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The Ludwig von Mises Institute (LvMI), based in Auburn, Alabama, is a libertarian academic organisation 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.

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 Rockwell Jr. Murray Rothbard was a major influence on the institute's activities and served as its vice president until his death in 1995.*

Mission and activities

The Mises 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. LvMI disparages both communism and the American System school of economics (more broadly the American School). With 250 academic faculty members and thousands of donors (reportedly in 50 states and 64 countries), the Mises 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 several books, hundreds of scholarly papers and thousands of mainstream articles covering economic and historical issues. The Mises Institute publishes two quarterly scholarly journals, the Journal of Libertarian Studies and the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.

The Mises Institute 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. LvMI takes a critical view of most US government activities, foreign and domestic, throughout American history. The institute characterizes itself as libertarian and expresses antiwar and anti-interventionist positions on American foreign policy, asserting that war is a violation of any rights to life, liberty and property with destructive effects on the market economy and empowering aspects for government. The Mises Institute website offers content which expresses support of individualism and is explicitly critical of collectivism, fascism, socialism, and communism.

An example of an essay published by the Mises Institute is Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, which claims democracy is inferior to the voluntary rule of "natural elites" and questions any notion of rule by the "people" as based on flawed assumptions of "the presumed decency of the 'common man.'" Hoppe condemns state intervention through "affirmative action" and "forced integration" initiatives, which he claims have been "responsible for the almost complete destruction of private property rights, and the erosion of freedom of contract, association, and disassociation." * The website offers a section of articles by the late Murray N. Rothbard, who wrote, "Egalitarian measures do not 'work' because they violate the basic nature of man, of what it means for the individual man to be truly human. The call of 'equality' is a siren song that can only mean the destruction of all that we cherish as being human." Rothbard argued "It is in the name of equality that the Left seeks all manner of measures, from progressive taxation to the ultimate stage of communism."*

The Mises Review commented favorably on anti-immigration activist Peter Brimelow's book Alien Nation, citing his argument that "past immigrants came mainly from Europe; in 1950 the U.S. population was about 90% white. If whites from Southern and Eastern Europe did manage, with substantial difficulty, to become absorbed into the majority culture by the 1960s, does it follow that vast numbers from Asia, Latin America, and Africa can do so as well? Brimelow thinks not: he fears that the growth of racial enclaves will polarize the United States."However some LvMI scholars are pro-immigration (including Walter Block *) and vol. 13, no. 2, of the institute's Journal of Libertarian Studies contained a symposium presenting diverse views on the immigration issue.*

Historical views

LvMI's publications have, like abolitionist Lysander Spooner, been supportive of the Confederacy'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." *

LvMI's publications have also maintained that fascism and 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.

Criticisms

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 the Institute for its connections with the League of the South. [http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=845

Another SPLC complaintinvolves an essay[http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/12_2/12_2_1.pdf 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. *

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.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."[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10009.

Claremont Institute

On the political right, the Mises Institute has clashed with other libertarian and conservative organizations. The neo-conservative Claremont Institute has sharply different views on issues such as Declarationism and strongly supports 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 *.

Faculty and administration

See also

External links

Political and economic think tanks | Libertarianism

Ludwig von Mises Institute

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Ludwig von Mises Institute".

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