Ludwig von Mises Institute
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Ludwig von Mises Institute |
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| Motto | Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito (Latin: Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it) |
| Established | 1982 |
| Type | Private |
| President | Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. |
| Faculty | 21 |
| Staff | 17 |
| Professional students | 273 |
| Location | Auburn, Alabama, USA |
| Address | 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, AL 36832-4501 |
| Telephone | 334-321-2100 |
| Campus | College Town, 4 acres |
| Founder | Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. |
| Website | www.mises.org |
The Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI), based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organization engaged in research and scholarship in the fields of economics, philosophy and political economy. It generally advances a view of government and economics expressed by Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. The Institute is funded entirely through private donations.
The Institute does not consider itself a traditional think tank. While it has working relationships with individuals such as U.S. Representative Ron Paul and organizations like the Foundation for Economic Education, it does not seek to implement public policy. It has no formal affiliation with any political party (including the Libertarian Party), nor does it receive funding from any. The Institute also has a formal policy of not accepting contract work from corporations or other organizations.[1]
There are also several other Institutes with the same name throughout the world, including those in Belgium, Poland, Argentina, Mexico, Russia, and Romania. However, the Institute has no formal ties with any of them.
The Institute's official motto is Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito, which comes from Virgil; the motto means "do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it." Early in his life, Mises chose this sentence to be his guiding principle in life. It is prominently displayed throughout the Institute's campus, on their website and on memorabilia.
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[edit] Background
The Ludwig von Mises Institute was established in 1982 under the direction of Margit von Mises, widow of Ludwig von Mises, who chaired its board until her death in 1993. The founder and current president is Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. The late economist Murray N. Rothbard was a major influence on the Institute's activities and served as its vice president until his death in 1995.[2] Among others, F.A. Hayek, Lawrence Fertig, and Henry Hazlitt also assisted in both its construction and continued scholarly development.
Some controversy surrounds its creation and the Koch Family Foundations throughout the 1980s.[3] The ensuing ideology-driven drama created a rift between the Mises Institute and organizations like the Cato Institute, whose members had been staunch allies throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.
[edit] Mission and activities
The Institute's stated goal is to undermine statism in all its forms. Its methodology is based on praxeology, a description of individual human action which seeks to avoid errors in scientific behavioral observation that could be induced by human self-consciousness and complexity. The Institute's economic theories depict any government intervention as destructive, whether through welfare, inflation, taxation, regulation, or war. The Institute disparages both communism and the American System school of economics (more broadly the American School).
With 250 academic faculty members and thousands of donors (throughout all 50 U.S. states and in more than 60 countries), the Institute has sponsored hundreds of teaching and scholars' conferences and seminars treating subjects ranging from monetary policy to the history of war. The Institute has published dozens of books, hundreds of scholarly papers and thousands of mainstream articles covering economic and historical issues.
The Institute's website went online in 1995 and is offered as an open-access research tool. The Institute has also produced several documentary films, including Liberty and Economics: The Ludwig von Mises Legacy, The Future of Austrian Economics and Money, Banking, and the Federal Reserve.
Institute scholars typically take a critical view of most U.S. government activities, foreign and domestic, throughout American history. The Institute characterizes itself as libertarian and expresses antiwar and non-interventionist positions on American foreign policy, asserting that war is a violation of rights to life, liberty, and property, with destructive effects on the market economy, and tends to increase the power of government. The Institute's website offers content which expresses support of individualism and is explicitly critical of collectivism, fascism, socialism, and communism.
The website offers a vast array of articles and books by Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, and many other scholars who write in the tradition established by Carl Menger in 1871 with the publication of his Principles of Economics. The Institute's current campus was erected in 1998; its main building is a Victorian-style villa.[4] Before that, the Institute's offices were located in the business department at Auburn University. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal discusses the rationale behind its strategic placement in rural Alabama. To the author and many others, it seemed out of place, not only for the Institute's cosmopolitan outlook but also when compared to its peer organizations located in cities such as New York City, Washington D.C. and San Francisco.[5]
[edit] Publications
[edit] Periodicals
As of 2006, the Institute publishes seven periodicals. The Free Market examines the economic and political scene from a classical liberal viewpoint and is published monthly. The Austrian Economics Newsletter links their academic network with in-depth interviews. The Mises Review surveys new books in the social sciences. The Mises Memo covers issues and legislation, plus conferences and publications of the Institute.
