Human Action

Mises' Human Action was published in September 1949 by Yale University Press. This extraordinary book explained why free markets produce higher living standards than government bureaucrats. It refuted fashionable doctrines, and as Rothbard recalled, "it provided eager libertarians with a policy of uncompromising laissez-faire: in contrast to all other free-market economists of that day or later, there were no escape hatches, no giving away the case with 'of course, the government must break up monopolies,' or 'of course, the government must provide and regulate the money supply.' ..."

[I]n my thoughts I divided the book [My Years With Ludwig von Mises] into eleven chapters. I decided on all their titles, and I never changed a single one of them. For example, I knew I had to write one chapter about Human Action. People had to know how my husband suffered about this, his greatest work ... I can see a day when economics will be taught as human action—including every subject that those words imply—and not broken up into courses that produce mathematicians instead of economists.

In the early sixties, Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden began publishing The Objectivist Newsletter. It was a lifeline of sanity that I read avidly each month. It must have been there that Rand recommended Mises' Human Action. I bought it and dove in. Now, this is weird. Without any formal education in economics, I loved that book. The experience of learning so much in a conversation with a great mentor was exhilarating. I was most impressed by its logical order. Over and over again, as I read, a question would arise in my mind and Mises would address that question in the next paragraph.

[E]ven the casual reader of Mises senses the enormous passion with which he preached the message of the free society ... (See, for example, the almost dramatic closing paragraph of his magnum opus, Human Action ...) ...

The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the ... achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused ...

Human Action, generally considered to be the greatest work of the greatest economist of our times, is a towering monument to the mind of a genius. Its 885 pages of text contain insights that have revolutionized economic thought and are moving the world toward a true and complete understanding of human freedom ... Human Action is not a book one reads; it is a book one studies ... [I]n dealing topically with one subject, Professor Mises never overlooked its relation to all others. Hence his convictions on any one topic were spread throughout his book.

The impact and importance of the Austrian icon Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) should never be marginalized. His magnum opus, Human Action, was a remarkable accomplishment. Mises located the dynamics of the free market within human nature itself. He coined the term "praxeology" to describe the logic of human conduct, ... that is, everyone acts to improve their own satisfaction. Economics, as a discipline, is a subcategory of praxeology. People co-operate with each other, specialize and exchange goods, formed societies from pure self-interest.

AEN: Was Human Action out by the time you met Mises?
GREAVES: Yes, and I read it in 1951. I remember standing on a street corner reading it, waiting to be picked up for Mises's seminar. I was captivated by it. Of course I didn't have an economics background, but in some ways that worked to my advantage. Mises's book went against the grain of what was being taught in economics classes and business schools. To understand his approach required first unlearning what was being taught elsewhere at the time ... The laissez-faire politics of the book was no problem for me.