Part V
The Culture of Critique
One reason why Mises did not like to identify Jews was that he did not like to remind people how much Jews had changed Austria and the West in general. After all, Jews dominated the cultural revolution that was sweeping the West. Mises never liked to talk about the Jewish Culture of Critique and neither did Margit or Rothbard. However, Hulsmann tries to grapple with the subject by denying the problem:
Having so many people in so small a city contributed to making Vienna—from the 1870s to the 1930s—a cultural hothouse that would shape much of what was most valuable in twentieth-century civilization. In those years Vienna became the birthplace of phenomenology, medicine, psychoanalysis, Zionism, and Jugendstil (art nouveau). It was one of the cradles of modern analytical philosophy … (Biography, p. 24. Emphasis added.)
The period between 1870 and 1930 was precisely the time Jews dominated the culture of Vienna until Nazis shut down all the relativist movements including the degenerative arts. Hulsmann again quotes Johnston who considers all that degeneration a Jewish “achievement”.
By the 1890s, the Jewish impact on Viennese culture could not be overlooked. William Johnston remarks that at the turn of the century, when the Jewish population represented less than 9 percent of Vienna, it was responsible for almost half of the overall artistic and scientific achievement. .. Their rugged individualism transformed Vienna and western culture in the course of a few glorious decades.(Biography, p. 29, 32. Emphasis added.)
It is one thing for degenerates to invent new shockingly immoral and absurd ideas but quite another to spread them to the masses through salons, theaters, newspapers and universities. Somebody had to be paying for all that. It is probably safe to say that these degenerate Jewish dominated movements would never have escaped the asylum and taken over Western culture without the support of very rich Jewish bankers and businessmen. It is they who financed modernist movements and spread them especially through the newspapers, Judenpress. Or the Lugenpress (fake news) as the conservatives called it. Hulsmann proudly notes the role of the Rothschilds.
The leading organ of this liberal Jewish immigrant community was the Neue Freie Presse, which relied on the financial backing of the CreditAnstalt bank, the Austrian flagship of the house of Rothschild.16 (Biography, p. 30)
Hulsmann notes that the wife of the economics editor of the Neue Freie Presse took part in Mises’ lecture seminars.
The presence of Strigl and of Helene Dub, wife of the economics editor of the Neue Freie Presse, (Biography, p. 288)
Richard M. Ebeling notes that Mises wrote for the Neue Freie Presse. Ebeling also notes the dominant position of Jews in journalism and many other fields.
By the beginning of the twentieth century more than 50 percent of the lawyers and medical doctors in Vienna were Jewish. The leading liberal and socialist newspapers in the capital were either owned or edited by those of Jewish descent, including the New Free Press, the Viennese newspaper for which Mises often wrote in the 1920s and 1930s.
The membership of the journalists’ association in Vienna was more than 50 percent Jewish. At the University of Vienna in 1910, professors of Jewish descent constituted 37 percent of the law faculty, 51 percent of the medical faculty, and 21 percent of the philosophical faculty. At the time Mises attended the university in the first decade of the twentieth century, almost 21 percent of the student body was Jewish. The high proportion of Jews in literature, theatre, music and the arts was equally pronounced.22 (Richard M. Ebeling. Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time)
It is no coincidence that when Jews started to dominate journalism and universities the Culture of Critique immediately developed. But did Mises personally support it? To answer this question we have to divide Culture of Critique into smaller parts and logical stages.
- Rationalist philosophy
- Freudian psychology
- Anti-Christian morality
- Subjective ethics
- Modernist aesthetics
- Boazian multiculturalism
- Cosmopolitanism
- Open borders
- Anti-Gentile Frankfurt School
1. Rationalist philosophy
When Mises started his studies in the University of Vienna the prevailing philosophy of science was historicism. It Germany it was also known as the Historical School and in America as the Institutional School. It claimed that there are only laws of natural science but no universal social laws. In human sciences there is only history. Economics and sociology are just part of history and especially the study of institutions.
Mises also noticed how the extreme empiricists, the logical positivists challenged historicism by claiming that only the methods of natural sciences are scientific. Even history and economics can be studied with the methods of natural sciences. Utilities of individual actions can be summed up or at least predicted with mathematical formulas and equilibrium models.
Then in 1903 Mises read Menger’s Principles of Economics and realized that there is a third alternative: Rationalism, which is the original Western philosophy developed by the Stoics, Scholastics and Kantians. Rationalist philosophy proves the existence of realistic axioms and social laws such as the laws of economics. Soon Mises became a hard-core Austrian School rationalist who considered both historicism and empiricism totally unsuited for economics. They poisoned economics with relativism which inevitably leads to interventionism or full-blown socialism. In fact, governments tend to support relativist philosophies because they give rulers and bureaucrats a free hand.