The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (the successor journal to the Review of Austrian Economics), publishes articles dealing with a wide range of issues in economics. The Journal of Libertarian Studies is the scholarly venue for political theory and applications. Policy implications are frequently discussed in both.
In addition, they also host Reason Papers, which is a peer-reviewed journal on inderdisciplinary normative studies appearing annually. It was founded in 1974, and was edited by Tibor R. Machan from issues 1 through 25. Beginning with Issue 26 (Summer 2003), it is now edited by Aeon J. Skoble.
The Libertarian Forum was a journal edited (and largely written by) Murray N. Rothbard from 1969 to 1984. It contains substantive theoretical contributions, commentaries on politics, details of disputes and arguments within the libertarian movement, and forecasts on the future of liberty.
Left and Right was a journal on libertarian philosophy that was the precursor to the Journal of Libertarian Studies. It was published from 1965-1968 and was edited by Murray Rothbard.
They also host a collection of continuously growing academic working papers. These papers are not in final form and are not available for publication. As of August 2006, there are more than 100 papers in draft form, with approximately 2-3 added each month.[6]
In addition, they feature original commentary through a stream of Daily Articles [7] and a supplemental weblog [8]. These original essays are written by professors and lay people alike and edited by Jeffrey Tucker. As of August 2006, there are more than 25,000 subscribers to the Daily Articles alone.
[edit] Books
![Human Action[29]](../../../upload/shared/b/b2/Humanactionscholar.jpg)
The Institute has published nearly 50 books and pamphlets, most of which deal with topics covering political and economic theories and their interconnectedness. Others deal with history, from early American settlements to chronicling the Great Depression.
Notable entries include:
- Human Action, The Scholars Edition, the original, unaltered treatise (originally published in 1949) written by Ludwig von Mises. It is largely viewed as his magnum opus and is a rejection of positivism within economics. It defends an a priori epistemology and defines the science of praxeology.
- Man, Economy, and State, an economic treatise covering both micro and macro thought and was written by Murray Rothbard. It was originally published in 1962, however the final eight chapters were removed due to political conflicts with the original publisher. These were finally published as Power and Market in 1970. The 2004 edition published by the Institute combines both books in a single volume.
- The Myth of National Defense, edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and published in 2003. It is a collection of essays on the theory and history of security production.
- Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John V. Denson and published in 2001. It is a critique of each American President through the lens of libertarianism.
- For A New Liberty, written by Murray Rothbard and published in 1973. It attempts to reconcile his libertarian system of thought, including: natural law, natural rights, Austrian economics, American history, and State intervention.[9]
[edit] Student outreach programs
The Institute invests in many resources devoted to educating students regardless of academic background.
[edit] Web resources
The "Are You An Austrian?" quiz is designed to test an individual's economic reasoning.[10] Its questions include topics covering many fundamental tenets in economic thought (e.g. property rights, the role of State intervention, value of money). It has been criticized by economists such as Arnold Kling.[11]
The Austrian Study Guide is a freely-accessible comprehensive selection of Austrian-oriented literature comprising videos, audio lectures, books, papers and more. As of August 2006, it is comprised of approximately 3,000 unique items and the entire contents of roughly 100 books. [30] The Austrian Forum [31] is a web-based interactive forum in which students from across the globe can discuss theories, papers, research agendas, conferences and a cornucopia of other topics. As of August 2006 it has over 400 members and 10,000 posts.
In addition to maintaining an active website since October 1995, the Institute also maintains a robust virtual store of its entire in-print catalogue, a highly-trafficked group weblog, numerous RSS feeds for weekly podcasts, and BitTorrent files for much of its video library.[12]
All told, its site logs over 1.2 million page views each month, nearly 750,000 visitors, and in the month of July 2006 alone, the site transferred over two terabytes of data. This is in addition to having content hosted and cached at sites such as YouTube, Google Video, Wayback Machine and Bloglines.
