 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this plenary lecture on Ludwig von Mises. It's about time. It's Thursday morning We're into the fourth day of the Mises Summer University 2015 And it's about time that we have a lecture on Ludwig von Mises In former summer universities, we had this at the beginning And in fact some of the lecturers already said a few words here and there on the patron Saint of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. So there's a reason why this is the Ludwig von Mises Institute It's not because other economists hadn't said anything of value, but Ludwig von Mises definitely is a very important economist Possibly the What certainly one of the most important in the history of economic thought and in my eyes the best economist That ever lived so far Of course, we are all hoping that you or maybe not all of you is unlikely, but Some of you will step into his footsteps and also do great things in the future and so there's no no monopoly on greatness In my lecture, I'll start off as usual with a few hints to further readings and then I'll walk through the main life stations of Mises Then come to talk in a third step about his major works and give you an overview and also try to characterize Mises research methodology and Mises research orientation. What was he striving to do and I'll conclude with a few remarks on the significance of Mises within the history of economic thought and the history of Ideas in the 20th century and significance for our own day So as far as readings are concerned Primary material can be found in two books Ludwig von Mises memoirs that if that he wrote in in German In the early years of World War two Then he confided the manuscript to his wife and said you do with this what you wish But only once I'm gone. So then effectively died in 1973 and market for Mises had the manuscript Copy edited and typed type set and so on. It was published under the title notes and recollections in 1978 and has recently been retranslated and Published under a new title memoirs Which is more faithful to the German original innerungen In 2009 then the market for Mises has published Her own recollections of her years with Ludwig von Mises also in 1978 Here in the Mises Institute. We have copies of Mises correspondence Throughout his entire career. So we have the originals are in Grove City College his post World War two correspondence and The originals of the pre World War two correspondence are now the Austrian Government archive the Staatsarchive in Vienna for a long time. They had been stored in in Moscow in Russia So here at the Mises Institute You have access to all this pride these primary sources and those of you who are inclined to do research in the history of ideas Biographical work and so on will find everything you need as far as this primary stuff is concerned Then as far as biographical works are concerned the most Important one. I think is still very Rothbard He has written two very nice concise presentations of Mises live and his contributions to economics the essential for Mises Was published shortly after Mises death or in the same year And then Ludwig von Mises called our creator hero and 1988 I didn't check whether we have it still on sale, but I suppose it's still downstairs So you can acquire this and this is a wonderful introduction for those of you Who just want to read 40 50 pages on the subject? Then there is a British scholar Eman Butler who has written a nice book on Ludwig von Mises as the fountain head of modern microeconomic revolution and Israel Kirtzner famous Student of Ludwig von Mises wrote a biography and published a biography in 2001 Richard Eberling is Scholar who has published a great number of articles and edited Several volumes of writings of Ludwig von Mises assorted with this Introductions a very insightful introduction, so I recommend these works as well And then finally there is a talented young German author place. It's no longer that that young but formerly young Who published Mises biography in 2007 which is now on sale also downstairs? And you might think that the price is Exaggerated by I tell you will get your money's worth and plus always consider. It's a multifunction volume Okay, so you can use it as a door stopper and If you have small children at home, you can seat them on it, so this Okay Live stations of Mises Mises was born in September 1881 in What at the time was called Austria-Hungary? In Austria-Hungary was in those days the second largest political Entity in Europe so that the largest one was was Russia I just found this German map and the Germans are always quicker put this stuff on the net So I get the Russian Reich the Russian Empire. See you not only learn Austrian economics and Mises stuff. You also learn some German so repeat after me. Who's this rich? Okay, so Austria-Hungary was the second largest entity after Russia So bigger than Germany France Sweden and of course these islands I Third largest country in population after Russia and Germany And me Mises was more particularly born. He was born in Galicia. Repeat after me Galicia Very nice Okay, so So Galicia see this is the north-easternmost part of The austral-Hungarian Empire where the look Zooming in into this and so he was born. So this is austral-Hungary So and he was born here in the city of Lemberg so quite close to the Russian border. In fact Galicia shifted political Affiliation many times in the course of history. So formerly it belonged to Poland Today it belongs to Ukraine. So the the Polish name I believe as it was and the Ukrainian name is a riff. So if you look at it on the map today, it's with and You still have there for those who are inclined to travel you still have the old architecture typical of the 19th century austral-Hungarian