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Human Action: A Treatise on Economics Paperback – March 14 2007

by Ludwig von Mises (Author), Bettina Bien Greaves (Editor)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 261 ratings
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In Human Action, Mises starts from the ideas set forth in his Theory and History that all actions and decisions are based on human needs, wants, and desires and continues deeper and further to explain how studying this human action is not only a legitimate science (praxeology) but how that science is based on the foundation of free-market economics.

Mises presents and discusses all existing economic theories and then proceeds to explain how the only sensible, realistic, and feasible theory of economics is one based on how the needs and desires of human beings dictate trends, affect profits and losses, adjust supply and demand, set prices, and otherwise maintain, regulate, and control economic forces.

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century.

Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0865976317
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0865976313
  3. Edition
    In Four Volumes ed.
  4. Publisher
    Liberty Fund
  5. Publication date
    March 14 2007
  6. Part of series
    Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises
  7. Language
    English
  8. Dimensions
    17.15 x 13.97 x 24.13 cm
  9. Print length
    1128 pages
  10. See all details
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Human Action: A Treatise on Economics is a good representation of the Austrian School of Economics that had a great influence in the development of economic liberalism after the Cold War. The great paradox of this movement is similar to that found in other representations of this time like Popper or Hayek himself, to know/find out: Up to what point do these type of economic theories they elaborate upon try to give some answer to the collective economies of Communism, to those put into place post Cold War or are they simply suggested in a social and political context of successive economic crises of liberal experiments at the beginning of the century, especially after the convulsions of the 1920s. . . .In effect Human Action may have discovered some anthropological universals that would permit justification for the behavior of 'homo oeconomicus' situated at either a local or global level. It would change the context upon which their theories are projected these days, not the problems they try to resolve.

Carlos Ortiz de Landazuri
2007

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Liberty Fund; In Four Volumes ed. edition (March 14 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 1128 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0865976317
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0865976313
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 2.27 kg
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17.15 x 13.97 x 24.13 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 261 ratings

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Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises

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4.7 out of 5 stars
261 global ratings