[edit] Conferences
The Austrian Scholars Conference is an interdisciplinary meeting of the Austrian School held annually each spring at the Institute's campus. It typically lasts three days and involves paper presentations and moderated panels.[13]
Mises University, started in 1986, is a week-long summer instructional program.[14] The schedule of events includes lectures from senior and adjunct faculty members, reading groups, discussion panels and various social functions. It takes place twice each summer, and typically hosts 100-125 students from around the world (reportedly nearly 30% are from Europe).[15]
Throughout the year, the Institute hosts numerous symposiums. These range on topic from the history of taxation to free speech and dissent during wartime. They are typically hosted by a senior faculty member or noted scholar (such as historian Charles Adams and literary critic Paul Cantor). [16]
[edit] Support of scholarship
The Ward and Massey libraries are an on-site archive of nearly 35,000 volumes. [17]
The Institute also awards scholarships and fellowships throughout the year. [18] These include the Peg Rowley Summer Fellowship for graduate and post-doctoral students. The O.P. Alford, III Fellowship is awarded to undergraduates studying during the summer. The Kurzweg Fellowship sponsors a visiting scholar for an entire year of research and study at the Institute. Economist Walter Block was a recent Kurzweg Fellow, due to the events of Hurricane Katrina.[19]
[edit] Academic awards
In maintaining a tradition of recognizing scholarly achievement, each year the Institute awards several individuals for their accomplishments.[20] The annual Schlarbaum Prize for lifetime defense of liberty, awards $10,000 to a public intellectual or distinguished scholar. The Kurzweg Family Prize awards $5,000 for the defense of liberty, property, and personal responsibility. The Elgin Groseclose Award, a $20 Liberty Head Double Eagle, goes to the best piece of money writing in the previous year. The Lawrence W. Fertig Prize in Austrian Economics awards $1,000 to the author of a paper that best advances economic science in the Austrian tradition. The O.P. Alford III Prize in Libertarian Scholarship awards $1,000 to the author of the paper best advances libertarian scholarship.
Individuals such as Congressman Ron Paul and philosopher Antony Flew are among past laureates.
[edit] Faculty and administration
[edit] Administration
- Lew Rockwell, President
- Patricia Barnett, Vice-President
- Jeffrey Tucker, Editorial Vice-President
[edit] Senior faculty
- Walter Block
- Thomas DiLorenzo
- David Gordon, Editor, Mises Review
- Jeffrey M. Herbener
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Distinguished Fellow, former Editor, Journal of Libertarian Studies
- Peter Klein
- Roderick Long, Editor, Journal of Libertarian Studies
- Yuri N. Maltsev
- Ralph Raico
- Joseph Salerno
- Mark Thornton
- Thomas Woods
[edit] Adjunct faculty
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[edit] Criticisms
The Institute has been characterized by some writers as "right-wing,"[21][22] a label which individuals associated with the Institute, including Lew Rockwell, say is inaccurate.[23]
[edit] Historical views
LvMI's publications have, like abolitionist Lysander Spooner, been supportive of the Confederate States of America's attempted secession (or more accurately, the right to secede), which precipitated the American Civil War. They have also been highly critical of Abraham Lincoln's conduct of the war (e.g. suspending Habeas Corpus, jailing those who dissented against the war and against the draft), asserting that his policies contributed to the growth of authoritarianism in the United States. Senior faculty member Thomas DiLorenzo, in his critical biography The Real Lincoln, argues that the 16th president substantially expanded the size and powers of the federal government at the expense of individual liberty. Adjunct faculty member Donald Livingston shares a similar view, blaming Lincoln for the creation of "a French Revolutionary style unitary state" and "centralizing totalitarianism." [24]
LvMI's publications have also maintained that fascism and National Socialism (Nazism) are branches of socialist political philosophy. They cite the fact that these ideologies are based on collectivist rejections of the individual in favor of some "greater good", and that they incorporate central control over the economy and often also society. This line of argument is discussed in more detail at Fascism and ideology.