For the rest of his life Mises would not budge. First he fought against the historicists and then later empiricists who were gradually taking over economics. He not only defended rationalism but also further developed it by creating an axiomatic method in economics: The logic of action, praxeology. So in economics Mises certainly was against the relativist tide. However, curiously he did still greatly respect the relativists like the extreme empiricist Ernst Mach and the extreme historicist Edmund Husserl. Mises even believed they should gain prestigious university positions.
In this soil, Bolzano’s epistemology, Mach’s empiricism, Husserl’s phenomenology, and Breuer’s and Freud’s psychoanalysis reached maturity. .. It would be a mistake to assume that the Austrian government promoted all of these great movements. On the contrary, it withdrew the teaching assignments of Bolzano and Brentano; it isolated Mach, and did not bother at all with Husserl, Breuer, and Freud. (Ludwig von Mises. Memoirs, p. 31)
There are two explanations for Mises’ attitude. First, he might have believed that all significant intellectual movements should be represented at the universities. There should be a free market place of ideas. Then students would be free to choose. Gradually the best ideas would then win in this free competition. Needles to say this kind of attitude is quite naive especially in government universities. Rothbard notes that this attitude was prevalent among the leaders of the Austrian School and thus hurt the movement dearly:
But there is, I believe, another important reason for this shameful treatment [of Mises not getting full professorship] that Craver does not mention and that Mises hints at in his memoir, although perhaps without seeing the significance. Unlike their successful enemies, such as Schmoller and Lujo Brentano, and even Wieser, neither Menger nor Böhm-Bawerk saw the academic arena as a political battlefield to be conquered. Hence, in contrast to their opponents, they refused to promote their own disciples or followers, or to block the appointment of their enemies. In fact, Böhm-Bawerk leaned even further backward to urge the appointments of sworn enemies of himself and of the Austrian School.
This curious form of self-abnegation helped to torpedo Mises’s or any similar academic appointment. Menger and Böhm apparently insisted on the naive view that truth will always win out, unaided, not realizing that this is hardly the way truth ever wins out in the academic or any other arena. Truth must be promoted, organized, and fought for as against error.
Even if we can hold the faith that truth, unaided by strategy or tactics, will win out in the long run, it is unfortunately an excruciatingly long run in which all too many of us—certainly including Mises—will be dead. Yet, Menger adopted the ruinous strategic view that “there is only one sure method for the final victory of a scientific idea, by letting every contrary proposition run a free and full course.”19
But there is an another explanation. Mises did not mind relativist philosophies and ideologies because he believed they all have a place in science. Historicism was useful in history, empiricism in natural science and rationalism in economic science. Furthermore, historicism and empiricism could be useful also in certain human sciences such as psychology and ethics. Mises defended rationalism in economics but otherwise he was not afraid of relativism. He also realized that for thousands of years rationalism had been the backbone of Western science and culture. It produced many good theories but also “intolerant” Western culture and the discrimination of Jews. This is probably why he left the backdoor open for relativism and the Culture of Critique.
2. Freudian psychology
As noted Mises also defended psychoanalysis. From the very beginning he seems to have been very enthusiastic about Freudianism. This despite the fact that it was originally a Jewish movement that resembled a rabbinic cult. It not only relativized and pathologized individual responsibility and self-restraint but at the same time weaponized psychology against Gentiles. Despite all this Mises called it a “great movement” worthy of university appointments. Mises gave the impression that Freud was so discriminated against that he could not teach at the university. However, Freud did become an associate professor and did have the right to teach at the university. Friedrich von Hayek explains:
Both Mises and Freud had the title “professor,” but it was purely a title. They were Privatdozenten, had a license to teach, and they were called “professor,” but never received a penny from the university. (Hayek on Hayek, p. 60)
What Mises seemed to be saying is that Freud should have received a payed position as a professor. Mises must have valued psychoanalysis. Did he also participate in Freud’s private seminar? Mises, Rothbard and Hulsmann do not tell us though Hulsmann does mention the Freud seminar:
Many such private circles existed in Vienna, and their characters differed widely depending on those involved. Some pioneers of various disciplines had instituted private seminars to train their followers in small-group sessions; this was the case, for example, with Sigmund Freud, who had already started a group before World War I .. (Biography, p. 364)
Mises must also have known that Freud was quite hostile towards Christianity and Western culture in general. Freud saw Jews more rational and moral people who were also more in touch with their feelings and sexuality. Freud did not like to interact with Gentiles and kept to his Jewish circle. Mises’ non-Jewish student, Friedrich von Hayek notes how Freud’s circle was almost totally Jewish.
