Ralph Raico, “Keynes and the Reds,” Mises Daily, February 13, 2002.The remarks in question were allegedly made by Keynes in a radio talk for the BBC in June 1936 in which he discussed Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (Longmans, 1935), a rather disgraceful apologia for Soviet communism.
“The Case for Robert Skidelsky as a Liar,” August 20, 2011.
Raico draws attention to this comment of Keynes:
“Until recently events in Russia were moving too fast and the gap between paper professions and actual achievements was too wide for a proper account to be possible. But the new system is now sufficiently crystallized to be reviewed. The result is impressive. The Russian innovators have passed, not only from the revolutionary stage, but also from the doctrinaire stage.If Keynes really thought that Soviet Union was “impressive,” then that was a wrong, ridiculous, contemptible and disgraceful remark.
There is little or nothing left which bears any special relation to Marx and Marxism as distinguished from other systems of socialism. They are engaged in the vast administrative task of making a completely new set of social and economic institutions work smoothly and successfully over a territory so extensive that it covers one-sixth of the land surface of the world. Methods are still changing rapidly in response to experience. The largest scale empiricism and experimentalism which has ever been attempted by disinterested administrators is in operation. Meanwhile the Webbs have enabled us to see the direction in which things appear to be moving and how far they have got.”
However, I have not seen the full interview yet, and I suspect that there is some kind of selective quotation going on here. Why? The reason is that such a remark blatantly contradicts Keynes’s other writings and statements. The fact is that Keynes’s explicit public and private condemnation of Marxism, communism, and the Soviet Union is well attested.
First, Skidelsky is clear that Keynes did not support the Webbs’ book:
“unlike the Webbs, he [sc. Keynes] could never think of Soviet Russia as a serious intellectual resource for Western civilisation. In the 1920s he had said that Marxism and communism had nothing of scientific interest to offer the modern mind. The depression did not alter his view. Russia ‘exhibits the worst example which the world, perhaps, has ever seen of administrative incompetence and of the sacrifice of almost everything that makes life worth living ...’; it was a ‘fearful example of the evils of insane and unnecessary haste’; ‘Let Stalin be a terrifying example to all who seek to make experiments.’” He found Kingsley Martin too ‘pro-Bolshie’ in the New Statesman.” (Skidelsky 1992b: 488).Secondly, Keynes wrote a letter in reply to George Bernard Shaw in 1935 on the issue of Marx, where he was quite clear in rejecting Marxism:
“Thank you for your letter. I will try to take your words to heart. There must be something in what you say, because there generally is. But I’ve made another shot at old K.[arl] M.[arx] last week, reading the Marx-Engels correspondence just published, without making much progress. I prefer Engels of the two. I can see that they invented a certain method of carrying on and a vile manner of writing, both of which their successors have maintained with fidelity. But if you tell me that they discovered a clue to the economic riddle, still I am beaten – I can discover nothing but out-of-date controversialising.Thirdly, Keynes rejected the Soviet system:
To understand my state of mind, however, you have to know that I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionalise – not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years – the way the world thinks about economic problems. When my new theory has been duly assimilated and mixed with politics and feelings and passions, I can’t predict what the final upshot will be in its effect on action and affairs. But there will be a great change, and, in particular, the Ricardian foundations of Marxism will be knocked away.
I can’t expect you, or anyone else, to believe this at the present stage. But for myself I don’t merely hope what I say, – in my own mind I’m quite sure.”
(Keynes to Shaw, 1 January, 1935, quoted in Skidelsky 1992b: 520–521).
“And so he [sc. Keynes] could both love the communist generation for their idealism, and despise them for their muddle-headedness. If Keynes could not solve the ‘primal question’ of how to live, he felt he could solve the secondary question of what to do. His assault on the scientific pretentions of Marxism and the horrors of the Soviet system was unremitting, and needed no revelation of mass murder. He insisted on the supreme importance of ‘preserving as a matter of principle every jot and tittle of the civil and political liberties which former generations painfully secured ....’. He was outraged when London University tried to silence the loquacious Professor Laski of the LSE, writing in the New Statesman to defend Laski, but adding, ‘Too many of the younger members of the Left have toyed with Marxist ideas to have a clear conscience in repelling reactionary assaults on freedom.’” (Skidelsky 1992b: 518).His verdict on Bolshevism was made in 1922, in a remark that unfortunately also evinces some anti-Semitism:
“Bolshevism is such a delirium, bred by besotted idealism and intellectual error out of the sufferings and peculiar temperaments of Slavs and Jews. But we can no more regard this culminating delirium as a lasting fact or influence than the rule of Robespierre or the Jacobins.” (Keynes 1977 [1922]: 373).But suppose, for the sake of argument, that Keynes did praise the Soviet Union in this one radio address, even though on numerous other occasions he condemned it. The correct response to this by any modern progressive liberal or Keynesian is to condemn Keynes for this particular morally disgraceful remark, and to question why he would have been so inconsistent when he clearly and correctly criticised and rejected communism many times. This example of a personal, moral failing of Keynes does not, however, invalidate his ideas in the General Theory.
To dismiss Keynesian economics on the basis of an ad hominem attack on Keynes is nothing but an informal logical fallacy.
If Austrians really think the ad hominem fallacy is valid, then by the same fallacious reasoning all of Mises’s economics can be dismissed by this remark:
“It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.” (Mises, 1978 [1927]: 51).You could not find a clearer apology for fascism. Keynes, for all his moral faults (for example, his support for eugenics and anti-Semitism), never declared that fascism “saved European civilization” or that the “merit that Fascism has … won for itself will live on eternally in history”. It was Ludwig von Mises - the Austrian school hero - who wrote this vile nonsense.
Appendix: Paul Sweezy and Keynes
I will note as an interesting appendix that many of the less doctrinaire Marxists of the late 20th century abandoned pure Marxism and came to see merit in Keynes’s work, as noted by Gilles Dostaler:
“It was in the Anglo-American world that Marxism, much less established, or recognized than in France, or in other Latin countries, particularly Italy, was more receptive to Keynesianism, and where efforts were made to rethink Marx in the light of Keynes thought. The pioneer here was Paul Sweezy, who was first a disciple of Hayek, in his book The Theory of Capitalist Development, published in 1942. The Keynesian-Marxist synthesis that he put forward lead him to call into question fundamental ideas developed by Marx, such as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which was replaced by the tendency of the surplus to rise. Sweezy developed his ideas with his co-author Paul Baran in Monopoly Capital, published in 1966, and wrote about them extensively in Monthly Review which he co-founded.” (Dostaler, “The General Theory, Marx, Marxism and the Soviet Union,” p. 18).Paul M. Sweezy (1910–2004) was a leading American Marxist and abandoned Marx’s value theory and the belief that the rate of profit had an inevitable tendency to fall in modern capitalism. His version of Marxism attempts to reconcile Marxism with Keynesian macroeconomics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dostaler, Gilles, “The General Theory, Marx, Marxism and the Soviet Union,”
http://appliphp.univ-tlse1.fr/LEREPS/spip/IMG/pdf/Dostaler-Marx_et_Keynes.pdf
Keynes, J. M. 1977. The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. Vol. 17, Activities 1920–1922, Treaty Revision and Construction (ed. E. Johnson), Macmillan, London.
Mises, L. von. 1978 [1927]. Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition (2nd edn; trans. R. Raico), Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Mission, Kansas.
Skidelsky, R. J. A. 1992a. John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed 1883–1920 (vol. 2), Macmillan, London.
Skidelsky, R. J. A. 1992b. John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour 1920–1937, Macmillan, London.
Skidelsky, R. J. A. 2000. John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Britain 1937–1946 (vol. 3), Macmillan, London.
Webb, S. and B., Webb, 1935. Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?, Longmans.