[edit] Southern Poverty Law Center
The historical views of the Institute and of several people affiliated with it have been interpreted by some critics, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, as sympathetic to the Confederacy. The SPLC has criticized the Institute for its "interest in neo-Confederate themes", which SPLC considers to be a form of racism. SPLC has also criticized some members of the Institute for their connections with the League of the South. [25]
Another SPLC complaint[26] involves an essay[27] on the Mises Institute website by Murray Rothbard. According to an SPLC Intelligence Report article written by Chip Berlet:
- Rothbard blamed much of what he disliked on meddling women. In the mid-1800s, a "legion of Yankee women" who were "not fettered by the responsibilities" of household work "imposed" voting rights for women on the nation. Later, Jewish women, after raising funds from "top Jewish financiers", agitated for child labor laws, Rothbard adds with evident disgust. The "dominant tradition" of all these activist women, he suggests, is lesbianism.[26]
Ludwig von Mises Institute affiliates have denounced the SPLC's allegations: LvMI's Tibor Machan argues that the SPLC's tactics are not aimed at "fighting poverty" as the its name suggests, but rather to create a "major threat against the First Amendment and the presumption of innocence in our criminal justice system" by unfairly labelling organizations with differing political viewpoints.[28] Myles Kantor, also affiliated with LvMI, has asserted the SPLC engages in fear-mongering and smearing of legitimate non-racist groups in pursuit of profitable financial contributions and ideological goals. According to Kantor, the SPLC's labelling tactics include "egregious" and "defamatory" implications that "the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and Mises Institute seek to restore Hitlerian policies."[29]
[edit] Claremont Institute
The Mises Institute has clashed with other institutes. The Claremont Institute has sharply different views on issues such as Declarationism and honors Lincoln. The Claremont Institute's Harry V. Jaffa has debated on Lincoln with LvMI's Thomas DiLorenzo and writers from both organizations have sparred in editorial publications.[30]
[edit] References
- ^ "Frequently Asked Questions." Mises.org. [1]
- ^ "About the Mises Institute." Mises.org. [2]
- ^ Rockwell, Lew. "Libertarianism and the Old Right." Mises.org. 5 August 2006. [3]
- ^ "The Mises Campus" Mises.org. [4]
- ^ Wingfield, Kyle. "Auburnomics: Von Mises finds a sweet home in Alabama." Wall Street Journal. 11 August 2006. [5]
- ^ "Mises Institute Working Papers." Mises.org. [6]
- ^ "Daily Articles Archive." Mises.org. [7]
- ^ "Mises Economics Blog." Mises.org. [8]
- ^ Rothbard, Murray. For a New Liberty. Mises.org. [9]
- ^ "Are you an Austrian?" Mises.org. [10]
- ^ Kling, Arnold. "The Sect of Austrian Economics" TechCentralStation Daily. 11 November 2003. [11]
- ^ "Mises RSS Feeds." Mises.org. [12]
- ^ "Austrian Scholars Conference 2007." Mises.org. [13]
- ^ "Mises University 2006." Mises.org. [14]
- ^ "Mises University Student Comments." Mises.org. [15]
- ^ "Upcoming events." Mises.org. [16]
- ^ "Ward & Massey Libraries." Mises.org. [17]
- ^ "Conference Scholarships and Residency Fellowships." Mises.org. [18]
- ^ Block, Walter. "Walter Block Says: Support the Mises Institute!" Mises.org. 22 December 2005. [19]
- ^ "Mises Institute Awards." Mises.org. [20]
- ^ Hardisty, Jean V. 1999. Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers. Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 166-172
- ^ Heider, Ulrike. (1994). Anarchism: Left, Right, and Green. Translated by Danny Lewis and Ulrike Bode. San Francisco: City Lights Books. Original edition in German, 1992.
- ^ Rockwell, Lew. "What is Left? What is Right?" The American Conservative. 28 August 2006.[21]
- ^ Beirich, Heidi and Mark Potok. "The Ideologues." Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Winter 2004. [22]
- ^ "The Neo-Confederates." Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Summer 2000. [23]
- ^ a b Berlet, Chip. "Into the Mainstream." Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law Center. Summer 2003. [24]
- ^ Rothbard, Murray. "Origins of the Welfare State in America." Journal of Libertarian Studies. Vol. 12, No. 2. [25]
- ^ Machan, Tibor. "Hate Crimes and Corporations" LewRockwell.com. 26 December 2001. [26]
- ^ Kantor, Myles. "Morris Dees' Defamation." FrontPageMag.com. 25 September 2003. [27]
- ^ "The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate." Transcript of 7 May 2002 debate between Thomas J. DiLorenzo and Harry V. Jaffa. Independent Institute. [28]
