This article was originally published by Wanjiru Njoya at The Mises Institute.
Free market capitalism is often mistakenly associated with sinister One World globalists and “open borders” liberals who care nothing for national identity and would happily replace the white people who built Western civilization with a global, “raceless” population sourced through mass immigration. To reject these globalist machinations, nationalists have resorted to promoting white ethnonationalism and European exceptionalism, encouraging white people to take pride in what they see as the unique civilizational attributes of the white race. Ludwig von Mises was a great defender of Western civilization and saw free market capitalism as essential to sustaining this civilization, but he eschewed both the identikit globalists and the ethnonationalists of all races.
In Human Action, Mises depicts Western Civilization as inseparably linked to economic science. He does not see economic progress as merely a coincidental result or fortuitous outcome of the great Western civilization, but as an essential component of that civilization. Western civilization was able to spring into existence precisely because of sound economic science, and would perish without it. While he recognizes that people of the white race are the creators of Western civilization, he does not see the white race, in itself, as a necessary condition of civilization—he rejects the notion that countries without a white population have no hope of ever achieving the same great heights as the West. In his view, the science of economics works the same way regardless of the race of people applying it, just as the force of gravity applies in the same way to men of all races. Economics is a science of means and ends, meaning that those who choose the wrong means will always fail in their efforts to achieve their desired goal. Mises cautions that if Western society rejects sound economics, failure will inevitably follow:
It must be emphasized that the destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science. This civilization was able to spring into existence because the peoples were dominated by ideas which were the application of the teachings of economics to the problems of economic policy. It will and must perish if the nations continue to pursue the course which they entered upon under the spell of doctrines rejecting economic thinking.
To Mises, human reason and human action are the foundations of civilization. It is reason that enables man to understand the importance of property rights and the division of labor which are essential to the economic progress that permits man to move beyond a primitive existence. This holds true no matter what the racial composition of the population may be. There are no economically sound arguments to justify race-craft of any kind, because the laws of economics do not vary based on race. Those who say the West was built by white people through the exploitation of other races are completely wrong. The West was built on property rights, the division of labor, and voluntary exchange. Thus, Mises explains that economic progress is essential to, and a precondition for, civilization. Those who yearn to keep their civilization but abandon the pursuit of sound economics will fail to achieve their goal. As Mises explains:
The natural condition of man is extreme poverty and insecurity. It is romantic nonsense to lament the passing of the happy days of primitive barbarism. In a state of savagery the complainants would either not have reached the age of manhood, or if they had, they would have lacked the opportunities and amenities provided by civilization. Jean Jacques Rousseau and Frederick Engels, if they had lived in the primitive state which they describe with nostalgic yearning, would not have enjoyed the leisure required for their studies and for the writing of their books.
In emphasizing that division of labor and a society based on cooperation and trade is essential to civilization, Mises did not mean that civilization is entirely attributable to economic theories. He acknowledged that, “There are many sources both of success and of error”; the science of economics is not the only science that explains the human condition, and economics cannot provide a complete explanation for why some nations are rich while others remain poor. There are many aspects of human nature that lie beyond the frame of reference for the economist, and are left to the study of human psychology or sociology. In other work, such as his book Liberalism, he explores some of these non-economic factors. Similarly, in “Nations by Consent” Murray Rothbard warns libertarians against forgetting the importance of community, of nationhood, and of belonging to a people.
However, in explaining the essential role of economics in laying the foundations of civilization, he emphasizes that ethnic loyalties and ties of racial kinship are causal factors of civilization only to the extent that they encourage cooperation and the division of labor. Mises observes that,
We may call consciousness of kind, sense of community, or sense of belonging together the acknowledgment of the fact that all other human beings are potential collaborators in the struggle for survival because they are capable of recognizing the mutual benefits of cooperation, while the animals lack this faculty.
Collaboration and cooperation are necessary; kinship on its own does not suffice. For example, no one can fault African tribes for lacking a strong sense of tribal kinship, but this alone has never brought them economic progress. The point is that, without sound economics, nations will always remain mired in poverty no matter how strong their ethnic bonds, and no matter what other admirable social and cultural qualities they may have. Again, this is not to argue that ethnicity and kinship are not important, but that racial bonds of loyalty are not, in themselves, the foundation of civilization.
Therefore, attempts to achieve a higher level of civilization, while at the same time rejecting individual liberty and dismantling the protection of private property, will inevitably fail. Without private property rights, any means adopted in hope of achieving economic success is incapable of yielding the desired result. This is not due to an inherent lack of reasoning ability among particular races, but due to error, folly, and ignorance of basic economics. Mises explains,
[Ethnologists] are utterly mistaken in contending that these other races have been guided in their activities by motives other than those which have actuated the white race. The Asiatics and the Africans no less than the peoples of European descent have been eager to struggle successfully for survival and to use reason as the foremost weapon in these endeavors. They have sought to get rid of the beasts of prey and of disease, to prevent famines and to raise the productivity of labor. There can be no doubt that in the pursuit of these aims they have been less successful than the whites. The proof is that they are eager to profit from all achievements of the West.
Taking the example of African peoples who are beguiled by communism and utterly convinced of their magical ability to make communism yield progress and prosperity, their stated goal remains that of achieving economic progress. The problem is not that they have no interest in being civilized. The problem is that the means they have selected—communism—will not and cannot lead to their desired goal. They are beguiled by Marxist thinkers to believe that communism has never really been tried, and that this time, under the guidance of communitarian African philosophies, they will finally bring about true and prosperous communism. In this, they have demonstrably failed. Mises distinguishes between this type of failure to choose the correct means that will lead to the desired goal and the inherent inability to reason:
The North American Indians lacked the ingenuity to invent the wheel. The inhabitants of the Alps were not keen enough to construct skis which would have rendered their hard life much more agreeable. Such shortcomings were not due to a mentality different from those of the races which had long since used wheels and skis; they were failures, even when judged from the point of view of the Indians and the Alpine mountaineers.
Indeed, this is why people learn from others—they see that others have succeeded where they failed, and from this, they deduce that those who succeeded must have employed superior methods to their own. It is basic common sense. Mises insisted that reason is a universal human condition. Although he acknowledged the association between Western civilization and white peoples (“It is vain to deny that up to now certain races have contributed nothing or very little to the development of civilization and can, in this sense, be called inferior”) he did not attribute this to an innate racial inferiority that could not be overcome. Similarly, he did not attribute the genius of white men to an innate racial superiority. He observed that,
We do not know what causes the inborn differences in human abilities. Science is at a loss to explain why Newton and Mozart were full of creative genius and why most people are not. But it is by all means an unsatisfactory answer to say that a genius owes his greatness to his ancestry or to his race. The question is precisely why such a man differs from his brothers and from the other members of his race.
The rejection of reason that has taken over institutions of the West is, therefore, a grave threat to Western civilization. The lesson to derive from Mises is that civilizational failure assuredly attends all who reject reason, regardless of their motivations and regardless of their race.
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