But the Vienna of the 1920’s and 1930’s is not intelligible without the Jewish problem. Which was not a problem simply of Christians and Jews but a very large middle group in between the two, partly of babtized Jews, partly of Christians who had made friends with the Jews; and there was close contact between the purely Christian group and the mixed group, and again between the mixed group and the Jewish group, but not between the two extremes. I became very much aware of this quite recently, when I was asked whom of the great figures of Vienna I’d known at the time. For instance, Schorödinger, yes, of course; Wittgenstein, yes, of course; and so on.
Then he came to Freud, and I couldn’t possibly have known of Freud. Why? Because he belonged to the really Jewish group, and that was beyond my ranger of acquaintances. I had a great many very close acquaintances in the mixed group, I constantly moved in it, but to have met somebody in the purely Jewish group was so unlikely that being told that because I was a Viennese, I ought to have known Freud, seemed to me absurd. (Hayek on Hayek. p. 59-60. Emphasis added.)
Mises seems to have known Freud well. He even had private correspondence with Freud. However, the letters have never been published. Gestapo confiscated at least part of them. In a footnote Hulsmann passingly notes the correspondence.
Footnote 84: By 1956, Mises knew that some of his books had “turned up in German second hand bookshops” and opined that some of his letters— two letters he had received from Sigmund Freud, for example—would “be found one day in the possession of an autograph dealer.” (Biography, p. 728)
Freud’s parents came from Galicia. In fact, Both Freud’s mother Amalia Nathansohn and Mises’s mother Adele Landau came from Brody. So they might even have been relatives. At least their families probably knew each other. Amalia worshipped his son and seems to have encouraged him to develop his sex crazed psychological theories. Perhaps the Talmudic culture was a contributing factor.
Mises also had a very close and strange relation with his mother. Mises lived with her well into his fifties. His mother seems to have forbidden him from marrying his love Margit. Hulsmann only notes “the shadow” of the mother.
He [Mises] often came to the Austrian capital in the middle of the week, for one or two days. Whenever he was in Vienna, he visited with Margit. She was still waiting for him; he could not make his mind up about proposing. For another three years, their love could not get out from under the shadow of his mother. (Biography, p.684)
Margit had to wait over 10 years until Adele died.
Adele von Mises suffered only for a few days. She died on April 18, 1937 and was buried four days later in the presence of her sons. Ludwig had been very close to her—so close that she was an obstacle to marriage with Margit. Now the gates were open for this union. (Biography, p. 708)
It is one thing for a mother to forbid his son to marry a suspicious woman but quite another for the son to obey and still continue to live with his mother well into his fifties. Rothbard and Hulsmann do not attempt to explain this strange behavior. Margit notes that the over 10 year waiting period seems to have been so painful for Ludwig that he could never talk about it. In fact, Ludwig totally refused to talk about their past together.
But there was one thing about him that I never understood and still don’t understand. From the day of our marriage he never talked about our past. If I reminded him now and then of something, he cut me short. It was as if he had put the past in a trunk, stored it in the attic, and thrown away the key.
In thirty-five years of marriage he never, never-not with a single word-referred to our life together during the thirteen years before our marriage. As the past was part of my life, part of the person I became, I could not forget. His silence about the past remains in my mind like a crossword puzzle that one cannot solve because one needed letter is missing. (My Years, p. 43)
It seems certain that Mises greatly admired Freud and might even have understood his mother issues. Mises seems to have called Freud a “genius”. He never went into details but we can safely assume that he really did take Freud’s pseudoscientific theories very seriously. This despite the fact the Freud was well known to have a troubled relationship with both children and women. He tried to excuse the sexual exploitation of children by claiming it was the child who lusted after the adult. Freud’s de facto defense of pedophilia is not surprising considering that it was considered relatively normal in Talmudic culture. Freud might even have systematically covered up sexual abuse of little girls.
The sex craze of Freud and many other Jews was certainly also a reflection of the highly sexed Talmudic culture. It was the Jews who most pushed for sexual revolution and especially the creation of pornographic subculture in the West. Mises must certainly have known this but he said nothing. In this sense he defended the Freudian part of the Culture of Critique.
Freud’s relationship with women is also highly troubling. He seemed to consider them vastly inferior and natural hysterics. Mises seems to have somewhat shared these views. He even presented some strange views of women in his book Socialism. Mises believed that a woman can never be a genius.
Extraordinarily gifted women may achieve fine things in spite of motherhood; but because the functions of sex have the first claim upon woman, genius and the greatest achievements have been denied her.16 (Biography, p. 417. Emphasis added.)
Hulsmann explains that Mises shared the theories of his close Jewish friend and student of Freud, Otto Weininger who stated in his book Sex and Character:
Thus, whereas F is totally fulfilled and taken by sexuality, M knows a dozen of other things: fight and play, sociability and [Gelage], discussion and science, business and politics, religion and art. . . . F is nothing but sexuality, M is sexual and also something above. (Biography, p. 416. Emphasis added.)
