Ludwig Von Mises Institute - Views Espoused By Founder and Organization Scholars

Views Espoused By Founder and Organization Scholars

Mises Institute scholars are generally consistent with several philosophies, including: Austrian Economics, Libertarianism, Anarcho-Capitalism, and Just War.

Institute scholars have been highly critical of Abraham Lincoln's conduct of the American Civil War (e.g. suspending habeas corpus), asserting that his policies contributed to the growth of statism in the United States. Senior faculty member Thomas DiLorenzo, in his critical biographies The Real Lincoln and Lincoln: Unmasked, argues that the sixteenth president substantially expanded the size and powers of the federal government at the expense of individual liberty. Adjunct faculty member Donald Livingston shares a similar view, blaming Lincoln for the creation of "a French Revolutionary style unitary state" and "centralizing totalitarianism." Institute scholars have also taken a more general anti-war stance. Many works espousing a general anti-war view such as John Denson's A Century of War and H.C. Engelbrecht's The Merchants of Death can be found on the institute’s website and purchased through its bookstore.

The Institute's publications argue that fascism and National Socialism (Nazism) are branches of socialist political philosophy. They assert that these ideologies are based on collectivist rejections of the individual in favor of some "greater good", and that they incorporate central control over the economy and often also society. This line of argument is discussed in more detail at Fascism and ideology.

Institute scholars are often opposed to democracy, described by Institute Fellow Hans-Hermann Hoppe as Democracy: The God That Failed. James Ostrowski describes the system as follows:

Not to be confused with a republic, a democracy is a system in which, theoretically, what the majority says goes. The reality, however, is more complex and much uglier. In a democracy, various political elites struggle for control of the state apparatus by appealing to the material interests of large voting blocks with promises of legalized graft.

Institute scholars disagree on the subject of immigration. Walter Block argues in favor of open borders. Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that in a stateless society individuals would only be able to travel with permission of individual land owners.