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