Mrs. Ludwig von Mises's Memoir Takes You Inside His Life and Mind

This book will answer no economic questions and offer no academic wisdom. What it sets out to answer are the many personal questions about my husband, Ludwig von Mises. —Margit

About the Author:

Margit von Mises (Margit Serény von Mises, 1890–1993): In her youth she was an actress in Hamburg. She met Ludwig von Mises in 1925, and the two married on July 6, 1938. After Mises's death, Margit worked tirelessly to organize and publish the manuscripts he had left unpublished, to oversee the reprinting and translation of his works, and to push for the founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Margit was a remarkable woman — strong inwardly, firm of will — who not only looked after Mises's daily life but also did a great deal to preserve and spread his ideas.

Excerpt from the Book:

Chapter Eight: The Story of Human Action (Excerpt)

I should count as someone who knows Human Action well. I typed all 890 pages of the manuscript, and once the index was done, I checked that too. Lu was a rather strict "boss," at least where I was concerned. The moment he spotted a typing error he made me retype the whole page — just as at the Delehanty Institute, where I had studied. Lu's standards were as strict as the Institute's: no correction marks allowed.

Most readers know that Human Action is the revised English edition of Nationalökonomie, published in Geneva in 1940. In 1942, as soon as we had settled into our new apartment in New York, Lu began planning the English revision, and it took him many years. There was much else to attend to, so I could type only a few pages a day. For a long stretch my life held not just Lu but Human Action as well. The book became part of his life and mine, and in the years that followed I shared in every joy and every disappointment it brought.

Compared with the books he wrote before and after it, Human Action meant more to Lu than any other, and so when Yale University Press mishandled the book's second edition, Lu suffered more than he ever had. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I mean to set these events down in order, so that readers can more easily see how this book came to be written, how many difficulties we overcame before it was finally published, and what torment Lu went through when he saw Human Action — the most important work of his creative life — torn apart in its second edition.

Lu's first collaboration with Yale University Press involved Omnipotent Government, and it was Henry Hazlitt who recommended Lu to the press. Going back through the papers, I saw more clearly than ever how much effort Henry Hazlitt put into spreading my husband's ideas — and how much he still does. In our first year in America, Henry, a busy and hardworking man in his own right, read the whole of Lu's manuscript and revised it, no small task. Hazlitt shared my husband's convictions; both men held getting something for nothing in contempt.

In April 1943, Hazlitt wrote to Lu: "Yale University Press is interested in your manuscript (Omnipotent Government). I suggest you send it to Mr. Eugene Davidson at the press." Lu took the advice and soon became fast friends with Davidson. The two met once a month, usually over lunch, to talk about their publishing plans.

By way of thanks, Davidson wrote to Hazlitt on December 16, 1943: "Professor von Mises was here (in New Haven) yesterday to settle the last details of the manuscript. There is no doubt in any of our minds that this book will be an important and challenging contribution to current thought. We are most grateful for the effort you put into bringing about its publication."

Yale University Press's editor-in-chief, Norman V. Donaldson, was every bit as enthusiastic as Davidson. Four days later, Donaldson wrote to Lu: "It was splendid that you could come to New Haven and work with us to finish this book. Needless to say, I have the highest hopes for it."

Not long after Omnipotent Government came out, Bureaucracy was published as well. On January 24, 1944, Davidson wrote: "The more I think about your views, the more I feel we should discuss seriously whether you might write them down and publish them. I keep coming back to your vivid description of Yale University Press's own bureaucratic machinery, set against a branch office of the Internal Revenue Service. And I believe many readers will find in such a book statements that clarify their own views..."

In his reply of January 31, Lu wrote: "I have thought seriously about your suggestion that I write a short book on the economic and social problems of bureaucracy. The subject interests me greatly, and I care about the practical interests of ordinary people." Davidson answered promptly, on February 2, 1944: "I'm glad you are giving serious thought to a short book on bureaucracy... And I'm pleased to hear the proofreading (of Omnipotent Government) is going well; we are now one step closer to publication."

Settling on a subtitle for Omnipotent Government proved difficult. Davidson proposed lunch on February 16: "We can discuss the book's subtitle and the Bureaucracy book. I hope we can each report on our progress." It must have been at that lunch that Lu agreed to write Bureaucracy, since in a letter of March 1, 1944, Davidson told him: "George Day (chairman of the committee) and Norman Donaldson were both delighted to hear how much you favor going ahead with a book on bureaucracy..." And on March 3 he wrote again: "I am happy to tell you that the committee has gladly approved our plan for the bureaucracy book... We are all looking forward to the success of this new venture." On June 2, 1944, Davidson received the manuscript and wrote: "I think this manuscript is very good — in fact, I think the book we now have on our hands is rather splendid... I hope you will soon receive my enthusiastic praise for this newborn."

