
The Mises Institute or Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics is a nonprofit educational organization located in Auburn, Alabama. The institute is a center for Austrian economics, libertarian thought and the paleolibertarian and anarcho-capitalist movements in the United States. It is named after economis Ludwig von Mises and promotes the Misesian version of Austrian economics.
The institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, chief of staff to Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul. Early supporters of the institute included economist F. A. Hayek, writer Henry Hazlitt, economist Murray Rothbard, Ron Paul and libertarian coin dealer Burt Blumert.
History
The Mises Institute was founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, who was chief of staff to Texas Republican congressman Ron Paul; previously Rockwell had been editor for the conservative Arlington House Publishers1 and had worked for the John Birch Society and Hillsdale College1. Rockwell received the blessing of Margit von Mises during a meeting at the Russian Tea Room in New York City, and she was named the first chairman of the board. According to Rockwell, the institute was meant to promote the contributions of Ludwig von Mises, who he feared was being ignored by libertarian institutions financed by Charles Koch and David Koch. As recounted by Justin Raimondo, Rockwell said he received a phone call from George Pearson, of the Koch Foundation, who said that "Mises was too radical" to name an organization after or promote.2
The first academic vice president of the Mises Institute was Murray Rothbard, an influential right-wing libertarian activist and writer who had studied under Ludwig von Mises; Rothbard was a leading figure in the development of anarcho-capitalism and had also been a Cato Institute co-founder. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican congressman who would later run for president of the United States, was named Distinguished Counselor and assisted with early fundraising.
John V. Denson assisted in the Mises Institute becoming established at the campus of Auburn University. Auburn was already home to some Austrian economists, including Roger Garrison. The Mises Institute was affiliated with the Auburn University Business School until 1998 when the institute established its own building across the street from campus.
The Mises Institute aligned itself with what Rothbard called the Old Right, with "a defense of the gold standard, military isolationism, and 'traditional morality' and opposition to fiat money, supranational institutions, and 'forced integration'", according to academics Niklas Olsen and Quinn Slobodian. In 1986, it started publishing The Review of Austrian Economics.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rockwell presented "paleolibertarianism" as a new "fusion" attempt between traditional conservatives and libertarians3. Rothbard supported Rockwell in a series of articles4. They had forged an alliance with "paleoconservatives" in the form of the John Randolph Club in 1989, which allied the Mises Institute and the conservative Rockford Institute. As a result, in the early 1990s, Austrian economist Steve Horwitz called the Institute "a fascist fist in a libertarian glove"5.
Some people associated with the Mises Institute held neo-Confederate views, and the institute hosted a 1995 conference entitled "Secession, State and Economy", "symbolically held in Charleston, South Carolina, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired"6. In a 2000 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center indicated that the institute had shown "recent interest in neo-Confederate themes" and that its founder, Rockwell, had "argued that the Civil War 'transformed the American regime from a federalist system based on freedom to a centralized state that circumscribed liberty in the name of public order'"7.
Kyle Wingfield wrote a 2006 commentary in The Wall Street Journal that the southern United States was a "natural home" for the institute, as "Southerners have always been distrustful of government" with the institute making the "Heart of Dixie a wellspring of sensible economic thinking"8.
In 2011, The Economist said that the Austrian School economics championed by the Mises Institute had "won few mainstream converts", but noted the institute's growing presence on the internet as well as its facilities in Auburn including an amphitheater, conservatory, recording studio and library9.
The political scientist George Hawley described the Mises Institute in 2016 as "the intellectual epicenter of the radical libertarian movement in the United States"10.
Current activities
The institute describes its mission as to "promote teaching and research in the Austrian school of economics, and individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard"11.
Its academic programs include Mises University (non-accredited), Rothbard Graduate Seminar, the Austrian Economics Research Conference, and a summer research fellowship program. It publishes the Journal of Libertarian Studies, which it took over in 2000 from the Center for Libertarian Studies12.
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Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (New York: Public Affairs, 2009), 558. ↩︎
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Justin Raimondo, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000), 260-261. ↩︎
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Llewelyn H. Rockwell, Jr., "The Case for Paleolibertarianism", Liberty 3, no. 3 (January 1990): 34-38. ↩︎
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Murray N. Rothbard, "Why Paleo?", Rothbard-Rockwell Report I, no. 2 (May 1990): 1-5; and "The Life and Death of the Old Right", Rothbard-Rockwell Report I, no. 5 (September 1990): 1-5. ↩︎
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Steve Horwitz, "How Did We Get Here? Or, Why Do 20 Year Old Newsletters Matter So Damn Much?", BleedingHeartLibertarians.com, 23 December 2011, accessed 8 October 2024. ↩︎
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Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich and Edward H. Sebesta, eds., Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008), 33-34. ↩︎
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"The Neo-Confederates", Intelligence Report (Summer 2000), accessed 16 October 2024. ↩︎
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Kyle Wingfield, "Von Mises Finds A Sweet Home In Alabama", The Wall Street Journal, 11 August 2006, accessed 14 October 2024. ↩︎
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"Marginal Revolutionaries", The Economist, 31 December 2011, accessed 14 October 2024. ↩︎
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George Hawley, Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2016), 171. ↩︎
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"What is the Mises Institute?" (Mises.org), accessed 17 October 2024. ↩︎
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"About the Journal" (JLS.Mises.org), accessed 17 October 2024. See also Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., "Publisher's Note", Journal of Libertarian Studies 14, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 151-153. ↩︎
This article is derived from the English Wikipedia article "Mises Institute" as of 20 Sep 2024, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.