"Bolshevism is such a delirium, bred by besotted idealism and intellectual error out of the sufferings and peculiar temperaments of Slavs and Jews."
ReplyDeleteI don't see the anti-Semitism here.
What he seems to say is that Bolshevik ideas are a product of the place and time in which many Russians lived - many Russians being ethnically Slavic and Jewish. By "peculiar temperaments", I suppose he means that Russians, as a far off eastern peoples, have a mode of thinking that would definitely seem peculiar to the British. That's not an outrageous suggestion. And given the endless ethnic conflicts and the persecutions faced in the region (especially by Jewish people), many of them fell towards a broken ideology.
I myself have an ancestral family going back to the Red Zone of India - an area torn by forest tribal insurgency. Many of those insurgents are Maoist ideologues. When I visited the place, I understood that the fatalist culture native to the region and the anger about mistreatment by police could result in falling to communist ideology.
The same way, it was something similar that led to many Russians, and a few heavily marginalised Russian Jews, to move towards Bolshevism.
Keynes made plenty of contradictory statements, including this one from 1919 where he sounds like me:
ReplyDeleteBy a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose.
Somehow, the “extra-judicial theft of purchasing power and wealth via inflation” (the operative Keynesian mechanism for curing a “lack of aggregate demand”) disappeared from Keynes’ narratives by the 1930s.
Your Mises’ quote is taken completely out of context. Mises is clearly and merely saying that the pre-Hitlerite Italian fascists halted the spread of a Stalinist slaughter-state to Italy but that fascism is nonetheless a brutal and ignorant movement.
“Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism. ****
So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.
It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.” Pages 50-51
http://mises.org/books/liberalism.pdf
http://mises.org/journals/jls/12_1/12_1_1.pdf
So Sweezy became a Keynesian? Birds of a feather? Where are all the fascists who became Rothbardians?
"So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion."
ReplyDeleteYes - and how idiotic of Mises to then claim that the “merit that Fascism has … won for itself will live on eternally in history”.
Yes - and how idiotic of Mises to then claim that the “merit that Fascism has … won for itself will live on eternally in history”.
ReplyDeleteYou idiot. That wasn't Mises himself assessing fascism to have merit as a workable system, that was Mises identifying that fascism has "won" merit in the eyes of large populations of people, but Mises argues that fascism was a short-term solution but a long term catastrophe, and hence should not be advocated.
You quoted Mises completely out of context and you insinuate the lie "You could not find a clearer apology for fascism."
Not only was it not an apology for fascism, but there actual apologies to fascism that you will in fact find if you bothered to research.
When it comes to economic worldviews, Mises stands in direct opposition to fascists. It is Mises who has provided the most devastating criticisms of fascism.
Incidentally, as a side note, if we consider whose economic worldview is most open to fascist ideology, Mises or Keynes, then we can look to Keynes' own words.
In the preface to the German edition of his General Theory, Keynes boasted that his theory was particularly well suited for totalitarian regimes and lamented that it was less fit for the conditions prevailing in freer societies. Keynes wrote:
"Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire."
Mises writes in summation and as a general response in "Lord Keynes and Say’s Law," in Hazlitt, "The Critics of Keynesian Economics," p. 319:
"The policies he advocated were precisely those which almost all governments, including the British, had already adopted many years before his "General Theory" was published. Keynes was not an innovator and champion of new methods of managing economic affairs. His contribution consisted rather in providing an apparent justification for the policies which were popular with those in power in spite of the fact that all economists viewed them as disastrous. His achievement was a rationalization of the policies already practiced."
Your softball criticism of Keynes' "morals" woefully ignores the depravity that is contained in the deeper fundamental aspects of his economic worldview, where he goes beyond anti-semitism and advocacy of eugenics.
Finally, if we were to compare Mises and Keynes in terms of who provides a more thorough criticism of fascism, then Mises is far and away the clear winner, because he actually wrote economic criticisms of fascism whereas Keynes did not. Keynes could only muster together the statement that his general theory is more conducive to totalitarian societies than to free societies.
Keynes was just another moron statist apologist who was able to hoodwink large numbers of people into abandoning, not refuting, economics.
Yes - and how idiotic of Mises to then claim that the “merit that Fascism has … won for itself will live on eternally in history”.
ReplyDeleteNot a proud moment, but meaningless in the scope of his beliefs. Isn't it true that the government he lived under and the people he was trying to influence at this time in Austria were nationalistic Catholic fascists? If it weren't for their vile warmongering which will lead to catastrophe, their inclination for locking up their opponents and their horrible economic ideas, I'm sure they were be great guys.
It's the equivalent of saying thank goodness for that thug Pinochet who saved us from Pol Pot. I'm not trying to excuse the form of the statment, just putting it in context. In context, it is understandable.
"That wasn't Mises himself assessing fascism to have merit as a workable system, that was Mises identifying that fascism has "won" merit in the eyes of large populations of people,"
ReplyDeleteFalse. That is clearly Mises personal opinion. It is quite clear from the context.
'Somehow, the “extra-judicial theft of purchasing power and wealth via inflation” (the operative Keynesian mechanism for curing a “lack of aggregate demand”) disappeared from Keynes’ narratives by the 1930s.'
ReplyDeleteThank you for confirming Paul Krugman's assertion that extremists are unable to comprehend positions that aren't as extreme as their own.
Keynes obviously thought excessive money creation would causes unjust inflation. It does not follow that he thought any money creation would do this; and it doesn't if the new money is used to facilitate further wealth creation.
As a side note, if I start prefacing my comments with 'you idiot' and using 'Austrian' and 'propertist' as self evident insults will you understand me more clearly?
That is clearly Mises personal opinion. It is quite clear from the context.
ReplyDeleteFalse. That was clearly NOT Mises' personal opinion, because, as Roddis has shown in the full context, Mises was vehemently against fascism.
He is not "vehemently" against fascism. The chapter in question contains a number of apologetic statements trying to justify the violence of fascism. It doesn't occur to you that your hero Mises is capable of inconsistency.
ReplyDeleteThere is not one shred of evidence that his comments "It cannot be denied that Fascism ... etc" are not his perosnal opinion.
It is easy to make statements and conclusions about something you have never seen. I do not defend USSR but it is a blind ideology to deny that USSR has managed to scare invincible capitalism to death. Should GFC have happened 20-30 years earlier where would we all end up?
ReplyDeleteTMMblog:
ReplyDeleteWhether the amount of the theft/surreptitious wealth transfer caused by funny money dilution is discernable by statistics or not, the person getting the new funny money has no right to it and has no right to use it to purchase goods and services. And it is still an extra-judicial theft of purchasing power and/or wealth. Just as the same bite of steak cannot go down two throats at the same time, the same purchasing power cannot be used by two different entities at the same time. Keynesianism is based upon the very type of conceptual nonsense and confusion you propound.
"Whether the amount of the theft/surreptitious wealth transfer caused by funny money dilution is discernable by statistics or not, the person getting the new funny money has no right to it and has no right to use it to purchase goods and services.
ReplyDeleteOn the basis of what? Your rubbish ethical theory:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/08/rothbards-argument-for-natural-rights.html
In any case, the primary effect of spending via new debt-created money in an eocnomy iwth idle resources is to raise production and employment, not inflation. Where international trade exists and imports are available, it also has a source of commodities without causing inflation.
It is only at full employment at FRB or fiat money creation is primarily inflationary.
On the basis of what? Your rubbish ethical theory
ReplyDeleteYes. And based upon pervasive and long understood notions of private property and due process.
However, whether or not the transfer of purchasing power is immoral or not is irrelevant to the undeniable fact that it must and does always occur and is the operational mechanism of Keynesian policy.
The morality and alleged necessity of the process can be differentiated from the mechanism itself.
"Where international trade exists and imports are available, it also has a source of commodities without causing inflation."
