Comments Elsewhere

Kevin,

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this is a wonderful post. Kudos. I just wish that I had more to add.

Iaian: If a government did that, you would hope the right-“libertarian” would oppose it (unlike, say, von Mises and his support for fascism in the 1920s).

This is a libel against Mises. Ludwig von Mises had plenty of problems, but “support for fascism in the 1920s” was not among them, unless you consider explicit attacks on fascism to count as “support” for it. If you are (as I suspect) referring to his remarks in Ch. 1, § 10 of Liberalism (1927), then you had better note that the chapter explicitly condemns the assault on freedom of speech and association by the fascists, as well as the policy of jailing and murdering political opponents: “The fundamental idea of these movements—which, from the name of the most grandiose and tightly disciplined among them, the Italian, may, in general, be designated as Fascist—consists in the proposal to make use of the same unscrupulous methods in the struggle against the Third International as the latter employs against its opponents. The Third International seeks to exterminate its adversaries and their ideas in the same way that the hygienist strives to exterminate a pestilential bacillus; it considers itself in no way bound by the terms of any compact that it may conclude with opponents, and it deems any crime, any lie, and any calumny permissible in carrying on its struggle. The Fascists, at least in principle, profess the same intentions. . . . . Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success. This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall. . . . So much for the domestic policy of Fascism. That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion. To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured. But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one’s own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.”

In the same section, Mises made a couple of embarrassing mistakes about fascism. First, he suggested that fascism would likely moderate with time and become less rapacious as it settled into power; that first error led him into the second error of supposing that fascism was a lesser evil than Stalinism. But in a chapter that directly and unequivocally condemns the Fascists’ repressive policies, states that Fascist anti-Communism (the only “merit” he can find in Fascism at all) is ultimately doomed to failure, and closes by saying that Fascist militarism “cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization,” the claim that Ludwig von Mises — whose apartment, library, and papers in Vienna were targeted and seized by the Gestapo ten years later while he sought refuge in Switzerland — “supported” fascism, is both unfounded and irresponsible.