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[[Category:Tom G. Palmer]]
[[Category:Ludwig von Mises Institute]]
[[Category:Hans-Hermann Hoppe]]
[[Category:Ludwig von Mises]]
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{{DES | des = [[Tom G. Palmer]] savages [[Llewellyn Rockwell]], the [[Ludwig von Mises Institute]] and [[Hans-Hermann Hoppe]] for [[Austrian Economics|Austrianism]] above and beyond the call of sanity. | show=}}
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{{Quotations|For Mises' Sake|quotes=true}}

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Is the Ludwig von Mises Institute worthy of its namesake? The continuing saga . . . 

If anyone could defend the acts of Llewellyn Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, it would have to be Ralph Raico. Ralph is an outstanding scholar and a fine writer. Indeed, in his well-written essay ("Mises and Monarchy," November 1997) I found only a few trifling points of clear disagreement. For example, while I certainly have no quarrel with Raico's praise of Ludwig von Mises, I find him a bit harsh on F.A. Hayek. (Of Hayek's dedication of The Road to Serfdom to "the socialists of all parties," Raico asks rhetorically "but what socialist was ever brought over by it?" To judge from the influence of the book, it must have been many thousands: I have even met a number of them. Hayek may have demonstrated the truth of the old saying, "You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.")

My disagreement is with what is implied in Raico's essay. For example, I certainly bear no ill will toward either Mr. Otto Habsburg or toward his son, Mr. Karl Habsburg, and would never argue that either is obliged to apologize for the misdeeds of his ancestors. Not only do I not believe in inherited guilt, but I have much respect and admiration for the elder Mr. Habsburg, whom I heard some years ago in Vienna speaking on behalf of Austrian entry into the European Union. Mr. Habsburg quite gracefully ignored the bowing and scraping from the fawning monarchists in attendance, who preceded their questions with such terms as "Eure Hoheit" or "Eure Majestat," and instead addressed only factual questions. (Though it might be noted that Mr. Habsburg described the European Union as the fulfillment of the "Great Austrian Idea" of European unity in one political system; the old "Austrian idea," of course, was for that political unity to be ruled by one family.) Despite my differences on the wisdom of the "Austrian Idea," I found the elder Mr. Habsburg quite likable. I suspect that his son may be an equally fine fellow. But that doesn't mean that I want to be ruled by them, unless, of course, the alternative were Hitler. I take it that that was what Otto Habsburg had discussed with Mises in 1942. Had I been alive then, I might well have been a strong supporter of replacing Hitler with a constitutional monarchy under Otto. Just as good republicans should be happy that Juan Carlos was King of Spain at the time of Franco's death, and therefore able to keep the country from plunging into civil war, good republicans would certainly have preferred a constitutional monarchy under anyone to National Socialist dictatorship. This hardly cuts against my claim that Mises was a republican.

I should add that Ralph's praise of the reign of Franz Joseph -- on the grounds that Jews were treated better under his nearly seventy-year reign than they were under the National Socialism that was imposed in Austria a couple of decades after the end of the Habsburg regime -- is only made plausible because he sets the standard so low. When compared to Hitler, virtually anyone could be made to look good; even Franco, Mussolini, or the post-war communist rulers seem relatively benign when the standard of comparison is Adolf Hitler. As Ralph wrote in The Libertarian Forum of August 1975, in a critical review of the life of Winston Churchill: "This may well turn out to be the most enduring injury Hitler inflicted on humanity; that, besides causing the slaughter of so many, he permanently lowered the standards by which political conduct is judged, so that, compared to him virtually any other mass-murderer -- except maybe Stalin -- is seen to be as white as the driven snow." Franz Joseph was by no means the worst ruler Europe has ever seen, but pointing out that he was better than Hitler is pretty faint praise.

On the issue of republicanism I would consider as a republican anyone who advocates constitutionally limited, representative government and who did not append to that any role for a monarch. I have been unable to find in any of Mises' writings evidence that he was a monarchist. Considering a constitutional monarchy to be superior to a murderous dictatorship hardly counts as evidence that Mises was not a republican.