ReplyDeleteImperialism ???
'It is only at full employment at FRB or fiat money creation is primarily inflationary.'
ReplyDeleteYou do realise that if you argue against this you effectively end up saying any private investment right now would not increase employment, right?
It appears money has become a religion. It is where the faithful seek absolute truth: people should bow to it rather than debase it by using it to support coarse humanity.
ReplyDeleteThese folks really seem to think money occurs in nature and that the human population should regulated itself to fit its natural supply! It fits with the libertarian mind set that laptops and heart valve replacements would have occurred sooner had government not impeded their development.
He is not "vehemently" against fascism. The chapter in question contains a number of apologetic statements trying to justify the violence of fascism.
ReplyDeleteYou continue to lie.
Mises was vehemently against fascism. There are certainly not "a number of apologetic statements trying to justify the violence of fascism." There is ONE statement saying that fascism acquired merit because it vanquished the socialists in Austria.
Mises was NOT an apologist of fascism you liar. You're ignoring the context in which he wrote the chapter called "The Argument of Fascism" in his book "Liberalism."
I said before that Mises argued that fascism acquired merit in the eyes of many, but Mises himself was nowhere close to being a personal supporter or apologist of fascism.
Since you're too idiotic and honest to post more of what Mises wrote yourself, I must.
Mises writes:
"Only under the fresh impression of the murders and atrocities perpetrated by the supporters of the Soviets were Germans and Italians able to block out the remembrance of the traditional restraints of justice and morality and find the impulse to bloody counteraction. The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists. As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time."
"This moderation is the result of the fact that traditional liberal views still continue to have an unconscious influence on the Fascists. But however far this may go, one must not fail to recognize that the conversion of the Rightist parties to the tactics of Fascism shows that the battle against liberalism has resulted in successes that, only a short time ago, would have been considered completely unthinkable."
In other words, Mises stresses that fascism was only able to gain success over liberalism because of attacking communism, not because it is itself good.
and then
ReplyDelete"Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the archenemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods."
"Now it cannot be denied that the only way one can offer effective resistance to
violent assaults is by violence."
In other words, Mises held Fascism to be an evil, but an evil that vanquished another evil.
and then
"The Third International seeks to exterminate its adversaries and their ideas in the same way that the hygienist strives to exterminate a pestilential bacillus; it considers itself in no way bound by the terms of any compact that it may conclude with opponents, and it deems any crime, any lie, and any calumny permissible in carrying on its struggle. The Fascists, at least in principle, profess the same intentions. That they have not yet succeeded as fully as the Russian Bolsheviks in freeing themselves from a certain regard for liberal notions and ideas and traditional ethical precepts is to be attributed solely to the fact that the Fascists carry on their work among nations in which the intellectual and moral heritage of some thousands of years of civilization cannot be destroyed at one
blow, and not among the barbarian peoples on both sides of the Urals, whose relationship to civilization has never been any other than that of marauding denizens of forest and desert accustomed to engage, from time to time, in predatory raids on civilized lands in the hunt for booty."
In other words, Mises knew that fascism was evil at its root, and calls for murder of anyone who stands in its way, but it hasn't fully manifested itself the way communism had because the countries where fascists arose were more liberal countries that prevented it from taking full hold.
and then
"Against the weapons of the Bolsheviks, weapons must be used in reprisal, and it would be a mistake to display weakness before murderers. No liberal has ever called this into question. What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity
of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power."
This is the most relevant passage to the quote you keep repeating as allegedly showing Mises to be an apologist of fascism. Here he states very clearly that when it comes to violent murderers, violence is the only way to stop them. That is where he said that fascist violence stopped communist violence. That isn't an apology of fascism, that is just someone saying that evil Mr. X stopped evil Mr. Y, and thus Mr. X derived merit in the eyes of many. Mises would of course not deny that violence stopping violence is justified.
The people who historically were the ones who stopped the communists in Austria were the fascists. So Mises said the fascists acquired merit in the eyes of others. That doesn't mean in any way that he supports or apologizes for fascism.
and then
ReplyDelete"The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence. In order to assure success, one must be imbued with the will to victory and always proceed violently. This is its highest principle."
Mises held fascism to be a great danger because of its inherent basis in violence. That is not an apology.
and then
"Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles. But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses. For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them. If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas. There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism."
In other words, fascism could only ever be just a violent suppression of communism, and not a positive system in its own right.
and then
"Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property."
All these passages show that Mises was dead set against fascism, and only made ONE statement saying that fascism, for the time being, stopped the onset of socialism, and for that, is derived merit in the eyes of many. But that is not Mises supporting or apologizing for it.
If one serial killer killed another more brutal serial killer, then nobody, including Mises, would deny that a greater evil was vanquished, but Mises would stress that the serial killer killer, should he derive support from others, must not be confused as someone in favor of liberalism.
It doesn't occur to you that your hero Mises is capable of inconsistency.
Yes, Mises as a human was capable of inconsistency, but that does not entitle you to LIE about Mises' alleged apology for fascism, in order to deflect attention away from your hero Keynes who apologized for communism in Russia, and to show that whatever faults Keynes had, everyone else must be victim to the same faults.
There is not one shred of evidence that his comments "It cannot be denied that Fascism ... etc" are not his perosnal opinion.
It cannot be denied that fascism has acquired merit IN THE EYES OF MANY, NOT MISES.
There is a myriad of evidence, some of which I have showed above, that proves Mises was dead set against fascism.
Here is Keynes on Marxism. He is very dismissive. He is so dismissive that Joan Robinson ever wondered if he had read the works. It is interesting to note that Chomsky has also referred to Marxism as incredibly boring, etc.
ReplyDelete"“Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of Opinion — how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.” - John Maynard Keynes
"How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete text-book which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, whatever their faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? Even if we need a religion, how can we find it in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.My feelings about Das Kapital are the same as my feeling about the Koran...
I know that it is historically important and I know that many people, not all of whom are idiots, find it a sort of Rock of Ages ... it is inexplicable that it can have this effect. Its dreary, out-of-date, academic controversialising seems so extraordinarily unsuited as material for that purpose.... How could either of these books carry fire and sword round half the world?"
Ouch... Pretty harsh words to me.
In case there is anymore doubt:
“I can be influenced by what seems to me to be justice and good sense; but the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.” - John Maynard Keynes
I don't know people's opinions of Marxism here. I know LK has critiqued the LTV, and I kind of agree it doesn't explain everything. But I am still of the opinion that economics is a lot of philosophizing and you can really find value in all the schools to some degree.
--successfulbuild
"Whether the amount of the theft/surreptitious wealth transfer caused by funny money dilution is discernable by statistics or not, the person getting the new funny money has no right to it and has no right to use it to purchase goods and services."
ReplyDeleteOn the basis of what?
On the basis that initiating violence is unethical. Any policy that is ultimately based on initiations of violence, is unethical.
A government that enforces its own monopoly over money production, is unethical, because it is based on violence, not voluntary consent. The government uses violence to prevent competition in money production (see Liberty Dollars) and the government uses violence to backstop a demand for US dollars (through legal tender laws).
The Federal Reserve System is not a voluntary free market institution. It is an institution based on coercion, and is hence unethical. Individuals are not free to produce and use their own money. The government uses violence to get Americans and foreign businesses in the US to pay the government in US dollars, which of course coerces them to find and accept US dollars in their trades.
In any case, the primary effect of spending via new debt-created money in an eocnomy iwth idle resources is to raise production and employment, not inflation.
False. That claim rests on the fallacious assumption that inflation can target ONLY idle resources, instead of what it actually does, which is to also affect non-idle complimentary resources that the idle resource requires to fit in the overall capital structure, and hence raise those prices.
See William Hutt in his book "The Theory of Idle Resources" and Robert Murphy in one of his articles on the Mises website, both of which destroy the "idle resources" myth.
The doctrine of inflation being justified on the basis of idle resources completely ignores the problem of economic calculation, which only private property owners can finally settle. Only economic calculation can ascertain whether a resource should or should not be idle, whether it should be liquidated and sold for scrap, or whether it should be held for longer or shorter periods of time in idleness before being put back into operation.
Governments cannot know any of this, which means inflation from government is not the correct solution to "idle resources".
Where international trade exists and imports are available, it also has a source of commodities without causing inflation.
Which just exports the money temporarily, only to be sent back to buy goods, services, and assets (such as government debt), causing those prices to rise from where they otherwise would be.
It is only at full employment at FRB or fiat money creation is primarily inflationary.
False. Even with less than full employment, inflation can blow up stock market bubbles.
Your conception of inflation is fallacious. You believe the myth that inflation affects idle resources and unemployed and puts them into operation first, before inflation affects other prices. That is not the case.
Daniel Kuehn and I had a long exchange at his site about Mises' piece where Kuehn wheezes the following once he sees that his stance (which is the same as Lord Keynes') is untenable:
ReplyDeleteYou could have saved your breath - I've said since the beginning "Mises likes fascists because they brutally repressed the communists".
Why did you feel the need to list all this?
Do you think I somehow missed that point, despite the fact that I've been saying that?
I'm still not sure it's a viable enough point to praise fascists, particularly when he throws in line about how fascists still have liberal tendencies.
The exchange begins with (Ctrl+F):
Kuehn: "Thoughts? Does this make anyone uneasy?"
... and goes on for a while. The Mises piece is clearly an indictment of Fascists and Commies as illiberal while saying that Fascists are slightly less awful, which I had to lay out in nauseating detail. I was amazed at some of Keynes' psychotic quotes and how closely he aligned with those calling for state-enforced sterilization, etc. And Kuehn hilariously called Spanish Commies more "liberal" than their Fascist counterparts.
"Pinhead" and "lyingest economist" are terms sanctioned by Kuehn when used to describe people he disagrees with, which is why I used them.
"I said before that Mises argued that fascism acquired merit in the eyes of many, but Mises himself was nowhere close to being a personal supporter or apologist of fascism."
ReplyDeleteFalse. He:
(1) praised fascism
“It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization."
(2) become an economic adviser to the Austrian fascist Engelbert Dollfuss, even a close adviser (Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Meaning of the Mises Papers,” Mises.org, April 1997), and supported Dolfuss' Austro-fascism as
"a quick fix to safeguard Austria’s independence—unsuitable in the long run, especially if the general political mentality did not change"
(Hülsmann, 2007. Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Ala. pp. 683–684).
If you think that fascism IS a "quick fix" for your country, you are (1) personal supporter for it or (2) apologist for it.
"Even with less than full employment, inflation can blow up stock market bubbles."
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why Keynesians support effective financial regulation of the type we had before the 1980s that prevents bubbles in financial or real assets.
Mises is also guity of the following other charges:
ReplyDelete(1) A sheer stupid prediction:
“The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists. As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time” (Mises 1978: 49).
(2) A ridiculous non sequitur:
First:
"That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion."
Second:
"It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."
No ideology that would result in an "endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization" can possibly hvae "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history".
Mises is a muddle-headed idiot.
Lord Keynes!I am little amused Austrian libertarian don´t reed "If Austrians really think the ad hominem fallacy is valid, then by the same fallacious reasoning all of Mises’s economics can be dismissed by this remark:"et al.
ReplyDeleteAs i read it,you statetement means that a quotation could not dismiss a whole theory in this case Austrian and Ad Honimem is not valid.And of course they call you idiot!Take it as an honor!
False. He:
ReplyDelete(1) praised fascism
“It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization."
Wrong. That is not praising fascism. That is identifying that fascism had stopped the spread of communism and thus, for the moment, saved European civilization.
(2) become an economic adviser to the Austrian fascist Engelbert Dollfuss, even a close adviser (Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “The Meaning of the Mises Papers,” Mises.org, April 1997),
Becoming an economic advisor to a fascist is also not a praise nor support of fascism.
and supported Dolfuss' Austro-fascism as
"a quick fix to safeguard Austria’s independence—unsuitable in the long run, especially if the general political mentality did not change"
That is not a support of fascism. That is an identification that fascism was a quick fix. It is like identifying that Mao killed Stalin and hence stopped the spread of the Soviet Empire. That would also not be a support of Maoism.
If you think that fascism IS a "quick fix" for your country, you are (1) personal supporter for it or (2) apologist for it.
False. If you identify that fascism was a quick fix, and in your other writings go into detail how
"Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods."
"Even with less than full employment, inflation can blow up stock market bubbles."
ReplyDeleteAnd that's why Keynesians support effective financial regulation of the type we had before the 1980s that prevents bubbles in financial or real assets.
Regulations cannot stop the boom and bust, because the government does not know what the proper prices of anything should be. Only ECONOMIC CALCULATION, i.e. market exchange, can do that. But if the Federal Reserve System expands credit, and holds interest rates below the natural market rates of interest, then bubbles will form no matter what is "regulated".
Prior the 1980s, there were still booms and busts.
There was a boom in the early 1970s, which was followed by a bust and recession 1973-75.
In the late 1960s, there was a boom, followed by a bust and recession 1969-70.
In the late 1950s, there was a boom, followed by a bust and recession 1960-1961.
There were recessions 1958, 1953, and 1949.
The reason why the latest bust is so severe is precisely because the credit expansion was so high and interest rates held extremely low during the early 2000s.
No regulations can stop bubbles because the government cannot know if prevailing prices are justified.
"That is identifying that fascism had stopped the spread of communism and thus, for the moment, saved European civilization."
ReplyDeleteLOL... And he tells us clearly that this means that the "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history".
"That is not a support of fascism. That is an identification that fascism was a quick fix. "
And it is still support for fascism as "a quick fix", no matter how you cut it. Mises was, without any doubt, supporting a type of fascism: Engelbert Dollfuss's Austro-fascism, even to the extent of advising Dollfuss.
If he was really a vehement opponent of fascism he would NEVER have offered economic advice to a fascist dictator. He would have shunned Dollfuss - that would have been the action of a man strongly oppposed ot fascism, not a contemtiple worm who declared that the "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history".
"No regulations can stop bubbles because the government cannot know if prevailing prices are justified."
ReplyDeleteHousing bubble?! Full speed private market exchange and deregulation.
"Prior the 1980s, there were still booms and busts... etc."
ReplyDeleteYou are conflating asset bubbles with the business cycle - and assuming the false and flawed ABCT.
The business cycle existed 1945-1973 - but it wasn't driven by asset bubbles at all. It was normally a inventory cycle.
And the business cycle after WWII down to about 1980s was rather different from the pre-1933 business cycle. Recessions in this period were not caused by the familiar 19th-century and pre-1933 pattern of bursting asset bubbles, financial crises, bank runs and debt deflation.
As Sorkin argues, downturns were mostly “inventory recessions,” a phenomenon that people in the 1950s and 1960s themselves understood. See Life, 14 April 1961:
http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=9lEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA34&dq=%22inventory+recession%22&hl=en&ei=XubmTNDAI4KmsQPVvLyxCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22inventory%20recession%22&f=false
The absence of huge and damaging asset bubbles, financial crises, and bank runs after 1945 is undoubtedly related to the superior system of financial regulation and deposit insurance that existed in this era that minimised bubbles and reckless lending.
When that effective system was transformed into one that was fundamentally dysfunctional after 1980 and, in particular, in the 1990s, with the advent of New Classical economics, monetarism, and revived neoclassical macro-theory, we saw the return of huge asset bubbles, financial crises and debt deflation as significant causes of the business cycle.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/01/keynesianism-in-america-in-1940s-and.html
Mises is also guity of the following other charges:
ReplyDelete(1) A sheer stupid prediction:
“The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists. As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time” (Mises 1978: 49).