Empire in the city and they are cultivating it and maintaining it and some people Some locals have even discovered Ludwig for Mises have rediscovered Ludwig for Mises. So there is now a sign on his On a house that formerly belonged to his family. We don't know whether this is the birthplace But so in any case so there is now something is something in for Mises tourists who go to these areas and some scholars and Members of the Mises Institute have already done excursions to Lemberg so that for example Don Prince I think he went there and Yuri Maltsev Professor Maltsev went there too with a group of students Yeah, so this is where Mises was born and spent the first years of his life His family was original from this area and his father worked as an engineer for the austral Austrian railway company so was a formerly a private company which was then nationalized So the father moved to the ministry of transport Or even of the railway ministry in Vienna, right? So then the family followed him in the early 1990s 1890s to Vienna and Ludwig was then schooled in in Vienna and went to What we would translate today as a high school Gymnasium but the to the gymnasium was a very specialized school the point of which was to Bring the students up to to a university level In the course of six or seven years So only five percent of the population Approximately of an age court would go to that kind of school and of course they came from families that were sufficiently well off because they had to pay fairly high tuition fees and so on and The high school degree that they had you must imagine this as at least being equivalent to a bachelor degree today Okay, so they had a higher mathematics, of course, but they were fluent in in Greek and in Latin and so on so a very high level Of very high standard in those schools So after school Mises went to the University of Vienna to study law and Soon discovered his interest for political science and economics, so he specialized in economics and Graduated in 1906 with the doctoral degree, which at the time the only doctoral degree that they Awarded was the one in law. So he obtained Dr. Euras in 1906 After school he went to work for the Treasury department of The Austrian government right so this the country is Austria-Hungary, but in fact it was that there's a reason why it's called Austria-Hungary because there were two distinct Political entities within that country one was Hungary in the other one Were the countries affiliated to the Austrian crown? Okay, there was the Austrian crown There was a Hungarian crown and then there was the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, okay, and okay, so I'll spare you those details. We could do a class just on this Anyway, so Mises did not work for the Austro-Hungarian Treasury worked for the Austrian Treasury Department, which was the main career step for all young people. So this is Professor Böhm-Bawerk had done the same thing Many so this is the A career track today But Mises didn't like it and didn't like the bureaucracy and later on made a few disparaging remarks on this So really the working in the bureaucracy was nothing for him There's no scope for initiative no scope for independent decision-making for judgment And so he just had to execute orders and certainly this experience inspired him to one of his later books With the title bureaucracy, which we also have on say out downstairs So some of the descriptions that you find in the book are certainly taking also from personal Experience not only from theoretical deliberation Mises went on to work for a few months for a law firm and then eventually joined the Chamber of Commerce In Vienna, so this was the Chamber of Commerce for lower Austria. So lower Austria is the area Whereas my laser is the air you see this here lower Austria, right? So this is this area around Vienna And in fact because it was it included the firms Operating in and around Vienna. It was the most important Chamber of Commerce within the entire Empire and The Chamber of Commerce played an eminent role in Austrian politics because it provided expert knowledge to parliamentarians the members of Congress in In Austrian politics because at the time they were not yet as richly endowed with Human resources and budgets as a typical member of Parliament would be today So at the time they were dependent on outside assistance and as far as economic and financial Expertise was concerned this came then especially from the Chamber of Commerce so the Chamber of Commerce had a huge impact on Austrian politics in The last two or three decades, but especially in the last decade before World War one and then again in the time after World War after World War one Mises then Worked there about two When about six years and the World War one broke out so he Spend a lot of time on the front and the front was especially for him what the Austrians called the northern front. So this front here so fighting against Russian troops and at the very end of the war he was also commanded to Wait a minute. I think it's this area here Fighting against Italian troops and he was successful in Each time so this is very good But what was remarkable was that he had to go to the front in the first place right because most of his colleagues From the university and from the Chamber of Commerce did not right there They stayed at home like most bureaucrats do also in Washington right few of these guys actually go to Afghanistan or to Iraq and so on and they're commanding everybody from the safe place Behind their desk or elsewhere In at home so that was also the case at the time So why was Mises sent to the front? Well because of course, I mean I'm only speculating right nobody knows for sure because there's no Documentary evidence by the