Attention Ludwig von Mises Scholars!

I have a question about something dear Ludwig wrote in Liberalism: The Classical Tradition. I am referring to this edition translated by Ralph Raico and released in 1996 by the Foundation for Economic Education.

In Chapter 3, "Liberal Foreign Policy," there is a section devoted to and titled The Right of Self-Determination. Quoting from page 109:

The Right of self-determination in regard to the question of membership in a state thus means: whenever the inhabitants of a particular territory, whether it be a single village, a whole district, or a series of adjacent districts, make it known, by a freely conducted plebiscite, that they no longer wish to remain united to the state to which they belong at the time, but wish either to form an independent state or to attach themselves to some other state, their wishes are to be respected and complied with. This is the only feasible and effective way of preventing revolutions and civil and international wars.

There is also a section within this chapter titled The League of Nations. On pages 147-148 von Mises writes:

Just as, in the eyes of the liberal, the state is not the highest ideal, so it is also not the best apparatus of compulsion. The metaphysical theory of the state declares - approaching, in this respect, the vanity and presumption of the absolute monarchs - that each individual state is sovereign, i.e., that it represents that last and highest court of appeals. But, for the liberal, the world does not end at the borders of the state. In his eyes, whatever significance boundaries have is only incidental and subordinate. His political thinking encompasses the whole of mankind. The starting-point of his entire political philosophy is the conviction that the divison of labor is international and not merely national. He realizes from the very first that it is not sufficient to establish peace within each country, that it is much more important that nations live at peace with one another. The liberal therefore demands that the political organization of society be extended until it reaches its culmination in a world state that unites all nations on an equal basis. For this reason he sees the law of each nation as subordinate to international law, and that is why he demands supranational tribunals and administrative authorities to assure peace among nations in the same way that the judicial and executive organs of each country are charged with the maintenance of peace within its own territory.

He then goes on to state his grievences with the League of Nations as it was constituted, formed, and charged. The context for the latter quote can be read here and the context for the former can be found here.

My question is, how can Mises reconcile the first quote with the second?

He obviously believes people should be free to persue political associations as they please, and yet he also seems to believe everyone should eventually be under the coverage of a world state's reach. Granted, he also says of this world government on pages 150-151:

...the problem involved is not at all a matter of organization or of the technique of international government, but the greatest ideological question mankind has ever faced. It is a question of whether we shall succeed in creating throughout the world a frame of mind without which all agreements for the preservation of peace and all the proceedings of courts of arbitration will remain, at the crucial moment, only worthless scraps of paper. This frame of mind can be nothing less than the unqualified, unconditional acceptance of liberalism. Liberal thinking must permeate all nations, liberal principles must pervade all political institutions, if the prerequisites of peace are to be created and the causes of war eliminated. As long as nations cling to protective tariffs, immigration barriers, compulsory education, interventionism, and etatism, new conflicts capable of breaking out at any time into open warfare will continually arise to plague mankind.

The sort of worldwide government he envisions is a distant and unrecognizable entity that most advocates of a worldwide state wish. He disavows socialism whereas they do not.

However, this still conflicts with the right to self-determination. What happens when sections of the world hold out from this advancing Leviathan and refuse to join? What happens if a section of Pax Libertas decides to secede? Mises doesn't explicitly come out and say such rogue entities should be forced to become part of the international union, but I'll repeat his words: "The liberal therefore demands that the political organization of society be extended until it reaches its culmination in a world state that unites all nations on an equal basis."

That sounds rather ominously akin to imperialism, something to which he is emphatically opposed. No doubt he'd argue that the extention of Pax Libertas should be accomplished solely through, as he puts it elsewhere in the book, "the weapons of the intellect, which liberalism views as the only ones permissible in" political contests. But his "demand" is just a little too forceful for me to completely disregard as something benign.

I'll leave my comments on his desire to see a world state to just this: I think it's a bad idea. It caught me by surprise that an Austrian (no less the fount of modern Austrian School economics) would advocate something like this.

Can anyone comment on this? Did he write anything else after this clarifying this issue? The only Mises I've read is this (and I'm not finished yet) and Socialism (ditto). These are some of his earlier major works, so it's entirely possible I haven't come across futher elucidation of the concepts here.

Posted by Drizzten at November 06, 2003 07:41 PM