Nor would I deny the role of certain members of the Habsburg family in staving off Turkish invasion of Central Europe after the collapse of the Hungarian monarchy at the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and the dynastic connection of the traditional Habsburg lands with the crown lands of St. Stephen. But as I recall, the last siege of Vienna was in 1683, and neither Otto nor Karl was there. Indeed the Emperor who drew Rockwell's praise -- the autocratic Franz Joseph -- came to power in December 1848, just in time to invite the Russian Tsar to invade Hungary, to annihilate the constitutional Hungarian republic, to undertake mass executions of the Hungarian leadership (rejecting even the Tsar's request for clemency for the brave Hungarian liberals) and to institute a period of foreign (Austrian) occupation that did not end until the Compromise of 1867 instituted the dual monarchy and restored a measure of constitutional rule to Hungary.

I was moved to ridicule Rockwell's articles, letters, and essays by his truly ridiculous claims about the Emperor Franz Joseph's being a patron of classical liberalism and of the Austrian school of economics. Ennobling the father of a future Austrian economist and decorating that economist (along with thousands of other human cannon fodder) for battlefield bravery are, well, utterly risible when offered as evidence of a commitment to either classical liberalism or Austrian economics.

And why was I moved to spend twenty minutes writing about something that is merely absurd and risible? Perhaps it has something to do with a lecture I gave some years ago at Washington State University, after which I was introduced by the chairman of the department of economics to some graduate students whom he termed "our former Austrians." One might ask why the graduate students there called themselves "former Austrians." One name suffices to answer the question: Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Dr. Hoppe, leading light of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, had presented such a loopy, absurd and utterly unhinged picture of Austrian economics at a public lecture there, under the sponsorship of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, that those graduate students felt obliged to distinguish themselves publicly from such a strange and incomprehensible set of views. And I can certainly understand why they would feel compelled to do that. If Hoppe is the leading light of Austrian economics as the Mises Institute presents him, then Austrian economics should prepare for a long dark age. At George Mason University I saw Hoppe present a lecture in which he claimed that Ludwig von Mises had set the intellectual foundation for not only economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics, as well. This bizarre claim turned a serious scholar and profound thinker into a comical cult figure, a sort of Euro Kim Il Sung.

Hoppe's scholarship is so pitiful that one of his own colleagues -- who is still involved in the Mises Institute -- once remarked to me that Hoppe's book on ethics was a truly remarkable achievement; it was the only book he had ever read in which every step of the argument was a logical fallacy. And Mark Skousen, in his introduction to Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics (New York; Praeger Publishers, 1992), felt obliged to single out and strongly disavow Hoppe's cranky economic views. Skousen made subtle reference to the unreadability of Hoppe's screed, which required extensive rewriting by Hoppe's friends at the Mises Institute, as well as to Hoppe's failure to understand fundamental Austrian economic principles, such as the role of time in economic adjustment. "As the editor of this volume, I have to admit that I do not agree with everything Professor Hoppe presents as Misesian economics, even in this significantly revised chapter. For example, I have serious doubts about his claim that market unemployment is 'always voluntary.' Certainly, permanent unemployment is always voluntary in the unhampered market, but a dynamic market is constantly generating temporary unemployment that requires time to correct." Skousen included the chapter by Hoppe only because he was threatened with legal action by Llewellyn Rockwell if he did not. One could go on with examples of how Hoppe and the Mises Institute have proven embarrassing to the Austrian economists by whom they claim to be inspired but what would be the point? Those who have had contact with him know that Hoppe is an intellectual bully and an academic disgrace.

I was cautioned by a friend not to criticize Hoppe, on the grounds that one should never wrestle with a pig. I have not followed that advice. That may turn out to be unwise especially considering Hoppe's record for heaping abuse on those with whom he disagrees. I recall with great distaste witnessing Hoppe quite savagely attack Professor Don Lavoie of George Mason University at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society; in Hoppe's sustained rant, he said "I don't know what the world looks like when you're on LSD, but it doesn't look that way to me," with the clear insinuation that Don was a drug fiend, and that his paper was the result of a drug trip. My own little note in Liberty was described as follows in the Mises Institute newsletter: "Few writers today can match the anti-Habsburg rantings of Lenin, Wilson, and Hitler, but just by renewing the ties between the Austrian School and the Habsburgs we drew a hysterical attack from a D.C. partisan." The implicit comparison with Lenin, Wilson, and Hitler was bad enough, but what is a "D.C. partisan"? Does that mean that I lunch regularly with Hillary Clinton, or that I spend my time at the World Bank, plotting the world's financial ruin? I can only guess at the vituperation and slander that Hoppe and Rockwell must be preparing for me, as well as for anyone else who might voice doubts about their bizarre cult.

Poor Ludwig von Mises. He was a great man and a profound thinker. To have the likes of Hoppe and Rockwell as disciples is a sad fate. 
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