way, it's not the kind of things that you would write down in a personnel file I'd we sent this guy to the front to have him killed and to get rid of him But of course, that's what you have to think And Mises was an outspoken Critic of economic policies already at the time He was not always an easy person. I come to talk About this a little later on right so it could be very adamant in defending his own opinions and certainly had sometimes also a harsh Harsh word on his opponent opponents So this might have been a reason to just get him out of the picture so that central planning could take its smooth course in Vienna Which it did At the very end of the war Mises returned to Vienna and things were going better for him He was one of the things he was appointed Still by the last emperor the last emperor of Austria Charles from Hasbrook Carl von Habsburg Extraordinary professor at the University of Vienna Excellent extraordinary professor. It's not an ordinary professor. There is is not somebody who holds a chair But he has some sort of an adjunct that is he is not really paid by the University But he has as far as his intellectual standing is concerned the same status as a for professor So he was just simply not pay was an extra ordinary professor Not an ordinary one, but he was still a professor So he could have doctoral students could direct research and so on and give lectures, of course, which he did during the rest of his years that he spent in Vienna He stayed In Vienna until 1934 during those years he continued his Chamber of Commerce activities. He was much involved with International negotiations to settle war-related claims and so there was Export commissions and so on a company Diplomatic missions and so on dead re negotiations constantly going on And then there was increased international cooperation also on the level of chambers of commerce. So Mises was a member of International associations of chambers of commerce and so on in Austria he played an influential role in the discussion of economic policies so he led a combat mainly in the form of Newspaper articles that he wrote but also in Discussions within committees and so on about which we do not know much, but he was an expert admitted to these Councils as well. So a combating first of all The introduction of outright socialism in Austria in the immediate World War one period The post-World War one period and then in combating hyperinflation Which took place a few years later because after a war typically a government is even more bankrupt than usually So what they did was to finance the expenditure at an increasing pace with the help of the printing press so unsurprisingly you get high price inflation rates and it was much denial at the time that this had anything to do with the monetary policy pursued by the central bank. So Mises was Very much on that front too and then later on he championed the reintroduction of Gold standard in Austria which happened and so on. So there are lots of things on which he had a very beneficial Impact and which are related in his memoirs. So you will find all of this stuff there Much more detail than I could relate it here in 1934 then Mises obtained an offer from the Institute of Graduate studies in Geneva now Geneva at the time was the seat of The first international organization the first major international organization It is in fact there were already two of them one was the International Labor Office and the other one was the League of Nations Today they are of course panoply of international organizations pretty much all over the world and the even in the US right you have United Nations and similar stuff and so on so we're used to this at the time This was quite a was quite a new thing right so Geneva Wasn't out with these two institutions and so the the bureaucrats On the top they needed qualified labor qualified assistance So they set up their own school to for to train these These people so that was the mission of the graduate school of international studies in Geneva In which hired then very prestigious Professors from all kinds of countries and Mises was hired on one of those positions It was in principle a one-year position, but he obtained it six years in a row and Could probably have stayed on longer had it not been for World War two which broke out in 1939 and then Mises grew a little nervous his trust in the Austrian excuse me in the Swiss authorities was not perfect that they would not Surrender him to the Nazi governments No, so of course there was much pressure coming from Germany to neutral country such as Switzerland Sweden to Delivered surrender regime opponents right known regime opponents, which Mises was right It's a little bit like Ed Snowden today right a constant demands from the US government that Ed Snowden finally delivered We did a lot to to the US right because he's a known regime opponent So Mises then by precaution left the country in 1940 and went to the United States In a very adventurous escape route that led him through France and in Spain. I relate this in The Mises biography so you can have a look up there. So he arrived in July 1940 he arrived in New York City and he would stay it would make New York City is his residence for the rest of his life Until 1973 Now without spending too many words on this you May probably imagine what this means for a person of 59 years At the time if it was almost 15 hours still 58 when he went to the US So he had no network in the US. You knew a few people. There was no real no professional network He had no source of revenue yet His his wealth right his savings and so on were not there yet to give up everything And start afresh very hard decisions had it not been for this decision though Mises probably would not have written much in English