Hulsmann does not tell us that Weininger went even further in his book. He believed that Jews have a female soul. This is why they cannot uphold a civilization but tend to destroy it. Wikipedia explains:
In a separate chapter [of Sex and Character], Weininger, himself a Jew who had converted to Christianity in 1902, analyzes the archetypal Jew as feminine, and thus profoundly irreligious, without true individuality (soul), and without a sense of good and evil. Christianity is described as “the highest expression of the highest faith”, while Judaism is called “the extreme of cowardliness”.
Weininger decries the decay of modern times, and attributes much of it to feminine (or identically, “Jewish”) character. By Weininger’s reckoning everyone shows some femininity, and what he calls “Jewishness”.[15] (Wikipedia)
Hitler was impressed by Weininger’s theories.
In his private conversations, Hitler recalled a remark his mentor Dietrich Eckart made about Weininger: “I only knew one decent Jew and he committed suicide on the day when he realized that the Jew lives upon the decay of peoples…”.[21] (Wikipedia)
Weininger’s book and his consequent 1903 suicide must have shocked his close friend, Mises. It also made him think deeply about Jewishness. But he decided to be as quiet about the subject as possible. By keeping silent and by promoting Freudianism he was supporting one of the most important aspects of the Culture of Critique.
3. Anti-Christian morality
Mises was not only a psychological relativist but was also very critical of religions. He did not believe in absolute moral values. There is no good and bad because they are just relative concepts. Mises was especially critical of Christianity. That is not surprising considering his Talmudic Jewish background. Mises came from the most conservative Jewish area, Galicia. The influence of Talmudism was very strong there. The Mises family was very conservative and thus they did not have much personal relations with Gentiles. Hulsmann notes this but tries to turn it into a story of discrimination.
[T]he Miseses were more conservative than most other Jewish families in Vienna (Arthur was a board member of the Vienna Jewish Cultural Community, and Adele was very religious17) … Summer vacations were spent in the countryside with the Nirensteins and other cousins. Social contacts outside the network of Jewish families must have been rare. The old Viennese establishment remained closed to newcomers, and even the noble pedigree of the Mises family was too recent to be taken seriously by them. (Biography, p. 30, 27)
At university Mises soon became an atheist. He opposed all religions. He even saw Judaism as an empty ritualistic religion. Rothbard notes:
Neither does Mises find any more hope in religions other than Christianity; to the contrary, they are dismissed brusquely and with contempt. Eastern religions are hopelessly anti-capitalist; the Greek Church “has been dead for over a thousand years”; and the “Islamic and Jewish religions are dead.” Islam and Judaism “offer their adherents nothing more than a ritual”; they “suppress the soul, instead of elevating and saving it.” They maintain themselves by “rejecting everything foreign and ‘different’, by traditionalism and conservatism. Only their hatred of everything foreign rouses them to great deeds from time to time.” (Murray Rothbard. Ludwig von Mises: Laissez-Faire Radical)
Mises never criticized the Talmudist culture but he was quite militantly anti-Christian and criticized Christian culture in many of his writings. This was surprising since traditionally classical liberals saw both the teachings of the Church and its organization as important contributing factors for the emergence of liberty in Europe. The natural law tradition of the Church emphasized the rights of individuals against the state. The organization of the Church also created a balance of power which stopped the state from becoming all-powerful as it had done in all other cultures. However, Mises disagreed. He had a completely different view. Mises saw the Church as a socialist organization that destroyed the liberty of the West. Mises explained his theory in detail in his 1922 book, Socialism. Mises starts by complaining that Christianity hates the rich.
Later revisers have tried to soften the words of Christ against the rich … but there is quite enough left to support those who incite the world to hatred of the rich, revenge, murder and arson…. This is a case in which the Redeemer’s words bore evil seed. More harm has been done, and more blood shed, on account of them than by the persecution of heretics and the burning of witches. They have always rendered the Church defenceless against all movements which aim at destroying human society.
The church as an organization has certainly always stood on the side of those who tried to ward off communistic attack. But it … was continually disarmed by the words: “Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the Kingdom of God.” (Socialism. pp. 419-20.)
In fact it was the Church that made socialism possible.
it is the resistance which the Church has offered to the spread of liberal ideas which has prepared the soil for the destructive resentment of modern socialist thought. (Socialism, p. 420)
The Church is a statist organization that destroyed liberty.
As long as rationalism and the spiritual freedom of the individual are maintained in economic life, the Church will never succeed in fettering thought and shepherding the intellect in the desired direction. To do this it would first have to obtain supremacy over all human activity. Therefore it cannot rest content to live as a free Church in a free state; it must seek to dominate that state. .. A living Christianity cannot, it seems, exist side by side with Capitalism.” (Socialism p. 427, 429)
In this very same book, Socialism Mises is silent about the fact that Bolshevism was a Jewish dominated movement. Instead he claimed that Bolshevism and Christianity are two sides of the same coin!
