--- Mason Gaffney wrote:

> Samuel Bostaph ... writes that "Mises's concept of
> interventionism relies on a theoretical construct of
> an unimpeded market process that is not set in a
specific historical or institutional context..."


Mises was not an anarchist, and his works such as the
books Socialism and Human Action do encompass
government playing an important institutional role in
providing security and the rule of law.  Moreover,
Mises in Socialism (1922)states that taxes to finance
a minimal state would not be too harmful to the
economy if kept low.  In accepting low taxation, Mises
was a mild interventionist rather than advocating a
pure free market (in contrast, say, to the anarchist
Murray Rothbard or the Georgist-libertarian Albert Jay
Nock).

Mises did not place the market in any historical
context because his methodology was to first establish
pure (universal) theory as axiomatic deductive, based
on universal human nature.
Once pure theory (what he called "praxeology") is
understood, we can then apply it to understand
economic history or actual economic reality.
 
> it seems so otherworldly

In what way?  No country today has a pure free market,
but that is not relevant.  The positive economics is
that we first need to understand how a pure market
functions, and then we can incorporate intervetion to
see how policy changes the outcome.

As an analogy in physics, a model can first assume the
absence of friction to determine the pure effect of
gravity, and then put in friction to see how that
changes the outcome.

Mises has a similar methodology in his model of the
evenly rotating economy, in which there is no
uncertainty, in order to then understand the role of
entrepreneurship in the real world of uncertainty and
change.

> and contrary to the spirit of science

In what way?

> I see two contradictions in what I observe or
> understand of Mises.
> 
> 	1. He rejects the use of mathematics in economic
analysis, while also adopting the pure mathematicians'
preference for pure reason over
> observation and testing. Is this consistent?

Mises did not completely reject the use of
mathematics, and indeed uses some simple mathematics
in his texts.  The point is that natural languages are
sufficient to explain much if not all of economic
phenomena, and so the overuse of calculus is not only
redundant but limiting, as many models simplify not to
clarify but to keep the math tractable. 

> 	2. Those who write in Mises' name ... draw definite
- some would say extreme - conclusions about specific
applied public policies in the real world... Can one
reconcile this with a theory not set in
> a specific historical context?

Yes, just as one can argue from pure theory that the
deadweight loss of taxation is unnecessary since there
can be public revenues without such excess burdens,
without any specific historical context, no?

Fred Foldvary