if at all and so It's very doubtful that that what is known today as Austrian economics and which is a very strongly influenced by Mises in the United States Whatever I've come to be. There's a very fateful Decision of almost world historic importance. Who knows if we're working hard on this to make it of world historically important Yeah, so Mises state in New York He he got along finally because he found funding through the Rockefeller Foundation at first Who had funded some of his projects already before so during European times and then? essentially eventually through his association association with the association of American manufacturers and similar organizations now some people have claimed that Well, in fact that Mises was a paid lobbyist Okay, since you received money from the association of manufacturers, I guess that that's the argument So I suppose that the same people that think that all professors were employed at public universities universities Should be characterized as minions of the state and I mean that seems to be the implication And if you characterize everybody just by the source of his revenue You can find all kinds of name-calling to put this in a favorable or less favorable light Of course, it's a ridiculous claim because if you look at Mises what he did and what he wrote and what he held is certainly not somebody who tuned His writings and his message to the source of revenue. I certainly not what he would would have done And I'll come to talk about this later on so Mises died then in New York City in October of 1973 and at that point Austrian economics was probably at the low point Even though he himself had created the roots of Renaissance and there had been a Renaissance under his influence most notably under the influence of the works That he had published in the previous decades and in particular under the influence of his book Human Action which appeared in 1949 so I'll say a few words About his major works right so third part of our lecture Mises has written and published for Major works through he was very productive But there are four works for major books that stand out and that all of you especially if you want to go on with Austrian economics and learn more about this economics should read at some point in your life Okay, so these books are the theory of money and credit published first published in 1912 Mises first book The book socialism which was published first in 1922 right so both of these books published in German right Teorides Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel and Digamine Wirtschaft 1922 and then Human Action published in English But there was a German language predecessor under the title of national economy published in 1940 But which due to war related circumstances would not have made much of an impact right so human action way more influence and to the present day and Then so this was published in 1949 and then finally theory and history published in 1956 or 57 1957 he also published 12 other books dozens of articles and so on so there's a lot to read, but it's manageable It's not like it's a Murray Rothbard. I don't nobody can read as much as Murray Rothbard has written Few few people can read as much as he has written plus. I mean, I'm just talking about his books and articles and so on I'm not talking about the correspondence It's literally so I'm a few people can read as much as this guy has written. It's just unbelievable plus He has he has read a lot Yes, so it's possible Don't give up, but you can also be a very good scholar You can't be a very good scholar even if you do do not have quite the same pension of work as a Rothbard, right? It's possible different ways of being great Now on the theory of money and credit I I just highlight a few contributions of each book But then in a way highlighting these contributions is inadequate as I will argue in a second step So first a few contributions in the theory of money and credit Mises Revises the Austrian theory of value the theory of value that had been established by Karl Manger in 1871 so the subjective theory of value and Mises puts it on a Choice-based foundation, right? So Mises roots the phenomenon of subjective value within Choice whereas in Kalmengar's conception this had been much much less clear Mises then applies this theory that he has so revised To the phenomenon of money so Kalmengar himself had not tried to apply the theory of subjective value to money Which is what Mises does and he solves the Analytical problems that went ahead with it and which had steered some of those predecessors away from it so most notably the The circular explanation of the value of money right with the value of a medium of exchange obviously depends on the purchasing power of the medium of exchange, but Then the purchasing power for purchasing power to exist while there must be an exchange so people must exchange money That is they must already evaluate it somehow So if they evaluate it somewhere They must have a notion of the subjective value of that money before they know the purchasing power that seems to be a contradiction Right, and so you explain the purchasing power by the subjective value and the subjective value depends on the purchasing power And so you're moving in a logical circle and Mises explained Following the Fridrich von Wieser where it laid the foundation to that explanation. He said no actually we don't have Circular explanation between the subjective value now and the purchasing power now rather the purchasing power now is Based on the subjective value now, which in itself is based on the purchasing power of yesterday So because I already know the purchasing power that money had yesterday I can form an opinion on the subjective value that money has for me and based on