The clearest modern parallel to the attitude of complete negation of primitive Christianity is Bolshevism. The Bolshevists, too, wish to destroy everything that exists because they regard it as hopelessly bad. But they have in mind ideas, indefinite and contradictory though they may be, of the future social order…. Jesus’s teaching in this respect, on the other hand, is merely negation. (Socialism p. 413, 416)
Not only the relativist morality but also the double standard is clear. The Christians and their culture are to blame but never the Jews and their Talmudic culture. Thus Mises supported the moral aspects of the Culture of Critique.
4. Subjective ethics
Mises was not only a psychological and a moral relativist but also an ethical relativist. He was an extreme utilitarian who did not believe that there exists ethical right and wrong. This is quite surprising since most classical liberals followed or at least respected the natural law tradition. Mises does admit that it gave birth to Western liberty:
Now it is true that the liberal and democratic movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries drew a great part of its strength from the doctrine of natural law and the innate imprescriptible rights of the individual. These ideas, first developed by ancient philosophy and Jewish theology, permeated Christian thinking. Some anti-Catholic sects made them the focal point of their political programs. A long line of eminent philosophers substantiated them. They became popular and were the most powerful moving force in the prodemocratic evolution. (Ludwig von Mises. Human Action, p. 174)
But Mises was very much against natural law tradition and considered it nonsensical.
There is, however, no such thing as natural law and a perennial standard of what is just and what is unjust. Nature is alien to the idea of right and wrong. (Human Action, p. 716)
Mises believed that ethics was subjective. Right and wrong are just personal opinions.
The notion of right and wrong is a human device. … All moral rules and human laws are means for the realization of definite ends. There is no method available for the appreciation of their goodness or badness other than to scrutinize their usefulness for the attainment of the ends chosen and aimed at. (Ludwig von Mises. Human Action, Chp. 27, Sec. 3)
Mises emphasized that most people want peace and prosperity. Therefore they would logically have to be classical liberals and support peaceful coexistence and liberty. Ethics is not only a matter of taste but also logic.
But what if people do not behave logically? And what about jealousy, envy, impatience, greed, lust, malice and pure evil? Sure, one might even agree that in the long run classical liberalism would make everybody economically more prosperous. But for some economic prosperity is not the highest value. For many prosperity is also relative. Some are even happy to be poor if others are even more poor. Revenge is often sweet and so is dominance. Even more importantly: Often people do not care about the long run. They do not have the patience to wait for years. They want their way now. So they cheat, lie and support aggression. Mises cannot blame them since that is evidently what they value and want.
Moral relativism is often also good for the Jews. After all, Diaspora Jews are in an impossible situation. They live in foreign lands and refuse to assimilate. This could make many of them into liars and cheaters. A relativist utilitarian world view would be very helpful to excuse all that. No wonder Mises supported the ethical relativist aspects of the Culture of Critique.
5. Modernist aesthetics
Mises was a psychological, moral and ethical relativist so it is not surprising that he seems to have been a relativist also in art and literature. He was a utilitarian who believed that beauty and sentiments are subjective anyway. They are all a matter of taste. Mises seems to have denied that there even exists degenerate art. He himself preferred high culture with classical music and operas but considered that only as a matter of his own individual subjective taste. This is probably why he was not actively opposed to the effects of modern art and literature on Western civilization.
Mises must have been fully aware that many modern art forms were dominated by Jews. In fact, his own relatives were leading the modern art movement! For some reason Rothbard and Hulsmann have been silent about this even if Otto Kallir (originally Nirenstein) in 1923 founded the famous expressionist gallery, Neue Galerie in Vienna.
Hulsmann passingly notes that Otto Kallir was Mises’ cousin but fails to note that he was one of the most important exponents of modernist art. Hulsmann:
On October 20, 1962, Mises received the Austrian Medal of Honor (Ehrenzeichen) at the Austrian embassy in Washington. He had the embassy invite Otto Kallir for the luncheon. (Biography, p. 1034. Curiously this is not noted in the index.)
Why invite Kallir? Hulsmann gives no explanation. Perhaps because Kallir was a relative. Perhaps also because Mises had a high opinion of Kallir despite the fact that he was one of the leading proponents of expressionist art. Wikipedia explains:
In 1923 Nirenstein established the Neue Galerie (still operating, under different ownership, as the Galerie nächst St. Stephan), which opened with the first major posthumous exhibition of Schiele’s work. Eventually, Nirenstein became an internationally recognized art dealer, representing Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele and Alfred Kubin. …
In 1933 Otto Nirenstein legally changed his name to Kallir, adopting a name that had been in his family for many generations. …
Because the modern artists represented by the Neue Galerie were not subject to Austria’s export laws in 1938, and most were in any case considered “degenerate” by the Nazis, Kallir was able to bring a significant inventory with him into exile. …
In 1939, they emigrated to the United States, bringing a significant portion of his inventory.[5] In the same year, Kallir established the New York Galerie St. Etienne, where he introduced Austrian and German expressionist art to the United States. (Wikipedia)
Margit Mises explains that Otto Kallir was a second cousin of Ludwig and they were good friends. Moreover, Margit also lauds Kallir’s modernist gallery.
