This post from Alan, who cannot be called overly sympathetic to Mises (and Hayek), provides all that we need to know about the "evidence" that Leeson purports to present.  Along with Richard Ebeling's later post, a scholar who knows Mises's life as well as anyone alive, these two should be sufficient to dismiss Leeson's chop-shop version of the history of ideas and venomous attack on a man who was hounded by the Nazis (being both a Jew and a liberal) as the nonsense that it is.

Steve


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Steven Horwitz
Charles A. Dana Professor and Chair
Department of Economics
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY 13617
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-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alan G Isaac
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 11:55 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] can we please get back to business

On 5/21/2014 6:08 PM, J Kevin Quinn wrote:
> I will say to Alan - I think it was Alan - that it's a little rich to 
> invoke Godwin's law when the debate is precisely about the extent of 
> Mises' cozying up to fascism!



I do not think so. Here is the quote from Robert's post:

         '1927: "It cannot be denied" that "fascists"
         - including "Ludendorff and Hitler" - will protect
         "civilisation" and "property" (von Mises
         _Liberalism_ 1985 [1927]).'

Here is the quote from Mises (p.44) containing the phrase "Ludendorff and Hitler":

         "The opponents of democracy champion the right of
         a minority to seize control of the state by force
         and to rule over the majority. The moral
         justification of this procedure consists, it is
         thought, precisely in the power actually to seize
         the reins of government. One recognizes the best,
         those who alone are competent to govern and command,
         by virtue of their demonstrated ability to impose
         their rule on the majority against its will. Here
         the teaching of l'Action Française coincides with
         that of the syndicalists, and the doctrine of
         Ludendorff and Hitler, with that of Lenin and
         Trotzky. Many arguments can be urged for and against
         these doctrines, depending on one's religious and
         philosophical convictions, about which any agreement
         is scarcely to be expected. This is not the place to
         present and discuss the arguments pro and con, for
         they are not conclusive. The only consideration that
         can be decisive is one that bases itself on the
         fundamental argument in favor of democracy."

(An argument that Mises then presents.)  Furthermore, identifying fascism in the mid-1920s with Nazism of say the mid-1930s (when Mises, anticipating trouble from the Nazis, fled to Switzerland) is simply anachronistic.

As I said before, I consider even the brief and very conditional Mises praise offered to fascism of the 1920s to have been a moral lapse.  But we cannot turn that lapse into praise of the German Nazism of a decade later, nor into some kind of pretense that the praise was for anything other than an emergency response to forces that (to Mises) looked even more horrific.

     "Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as
     something more would be a fatal error. ...  As the
     liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely
     and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life,
     health, liberty, and private property against violent
     attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil.
     A government that, instead of fulfilling its task,
     sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal
     security of life and health, freedom, and property
     would, of course, be altogether bad." (p.51-52)

I hope that clarifies why I felt justified in invoking Godwin's law.

Cheers,
Alan