that subjective Value I can now exchange the money that I own or that I want to acquire Another important contribution that he made I'll just zoom on one because time is running out is Here you presented for the first time his business cycle theory, which is today known as the Austrian theory of the business cycle and which holds that if there's credit expansions on expansion of the Artificial expansion of the money supply in form of fiduciary media through fractional reserve banks But also the same argument holds for monetary expansion through in a fiat money regime Then it's likely that the interest rate be depressed below its natural level so we have the distinction between the natural level of the interest rate and the The effective or monetary rate of the interest rate a distinction that Mises took over from a Knudvik cell a Swedish economist So if we have this then these are good and people are likely to start more investment projects than can finally be realized With the available resources within the economy We can always start as many projects as we wish right the other question is what can we finish and we are objectively constrained in our ability to finish things because The real resources that are available in which we need to finish right consumers goods to keep us going right to to feed human people Produce as good to realize these To help as tools and so on natural resources all of this is limited and helps only to Realize so and so many projects so if we start too many projects if we divert if we dilute our forces Well, then we end up finishing nothing So we get a crisis situation the crisis situation is the situation Which you realize that you have done something stupid in the past right you realize that you've started too much Too many things that you cannot finish It's probably an advice that your parents give you constantly at least they should and you're in your Professors as well. So I'm doing it again right concentrate And you can do only so you think you can do everything and there's a lot you can do because you're young But you cannot do everything right so you need to concentrate in order to finish you need to finish your studies you need to finish Projects that you start in your job and and so on right So Mises theory has a microeconomic foundation rooted in everyday experience and he Also highlights that this applies as well to the macroeconomy right from a macroeconomic point of view is the same thing Okay in the theory of money and credit he had already started highlighting the importance of monetary calculation for the operation of market economy and This was the starting point for a grand critique of socialism that he published Ten years later ten years later and Mises came to realize that money Is not just a veil. It's not just an expression of value That is therefore Completely superficial phenomenon from an economic point of view that is you can could run an economy just as well with money as without money Which was in fact the conviction held by Friedrich von Wieser So one of his predecessors at the University of Vienna and of course it was your conviction of all socialists I had for all socialists until the present day By that you can run an economy without money. You have central planning Can organize a division of labor you do not necessarily need money and visa even thought you could calculate in terms of subjective value Like some economists still today believe that you can calculate in terms of utility And so Mises said no you're completely wrong you never calculate in subjective value You never calculate in terms of utility There is no such thing as a substance of utility that you could add up or subtract and so on If I explain to you my lecture a few days ago Value is a relation. It's a bundle of relationships. It's not a substance Because it's a bundle of relationships that it's contingent to each Particular situation so you cannot compare one value to another So Mises says well, so what we calculate is never in terms of value we calculate only in terms of money Calculate in terms of the medium the price is paid in terms of the generally used medium of exchange now that means That the division of labor and all of civilization is contingent To a particular set of institutional environment Only if you have a monetary economy You can have a widespread division of labor only if you have money you can have Very round about production processes. You can have an extended division of labor If you don't have money you will never have this So there's no choice here. I if you want all of these Achievements of civilization. Well, then you have to say yes to money if you want to have money Well, then you need to have private property because otherwise there's no exchange so there's a whole bundle of Implications that comes with it So the socialists were completely wrong, right? So he publishes an article in 1920 highlighting the socialist calculation problem He says well, you calculate only in terms of money in a socialist economy You do not have exchange because you do not have private property, right? The central planning board Owns everything so how can it possibly exchange any? Factor of production You have private persons who has exchanged an effect of production. There's one property owner who? seeds whatever piece of land or Petroleum and so on to some other property owner So there is an exchange going on if it all belongs to a central planning board There's no exchange as a consequence. There are no market prices as a consequence. It's impossible to calculate As a consequence, it's impossible to organize a widespread division of labor socialism is And it turns out to be right So various other points that he also makes in this book So he develops a political economy of