Very good friends of ours were Dr. and Mrs. Otto Kallir. He is a second cousin of Lu’s, and he, as well as his wife Fanny, were not only very interesting and cultivated people, but-what should count more-they were, and are, good and kind. He owns the Gallery of St. Etienne in New York City and-among others-he introduced the now famous Egon Schiele to this country.
Dr. Kallir has always been interested in folk art. When, in 1939, he was shown some primitive American paintings, he was attracted to some done by an old lady named Anna Mary Robertson Moses. The paintings were uneven in quality, but in some of them Kallir found an original and fresh approach to painting. He gave her a “one man” show at his gallery, calling the exhibition “What a Farmwife Painted.” This was the beginning of the fabulous career of the artist who has since then become known all over the “world as “Grandma Moses.” (My Years, p. 67)
Since Margit says nothing about Ludwig’s disapproval or doubts we can conclude that he too was enthusiastic supporter of the modernist art gallery. Here again Mises was a supporter of the Culture of Critique.
6. Boazian multiculturalism
The Culture of Critique was not only limited to the psychology, morality, ethics and aesthetics but tried to also to change hard sciences. Jewish professor Franz Boaz was the original race denier who denied that there exists clear average psychological and intellectual differences between races. Mises seems to have agreed with Boaz. For example, Mises was not even impressed by IQ tests developed in 1905 and successful utilized in schools and armies. Mises had a dismissive attitude towards the standard Stanford-Binet IQ tests even if they show clear average differences between races, nations and classes. Mises was totally against “race experts” in his 1922 book Socialism:
It is impossible to condemn too emphatically the procedure of the “race experts.” They set up criteria of race in an entirely uncritical spirit. More anxious to coin catchwords than to advance knowledge, they scoff at all the standards demanded by scientific thought. But the critics of such dilettantism take their job too lightly in directing their attention solely to the concrete form which individual writers give their theories and to the content of their statements about particular races, their physical characteristics and psychic qualities.” (p. 325)
Despite the further development of the IQ tests and racial studies in general Mises still in 1949 seems to have had a very egalitarian view of different races.
The fundamental discrepancies in worldview and patterns of behavior do not correspond to differences in race, nationality or class affiliation. (Human Action, p. 87)
Mises was a very intelligent man. It is hardly possible that he did not believe at all in IQ tests and racial differences. Surely he could not have believed that Australian Aborigines or Kongo pygmies have the same genotypic average IQ than Germanics and Jews. So why did he refuse to listen to hard sciences? Perhaps because race science gives too much credence for nationalist and other “Nazi” ideas. One would also start to wonder about the qualities of the Jews as a group. And that would not be good for the Jews. Clearly Mises supported also the multiculturalist aspects of the Culture of Critique.
7. Cosmopolitanism
Mises considered himself a a citizen of the world. Rothbard notes:
[Mises] was proud to call himself a “citizen of the world, a cosmopolite,” in contrast to chauvinist nationalism .. (Murray Rothbard. Laissez-Faire Radical.)
Mises was not only a cosmopolite but he also strongly opposed nationalism. In fact, he denied that nations even exist except as language communities. However, at the same time he demonized Germans. He even claimed that since the 1870’s over 90% of the German people had lusted after world conquest. He blamed the German people for starting both the First and Second World War.
It is very rare for a classical liberal to blame Germany for the First World War. It is even more rare for a Jewish classical liberal to blame the whole German people for the war. After all, Germans fought the Russians whom Jews considered anti-Semitic. During the First World War Jews were very much on the side of the Germans and Austrians against the Russians. But Mises did not seem to care. He seems to have considered both Germans and Russians anti-Semitic. Why? Perhaps one reason was that in the German army Jews were not allowed to become officers. Richard M. Ebeling explains:
Habsburg enlightenment was more advanced in many ways over that of the German government. For example, before the First World War it was virtually impossible for a Jew to be commissioned as an officer in the German Army, no matter his qualifications and merit.
On the other hand, Jews were accepted as officers in the Austrian Army with no similar prejudice, which enabled Ludwig von Mises to be commissioned as a reserve officer in the Austrian Army as a young man, and serve with distinction in the First World War on the Russian front. (Richard M. Ebeling. Ludwig von Mises and the Vienna of His Time)
During the First World War the Austrian army almost collapsed and the German army had to save them from the Russian attack. During this time Mises probably had to deal with German officers who were not pleased to be dealing with a Jewish officer.
