Human Action

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics is the main work of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises.

Formation

After his arrival in Geneva in 1934 Mises was a professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies, the first time the financial security to be able to dedicate himself fully to the research can. He wanted to work out his previous work and that of the Second Viennese School is a complete, self-contained theory of human action.

Mises was convinced that an incomplete understanding of human action was the cause of erroneous economic theories. Among these he counted all forms of state intervention; long term this would lead to socialism and economic disasters. He saw his task also in a comprehensive manner the basic inaccuracy of socialism and government interventionism.

The result of this work appeared in 1940 in German under the title of political economy, theory of action and economy. However, the Second World War prevented the dissemination of the work, and the Swiss publisher went bankrupt. In the U.S. exile, he prepared a revised edition in English for the American market, the 1949 under the title Human Action - A Treatise on Economics published by Yale University Press.

Content

The whole work is pervaded by the praxeological approach of Mises: Herein influenced by Kant, some synthetic a priori recognizable axioms and theorems are deduced on the basis of rates other than true. Proof or refutation by experience maintains von Mises from epistemological reasons a priori impossible. He turns on the one hand, herein agree with Karl Popper, in Germany against the prevailing historicism, on the other hand against the oversimplification of economic relationships by game theory, through statistical methods or by mathematical models as in the neoclassical and Keynesian economics in.

• Part One: Human Action
• Part Two: Actions Within the Framework of Society
• Part Three: Economic Calculation
• Part Four: Catallactics or Economics of the Market Society
• Part Five: Social Cooperation Without a Market
• Part Six: The Hampered Market Economy
• Part Seven: The Place of Economics in Society

Reception

Human Action has now been printed in four editions and sold more than 500,000 copies. It has been translated into eight languages.

The American journalist Henry Hazlitt, himself a follower of the Austrian School, wrote of Human Action: " [it is] a landmark in the progress of economics. [ ... ] Human Action is, in short, at once the most uncompromising and the most rigorously reasoned statement of the case for capitalism did Has Appeared yet. If a single book can turn the tide did Ideological Has been running in recent years so heavily toward statism, socialism, and totalitarianism, Human Action is did book. It shoulderstand become the leading text of everyone Who believes in freedom, individualism, and in the ability of a free -market economy not only to outdistance any government- fuel planned system in the production of goods and services for the masses, but to promote and safeguard [ ... ] Those intellectual, cultural, and moral values ​​upon which all civilization Ultimately rests. " ( German: ". [ it is ] a milestone in the progress of economics [ ... ] ' Human Action ' is short, and the most uncompromising at the same time most consistently thought-out presentation of the case of capitalism, which has been published. Given a single book can change the prevailing ideological opinion that so much statism, socialism and totalitarianism turned to in the past few years, then ' Human Action ' this book. should be for each of the authoritative text that believes in freedom, individualism and the free market economy and this not only in the production of goods and services to large population groups, but also in its promotion and its protection of the spiritual, cultural and moral values ​​that form the foundations of any civilization, against planned economies deems superior. " )