John Medaille wrote:  
>  
> I certainly agree that Mises rejected equilibrium, and many other   
> particular doctrines as well. Of course, one can ask, if equilibrium   
> (and hence equity) is not possible even in principle, than what   
> rationale remains for the system? But laying that question aside, the   
> reason for regarding Mises as the purest form of neoclassicism   
> involves the basic assumptions of neoclassicism, namely the   
> self-interest maximizing, autonomous individual.   
  
  
"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)  
  
So much for the "autonomous individual" in Mises (and this is just from   
HA, there's more elsewhere).  I'm not even going to bother to refute the   
"self-interest maximizing" part because Mises never invoked the language   
of "maximization" and his notion of "self-interest" was so broad as to   
be nearly empty.  It certainly was not narrow "self-interest" in the way   
we often talk about it now.  
  
I must confess my pleasure in seeing an extended discussion of Mises's   
work on this list, as I do think he needs to be taken seriously by   
historians of thought.  I must also confess my disappointment that we   
are seeing this attempt to read Mises into a neoclassical framework that   
is utterly contradicted by not just the text of HA but by his whole   
life's work, not to mention that of the modern Austrians who are   
attempting to expand and explore his framework.  
  
Steve Horwitz