Omnipotent Government and Bureaucracy were the first books Lu wrote in English, and both were well received by the public and the critics alike. But the two were only the beginning of the large body of work he would produce in America. From the start, Lu felt he had to revise Nationalökonomie for English-language readers. In December 1944, he sent Davidson the following outline of the book:

In Nationalökonomie: Theory of Action and Economic Activity, my aim was to provide a comprehensive theory of economic behavior — one covering not only the economics of the market economy (the free-enterprise system) but every other conceivable system of social cooperation, such as egalitarianism and the planned economy, interventionism, and corporatism. I also believe it is necessary to answer the many objections raised from other standpoints — ethics, psychology, history, anthropology, ethnology, and biology — objections that question the reliability of economic reasoning and the validity of the methods used by economists of every school and persuasion. Only by answering these objections thoroughly can one satisfy the most demanding readers and convince them that economics is a science able to convey knowledge and guide action. The book will therefore open with a general theory of human action, of which what is usually called "economic behavior" is only one particular form. It will analyze the foundational epistemological problems of the social sciences and determine the part economics plays within that framework. On the basis of this more general analysis, the book will then examine every problem in economics thoroughly. The English edition will be more than a translation of the German edition published in Geneva in 1940. Besides a revision of the whole text — several chapters will be rewritten — other significant changes are needed to fit the book to the American cultural climate. American readers in fact approach economic questions very differently from German readers, who were more or less caught up in an infatuation with Hegelianism, Nazi philosophy, and other doctrines. Fortunately things are much better in America — there is no need, for instance, to refute the mistaken theories of Werner Sombart and Othmar Spann. This is a purely scholarly treatise, not a popular book. But because it never uses a technical term without defining and explaining it in detail, any educated person can read it. At present the public shows little interest in dry economics books of this kind. But the wide response drawn by books on the most complicated problems in physics and biology, and on questions of philosophy and epistemology in the natural sciences, proves that the lack of interest cannot be blamed on distaste for complex research itself. The great questions of postwar reconstruction are likely to draw interest to this book, since it analyzes in detail such problems as prices, monopoly, money and credit, the business cycle, and unemployment, and discusses proposals for economic and social reform at length.

In a letter of December 28, Davidson thanked Lu and asked how large an advance he would need to write the book. He went on: "Right after New Year's, I'll be able to move quickly on the whole matter together with the members of the executive committee."

On January 15, 1945, Davidson wrote to Hazlitt: "Mr. von Mises may already have told you that we have been discussing the possibility of his translating and partly rewriting Nationalökonomie. It would help greatly if you could tell us about the book's importance. To get the committee to approve a project of this scale, we need to convince them of the book's breadth, depth, and fundamental character... I am writing to you, of course, because we value your judgment enormously, and remain grateful to you for first introducing von Mises to us."

Hazlitt replied on January 18, 1945, naming people who knew Lu's work and could give an authoritative opinion on Nationalökonomie: "It might be best to write to people who know this particular work, or who know Mises's work as a whole. Among those I would suggest are Fritz Machlup, at the University of Buffalo; Gottfried von Haberler, now at Harvard University; Dr. B. H. Beckhart at Columbia University (a former student of Mises's); Professor John Van Sickle at Vanderbilt University (who I believe was also one of Mises's students); Professor B. M. Anderson at the University of California, Los Angeles, who knows Mises's work well, especially on monetary theory; and Garet Garrett at the National Industrial Conference Board. Beyond that, if you have time to reach them, you might also try Professor Lionel Robbins and Professor F. A. von Hayek at the London School of Economics."

On January 19, 1945, Mr. Davidson received a letter from Benjamin Anderson:

As to your request that I assess von Mises's Nationalökonomie, here is my opinion. From what I know of von Mises's published works, and of those already translated into English, and from what I have learned in conversation with him, I believe the book well worth publishing. I would say that in my view the works already translated from the German are, next to the two books Yale University Press has already published, equally fine — indeed better and more important. I mean Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis and The Theory of Money and Credit. The first work of Mises's I ever read was the former. It offers the most profound and important critique yet written of the whole literature on the theory and meaning of the planned economy — including the classic works of Böhm-Bawerk, whose scope is narrower — and it was a revelation to me. Professor Lionel Robbins of the London School of Economics has also written, in his preface, that on the European continent Mises's The Theory of Money and Credit "has long been regarded as the standard work in its field." Nationalökonomie is von Mises's work on general economic principles. It should be said that the subjects it treats form the trunk, while the works on money and on the planned economy are branches... The book supplies the foundational theory from which the conclusions of those works are derived. It has been many years since the English-speaking world last saw a first-rate, comprehensive book on the basic principles of economics. I therefore believe that a book like this one — translated and revised by Mises himself — will have a significant effect on American economic thought.

