence to separatist regions that vote overwhelmingly for independence. 

Given all this it would be odd to regard a vote on independence in Scotland—or anywhere else—as some sort of outlandish or radical political strategy. 

  • 1. For an extensive description of nineteenth-century plebiscites, see Sarah Wambaugh, A Monograph on Plebiscites: With a Collection of Official Documents (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1920).
  • 2. Michael Hechter and Elizabeth Borland, “National Self-Determination: The Emergence of an International Norm,” in Social Norms, ed. Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), p. 193.

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power&Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado and was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Police Problems? Embrace Liberty!

Posted by M. C. on April 27, 2021

The drug war is a major reason police have increasingly looked and acted like an occupying army. Police militarization threatens everyone’s liberty. Black people have been subjected to drug war arrests and imprisonment at relatively high rates.

Those interested in protecting and enhancing black people’s (and all people’s) lives should embrace liberty. Libertarians reject the use of force to achieve political, economic, or social goals, Therefore, in a libertarian society, police would only enforce laws prohibiting the initiation of force against persons or property.

Free markets, individual liberty, limited government, sound money, and peace are key to achieving prosperity and social cohesion. Those sincerely concerned about improving all human lives should turn away from the teaching of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, who advocated expansive government power, and, instead, embrace the ideas of pro-liberty writers such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2021/april/26/police-problems-embrace-liberty/?mc_cid=74f313367e

Written by Ron Paul

undefined

Many Americans saw former policeman Derek Chauvin’s conviction on all counts last week as affirming the principle that no one is above the law. Many others were concerned that the jury was scared that anything less than a full conviction would result in riots, and even violence against themselves and their families.

Was the jury’s verdict influenced by politicians and media figures who were calling for the jury to deliver the “right” verdict? Attempts to intimidate juries are just as offensive to the rule of law as suggestions that George Floyd’s criminal record somehow meant his rights were not important.

The video of then-policeman Chauvin restraining Floyd led people across the political and ideological spectrums to consider police reform. Sadly, there have also been riots across the country orchestrated by left-wing activists and organizations seeking to exploit concern about police misconduct to advance their agendas.

It is ironic to see self-described Marxists, progressives, and other leftists protesting violence by government agents. After all, their ideology rests on the use of force to compel people to obey politicians and bureaucrats.

It is also ironic to see those who claim to want to protect and improve “black lives” support big government.

Black people, along with other Americans, have had their family structure weakened by welfare policies encouraging single parenthood. This results in children being raised without fathers as a regular presence in their lives, increasing the likelihood the children will grow up to become adults with emotional and other problems.

Those at the bottom of the economic ladder are restrained in improving their situation because of minimum wage laws, occupational licensing regulations, and other government interference in the marketplace. They are also victims of the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax.

Many progressives who claim to believe that “black lives matter” do not care that there is a relatively high abortion rate of black babies. These so-called pro-choice progressives are the heirs of the racists who founded the movement to legalize and normalize abortion.

The drug war is a major reason police have increasingly looked and acted like an occupying army. Police militarization threatens everyone’s liberty. Black people have been subjected to drug war arrests and imprisonment at relatively high rates.

Those interested in protecting and enhancing black people’s (and all people’s) lives should embrace liberty. Libertarians reject the use of force to achieve political, economic, or social goals, Therefore, in a libertarian society, police would only enforce laws prohibiting the initiation of force against persons or property.

A libertarian society would leave the provision of aid to the needy to local communities, private charities, and religious organizations. Unlike the federal welfare state, private charities can provide effective and compassionate aid without damaging family structure or making dependency a way of life. In a libertarian society, individuals could pursue economic opportunity free of the burdens of government regulations and taxes, as well as free of the Federal Reserve’s fiat currency.

Free markets, individual liberty, limited government, sound money, and peace are key to achieving prosperity and social cohesion. Those sincerely concerned about improving all human lives should turn away from the teaching of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, who advocated expansive government power, and, instead, embrace the ideas of pro-liberty writers such as Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries