View source for Deconstructing Ludwig von Mises

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[[Category:Jersey Flight (pseudonym)]]
[[Category:Ludwig von Mises]]
[[Category:Praxeology]]
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{{DES | des = Finds severe contradictions in Mises' writings.  "The fact that Mises made a direction confession, regarding the legitimacy of social conditioning, merely serves to undermine the claims of his morally-individualistic-philosophy." | show=}}
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So far as I can tell Mises is either super naive or super cunning. "...economic activity has no other basis than the value scales thus constructed by individuals."* While there is truth to this, Mises seems to think of individuals as being isolated from institutions and cultures. Ignoring this is the only way he can avoid the starting point of value being rigged from the beginning (and more importantly) that it can be manipulated to sway mass culture! Individuals can be influenced and herded! How in God's name could he be blind to this? Naive or calculated?

*The Theory of Money and Credit pg.52, Liberty Fund 1981 


MISES DISCIPLE: You are reading too much into Misean psychology...


FLIGHT: Precisely! then it must be naivety in the case of Mises. As the Austrian says, "If you want my theory to be rational then pay no attention to the relevant information behind the curtain." I think I see the problem here. I do in fact consider what you say, I even read Austrian literature, but this fairness is not returned. Try and consider my objection. Desire is the kind of thing that can be controlled and manipulated, turned in many directions. Mises is right about individuals and value, but he is not right that their power remains isolated, he is not right that their choices take place in a neutral vacuum. The theory here is very trite, in fact, it relies on ignorance and simplicity in order to propagate itself. Men who can only ask so many questions, this is what's required to make Austrian disciples! I am not interested in being indoctrinated, but I am interested in discussing certain claims made by the Austrians. Mises's quote that I cited above fits into the category of selective evidence, it is exceedingly narrow, there is more to the picture. 


MISES DISCIPLE: I get that Mises takes individual preferences as given for the purpose of economic analysis, although he does not exclude things like marketing which update those with new information. you could maybe improve your argument by explaining why that is a wrong starting point. Is there a branch of economics which does not accept preferences more or less as a given?


FLIGHT: "Why that is a wrong starting point," you ask? By "that" I assume you mean this: "...economic activity has no other basis than the value scales thus constructed by individuals." This is a false premise, economic activity also has the basis of manipulation and coercion (which comes in many subtle forms). Further it is not simply "value scales constructed by individuals" (if by "individuals" you mean autonomous, uninfluenced, born yesterday, unaffected by history, individuals). Economic activity is a social phenomena, not an independent phenomena! Activity itself is not isolated from a larger chain of causality. But Mises needs it to be this way so he can leverage his moralism of responsibility and reward, crime and punishment... ultimately so he can pseudo-justify his theory of inequality.  


MISES DISCIPLE: Please consider all the assumptions that read into Mises's notion of individual: " if by "individuals" you mean autonomous, uninfluenced, born yesterday, unaffected by history, individuals".
 
Do you seriously think that is what he means by individual? He does not realize that someone born in the US received different influences and culture than someone born in Germany? In other words, you're setting up a strawman. While all those influences obviously exist, the question is what determines an individual's choices today. The answer is that individual's value scale or preferences at that moment (regardless of how they were established). 

Of course economics is about more than one individual, a social phenomenon. That is the topic of much economic analysis (division of labor, specialization, spread of information, public choice theory). But this emergent social structure is the result of individual choices at points in time (very many of them). Each of which can be studied... 

To address a specific comment: "Desire is the kind of thing that can be controlled and manipulated, turned in many directions." First, this seems to overstate the case. I don't think I can manipulate you into liking mud pies or agreeing with Mises (apparently). Advertising is not mind control. Second, this does not affect or invalidate Mises's analysis of the moment where choice happens.


FLIGHT: "While all those influences obviously exist, the question is what determines an individual's choices today. The answer is that individual's value scale or preferences at that moment (regardless of how they were established)."

The "answer" for Mises (who it seems you have not read) is "desire," which I agree with, but my point is that desire does not come rushing forth from a vacuum, it is always the conclusion of a social process, causal chain. Do you deny this?

"But this emergent social structure is the result of individual choices at points in time (very many of them). " I think you mean, "emerging social structure." By "individual choices" do you mean socially unaffected, individual choices? Do you mean that all individuals have the same equality of choice? Surely you don't mean to say that all individuals have equal power in their choices? 

Back to my original claim: "...economic activity has NO OTHER basis than the value scales thus constructed by individuals." This is false. If I am not the sole cause of my value scales (and sole cause is exactly how I take Mises to mean it) then I am not the sole constructor of my values. Does Mises then mean to say, "economic activity has no other basis than the value scales thus constructed by individuals [even as some individuals are subverted in their value constructions by the value constructions of other individuals]?" Does the fact that I can make a choice mean that my choice is equal to every other choice? Does the fact that I have values prove that my values are individual, that they are the product of blank freedom? What about economic coercion? As for manipulation, your reply simply seems to be the assertion that it doesn't exist. 

Also, do provide a defense of Mises having a dialectical understanding of the individual. Am I in fact creating a straw-man? I think you may fail to comprehend Mises's position here. If you begin with a causally connected, and socially conditioned premise, when it comes to your definition of choice, then you cannot rightly end with autonomous responsibility. Social conditions will then have to be factored into the premise of human action! Mises does not want this because it strips him of his much needed moralization, demonization, of those who do not conform to the assumptions of bourgeois morality.

If I were to drink Mises uncritically I would end by not only fallaciously devaluing individuals on the basis of their monetary status (as well as over-valuing individuals), but I would also end up enshrining naive economic principles. That there is such a thing as a free market is entirely indefensible and empirically unfounded, it is pure imagination, it is the capitalist God-of-the-Gaps. Deregulating the market merely allows people to be exploited. All markets are regulated, the difference is between democratic regulation or autocratic regulation. 

Mises in his book, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, tries to put forth the mistaken idea that the "consumer" is the ruler of the market. This is backwards. Clearly Mises has NO understanding of the power of propaganda (the science of public relations) when it comes to shaping the "desires" of the consumer. [Please see Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Propaganda by Edward Bernays.]

As I said, 'Desire is the kind of thing that can be controlled and manipulated, turned in many directions.'

As you replied: "First, this seems to overstate the case. I don't think I can manipulate you into liking mud pies or agreeing with Mises (apparently)."

"I don't think" is not an argument, it is a personal statement about your feelings, and perhaps, your abilities. I wonder if we could manipulate people into hating Jews? Did the Nazi's perhaps know something you don't? 

"Advertising is not mind control." Every theory of public relations, since the time of Bernays, contradicts this assertion. How do you back it up? If advertising is not a form of control then what is it? Surely you would not call it a rational and innocent form of communication? 

After the second world war the behaviorists mastered the art of molding public opinion. Since that time corporations have fined-tuned this science to the point where it is no longer detectable, we are in fact, a product of the cultural industry. Very few people ever step outside the matrix of this world; mass culture moves to the tune of social engineering. Sadly, someone like Mises (instead of challenging the status quo) merely reinforces it. In this sense he is not a true liberal thinker, but like so many that walk his line, he is a tool in someone else's war. 


MISES DISCIPLE: I will start by repeating the questions you skipped, which I will refer to as [the] "central question": Do you seriously think that is what [Mises] means by individual ("autonomous, uninfluenced, born yesterday, unaffected by history, individuals")? He does not realize that someone born in the US received different influences and culture than someone born in Germany?

And here is the answer to the central question, by Mises: 

"Inheritance and environment direct a man's actions. They suggest to him both the ends and the means. He lives not simply as man in abstracto; he lives as a son of his family, his race, his people, and his age; as a citizen of his country; as a member of a definite social group; as a practitioner of a certain vocation; as a follower of definite religious, metaphysical, philosophical, and political ideas; as a partisan in many feuds and controversies. He does not himself create his ideas and standards of value; he borrows them from other people. His ideology is what his environment enjoins upon him. Only very few men have the gift of thinking new and original ideas and of changing the traditional body of creeds and doctrines." Human Action, Chapter II, Section 6, pg.46, Contemporary Books, third revised edition 1966 
 
Does this alleviate your misconceptions and fears that Mises discounts the influence of culture, ideology and other social influences? If yes, it would have been faster for you to read Mises or asked about what he wrote, rather than spinning up theories and slaying strawmen.

"(who it seems you have not read)"
Unsubstantiated trolling which will make my reading of your arguments less generous and will decrease my patience and any credit you may have in this discussion. First and last warning. If anything, I must conclude from the exchange so far that you have not read the works you wish to criticize.

"desire does not come rushing forth from a vacuum"
See central question. How are you disagreeing with Mises? Humans don't act? Action doesn't involve ends or means? Ends don't imply subjective valuation/preferences?  All those are necessarily true, whatever the source of preferences is. Does his economic analysis become wrong because he delegates the understanding of those desires to other disciplines (psychology, sociology, aesthetics, ...)?

For a parallel, consider geometry: "if a triangle has a right angle, then such and such conclusions necessarily follow".  The study of how to measure angles or fabricate angles does nothing to invalidate such statement. When the condition is met, the conclusion holds (If A, then B). If you can establish that the angle is not a right angle, then fine, the conclusion is not established.

"By "individual choices" do you mean socially unaffected, individual choices?" Asked and answered previously. See central question. In short, no, and it doesn't matter.

"(and sole cause is exactly how I take Mises to mean it)"
See central question. Technically, the sole cause for everything is probably the Big Bang, yet most disciplines can proceed fruitfully by breaking the causality problem into steps.

You are criticizing Mises's stopping his analysis at individual preferences, but that cannot possibly invalidate said analysis. If I say logically establish that "when the individual prefers this, then he will choose that", it will be true regardless of *why* the individual prefers this. 
 
All of praxeology is simply saying "if we have all the individuals' preferences, then this follows". Basically, purposeful action necessarily implies A, B and C.

You want to explore the psychology and sociology of those preferences, Mises would say party on. It's just a different area of inquiry than praxeology, which does nothing to invalidate or diminish it. Such study of values and ideologies can only add to it.

If you want to establish that my buying mud pies is unconscious and automatic, then the conclusions of the study of action won't apply.

Regarding manipulation, please stop making assumptions about what I believe or not. Ask a clarifying question if need be. Either way, mind control is irrelevant as it concerns the formation of preferences. If I could control you into increasing your subjective valuation of mud pies, you will buy more mud pies.

As for your rant, it has no point for me until you address the central question and save us both time. You introduce concepts that are either undefined or do nothing to show Mises's analysis to be incorrect ("equality of choice", a choice being equal to another, "blank freedom", "economic coercion" and so on). Your rant about the implications or evil motivations of such analysis is also completely besides the question.

""I don't think" is not an argument, it is a personal statement about your feelings, and perhaps, your abilities." Fair enough. You can convince me that you are not overstating your case by making a fortune selling mud pies (you just need a good marketing strategy I suppose), or alternatively simply changing my mind without having to convince me. 


----------DECONSTRUCTING LUDWIG VON MISES----------


At the outset I should like to say that I believe your reply is reasonable given a surface reading of Mises, which is precisely the reception Mises counts on in order to propagate his ideas.

In our time it is vital to deconstruct, precisely because language has morphed into a caricature of itself; to say that Mr. P is "irrational" has come to mean that Mr. P is "rational." 

Let us proceed to the "central question."

"Inheritance and environment direct a man's actions. They suggest to him both the ends and the means. He lives not simply as man in abstracto; he lives as a son of his family, his race, his people, and his age; as a citizen of his country; as a member of a definite social group; as a practitioner of a certain vocation; as a follower of definite religious, metaphysical, philosophical, and political ideas; as a partisan in many feuds and controversies. He does not himself create his ideas and standards of value; he borrows them from other people. His ideology is what his environment enjoins upon him. Only very few men have the gift of thinking new and original ideas and of changing the traditional body of creeds and doctrines." Human Action, Chapter II, Section 6, pg.46, Contemporary Books, third revised edition 1966 

In another place Mises says the same thing:

"This does not mean that every individual draws his valuations from his own mind. The immense majority of people take their valuations from the social environment into which they were born, in which they grew up, that moulded their personality and educated them. Few men have the power to deviate from the traditional set of values and to establish their own scale of what appears to be better and what appears to be worse." Mises, Theory and History pg.22, Arlington House 1969
 
Leaving aside the fact that Mises, at the end of each quote, actually negates the very thing he said, proving it to be mere lip service... we could ask, how does this magic individual escape a causal chain? But instead, let us pretend that Mises did not negate what he just said. 

As I see it this complicates Mises entire program, [as a praxeologist] why would he talk about individual choices, when in fact, these choices are determined by the society and environment in which men live? Do you see the problem? Mises's formal confession, wherein he bows the knee to the supremacy of environmental and social causes, as the supreme agents of value formation, usurps his desired axiom of individual choice. In other words, if it is true that "man does not create his ideas and standards of value," but that he "borrows them from other people," then why is the cult of praxeology not concerned with the formation of social values (most specially when it is admitted that individual choices are determined by social values)?

[If you understand me then you understand that Mises appears to be emphasizing the wrong axiom when it comes to value.]

In contrast to what Mises says above, the following is bound to provoke confusion from any thoughtful reader:

"Most of a man’s daily behavior is simple routine. He performs certain acts without paying special attention to them. He does many things because he was trained in his childhood to do them, because other people behave in the same way, and because it is customary in his environment. He acquires habits, he develops automatic reactions. But he indulges in these habits only because he welcomes their effects." Human Action, Chapter II, Section 6, pg.47, Contemporary Books, third revised edition 1966
 
"The characteristic mark of ultimate ends is that they depend entirely on each individual’s personal and subjective judgment, which cannot be examined, measured, still less corrected by any other person. Each individual is the only and final arbiter in matters concerning his own satisfaction and happiness." Mises, Theory and History pg.13, Arlington House 1969

"The characteristics of individual men, their ideas and judgments of value as well as the actions guided by those ideas and judgments, cannot be traced back to something of which they would be the derivatives." Ibid. pg.183

"In their eagerness to eliminate from history any reference to individuals and individual events, collectivist authors resorted to a chimerical construction, the group mind or social mind." Ibid. pg.188

"What produces change is new ideas and actions guided by them. What distinguishes one group from another is the effect of such innovations. These innovations are not accomplished by a group mind; they are always the achievements of individuals." Ibid. pg.192

"While the group-mind school tried to eliminate the individual by ascribing activity to the mythical Volksgeist,* the Marxians were intent on the one hand upon depreciating the individual’s contribution and on the other hand upon crediting innovations to common men. Thus Marx observed that a critical history of technology would demonstrate that none of the eighteenth century’s inventions was the achievement of a single individual." Ibid. pg.192

"Every doctrine denying to the “single paltry individual” any role in history must finally ascribe changes and improvements to the operation of instincts. ...It is needless to enter into a critical examination of this fable invented by impotent people for slighting the achievements of better men and appealing to the resentment of the dull." Ibid. pg.194

"On the other hand, human society is an intellectual and spiritual phenomenon. In cooperating with their fellows, individuals do not divest themselves of their individuality. They retain the power to act antisocially, and often make use of it. Its place in the structure of the body is invariably assigned to each cell. But individuals spontaneously choose the way in which they integrate themselves into social cooperation." Ibid. pg.253

"The collectivist philosophy denies that there are such things as individuals and actions of individuals. The individual is merely a phantom without reality, an illusory image invented by the pseudo philosophy of the apologists of capitalism. Consequently collectivism rejects the concept of a science of human action." Ibid. pg.256

The question is not whether Mises ever confessed to the fact of social conditioning, but whether he holds this view when it comes to his capitalism? The fact that Mises made a direction confession, regarding the legitimacy of social conditioning, merely serves to undermine the claims of his morally-individualistic-philosophy.

Just because Mises has formally confessed the reality of social conditioning, by means of lip service, does not mean his philosophy is consistent with his confession. One can make a formal confession of the principles of reason only to turn around and contradict themselves in practice. One can pass a law titled, The People's Emancipation Act, but this will not mean the law has anything to do with the people's emancipation (hence our need for deconstruction). The question is whether or not Mises's idea of individual choice, does in fact, actually comport with his confession of social conditioning; the question is whether or not his economics are consistent with his formal confession?

If individual choices shape economies, and individual choices are determined within the context of society, then it would seem logical that the key to creating quality, individual choices, would be the formation and stability of equal societies. I contend that this has serious ramifications for any capitalist theory. 

It would seem, that when Mises speaks of individual choice, he is really playing a game of semantics, a kind of literal equivocation; for if we are to believe his quotes above, then what he really means by individual choice, is choice determined by social conditions and environment. Who then has supremacy in determining value (and hence choices) the individual or society? And even more so, is it still appropriate to call such choices free? What does this mean for the capitalist idea of responsibility? 

Now all of this must be considered in light of my original claim, that Mises is either naive or cunning when it comes to ignoring (glossing over in silence) the forces of manipulation and coercion within the system of capital. In other words, the claim that one chooses, in light of what makes one happy [pg.12-13], seems to lack an awareness of the power of social forces, which seek to manipulate value in order to gain profit. What most interests me is why one would think this doesn't matter when it comes to evaluating the value of capitalism?

If the consumer is driven to make choices on the basis of value, and his values are determined [can be manipulated by social forces and propaganda] then not only is he not free, but a system which promotes this is both irresponsible and immoral. (We can also add the fact that capitalism is irrational because it empowers malevolent exploiters with an agenda to control the formation of value. In this sense capitalism stands against any true libertarian tradition). 

[Isn't the true conclusion, drawn from Mises's confession regarding social conditioning, that society is more valuable than the individual?]

I think the fact that capitalist action is about profit, ends up being a scathing moral indictment against capitalism itself. Indeed the capitalist has gone to great lengths to show that this motive is both moral and rational. One would of course, wish for transparency from the capitalist, but this is not what we get... it is false to claim that capitalists do not make moral claims: but is capitalism really moral? At the end of the day the capitalist cannot be transparent precisely because the system he propagates is malevolent, exploitative and violent: ignorantly and deceptively interventionist and protectionist. It exalts individuals to the detriment of society, and yet, if Mises is to be believed, society is the mother of values. By what logic then should we exalt the individual at the expense of society? 

Perhaps the strongest rational argument that can be offered against capitalism, is the interest of society against the interest of the individual. [Here then is an argument that uses capitalist logic against itself.] What this means is that society is taken to be its own kind of individual, and as such, pits itself against the claims of other individuals. Why then should society act against itself in competition with other individuals? Should society not reward itself by giving back to itself? Should it not seek to increase itself and promote itself by equally distributing to itself? Why should it permit the unlimited accumulation of other individuals when this accumulation is not in society's interest? Why should it take from itself in order to booster the interest of rogue individuals, when it stands as the supreme Individual that has the power to shape all individuals? In other words, for society to act in favor of itself it must promote its well-being as society, and this means it should not allow any one individual to gain an advantage at the detriment of its own interest. This is entirely consistent with capitalist logic. 

Mises's response to such an argument is not to attack the logic, but to deny the existence of society. However, given his concession regarding the action of the group upon the individual, which assumes the existence of a social entity, it would seem this claim leaves him in something of a contradictory bind. 

There are many other crippling objections to the cult of praxeology, such as its claims to being a science while rejecting the criteria of science (it is also relevant to note that praxeology, that is to say, Mises's infallible assertion of the a priori nature of his position, was sanely rejected by Hayek).

The question to ask is what the premise of social conditioning means when it comes to economics? 


* "Again in Germany, in the years following the Napoleonic wars, the problem of comprehensive legislative codification was brought up for discussion. In this controversy the historical school of jurisprudence, led by Savigny, denied the competence of any age and any persons to write legislation. Like the Volksepen and the Volkslieder, a nation’s laws, they declared, are a spontaneous emanation of the Volksgeist, the nation’s spirit and peculiar character. Genuine laws are not arbitrarily written by legislators; they spring up and thrive organically from the Volksgeist." Ibid. pg.189-190
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