Tag Archives: Ludwig von Mises

Hayek v. Mises

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Sinclair’s post and the John Papola video on Mises v Marx was a really interesting but I doubt will have the same penetration as did his early video on Keynes v Hayek. This continues to provide some kind of ground for understanding the economic policies of our time, and the disasters of a demand-side approach to managing an economy. Central banks are now the major carriers of the disease.

As it happens I am in the last stages of completing my manuscript on Classical Economics and what is needed for a modern economist to follow the classics, which studying modern theory makes virtually impossible. This is the draft opening to the chapter on Austrian economic theory for your interest. Comments welcome.

Although Carl Menger initiated the Marginal Revolution with the intent to find a unified theory of value, the names now most closely associated with the Austrian School are Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. And while both are seen from a distance as almost one and the same, up close they were quite different from each other. There are many ways to highlight their differences, but here their approaches will be compared through their attitudes to John Stuart Mill, since both specifically identified themselves with the classical liberal tradition.

Where it matters is in the social aims an economist might hold. The essence of Mill’s approach to economic theory was to attempt to answer the question, what ought to be done to create the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people? Uppermost in his mind was the question of what can be done to raise the living standards and economic wellbeing of the individual members of the community. Yet while he called himself a “socialist”, it was the kind of socialism that by today’s standards would have had him grouped among the most market-oriented political theorists of the present day. In particular, he would find modern macroeconomic theory, and the policy matrix that accompanies its Keynesian basis, completely false. While he saw a definite role for government involvement in the economy, the basic framework was that everything that can be left to the market should be, while also understanding that not everything can be left to the market. He saw a clear but limited role for government regulation.

Hayek’s approach is similar to Mill’s (and I would say my own). Hayek discusses the economics prior to the publication of Menger’s Principles of Economics in 1871, noting that this was only “a mere twenty-three years since the great restatement of classical economics by John Stuart Mill (Hayek 1992: 96-97). He continues:

“It is important for proper appreciation of Menger, that we do not underestimate what had been achieved before. It is misleading to think of the preceding period, 1820-1870, as simply dominated by Ricardian orthodoxy. At least in the first generation after Ricardo there had been plenty of new ideas. Both within the body of classical economics as finally expounded by John Stuart Mill and even more outside it there had been accumulated an array of tools of analysis from which later generations were able to build an elaborate and coherent structure of theory after the concept of marginal utility provided the basis of the unification. If ever there was a time in which a quasi-Ricardian orthodoxy was dominant, it was after John Stuart Mill had so persuasively restated it. Yet even his Principles contain very important developments which go far beyond Ricardo. (ibid.: 97)

The point was that Mill had provided much of the raw material that the marginalists had been able to consolidate into a more unified whole. Hayek stops to state that

“It is indeed quite difficult to understand how a scholar of the penetration and transparent intellectual honesty of John Stuart Mill could have singled out what was so soon felt to be the weakest part of his system for the confident assertion that ‘there is nothing in the laws of value which remain for the present or any future writer to clear up; the theory of the subject is complete.” (ibid.: 98)

That Mill, the greatest utilitarian scholar of his generation, had no interest in making utility the core of his own theory of value may have been a conundrum to Hayek, although it might also have suggested that utility had been considered by Mill but then rejected. Yet the core point here is that there is no question that Hayek had a profound and extremely high regard for the economics of Mill, self-proclaimed “socialist” though he may have been. This is opposite to the attitude taken by Mises.

The economics of Mises is astonishingly detailed and profound. But what makes his approach so austere is its narrow focus on economic issues almost entirely outside the social and political arena. Hayek, like Mill, was continuously thinking through how economic conditions could be improved using as many arms as policy as possible, while always understanding the limits that are placed on the various possibilities available by the laws of gravity of economic theory which forbid various approaches to be adopted. Mises, on the other hand, thought that only an absolutely rigid adoption of market-based economic theory was acceptable. And unlike Mill, who even in 1848 could see how economic policies would be constrained by popular pressures to alleviate economic pressures and to use governments to temper economic outcomes, Mises accepts no compromise with the hard-edge views of how a market economy must operate. Here he discusses his views of John Stuart Mill in his Liberalism in the Classical Tradition (Mises 1985).