"Probably" is not "definitely" you idiot. And the fascists in Austria did in fact become more moderate, before Hitler arrived.
(2) A ridiculous non sequitur:
First:
"That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion."
That is not a non-sequitur. That is an argument about the foreign policy nature of fascism. In his book on Liberalism. In the chapter entitled "The Argument of Fascism."
Hahahahaha
"Non-sequitur" Hilariously idiotic.
Second:
"It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."
Hahahaha, also not a non-sequitur you idiot. Quote already dealt with above.
"Against the weapons of the Bolsheviks, weapons must be used in reprisal, and it would be a mistake to display weakness before murderers. No liberal has ever called this into question. What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power." - pg 50.
No ideology that would result in an "endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization" can possibly hvae "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history".
You idiot, that's just another reiteration of the fact that Mises statement "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history" was a reference to OTHERS who have given fascism merit, not Mises himself. Mises' position is that "endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization."
Mises hears people praising and supporting fascism, and so Mises says fascism has won merit. But Mises argues that fascism is evil, and that fascism is endless war and will destroy all of civilization if practiced as a socioeconomic system.
You're a muddle-headed idiot who lacks basic reading comprehension.
(1) "That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion."
ReplyDelete(2) "It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."
The non sequitur involved is asserting (1), and then asserting (2)
"that's just another reiteration of the fact that Mises statement "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history" was a reference to OTHERS who have given fascism merit, not Mises himself."
There is not one shred of evidence that the "merit" statement is anything but Mises' personal opinion.
If this was merely his talking about what others think, he would have said:
"for many ..."
"many people think .."
"it is widely held that. " etc.
LOL... And he tells us clearly that this means that the "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history".
ReplyDeleteThat is Mises referring to the population's judgment, to others who have given fascism merit for halting the spread of communism. Mises himself was anti-fascist, which is why he wrote a chapter excoriating fascism.
And it is still support for fascism as "a quick fix", no matter how you cut it.
I would support Hitler killing Stalin if I lived in Russia, and I would support Stalin killing Hitler if I lived in Germany. I would support Mao killing Pol Pot if I lived in Cambodia, and I would support Pol Pot killing Mao if I lived in China.
To say that one evil stopping another evil as a "quick fix" is not a support of the evil you idiot. It is realizing that one's own country has been saved from being destroyed.
Mises was, without any doubt, supporting a type of fascism:
LOL, no, he was not supporting fascism at all. He condemned it as evil and as destroyer of civilization.
Engelbert Dollfuss's Austro-fascism, even to the extent of advising Dollfuss.
Advising a domestic evil who is stopping foreign evil is not a support of domestic evil.
It would be like America invading all of Europe, and Europe become a military dictatorship temporarily to defeat the American invaders. If the Europeans succeed, then identifying the fact that the locals would invariably praise the European fascists, and identifying that European fascism "saved" Europe, is not a support of fascism. It is realizing that only violence can stop violence.
"Now it cannot be denied that the only way one can offer effective resistance to
violent assaults is by violence." - pg 49.
"No liberal has ever called this into question. What distinguishes liberal
from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power." - pg 50
If he was really a vehement opponent of fascism he would NEVER have offered economic advice to a fascist dictator.
ReplyDeleteNon-sequitur. To advise a dictator does not mean that one supports the dictator. Mises recommended low inflation, low spending, and trade liberalization. It is not a support of fascism to tell a fascist to enact liberal trade reforms.
He would have shunned Dollfuss - that would have been the action of a man strongly oppposed ot fascism, not a contemtiple worm who declared that the "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history".
Not if Dollfuss was standing ready to attack foreign invaders intending to take over the country you moron. Mises was an Austrian. He served in the army. He didn't want his country to be destroyed.
"It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.”"
ReplyDeleteNot one shred of evidence that he talking about other people.
He prefixes the whole paragraph with the clear give away: "It cannot be denied that ..."
He doesn't say, "many people think that..", or "it is widely though that..."
Your attempts to deny the obvious are feeble and laughable.
Also: that Mises thought Engelbert Dollfuss's Austro-fascism was "a quick fix" also supports the view that he is talking here about his own opinion that fascism "saved European civilization" and the "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."
"To say that one evil stopping another evil as a "quick fix" is not a support of the evil you idiot"
ReplyDeleteA wonderful example of the non sequitur: you should be proud.
"Dollfuss was standing ready to attack foreign invaders intending to take over the country you moron. Mises was an Austrian. He served in the army. He didn't want his country to be destroyed. "
ReplyDeleteWell, that makes it alright!! He sounds like a spendid chap!
Unfortunately for you, there were plenty of Austrian politicians who could have been democratically elected and done the same thing - they didn't need some dictator thug like Dollfuss to defend their country.
You are conflating asset bubbles with the business cycle - and assuming the false and flawed ABCT.
ReplyDeleteYou haven't shown how ABCT is "false and flawed."
Assets bubbles are a part of the credit expansion business cycle.
The business cycle existed 1945-1973 - but it wasn't driven by asset bubbles at all. It was normally a inventory cycle.
False. Inventory accumulation is a malinvestment caused by credit expansion. Inventory is an asset you idiot.
And the business cycle after WWII down to about 1980s was rather different from the pre-1933 business cycle.
Wrong. The recessions were all driven by the same factors, credit expansion and artificially low interest rates. Every single one.
Recessions in this period were not caused by the familiar 19th-century and pre-1933 pattern of bursting asset bubbles, financial crises, bank runs and debt deflation.
That's because the credit expansion was milder, on account of the country being less imperialistic.
As Sorkin argues, downturns were mostly “inventory recessions,” a phenomenon that people in the 1950s and 1960s themselves understood.
Excess inventory is a malinvestment. When inflation speeds up, businesses find that merely by holding onto inventory for a period of time will enable them to earn a competitive nominal profit, through selling it at higher prices in the future. If inflation was more subdued, then stockpiling inventory would not generate a competitive nominal profit, and would therefore be mitigated.
Once businesses in general begin stockpiling inventory as an investment, on account of inflation picking up, then as the errors are revealed, through the acceleration in inflation slowing down, then all the excess inventory cannot be sold at higher prices, and begins to accumulate, thus creating the appearance that excess inventory "caused" the recession.
The absence of huge and damaging asset bubbles, financial crises, and bank runs after 1945 is undoubtedly related to the superior system of financial regulation and deposit insurance that existed in this era that minimised bubbles and reckless lending.
Nope. It is directly the result of less credit expansion and interest rates being held not insanely low.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.pdf?&chart_type=line&graph_id=&category_id=&recession_bars=On&width=630&height=378&bgcolor=%23b3cde7&graph_bgcolor=%23ffffff&txtcolor=%23000000&ts=8&preserve_ratio=true&fo=ve&id=FEDFUNDS&transformation=lin&scale=Left&range=Max&cosd=1954-07-01&coed=2011-07-01&line_color=%230000ff&link_values=&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&line_style=Solid&lw=1&vintage_date=2011-08-23&revision_date=2011-08-23&mma=0&nd=&ost=&oet=&fml=a&fq=Monthly&fam=avg&fgst=lin
Fed funds rate fluctuations signaled a fluctuating amount of reserve expansion. The recession in 1987 was more severe than the 1970s recession because interest rates were lowered much more which then caused a much more protracted boom. The bigger the boom, the bigger the bust.
When that effective system was transformed into one that was fundamentally dysfunctional after 1980 and, in particular, in the 1990s, with the advent of New Classical economics, monetarism, and revived neoclassical macro-theory, we saw the return of huge asset bubbles, financial crises and debt deflation as significant causes of the business cycle.
