Ludwig Edler von Mises, Nation, State and Economy (1919; 1983, Leland B. Yeager, trans.), p. 252.
Bourgeois civilization has built railroads and electric power plants, has invented explosives and airplanes, in order to create wealth. Imperialism has placed the tools of peace in the service of destruction. With modern means it would be easy to wipe out humanity at one blow.
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Ludwig von Mises
2 replies on “Ludwig von Mises”
During the Cold War, libertarians quoted numerous pacifistic statements by Ludwig von Mises to advance their policy of aiding and abetting the Soviet threat. Von Mises, however, sided with the U.S. during the Cold War and urged us to use all means necessary to defeat the communist threat.
Your comment is a useful reminder that irrational argument ad hominem is a tool of the political right as well as of the left. Libertarians had no policy of aiding or of abetting the Soviets. The party in whose bed conservatives slept actually did have such a policy (as of course did the party in whose bed “progressives” slept). The Soviet Union was supported economically by privileged trade, even as the resources of the American economy were wasted by successive Republican and Democratic programmes, including military actions designed for purposes far different from those advertised. Libertarian policy was for an America that defended itself but again led the world by example. The right joined the left in making a shambles of the American example, so that every other nation generally imagined that they could do much better.