The problem was that the German Army was at least as arrogant as it was efficient. Even its regular soldiers had the tendency to treat foreign allies as incompetent junior partners. On at least one occasion, Mises himself had to confront pretentious German officers claiming jurisdiction over k.u.k. troops;74 and after the war, when in a high-profile paper he analyzed the problems of the proposed Austro-German monetary unification, he mentioned “the tendency of the North Germans to consider anything South German and in particular anything Austrian to be inferior and alien.” (Biography, p. 282)
Moreover Mises was very frustrated that Germany wanted to continue the even after the Tsar had been toppled. All this might partly explain why Mises’ hatred toward Germans was so intense that he considered virtually all of them as Nazis.
It is probable that today about 80 per cent of all German-speaking Europeans are Nazis. If we leave out the Jews, the Austrians, and the German-speaking Swiss, we might say that more than 90 per cent of the Germans support Hitler’s fight for world hegemony. (p. 233)
This is also why after First World War Mises defended the Versailles Peace Treaty and after Second World War wanted a total occupation of Germany by the allies and the United Nations. Germany should be totally demilitarized. They should not even own and fly airplanes.
The alliance of the victorious nations must be made lasting. Germany, Italy, and Japan must be totally disarmed. They must be deprived of the right to maintain armies, navies, or air fleets. A small police force, armed with rifles only, can be permitted to them. No kind of armament production should be tolerated. The guns and the ammunition for their policemen should be given to them by the United Nations. They should not be permitted to fly or build any planes. Commercial aviation in their countries should be operated by foreign companies using foreign planes and employing foreign pilots. (p. 258)
While demonizing Germans Mises at the same time was totally quiet about the Jews and especially the Zionists. He never criticized them in any way even if they invaded and ethnically cleansed many parts of Palestine. Mises clearly had a double standard because that was good for the Jews.
8. Open borders
In 1981 Rothbard published a short intellectual biography of Mises where he explained that:
Mises’ laissez-faire radicalism was marked by uncompromising attachment to freedom of immigration. Not only that, so bitter was he at any immigration laws that at times he came close to calling for war against those nations, such as the United States and Australia, who persisted in locking up parts of the earth and keeping out other peoples. (Emphasis added.)
Rothbard continues his summary of Mises’ position:
In Liberalism, Mises confined himself to pointing out that immigration barriers will only be able to be removed in a classical liberal world. In a world of minimal States, what difference would it make for Americans or Australians which ethnic or racial groups were in a majority in their country?[18]
At other times, however, Mises was not so gentle. In Nation, State and Economy he called Australia “the imperialistic state par excellence in its immigration legislation,” and linked this policy with its greater closeness to socialism than any of the other Anglo-Saxon states (in 1919). [19]
What is more, he chastised the League of Nations for not doing something about the U.S./Australian policy of immigration restrictions:
It is still more serious that the League of Nations does not recognize the freedom of movement of the person, that the United States and Australia are still allowed to block themselves off from unwanted immigrants…. Never can Germans, Italians, Czechs, Japanese, Chinese, and others regard it as just that the immeasurable landed wealth of North America, Australia, and East India should remain the exclusive property of the Anglo-Saxon nation and that the French be allowed to hedge in millions of square kilometers of the best land like a private park. [20]
.. In fact, after pointing out that European workers suffer from these immigration barriers, he warns darkly that
it may be that one day they will reach the conclusion that only weapons can change this unsatisfactory situation. Thus, we may face a great coalition of the lands of would-be emigrants standing in opposition to the lands that erect barricades to shut out would-be immigrants.[24]
But some believe that Rothbard exaggerated. After all, Mises admitted that a Black or Chinese invasion to the West would be terrible. He warned about this threat already in his 1927 book Liberalism but then denied the danger:
In the absence of any migration barriers whatsoever, vast hordes of immigrants from the comparatively overpopulated areas of Europe would, it is maintained, inundate Australia and America. They would come in such great numbers that it would no longer be possible to count on their assimilation. ..
[T]here is real danger that the ascendancy—or more correctly, the exclusive dominion—of the AngloSaxons in the United States would be destroyed. This is especially to be feared in the case of heavy immigration on the part of the Mongolian peoples of Asia. These fears may perhaps be exaggerated in regard to the United States. As regards Australia, they certainly are not. Australia has approximately the same number of inhabitants as Austria; its area, however, is a hundred times greater than Austria’s, and its natural resources are certainly incomparably richer. If Australia were thrown open to immigration, it can be assumed with great probability that its population would in a few years consist mostly of Japanese, Chinese, and Malayans. ..