“John Stuart Mill is an epigone of classical liberalism and, especially in his later years, under the influence of his wife, full of feeble compromises. He slips slowly into socialism and is the originator of the thoughtless confounding of liberal and socialist ideas that led to the decline of English liberalism and to the undermining of the living standards of the English people. Nevertheless – or perhaps precisely because of this – one must become acquainted with Mill’s principal writings:

Principles of Political Economy ˆ(1848)
On Liberty (1859)
Utilitarianism (1862)

“Without a thorough study of Mill it is impossible to understand the events of the last two generations. For Mill is the great advocate of socialism. All the arguments that could be advanced in favor of socialism are elaborated by him with loving care. In comparison with Mill all other socialist writers – even Marx, Engles and Lassalle – are scarcely of any importance.” (Mises 1985: 195)

An indication of how adamantine Mises’s political judgements are may be recognised in the following comment from the preface he wrote for Liberalism in 1962.

“In England the term ‘liberal’ is mostly used to signify a program that only in details differs from the totalitarianism of the socialists.” (ibid.: xvi)

At any rate, no actual socialists have ever cited Mill as the source of their views on how an economy ought to be managed. Yet Mises’s concerns over the drift of economic theory and government policy remain a vivid warning of how dangerous economic theory has become, both economically and politically.

Mises discusses government regulation

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Mises’ Human Action is an austere no frills explanation of not just how a market economy works, but also why only a market economy can work. There are the members of a community who have material desires they would like satisfied and personal services they would like to engage. Most of what individuals want is dependent on what has already been produced and sold in the past, although of those desires are for goods and services that have only just been made available.

There are also individuals who earn their own living by running businesses that produce these goods and services in the hope that others will buy them, and in so doing pay enough in total amongst all purchasers to cover the costs of production.

There are also entrepreneurs who run businesses that produce inputs that are used within other businesses. Ultimately, however, all production is focused on satisfying the demands of final consumers. It is in this sense that consumers call the shots. What people are willing to pay for determines what will be produced since only those enterprises that produce goods and services that earn a profit can stay in business.

But what people will be willing to pay for is an unknown that can only be discovered if an entrepreneur makes the decision to produce some good or service and put it on the market. Only then can it be discovered whether whatever has been produced can be sold at a profit. Once it has been determined that a profitable enterprise can be established to produce these particular goods and services, many other firms may then follow along and try to produce the same product or even better versions.

This is how the market works through the trial and error efforts of entrepreneurs to find products that can be sold at a profit. If a community is content never to change any of the products it chooses to buy, and there are never any interruptions or changes in the supply conditions for the inputs used in production, the economy can enter a steady state which can repeat endlessly the same routine. But since in the real world there are new innovations taking place all the time, and changes in the supply conditions for inputs, a steady state outcome is an impossibility.

Therefore to ensure an economy continually improves the products produced, and can adjust to new conditions in the supply of inputs, a market mechanism is essential. No other mechanism will work if a community is intent on improving its standard of living or wishes to accommodate changes in the conditions of supply.

The question then is whether there is any role for government oversight and regulation in such an economy. And while it is clear that Mises is reluctant to state that there is such a role for governments because of the principle of give-them-an-inch-and-they-will-take-a-mile, nevertheless, he does accept that government does indeed have such a role. This is from Human Action:

There are certainly cases in which people may consider definite restrictive measures as justified. Regulations concerning fire prevention are restrictive and raise the cost of production. But the curtailment of total output they bring about is the price to be paid for avoidance of greater disaster. The decision about each restrictive measure is to be made on the ground of meticulous weighing of the costs to be incurred and the prize to be obtained. No reasonable man could possibly question this rule. (Mises [1949] 1963: 748)

There ought to be no doubt from this passage that there are circumstances for which government regulation is warranted. It is a cost-benefit calculation in which regulations are laid down, which have a cost in lost production, but in which there is a positive return in the prevention of an even more costly outcome whose probability of occurrence has been reduced.

His reluctance to state in a more fulsome way that such regulations have a role in economic management is based on his no doubt correct judgement that from the example of this unquestionable use of government regulations to diminish the possibility of a much more costly outcome has been a thin edge of the wedge to justify an enormous and monstrous regulatory regime across all the economies of the world. If anything has occurred, the meticulous examinations that now occur are to determine if there is absolutely no possible harm that might occur if some regulation is not introduced and enforced. The weight of evidence has now been placed on those who wish to reduce such regulations where outcomes with a small probability of occurrence are not made the basis for such rules.

The principle should therefore not be seen as a blanket ban on government regulation per se, but as the need for those who wish to impose such regulations to demonstrate that the potential risk is large and that the market would not be expected to provide its own cure if left on its own to work things out.

If, for example, individuals who wish to built houses in the middle of flood planes that are expected to flood only once in fifty years should be permitted to do so, but also told that if they do, they must cover the cost of insurance themselves and not expect a government to make good any losses they might endure because of flood damage.

And while there is need for licensing for doctors and electricians, since no consumer can be expected to research into the competencies of individuals who declare themselves a doctor or electrician, there is no need for regulation in endless other occupations, with hairdressers as the most notorious example of regulatory overkill.