the family and of as we would say today gender relations But in fact sex relations, okay? between the sexes what were the forces that created greater legal equality between Females and males What is the role of feminism what beneficial role can feminism play what negative role is feminism likely to play? In the modern world and so on he has a very sharp Criticisms of John Stuart mill in this book. He develops the theory of monopoly Prices and various other things. So I relate this in more detail in my book You can look it up there. So the book is very rich in Individual points that you make some uses And typically economists today he would draw let's say 40 articles or 50 articles out of a book like this If he is an honest economist right so there's also some guys who publish the same thing twice sometimes in different languages Or a change a few words here and there so they get 120 articles, right? Then you can share with co-authors and so on in the exchange of publishing rights On the market so you get even more get 250 out of this right so Mises didn't do all this mumbo-jumbo Right, so he published this this one book now say a few things about the significance of this approach later Then 1949 he publishes human action, which is the grand treatise on economics outboard Which you have already heard and he and human action as well. They've there are many contributions Beyond what had he had written before for example. He develops the theory of probability It's a very important chapter chapter 6 which did not exist in the German language Predicis of volume which he Revises the theory of probability implicitly the theory of risk And highlights its significance for economic analysis He presents the whole system of his thought as it had developed in the previous years And so there are foundations of economic analysis as a theory of the division of labor and so on right but then The development of all these elements depends on the institutional setup So it depends on whether you have private property or not. So then there is once you have private property intellectual Economic calculation comes into place of the third part of the book deals with economic Calculation, then you have the theory of the market economy. You have the theory of interventionism and you have the theory of Socialism all at its proper place And also something that is very important in this book is that he highlights the epistemological underpinnings of Economic science right so Mises defended a very Original position, which is still contentious today. Namely that economics is a body of a priori Theorebs or a priori assertions Now this is contentious still today is the stumbling block All right, so so many people who otherwise like Mises if they think that he is completely wrong on this question and certainly I will not try to convince you now in two minutes and a half but So it's just a point to be to be noted that This is this original position and he explains why economics is an a priori science and as opposed to the economics Then we have other another intellectual approach to the explanation of reality Which is history and history focuses on contingent relationships. So in economics. We have a priori universals And which hold true independent of what we observe and independent what exists in the real world And they exist by virtue of what it means to act as they spring from the nature of human beings, right? So I choose Choosing mean I prefer something to something else. This is something that I do not choose right there I always prefer something to another thing all right So this is an a priori feature of the human nature that exists wherever human beings exist But independent of what they do and independent of the environment and so on but on the other hand Of course the environment and the concrete Intentions and projects and so on have an influence on the real world, but to analyze this is the job of historical research so therefore this this Fourth book that I should highlight a theory and history in which he explains at the epistemological Foundations of we would say today social research, right? It's not just economics run all Economics history Sociology, how do they interrelate? What is the crucial distinction between a universal and a priori statement and a concrete historical statement? Okay, so I said a few things about Concrete contributions that mesas made but as I Already mentioned before We would do would not do him justice if we just focus only on these individual contributions like Describing individual trees if you want to say something about the forest right and mesas Had a sense that is much lacking today among contemporary economists The sense for the importance of a system of thought The whole point of economics is not to understand this or that Isolated phenomenon the whole point of economics is to understand the interrelations between all things That are part of human action because all things are related through human action human action is Springs right from the necessity of dealing with scars economic goods So you do not understand economics if you are just an expert of the labor market of book production or Whatever else right you only only become an economist once you acquire A sense for and a knowledge of the interrelations between that concrete phenomenon and all the rest This is very important So therefore then it becomes important in researching and in publishing to understand and to Present the whole system how things interrelate That's what he did Okay, and that's why he's still so important today because few people Especially if you look at economists today a few people understand the need for such a presentation and even fewer are capable of doing this It's not completely extinguished, but it's It has