The entire nation, however, is unanimous in fearing inundation by foreigners. The present inhabitants of these favored lands fear that some day they could be reduced to a minority in their own country and that they would then have to suffer all the horrors of national persecution to which, for instance, the Germans are today exposed in Czechoslovakia, Italy, and Poland. It cannot be denied that these fears are justified. Because of the enormous power that today stands at the command of the state, a national minority must expect the worst from a majority of a different nationality. ..
It is clear that no solution of the problem of immigration is possible if one adheres to the ideal of the interventionist state, which meddles in every field of human activity, or to that of the socialist state. Only the adoption of the liberal program could make the problem of immigration, which today seems insoluble, completely disappear. In an Australia governed according to liberal principles, what difficulties could arise from the fact that in some parts of the continent Japanese and in other parts Englishmen were in the majority? (Liberalism, p. 139-141. Emphasis added.)
Mises believed in the melting pot. Not only America but also Europe was and should be a melting plot.
Europe too is a melting pot, or rather a collection of melting pots. (Omnipotent Government, p. 88)
Mises was a utopian multiculturalist. If tens of millions of Japanese, Chinese, Malayans and Africans would move to Australia under a liberal regime what stops them taking over in the future? Mises obviously understood the risks but did not care. He considered free movement an absolute civil right:
The liberal demands that every person have the right to live wherever he wants. (Liberalism, p. 137.)
Mises went so far that he blamed Australia for the Japanese aggression against China and America. The Australian desire to stay independent helped create the Rape of Nanking.
Those who are under the illusion that segregation could solve the international problems of our day are blind to reality. The very fact that the Australians succeeded in maintaining linguistic and racial homogeneity in their country helped to push the Japanese into aggression. The closed-door policy is one of the root causes of our wars. (Omnipotent Government, p. 263)
It is quite clear that Mises was an open borders fanatic. He really did believe that Africans, Indians and the Chinese have the right to populate Australia, America and even Europe. Mises must have understood that would have ended White Australia and even White America and Europe. Why would Mises support such a recipe for total disaster? Perhaps because open borders are good for Jews.
Jews don’t care what the masses look like because they would be an economic elite anyway. In a multicultural society Jews would also not have to be afraid to be singled out like they have been so many times in homogeneous White European countries. Multiracial society would have so many conflicting races and nationalities that Jews could even play them against each other. Jews would rule.
9. The anti-Gentile Frankfurt School
We already noticed how in 1924 Mises’ first teacher, the Jew Carl Grunberg became the director of the Social Research Institute which evolved into the Frankfurt School. It created a general theory that brought all the elements of the Culture of Critique together into a theory of anti-Semitism. If you believed in individual psychological responsibility, traditional Christian morality, natural law ethics, traditional aesthetics and values, racial theories, nationalism and immigration restriction there was something very wrong with you. You clearly suffered from an authoritarian personality that gave rise to irrational anti-Semitism. No wonder if you hallucinated that Jews were undermining Western civilization. You were in need of counseling and perhaps also psychiatric treatment.
Did Mises support the Frankfurt school’s mission? Of course. We already have seen that Mises was a Freudian and a Boazian who fully shared modernist relativist morality and ethics. He hated racial theories and nationalism. He was fanatically in favor of open borders. Mises disliked the socialist economic ideas of the Frankfurt school but he fully supported the cultural revolution.
Mises seem to also have agreed with the Frankfurt school that anti-Semitism was mostly the result of a psychopathology. Gentiles were paranoid when they saw the Jewish group as powerful and devious. In fact, Mises outright denied that Jews had caused anti-Semitism with their own behavior.
The truth is that while the Jews are the objects of anti‑Semitism, their conduct and qualities did not play a decisive role in inciting and spreading its modern version. (Omnipotent Government, p. 185)
Mises even denied the large role Jews had in creating modern culture:
The anti-Semites grossly exaggerate when they see in the Jews the foremost representatives of modern culture .. (Ibid, p. 185)
Mises does not explain why is it an exaggeration to point out the dominant role of Jews in many modern cultural movements. He simply refuses to discuss the subject. But then he says something very strange:
We are dealing here with conditions in Central and Western Europe and in America. In many parts of Eastern Europe things were different. There modern civilization was really predominantly an achievement of Jews. (Ibid, p. 185)
How so? Mises does not explain. Obviously Mises is again cherry picking. He thinks it self-evident that Jews have done great things in Eastern Europe. But he thinks it anti-Semitic to mention the bad things they have done.
Mises certainly knew that in Eastern Europe peasants had been exploited by a Jewish hostile elite for centuries. First Jews run an exploitative monopoly economy that reduced the people into serfdom. Then when people managed to gradually free themselves many Jews came back as communists and exploited them even more savagely with massacres, torture and Gulags.
No wonder many people were very suspicious of the Jews. But Mises and the Frankfurt School considered these people evil and sick anti-Semites! Mises really believed in the Culture of Critique.
I will just say that these elite jews sound like good for the jews.