On February 1, 1945, Lu received a letter from Hayek saying that in April he would lecture at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Oklahoma, and Stanford University, and would come to see us in early April. In his reply of February 23, 1945, Lu wrote:

I was delighted to hear you are coming for a lecture tour, and the public is abuzz over it. You may not yet realize what a triumph The Road to Serfdom has been, or how popular you are in this country... Yale University Press plans to publish the English revised edition of my Nationalökonomie. I have already begun writing it. But the book runs to many volumes, and publishing it will require a large investment, so the press's new committee wants to hear from a well-known economist about the book's importance. Since American economists read almost no foreign-language books, you are the only scholar who can write such an assessment...

In July 1945, Lu wrote Donaldson at Yale University Press another letter explaining Nationalökonomie, in which he said:

The German edition of Nationalökonomie was published in Switzerland in 1940 and runs to 756 pages. In the English edition I will try to remove all criticism of European theories that are unknown, or long since abandoned, in Anglo-Saxon countries. On the other hand, I will have to deal more thoroughly than in the German original with theories current in America, especially the Keynes-Hansen line. I expect these changes will make the manuscript somewhat shorter than the 1940 edition. I know that concision and clarity are an important measure of a book's quality, and I am doing all I can to achieve them. But a treatise like this one, dealing with the whole complex of economic problems, will inevitably run to more volumes than a monograph on a single topic.

On May 7, 1948, Yale University Press confirmed receipt of part of the manuscript. Eugene Davidson wrote: "The new chapters have arrived, and I'm glad to see you are another step closer to your goal. Norman Donaldson has reminded me of a serious oversight on our end: we are supposed to pay you each time we confirm receipt of a chapter. We forgot this clause in the contract entirely, so please tell us how you would like to settle it, and how you would like us to handle the installments from now on. My own suggestion would be to pay the total for the past several months in one sum, and then continue on the original schedule. But we are happy to meet your wishes either way." In his reply of May 12, 1948, Lu wrote: "Thank you for your letter of May 7. I fully agree with your proposal. As for the total owed for the past months, I leave the decision entirely to you." Nothing proves what this book meant to Lu better than these letters — he paid almost no attention to the money, and gave no thought at all to his own interests.

In 1949, the printing of Human Action went smoothly. Davidson supervised everything himself and let no detail slip. He wanted the book to be perfect, and he wanted the author to be satisfied. He even sent Lu a bound proof, hoping for his approval.

On May 31, 1949, Norman Donaldson wrote to Lu: "We have now received the finished copies of Human Action, and have sent one on to you... We are likely to set the publication date for September 14... I hope you will be pleased with the way the book has come out. It looks quite handsome, and it lives up to the $10 price we have set for it. I would also like to take this chance to offer my own congratulations on the completion of this hugely important masterwork."

Lu promptly confirmed that the copy had arrived and thanked Donaldson. On June 7, 1949, Donaldson wrote back: "We were delighted to receive your verdict on the Human Action copy, and pleased to see how enthusiastic you are about the way the book looks."

On September 14, 1949, Human Action was published. The book caused a sensation across the country. Nearly a hundred review copies alone went out — a figure that, granted, may not compare with today, when publishers send at least 200. On October 10, 1949, Donaldson wrote to Lu: "Orders are still coming in at a healthy pace; today we decided to go to a third printing."

In the three and a half weeks after the book came out, life looked to Lu, for the first time, more hopeful than it ever had. For years he had worked hard, and although he had held academic posts in Europe, enjoyed a considerable reputation there, and seen his writings respected, he had never won in America the academic recognition he once had across the Atlantic. To put it mildly, his finances were tight and unstable as well. But the success Human Action brought him far outstripped that of the two earlier books. Yale University Press did what it could to meet requests for foreign-language editions, and in time Human Action appeared in Italian, French, Japanese, and Spanish. Most of Lu's most devoted readers and admirers came from Spanish-speaking countries. Evidently, the more thoroughly one nation has been conquered by another, the more its people hunger for freedom. As I write this, a Chinese translation of the book is also about to be published in Taiwan.

Cover image: Mises and Margit, via mises