receded and in mesas we find this right so mesas presents the whole system. How do things interrelate? In a coherent way Maybe he's wrong. This is a different question right doesn't mean that he has Attained some sort of of perfection and we cannot go beyond this and this is a different question All right, but you need to understand the interrelation. Otherwise, you're not really in good economics That's what he did. He did us a great favor and he gave us great this great model But if we just look at human action now, it's already 945 But please allow me to take five additional minutes because I need to say a few important things I feel it's important because it comes from me If we just look at human action We get the impression well because we see the full-fledged system and we see we get the impression. Well, okay, there's this guy is somewhat He has the figured out how things work and it seems to be Kind of static or you might say even dogmatic right but of course that's what a system is all about You have a dogma right and so it's an opinion of somebody who has thought a lot about these matters and has acquired a lot of Knowledge about this matters publishes now what he thinks is is the truth but What is even more important is that we we keep in mind that mesas actually Did not start off with these ideas. There was a slow progression toward these ideas and this progression did not stop in 1949 So there was a progression from the theory of money to the theory of socialism to the theory of interventionism socialism To finally get a published human action. He in the course of this process He became interested in epistemological questions. It did not start off in 1912 or in 1906 While I think I like Kant and therefore Everything should be somehow a priori. So it was not at all. He didn't even express himself on these questions I was very he was a very painstaking very careful Scholar Right who only said things about which he had thoroughly informed himself and then finally made a statement Which he held to be true So he didn't start off with with some preconceived notion and then try to justify it at our cost or so I didn't try to be original But he insisted on those points that he felt were true even if they were not popular All right, so he came to be interested in epistemological problems because one critique of the market economy one critique of Of the market committee came through the critique of economics And that critique said well economics is a class based system of knowledge. It's bourgeois. It's a bourgeois science All right, so you have to be born with it By large and only if you belong to this class then economics holds true because your view is somehow distorted But if you have an objective view if you belong to the working class and so on then you have a completely different view All right, so this is of course a very nihilistic way of of arguing And so mesas became interested in so what is actually the basic of our exchange of our argumentation and so on He became interested in questions of logic and of epistemology And so on and then he started a second research project about Since 1927 28 or so which ran through the rest of his life And which gave the epistemological chapters in human action in theory and history and in one of his finest Small books ultimate foundation of economic science published in 1962 right So mesas thought was progressive and it was even progressive within each of these fields Is theory of money 1912 is not the same as the theory of money that he presented in 1949 It's essentially right the building blocks and so on if we make the same, but there are lots of Developments lots of nuances some of which we have highlighted in in this book which was published another advertisement advertisement published in 2012 is the centennial Celebration volume on the occasion of the centenary of the theory of money and credit Which contains articles written by young scholars and some also some older chaps such as myself Highletting the significance of mesas monetary thought and the progression of mesas monetary thought so in conclusion then The significance of mesas is There was certainly the the fountain head of intellectual opposition to To statism to all forms of statism, but even more mesas is a model because He didn't is a model as a scholar because precisely he didn't start off By being an anti-statist And he started off by being having a passionate love for truth And this is the true distinguishing mark of a scholar. You need to love truth Need to love truth more than what you believed before And that's what he did. He actually changed his opinion on very important points. He started off as Quite an interventionist right quite a left winger as we would say today And he changed his opinion by becoming acquainted with economic theory And he became acquainted with it by reading kalmengar first and say wow, this is this is amazing Nobody's ever talking about this is a realist theory of value and of prices and of the economy And then he started going back to the sources that kalmengar quoted most notably classical economics And then he fully understood what his own teachers had deprived him of And he changed this is his opinion. So this is the model of a scholar It's one thing to we of course we We cherish him also by giving us all these ideas Necessary in the battle the political battle against statism. Okay, but more important more fundamental still Is this the love of truth and scholarship and so mesas was a model for all of us in that respect And he was a model not only therefore as a scholar, but also As far as his personal integrity Is concerned and I hope that Well, you will find some emulation among these groups and whoever else is watching us today. Thank you for your attention