Credit expansion radically accelerated post 1980.
"It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.”"
ReplyDeleteNot one shred of evidence that he talking about other people.
There is tons of evidence he is talking about other people.
"Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire."
Mises writes in summation and as a general response in "Lord Keynes and Say’s Law," in Hazlitt, "The Critics of Keynesian Economics," p. 319:
"The policies he advocated were precisely those which almost all governments, including the British, had already adopted many years before his "General Theory" was published. Keynes was not an innovator and champion of new methods of managing economic affairs. His contribution consisted rather in providing an apparent justification for the policies which were popular with those in power in spite of the fact that all economists viewed them as disastrous. His achievement was a rationalization of the policies already practiced."
"Only under the fresh impression of the murders and atrocities perpetrated by the supporters of the Soviets were Germans and Italians able to block out the remembrance of the traditional restraints of justice and morality and find the impulse to bloody counteraction. The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists. As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time."
"This moderation is the result of the fact that traditional liberal views still continue to have an unconscious influence on the Fascists. But however far this may go, one must not fail to recognize that the conversion of the Rightist parties to the tactics of Fascism shows that the battle against liberalism has resulted in successes that, only a short time ago, would have been considered completely unthinkable."
In other words, Mises stresses that fascism was only able to gain success over liberalism because of attacking communism, not because it is itself good.
"Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the archenemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods."
"Now it cannot be denied that the only way one can offer effective resistance to
violent assaults is by violence."
In other words, Mises held Fascism to be an evil, but an evil that vanquished another evil.
and then
ReplyDelete"The Third International seeks to exterminate its adversaries and their ideas in the same way that the hygienist strives to exterminate a pestilential bacillus; it considers itself in no way bound by the terms of any compact that it may conclude with opponents, and it deems any crime, any lie, and any calumny permissible in carrying on its struggle. The Fascists, at least in principle, profess the same intentions. That they have not yet succeeded as fully as the Russian Bolsheviks in freeing themselves from a certain regard for liberal notions and ideas and traditional ethical precepts is to be attributed solely to the fact that the Fascists carry on their work among nations in which the intellectual and moral heritage of some thousands of years of civilization cannot be destroyed at one
blow, and not among the barbarian peoples on both sides of the Urals, whose relationship to civilization has never been any other than that of marauding denizens of forest and desert accustomed to engage, from time to time, in predatory raids on civilized lands in the hunt for booty."
In other words, Mises knew that fascism was evil at its root, and calls for murder of anyone who stands in its way, but it hasn't fully manifested itself the way communism had because the countries where fascists arose were more liberal countries that prevented it from taking full hold.
and then
"Against the weapons of the Bolsheviks, weapons must be used in reprisal, and it would be a mistake to display weakness before murderers. No liberal has ever called this into question. What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity
of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power."
This is the most relevant passage to the quote you keep repeating as allegedly showing Mises to be an apologist of fascism. Here he states very clearly that when it comes to violent murderers, violence is the only way to stop them. That is where he said that fascist violence stopped communist violence. That isn't an apology of fascism, that is just someone saying that evil Mr. X stopped evil Mr. Y, and thus Mr. X derived merit in the eyes of many. Mises would of course not deny that violence stopping violence is justified.
The people who historically were the ones who stopped the communists in Austria were the fascists. So Mises said the fascists acquired merit in the eyes of others. That doesn't mean in any way that he supports or apologizes for fascism.
He prefixes the whole paragraph with the clear give away: "It cannot be denied that ..."
Yes, it cannot be denied that the Austrian people gave merit to fascism.
He doesn't say, "many people think that..", or "it is widely though that..."
He doesn't have to.
Your attempts to deny the obvious are feeble and laughable.
Also: that Mises thought Engelbert Dollfuss's Austro-fascism was "a quick fix" also supports the view that he is talking here about his own opinion that fascism "saved European civilization" and the "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."
I would support Hitler killing Stalin if I lived in Russia, and I would support Stalin killing Hitler if I lived in Germany. I would support Mao killing Pol Pot if I lived in Cambodia, and I would support Pol Pot killing Mao if I lived in China.
To say that one evil stopping another evil as a "quick fix" is not a support of the evil you idiot. It is realizing that one's own country has been saved from being destroyed.
"To say that one evil stopping another evil as a "quick fix" is not a support of the evil you idiot"
ReplyDeleteA wonderful example of the non sequitur: you should be proud.
That is not a non-sequitur. That is a refutation of your idiotic claim that to identify one evil stopping another evil, and thus calling the first evil a "quick fix" is not a support or apology of fascism contrary to your claims.
"Dollfuss was standing ready to attack foreign invaders intending to take over the country you moron. Mises was an Austrian. He served in the army. He didn't want his country to be destroyed. "
ReplyDeleteWell, that makes it alright!! He sounds like a spendid chap!
Well, you identify American fascists as stopping terrorism. If Mises is a "splendid chap" then so are you.
Unfortunately for you, there were plenty of Austrian politicians who could have been democratically elected and done the same thing - they didn't need some dictator thug like Dollfuss to defend their country.
ReplyDeleteNot when there is violence at your doorstep. If you have murderers knocking on your door, you don't respond by electing someone to shoot them. You just shoot them.
"No liberal has ever called this into question. What distinguishes liberal
from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power." - pg 50
"Here he states very clearly that when it comes to violent murderers, violence is the only way to stop them."
ReplyDeleteAnd the democratic, liberal state ALREADY has institutions to deal with revolutionary sedition: the police, law courts and justice system, where the state's agents can LEGALLY use force against criminals of any type when they use it themselves.
The pathetic, idiotic assumption underlying your statement appears to be that fascism and dictatorship are necessary to deal with extremists. That is false.
"The recessions were all driven by the same factors, credit expansion and artificially low interest rates. Every single one.
ReplyDelete"
Ah, yes, same rubbish appeal to ABCT.
It gets you no where.
There is NO unique natural rate of interest except in a fairy-tale equilibrium world. ABCT is false.
(1) "That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion."
ReplyDelete(2) "It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history."
The non sequitur involved is asserting (1), and then asserting (2)
That is not a non-sequitur you moron. Mises didn't argue that (2) logically follows from (1), in which case it would be a non-sequitur. He made two separate arguments.
Non-sequiturs arise out of attempting to make a logical syllogism, and one step does not logically follow from the other.
For example, your argument that Mises committed a non-sequitur, on the basis of the two preceding arguments, is actually a non-sequitur. In short, where a conclusion is not supported by its premises.
(1) is NOT a supporting premise for (2). (2) is a statement about the merit fascism has won for itself in the eyes of the population, and (1) is that fascism is endless war.
"that's just another reiteration of the fact that Mises statement "merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history" was a reference to OTHERS who have given fascism merit, not Mises himself."
There is not one shred of evidence that the "merit" statement is anything but Mises' personal opinion.
There is a ton of evidence.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/08/keyness-opinion-of-communism-and.html?showComment=1314061694520#c7821355762974058143
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/08/keyness-opinion-of-communism-and.html?showComment=1314061735624#c8173280709662649407
If this was merely his talking about what others think, he would have said:
"for many ..."
"many people think .."
"it is widely held that. " etc.
He did say that you idiot.
"Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the archenemies of civilization. Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil. For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods."
And the democratic, liberal state ALREADY has institutions to deal with revolutionary sedition: the police, law courts and justice system, where the state's agents can LEGALLY use force against criminals of any type when they use it themselves.
ReplyDeleteArmies need resources. When a foreign invader has a large army, then existing resources available to the state through democracy might not be sufficient to stop the violence.
The...assumption underlying your statement appears to be that fascism and dictatorship are necessary to deal with extremists. That is false.