But there is a further issue in relation to regulation. Within political debate, to argue that no regulations are ever justified will instantaneously lose the public debate. No one will accept that the market can be left to itself without oversight and regulation. Finding the balance is important, but not to recognise an important social function of regulation by governments, specially by governments under popular control, is to throw the baby of good economic management out with the bathwater of heavy-handed control.

Mises, Ludwig von. [1949] 1963. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Fourth Revised Edition. San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes.

Say’s Law and Austrian economics

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Peter Boettke at Coordination Problem links to the Liberty Fund discussion on the economics of John Stuart Mill under the heading, Mill > Keynes, so says Steven Kates. Very pleasing, but more pleasing are the two comments, very critical of what I wrote, that have been sent in by Barkley Rosser.

Kates is obsessed with Say’s Law, how it is true basically by definition. Mill’s view of macroeconomics is very sophisticated indeed, and Keynes notoriously undervalued the knowledge of his predecessors. But one very big difference is indeed over Say’s Law, which Mill accepted and Keynes did not. Given Kates’s strong views on this, of course he says Mill > Keynes, but, in fact, Say’s Law is not true in general, and Say himself knew it, as Kates has had pointed out to him on numerous occasions, but…
Posted by: Barkley Rosser | July 16, 2015 at 04:45 PM

BTW, now that it seems I can post here again after a long period of not being able to, let me add that I do not see anything particularly Austrian about Say’s Law. I just scanned a few books by Hayek and von Mises I have here in my office, and there was not a single mention of Say’s Law in any of them. I did find a mention of Say in Mises’s Socialism, but about whether or not Ricardo was right about gross versus net product. No Say’s Law.

I would suggest you all should not get yourselves too worked up about hanging your hats on Kates’s obsession, which he shares with the even more fanatical James Ahiakpor, whom those who follow HET know of. What is in it for you guys other than another way to bash Keynes?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser | July 16, 2015 at 04:53 PM

It’s as if criticising Keynes is some kind of thing in itself, and not one of the paramount economic issues of our time. Or that Say’s Law is not absolutely embedded in Austrian theory even if seldom mentioned. This is what I have replied:

It pleases me to see that Barkley Rosser has opened a second front on the issue of Say’s Law. And let me begin by noting where we agree, which is the absence of much discussion on Say’s Law among Austrian economists. But while there is not a lot, there is some, the most important one unfortunately going all the way back to 1950, in an article by Ludwig von Mises in The Freeman, “Lord Keynes and Say’s Law”. You can read the whole lot at this link but I will quote you the most relevant passage:

“The exuberant epithets which these admirers have bestowed upon his work cannot obscure the fact that Keynes did not refute Say’s Law. He rejected it emotionally, but he did not advance a single tenable argument to invalidate its rationale.

“Neither did Keynes try to refute by discursive reasoning the teachings of modern economics. He chose to ignore them, that was all. He never found any word of serious criticism against the theorem that increasing the quantity of money cannot effect anything else than, on the one hand, to favor some groups at the expense of other groups, and, on the other hand, to foster capital malinvestment and capital decumulation. He was at a complete loss when it came to advancing any sound argument to demolish the monetary theory of the trade cycle. All he did was to revive the self-contradictory dogmas of the various sects of inflationism. He did not add anything to the empty presumptions of his predecessors, from the old Birmingham School of Little Shilling Men down to Silvio Gesell. He merely translated their sophisms—a hundred times refuted—into the questionable language of mathematical economics. He passed over in silence all the objections which such men as Jevons, Walras and Wicksell—to name only a few—opposed to the effusions of the inflationists. . . .

“In fact, inflationism is the oldest of all fallacies. It was very popular long before the days of Smith, Say and Ricardo, against whose teachings the Keynesians cannot advance any other objection than that they are old.”

Say’s Law is at the heart of Austrian theory without most Austrians being fully aware of it. I have spent a good deal of effort trying to get Austrians more interested in Say’s Law as a means to explain the fallacies of Keynesian economics. I will merely here provide a link to my “Ludwig von Mises Lecture” of 2010, where I tried to show just how important Say’s Law is if classical economic theory – of which Austrian economics is the only modern manifestation – is ever again to become central to our understanding of the way in which an economy works. Just let me apologise in advance for the way in which I pronounce Mises’s name; at the time I had read much of what Mises had written, but by the nature of things, had never actually heard his name said by anyone else. It’s one of the problems being a lonely scholar way off on the other side of the globe. But as you will see, there is no denying my extremely high regard for both Mises and Hayek which I discuss early on.