{"id":2370,"date":"2014-04-16T03:28:46","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T03:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=2370"},"modified":"2014-04-16T03:29:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T03:29:18","slug":"mises-on-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2014\/04\/mises-on-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Ludwig von Mises on War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
April 15, 2014<\/span>
\n<\/big><\/div>\n
Recommend this page<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n
The following are quotations on war by Ludwig von Mises (1881\u2013 1973), who was the leading economist of the Austrian School. This list was first published as an article on the Mises Institute website<\/span><\/a><\/span> and subsequently published on Le Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Libre<\/a>.
\n<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/span><\/div>\n
***<\/span><\/div>\n
History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents……. A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets. (Omnipotent Government,<\/i> p. 7)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
***<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

War\u2026\u2026is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys. (Socialism<\/i>, p. 59)<\/span><\/p>\n

The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 817 ; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 821)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nEconomically considered, war and revolution are always bad business. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 152)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nThe market economy means peaceful cooperation and peaceful exchange of goods and services. It cannot persist when wholesale killing is the order of the day. (Interventionism: An Economic Analysis<\/i>, p. 67)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n[A]ggressors cannot wage total war without introducing socialism. (Interventionism: an Economic Analysis<\/i>, p. 70)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWar prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 154)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWar can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 154)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWhoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 77)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nModern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace. (Liberalism<\/i>, p. 44)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWars, foreign and domestic (revolutions, civil wars), are more likely to be avoided the closer the division of labor binds men. (Critique of Interventionism<\/i>, p. 115)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nModern war is not a war of royal armies. It is a war of the peoples, a total war. It is a war of states which do not leave to their subjects any private sphere; they consider the whole population a part of the armed forces. Whoever does not fight must work for the support and equipment of the army. Army and people are one and the same. The citizens passionately participate in the war. For it is their state, their God, who fights. (Omnipotent Government,<\/i> p. 104)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nThe existence of the armaments industries is a consequence of the warlike spirit, not its cause. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 297; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 300)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWhat basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free? (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 34)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nThe statement that one man’s boon is the other man’s damage is valid with regard to robbery, war, and booty. The robber’s plunder is the damage of the despoiled victim. But war and commerce are two different things. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 662; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 666)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nIt is certainly true that our age is full of conflicts which generate war. However, these conflicts do not spring from the operation of the unhampered market society. It may be permissible to call them economic conflicts because they concern that sphere of human life which is, in common speech, known as the sphere of economic activities. But it is a serious blunder to infer from this appellation that the source of these conflicts are conditions which develop within the frame of a market society. It is not capitalism that produces them, but precisely the anticapitalistic policies designed to check the functioning of capitalism. They are an outgrowth of the various governments’ interference with business, of trade and migration barriers and discrimination against foreign labor, foreign products, and foreign capital. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 680; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 684)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWhat has transformed the limited war between royal armies into total war, the clash between peoples, is not technicalities of military art, but the substitution of the welfare state for the laissez-faire state. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 820; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 824)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Under laissez-faire peaceful coexistence of a multitude of sovereign nations is possible. Under government control of business it is impossible. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 820; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 824)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nOf course, in the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 824; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 828)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWhat the incompatibility of war and capitalism really means is that war and high civilization are incompatible. If the efficiency of capitalism is directed by governments toward the output of instruments of destruction, the ingenuity of private business turns out weapons which are powerful enough to destroy everything. What makes war and capitalism incompatible with one another is precisely the unparalleled efficiency of the capitalist mode of production. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 824; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 828)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nModern war is merciless, it does not spare pregnant women or infants; it is indiscriminate killing and destroying. It does not respect the rights of neutrals. Millions are killed, enslaved, or expelled from the dwelling places in which their ancestors lived for centuries. Nobody can foretell what will happen in the next chapter of this endless struggle. This has little to do with the atomic bomb. The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest. It is probable that scientists will discover some methods of defense against the atomic bomb. But this will not alter things, it will merely prolong for a short time the process of the complete destruction of civilization. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 828; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 832)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nTo defeat the aggressors is not enough to make peace durable. The main thing is to discard the ideology that generates war. (1st Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 828; 3rd Ed. Human Action,<\/i> p. 832)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nSocial development is always a collaboration for joint action; the social relationship always means peace, never war. Death-dealing actions and war are anti-social. All those theories which regard human progress as an outcome of conflicts between human groups have overlooked this truth. (Socialism<\/i>, p. 279)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nBut what is needed for a satisfactory solution of the burning problem of international relations is neither a new office with more committees, secretaries, commissioners, reports, and regulations, nor a new body of armed executioners, but the radical overthrow of mentalities and domestic policies which must result in conflict. (Omnipotent Government,<\/i> p. 6)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nFor only in peace can the economic system achieve its ends, the fullest satisfaction of human needs and wants. (Omnipotent Government,<\/i> p. 50)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nIf men do not now succeed in abolishing war, civilization and mankind are doomed. (Omnipotent Government,<\/i> p. 122)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nIf you want to abolish war, you must eliminate its causes. What is needed is to restrict government activities to the preservation of life, health, and private property, and thereby to safeguard the working of the market. Sovereignty must not be used for inflicting harm on anyone, whether citizen or foreigner. (Omnipotent Government,<\/i> p. 138)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nOnly one thing can conquer war \u2013 that liberal attitude of mind which can see nothing in war but destruction and annihilation, and which can never wish to bring about a war, because it regards war as injurious even to the victors. (Theory of Money and Credit<\/i>, p. 433)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nThe first condition for the establishment of perpetual peace is, of course, the general adoption of the principles of laissez-faire capitalism. (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science<\/i> p. 137)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nHe who wants to prepare a lasting peace must\u2026\u2026be a free-trader and a democrat and work with decisiveness for the removal of all political rule over colonies by a mother country and fight for the full freedom of movements of persons and goods. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 86)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nLiberalism rejects aggressive war not on philanthropic grounds but from the standpoint of utility. It rejects aggressive war because it regards victory as harmful, and it wants no conquests because it sees them as an unsuitable means for reaching the ultimate goals for which it strives. Not through war and victory but only through work can a nation create the preconditions for the well-being of its members. Conquering nations finally perish, either because they are annihilated by strong ones or because the ruling class is culturally overwhelmed by the subjugated. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 87)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nWhoever on ethical grounds wants to maintain war permanently for its own sake as a feature of relations among peoples must clearly realize that this can happen only at the cost of the general welfare, since the economic development of the world would have to be turned back at least to the state of the year 1830 to realize this martial ideal even only to some extent. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 151)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nThe losses that the national economy suffers from war, apart from the disadvantages that exclusion from world trade entails, consist of the destruction of goods by military actions, of the consumption of war material of all kinds, and of the loss of productive labor that the persons drawn into military service would have rendered in their civilian activities. Further losses from loss of labor occur insofar as the number of workers is lastingly reduced by the number of the fallen and as the survivors become less fit in consequence of injuries suffered, hardships undergone, illnesses suffered, and worsened nutrition. (Nation, State, and Economy<\/i>, p. 151 \u2013 52)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nThere are circumstances which make the consumption of capital unavoidable. A costly war cannot be financed without such a damaging measure….There may arise situations in which it may be unavoidable to burn down the house to keep from freezing, but those who do that should realize what it costs and what they will have to do without later on. (Interventionism: an Economic Analysis<\/i>, p. 52)<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>
\nIt is not the war profits of the entrepreneurs that are objectionable. War itself is objectionable! (Interventionism: an Economic Analysis<\/i>, p. 74)<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) April 15, 2014 Recommend this page. ****************************** The following are quotations on war by Ludwig von Mises (1881\u2013 1973), who was the leading economist of the Austrian School. This list was first published as an article on the Mises Institute website and subsequently published on Le Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois Libre. *** History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents……. A lasting order cannot be established by…<\/p>\n

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