No, that is not an underlying assumption at all. That is only a historical happenstance. If fascist evil does succeed in stopping communist evil, then this is an identification of what happened, it is not a support of the methods used if the world could be run again in the same time period.
"Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist,.... etc"
ReplyDeleteThat statement is in a completely different part of the chapter.
The passage in question:
“It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.” (Mises, 1978 [1927]: 51).
contains NO such qualificiation like "Many people..".
This kind of denying what is obvious is typical of your endless nonsense.
Ah, yes, same rubbish appeal to ABCT. It gets you no where.
ReplyDeleteYou have not showed how ABCT is "rubbish."
There is NO unique natural rate of interest except in a fairy-tale equilibrium world. ABCT is false.
There doesn't need to be a single natural interest rate. There can be and are natural interest rates, and the ABCT would still fully explain credit expansion business cycles.
To focus on whether there is a natural interest rate or natural interest rates, is a red herring, because they are unobservable anyway. The point is that the Federal Reserve System puts interest rates below what they otherwise would have been had loans and investments in general been financed 100% by voluntary savings, instead of inflation out of thin air from the banking system. The core of the ABCT is the discrepancy between investment and voluntary savings, which is manifested in altered interest rates. Whether or not one interest rate or many are affected, it doesn't matter.
That statement is in a completely different part of the chapter.
ReplyDeleteThe statements you quoted into (1) and (2) are also in different parts of the same chapter you idiot.
The passage in question:
“It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.” (Mises, 1978 [1927]: 51).
contains NO such qualificiation like "Many people..".
It doesn't have to. The context of the chapter makes it clear that Mises as a passive bystander said that fascism acquired merit.
This kind of ad hominem, is what is obvious and typical of your endless nonsense.
"To focus on whether there is a natural interest rate or natural interest rates, is a red herring, because they are unobservable anyway."
ReplyDeleteLOL! The truth of the very foundtaion of ABCT is just "red herring" for you??
That says it all.
"The point is that the Federal Reserve System puts interest rates below what they otherwise would have been had loans and investments in general been financed 100% by voluntary savings, instead of inflation out of thin air from the banking system."
Meanwhile in the real world, there ARE, on many occasions, resources available for investment via loans made from FRB.
Another unrealistic assumtion of ABCT about the economy: that it is running at full employment, full capacity, no idle resources, no international trade.
LOL! The truth of the very foundtaion of ABCT is just "red herring" for you??
ReplyDeleteNo, the red herring is your insistence that assuming a natural interest rate or interest rates makes a difference in the validity of the ABCT.
That says it all.
Your inability to show how the presence of natural interest rates as opposed to a natural interest rate refutes the ABCT is what "says it all." You have not actually shown any rigorous explanation as to how the presence of natural interest rates in the ABCT model refutes the model. Just because Mises and Hayek originally presumed a natural interest rate as opposed to rates, doesn't mean that the whole theory crumbles when more than one rate is assumed.
All it would mean is that instead of the natural interest rate on goods being 5%, say, the natural interest rate on one half of goods is 4% and the other half is 6%, say. When the Federal Reserve System expands credit, pushing natural interest rates down, they push the interest rate on loans in the first half of goods to 3%, say, and the other half down to 5%, say, or even just one half but not the other. The business cycle will arise in the sections of the economy where interest rates are pushed below where they otherwise would have been had they been financed by voluntary savings.
If that means the boom will be concentrated in the housing sector, then so be it. If it means the boom will be focused in dot coms, then so be it.
There is not a shred of evidence and not a single valid argument that shows the presence of natural interest rates somehow compromises the ABCT.
That Mises and Hayek, and everyone else for that matter, cannot observe the natural interest rate or rates, on account of the Fed manipulating them, is why Mises and Hayek used a single interest rate as a conceptual shorthand to represent what would have existed due to voluntary savings.
Meanwhile in the real world, there ARE, on many occasions, resources available for investment via loans made from FRB.
ReplyDeleteFRB is not voluntary savings you idiot. It generates loans made out of no prior savings on the part of anyone. That's the problem!
Hahahaha
Watching you confirm the ABCT all the time is very funny to watch.
Another unrealistic assumtion of ABCT about the economy: that it is running at full employment, full capacity, no idle resources, no international trade.
ReplyDeleteFalse. ABCT does not require the economy to be running at full employment, nor full capacity, nor zero idle resources, nor zero international trade.
ABCT is valid whenever the banking system expands credit and investment exceeds voluntary savings, thus putting a strain on the available supply of real resources that would enable the investments to be sustainable.
See "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles" by Jesus De Soto.
Something that has not been discussed:
ReplyDeleteWhen Mises says that fascism will acquire a more moderate course, did he mean that -
1) Engelbert Dolfuss' Christian Corporativist regime would have acquired a more moderate course, not necessarilly meaning Hitler and Mussolini?
2) all kinds of fascism, Dolfussian or Mussolinian, would acquire a more moderate course?
3) specifically Mussolini would acquire a more moderate course, perhaps because he didn't consider Dolfuss a fascist?
I myself am confused by the context.
PS: I do recall von Mises emphasising that there were significant differences between Hitler's Germany and other authoritarian governments, to the point that he would not call Nazism the same thing as fascism. The reason was that socialist writers and liberal writers wrote rather freely in Italy, compared to Germany.
When Mises says that fascism will acquire a more moderate course, did he mean that
ReplyDelete1) Engelbert Dolfuss' Christian Corporativist regime would have acquired a more moderate course, not necessarilly meaning Hitler and Mussolini?
2) all kinds of fascism, Dolfussian or Mussolinian, would acquire a more moderate course?
3) specifically Mussolini would acquire a more moderate course, perhaps because he didn't consider Dolfuss a fascist?
Mises wrote "Liberalism" in 1927. At that time, Mussolini had been in power in Italy for around 5 years (coup was in 1922). Hitler was still a rabble rousing power seeker figurehead of the Nazi Party and Germany was still a liberal democracy.
Ralph Raico has a comment on the EconomicPolicyJournal.com blog:
ReplyDeleteRalph Raico said...
That Fascism “saved European civilization” from Bolshevism was a commonly-held view among anti-Communists of the period. For instance, Winston Churchill visited Italy, met with Mussolini, and publicly lauded “Fascismo’s triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism,” claiming that “it proved the necessary antidote to the Communist poison” (New York Times January 21, 1927). All of the Italian classical liberals supported Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922, fearing that the country was teetering on the brink of a Leninist takeover. When I discussed with Mises translating his Liberalismus, from which this quote comes, he suggested I include a note explaining the circumstances of the time. I told him I thought that was unnecessary--vastly underestimating the prevalence of the historically clueless. There is a section on this whole episode in my forthcoming Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School, from the Mises Institute
Sounds like Raico is confirming that this was Mises' personal opinion.
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/08/truth-about-john-maynard-keynes.html?showComment=1314117416823#c1174663225075716485
ReplyDeleteSounds like Raico is confirming that this was Mises' personal opinion.
ReplyDeleteOn the contrary, "he suggested I include a note explaining the circumstances of the time" clearly shows Mises wanted Raico to make a statement detailing what the prevailing opinions and circumstances at the time were. Mises clearly did not want Raico to include that quote on the basis that Mises himself supported fascism, but rather to put fascism in a historical context and accompanies by prevailing attitudes towards it. Mises in the same chapter rightfully called fascism evil and violent and a destroyer of civilization. But he was not dogmatic as to deny what people around him believed about fascism, or what the fascists did militarily.
You wanted Mises to have only knee jerk reactions against fascism, and to ignore what many people believed about it at the time, and to ignore the fact that Austria's Christian corporatist version of fascism, in Mises' opinion, stopped communism from taking over Austria.
Only an empty headed sophist like you would behave in such a dishonest way that you want Mises to have behaved in.
