John C.Medaille wrote:  
>  
> We can certainly agree on the historical importance of Mises, if not   
> for the same reasons. You, for his uniqueness, me for his typicality.  
>  
> Steven Horwitz wrote:  
>> "As a thinking and acting being, man emerges from his prehuman   
>> existence already as a social being.  The evolution of reason,   
>> language and cooperation is the outcome of the same process;  they   
>> were inseparably and necessarily linked together."  (HA:  43)  
>>  
>> "Inheritance and environment direct a man's actions.  They suggest to   
>> him both the ends and the means.  He lives not simply as a man in   
>> abstracto;  he lives as a son of his family, his race, his people,   
>> and his age;  as a citizen of his country;  as a member of a definite   
>> social group; as a practitioner of a certain vocation;  as a follower   
>> of definite religious, metaphysical, philosophical, and political ideas;  
>> as a partisan in many feuds and controversies.  He does not himself   
>> create his ideas and standards of value;  he borrows them from other   
>> people."  (HA:  46)  
>>  
>> "Individual man is born into a socially organized environment.  In   
>> this sense alone we may accept the saying that society is - logically   
>> or historically - antecedent to the individual."  (HA:  143)  
>  
> You are certainly correct in that Mises does recognize man as a social   
> being, but he draws no conclusion from this, at least none that I can   
> see. Instead, he insists on a methodological individualism. But if man   
> is a social being, how is this possible? It does not seem to me that   
> Mises answers this question.  
>  
  
  
He does.  His defense of methodological individualism is not an   
ontological one, but an  
epistemological one.  All of the statements about humans as social   
beings can be  
reconciled with his methodological individualism by noting, as he does,   
that  
"Methodological individualism, far from contesting the significance of   
such collective  
wholes, considers it as one of its main tasks to describe and to analyze   
their becoming  
and their disappearing, their changing structures, and their operation."   
(HA:  42).  MI is  
required to do this because "It is the meaning which the acting   
individuals and all those  
who are touched by their action attribute to an action, that determines   
its character.  It is  
the meaning that marks one action as the action of an individual, and   
another as the  
action of the state or of the municipality.  The hangman, not the state   
executes a  
criminal.  It is the meaning of those concerned that discerns in the   
hangman's action an  
action of the state.... Thus the way to a cognition of collective wholes   
is through an  
analysis of the individuals' actions." (HA:  42).  
   
And finally, "Whether [a] crowd is a mere gathering or a mass...or an   
organized body or  
any other kind of social entity is question which can only be answered   
by understanding  
the meaning which they themselves attach to their presence.  And this   
meaning is always  
the meaning of individuals.  Not our senses, but understanding, a mental   
process, makes  
us recognize social entities."  (HA:  43)  
   
Mises's economics is an economics of meaning.  Because, he argues, only   
individuals can  
attribute meaning to actions, any analysis of action, including   
collective action, must  
begin *but not end* with the meaning that individuals ascribe to them.    
It is not that  
social orders are "simply" the product of individual action, or that   
individual actions  
temporally or ontologically precede social wholes, but that to   
*understand* social orders,  
we need to start from the subjective meanings that individuals ascribe   
to them.  Mises's  
MI is of a more sophisticated sort, I would argue, than the caricature   
that is frequently  
drawn of MI in the literature, especially the critical literature.   
Emerging from the German  
philosophical literature of the early 20th century, Mises's economics   
has to be understood  
in that context.   
   
That said, I will agree that Mises overemphasized the "agency" side of the  
"structure/agency" debate, but that doesn't mean the "structure" issues   
weren't there.  The  
same could be said of Hayek.  More contemporary Austrians have tried to   
redress that  
imbalance.  An excellent critical overview of those attempts can be   
found in Paul Lewis's  
"Structure, Agency, and Causality in Post-revival Austrian Economics:    
Tensions and  
Resolutions" ROPE 17 (2), April 2005:  291-316.  I would also recommend   
G.B.  
Madison "How Individualistic is Methodological Individualism?" *Critical   
Review* 4  
(1/2) Winter/Spring 1990.   
   
Steve Horwitz