Here is what I posted on that blog:
ReplyDeleteIt should be noted that Austrians are incoherent. They say that fascism stopped communism, but people were so repulsed by fascism that they turned to more democratic-socialist systems in both Latin America and in Europe, what Austrians consider to be socialist systems. The socialist systems that would have grown up had the communists and the socialists combined to defeat Hitler would probably just have been more extreme forms of what exists in Europe today, not Stalinism. (East Germany is different because it was a satellite of the USSR, like Poland and the Czech Republic.)
The proper response to any threat of totalitarian communism is not to ally with business and terrorists to suppress the population, but to suppress the communists, end of story. By Austrian logic, we should lose all our freedoms just to respond to terrorism. It is a kind of Bush/Ayn Rand logic that says we need to give up freedoms to stop a greater enemy. It would have been better to just let socialist/communism take over if you couldn't stop it, and that would have been better than the fascists as I will explain.
First, Conquest has never said that Mao killed 50 million people; he specialized in the USSR, not China. You're probably thinking of Courtois, or maybe Rummel's sources. What Rummel did was he calculated what he thought the population should be (in other words he calculated people dead that never even existed). He had the worst methodology possible and had to refine his figures, which at least he did do, after they exposed as frauds on the Internet (he published his "findings" on geocities). Famine had occurred in China before Mao and floods and so on killed considerably more people than died during the famine.
It should be noted that like Rummel, the authors of the BBoC have recanted. Rummel now says 35 million. So 35 million (an incredibly high estimate, some historians place it at about 25 million) is the number for China.
Furthermore, to get these deaths they count excess deaths. It is difficult to know just how many died by these standards. The population doubled under Mao as did life expectancy, so it's difficult to figure out how many literally starved to death, and how many people died because they were old or because of disease. In fact, the Great Leap Forward excess deaths are calculated relative to the low levels of mortality during the first decade of the PRC. Actual mortality rates during the Great Leap Forward were not much different from the mortality rates during the first half of the 20th century:
http://www.bikealpine.com/p_10.gif
You may as well blame the government for the millions that died during feudalist periods -- which had overall far more people dying from wars, poverty, disease, and so on than in the twentieth century.
Civilization was advancing in China and if Chiang Kai-Shek stayed in power millions more would likely have died than under Mao. Chiang Kai-shek failed to reform the agrarian economy, was more incompetent than Mao, ruled over an unjust society, and headed a brutal military regime. It's been estimated by Sen that because India didn't have even Mao's social programs, every 8 years more people died in India every 8 years than they did during Mao under the Great Leap Forward. Plus, from 1870s to about 1910, tens of millions in India died due to famines. These feudalist systems killed far more people than even communism, and, combined with capitalism, communism doesn't even come close.
As for Stalinism, it should be noted that one of the co-authors of the BBoC, Nicolas Werth, said that Stalin never had "death camps." I don't think they're a source that you would be interested in citing. What Werth means is that, like Getty has said, Stalin's camps were different from Hitler's. Tens of thousands were released every year and before WWII more inmates escaped from the camps than died there. They were a part of the Soviet economy, and the substandard care in the camps was not much worse than what existed elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteStephen Wheatcroft refuted Conquest's claims about the numbers in the labor camps as well, but in any case, Conquest puts the deaths of the USSR at about 20 million. Again, these were not killed a systematic program, but are excess deaths, deaths calculated based on what the perceived mortality rate should have been. During the first four years of Yeltsin's tenure, the excess deaths were larger than the excess deaths of Stalin's Great Purge. You cannot morally equate these "excess deaths" or even the "let die" ideology of Maoism with Hitler's attempts to systematically execute all Jews and all non-whites.
So, we have 35 + 20 = 55 million people. That is still lower than the amount that died due to WWII and the Holocaust. And we still haven't counted the number that died from starvation, poverty, etc. during the industrial revolution. And we haven't counted the amount that died in India. And we haven't counted the amount that died by private enterprise in other areas of the world, such as in the Congo. And we haven't included Latin America. So just the fascist deaths from Nazi Germany, Latin America, and the wars they caused is greater than communism, and was more dangerous.
The comments on Cambodia show that the author has no understanding of Cambodia and probably doesn't even know where it is on the map. It was the United States' intervention in the region that led to Pol Pot and the United States' undermining the moderate regime there and constant bombings of inner-Cambodia. Pol Pot would never have gotten the support he needed and Prince Sihanouk would have maintained power had the US not intervened (and the US support of Pol Pot continued even into the Reagan years). For those interested, the historical estimate is about 1.7 million, about a third of the country, not half the country as revisionists suggest.
When it comes to a murderous regime, I'd rather have an inefficient hellhole like the Soviet Union, whose systematic executions were probably around 4 million or so, and who didn't even have control over the entire country, than an efficient one like Nazi Germany. Stalin's incompetence led to many deaths, but much of his bumbling and vague plans weren't all that much different from Russia in 1884.There was also widespread dissent, active resistance, strikes, and so on that existed in the USSR but which did not exist in Nazi Germany. As I said, the proper approach to a tyrannical social system, if it takes over, is to suppress or let it happen and collapse. It is not to start up an even more efficient killing machine with plans to take over the whole world and kill all non-white peoples.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to reply to any responses that aren't by historians or political scientists. I have no interest in the cranky sources written by economists. In fact, we see that the "Austrians" are little kids with no interest in historical accuracy, and probably do not have the mental capacity to be dealing with historians, data, analysis, and so on, as evidenced by the confusing of Conquest with Courtois.
Ultimately, I do think Nazism was more Keynesian than Austrian in economy, where Pinochet was more Chicago School/Austrian (the philosophical differences are irrelevant). Both economic theories show that without proper political morality, you can have great terror. The Austrians who advocate anarcho-capitalist feudalism advocate an even worse terror than Nazism or communism combined and obviously shouldn't be responded to.
--successfulbuild
Fascists had as an ultimate goal eliminating all non-fascists, and they had a higher death rate, and, as shown by the historians I quoted, the death rate under the Soviet Union is far less and the two systems, while both totalitarian, were very different forms of totalitarianism.
ReplyDeleteFascism gained support because of its belief in racism and superiority, the kind of superiority that says that individuals who are different can be killed. In fact, Mussolini engaged in all kinds of terror and repression against political opponents and anybody who denounced his fraud and crimes was executed by black-shirtted thugs, such as Giacomo Matteotti.
The idea that socialism is worse than fascism is ludicrous and Stalin hadn't even gotten into his stride yet.
And as for the USSR's crimes, no verifiable data even existed for the period then, and even today, between 1919 and 1939, little data exists. There have been census reports during this period that show no massive loss of life, but these are considered to be tainted. There are official NKVD records which are considered to be very solid, but these account for only deaths which came about from legal death sentences. There are also a number of reports considered to be probably factual about a number of dead caused by forced exile, premature deaths in prisons, gulags, and special settlements, etc. There was also a few extrajudicial executions, but it is impossible to tell how many exactly, only that the most famous and well-known events taken together probably amount to less than 50,000 dead. This and other data suggest to historians using modern archival sources that extrajudicial and undocumented deaths were much lowers than legal deaths. All documented deaths attributed to Stalin's policies (executions, deaths in camps, in exile, etc) amount to well under 5 million total for his entire regime. The total number killed, the excess deaths, is almost impossible to calculate from all the conflicting information and so on.
Certainly, Mises never had access to any data proving that the USSR was worse, and we now know that fascism, which culminated into an ideology to eliminate all inferior races and peoples, was far worse than the ineffectual USSR which collapsed on its own.
In China as well, documentation is almost non-existent or kept from scrutiny by the Chinese government insofar as they may exist at all. Actual data is so rare that it might as well not exist. The regime has not fallen yet and historians do not have access to all the archives.
--successfulbuild