Top reviews from Canada

Gene Balfour
5.0 out of 5 stars Austrian Economics at it’s best.
Reviewed in Canada on October 20, 2018
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For me, Ludwig von Mises is the greatest Economist of the last 200 years. This book is dry reading for anyone who is not determined to reap the rewards of the profound expertise of this man, but after reading this book over the period of a year, it has provided me with an understanding of Praxiology that I cannot do without in my efforts to make sense of the economic policies proposed by the “political class”. If you make the effort to read this book cover to cover, you will never regret it and will likely consider it one of the most important academic achievements of your life.
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joé
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect
Reviewed in Canada on July 10, 2019
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Perfect thx
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D. W. MacKenzie
5.0 out of 5 stars A Revolutionary Classic
Reviewed in Canada on June 26, 2004
Human Action is a rare type of book. It is a system of ideas, not just in economics, but in philosophy, sociology, scientific methodology, psychology, ideology, and politics. It is also a controversial book. Its divisive nature reflects not only profound disagreements over the subjects that it inquires into, but also the authors confrontational style of argumentation.
This book is at odds with the current mainstream of academia mainly because of its first principles. Mises sought to understand social orders on the basis of individual human action. The individualistic approach of von Mises puts him at odds with most academics outside of the economics profession. Notions of a collective will or purpose and individual irrationality still have much credibility among sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and other academics outside of economics. It is at odds with what many economists do for different reasons. Human action means perceiving ones current condition, imagining a better state of affairs, and acting to attain this state. This he separates from animal reactions or reflexes. The authors own purpose here is to escape determinism and its consequences. Economists who rigidly insist upon casting all economics in systems of mathematical equations do so without realizing that they have accepted a deterministic straightjacket. Other academics tend to be on the same page with Mises, in his rejection of deterministic math modeling. Mainstream economists who criticize Mises on these grounds tend to do so for pathetic reasons having to do with the fallacy of style. One could argue that Mises devoted too much attention to philosophic and methodological issues, but the simplistic assertions of some that math+statistics=science prove only that most economists do not take philosophy of science the least bit seriously. Mises' contribution here is in asserting the importance of deductive reasoning and of non-deterministic methodological individualism in examining all the actions that people make. His approach did impact upon economics. Prior to Mises economics was about material wealth. Now economics is about scarcity, allocation, and rational individual choice generally, not just with respect to material wealth- an idea that comes to us from Mises, through Lionel Robbins.
The main contributions of Mises on theoretical matters are on economic planning and monetary exchange. Mises launched the interwar debate over socialism in his earlier writings. Human Action integrates this critique of Socialism into a broader system. He contends that the calculation of profit and loss using the common denominator of money makes the rational accumulation and use of capital possible. Mises is examining the problem of using scarce resources across time periods here, and points to the indispensable role that private exchange relations play in enabling people to take advantage of social division of labor. This is a problem of mass coordination and therefore one of how to deal with the division of knowledge that is inherent to mass exchange and division of labor. The principle problem with this critique is in its presentation. While Mises is more clear than many other economists, who present their ideas in mathematical forms that few can decode, but his writing style is often opaque. He also arrives at many conclusions without spelling out his supporting arguments adequately. One must read Carl Menger first to understand Human Action, for what Mises wrote builds out of Menger without making critical details of Menger explicit. One should also note that modern game theoretic models are largely an attempt to deal with the issues that Mises, unlike his contemporary economists, saw as relevant.
Mises also explains trade cycles as a problem of dis-coordination stemming from distorted interest rates. Objections to this argument range from triviality to internal inconsistency. Some say that Mises is assuming systematic irrationality in arguing that investors always get fooled by the actions of central banks. These objections tend to underestimate the extent of the coordination problems that exist in getting a system of worldwide exchange to solve the temporal problems of resource use at all. The idea that other factors, like wage rigidity, are more important than interest rates in explaining recessions and depressions is more plausible. Here one could say that Mises erred in insisting upon deductive rather than inductive reasoning. However, we must remember that Mises did face serious challenges from irrationalists who rejected deductive reasoning, and even the universal legitimacy of any theoretical propositions- even those based on inductive reasoning. His stalwart defense of deductive reasoning, and reason in general, was fully warranted.
Human Action wanders through many other issues- polylogism and reason, interventionism and cooperation, feudalism and equality before the law, progress and warfare. Human Action rivals The Wealth of Nations as an intellectual construct, but contains huge advances beyond Smith's treatise, especially with value theory. These advances also put Mises ahead of his contemporaries. Mises saw critical failings in socialism at a time when most saw it as workable, of not the wave of the future. Mises saw the failings of Keynes' theory of deficient demand and chaos in capital markets- failings that mainstream economists have now acknowledged. Mises saw how critical the issues of time, coordination, and information are to understanding society. The Scholar's edition enables us to see all of this as in the first edition. Economists are gradually addressing these issues. Human Action was revolutionary as a systematic treatise. It challenged many widely held views, and has now become a classic statement of both process orientated non deterministic economic theory and libertarian political values. Human Action is mandatory reading for anyone who takes political economy and the history of economic thought seriously.
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Mika Nystroem
5.0 out of 5 stars Utterly amazing; this book may change your life
Reviewed in Canada on September 25, 2002
I find Ludwig von Mises to be a tragic figure. Why?
1. He expresses himself in direct and to the point language; when speaking of syndicalism, "in short, it is nonsense."
2. He writes about things that are terribly important, today and always, yet not so easy to understand.
3. He can't help but judge nonsensical ideas on the merits. No half-measures here. Don't expect him to go easy on your favorite ideology.
4. He expresses himself in old-fashioned language ("men" instead of "persons" or "people" or...) and uses expressions that no sane author would use today ("the white man") And he says what he thinks: Western society is superior to Eastern society because...
5. He sneaks in little quotations in Latin and Greek here and there and uses words not in some dictionaries. (Look up at least 'autarky,' 'praxeology,' 'catallactics,' 'epigone,' 'apodictic' before reading this book.)
In short, very few people today will ever read "Human Action." I am sure there are people that will refuse to read it because von Mises calls homosexuality a "perversion" (why he says that, I don't know, but it has no effect on the economic arguments) And that's too bad. Very much too bad.
Mises clearly strongly believes he's right. It certainly colors his writing. But try as you may, you won't find it coloring his reasoning. His personal opinions on economic matters are clearly the *product* of his reasoning, not the other way around.
There are a lot of people that believe that government intervention is necessary for a healthy economy. If you are one of them, you have to read this book. Once you have read and understood Mises's arguments, if you still believe that the government has any constructive role to play by "fixing" things wrong in the economy, I want to hear about it. (F. A. Hayek, of all people, once believed in socialism, too. Until he read Mises's "Socialism.")
Mises's argument goes like this:
First, capitalism clearly works. The more capitalistic a country is, the wealthier it is---you could even say, the more capitalistic a country is, the wealthier its *poor* are.
Secondly, socialism worked in small, self-sufficient medieval households, but it can't possibly work in a large industrial society. Why? Because the planners can't plan adequately without the help of a marketplace to set prices.
Thirdly and lastly---and this is the nail in the coffin for the wannabe socialists that get their opinions splattered all over the newspapers---any "in between" attempt at combining socialistic ideals with a capitalistic society must inevitably fail. Why? Because any interference with the market has the opposite effects to what the interferers themselves wanted!
(Fiasco policies that fall into this category are rent control, minimum wages, overtime rules, compulsory insurances of different kinds, Keynesian printing of money, etc. etc.---in short, almost every measure that "progressive" politicians use to "help" us.)
Mises is famous for having started the "socialist calculation debate," and there's even a book about it out there now. Critics of Mises's position in the calculation debate *must* read "Human Action." The basic point that Mises makes here---and he never makes it entirely explicitly---is that prices are ephemeral one-time phenomena that are controlled by buyers and sellers (their "human action"); prices are historical data, past information; prices do not control people, they are controlled by people. It's utterly impossible to predict the future price of any good better than that of any other good. The reason is that we don't know today what people will want tomorrow. The idea of a "demand curve" is just an abstraction useful for teaching the simplest principles of supply and demand to college students. Once you understand this simple but subtle point, Mises's position becomes clear. The planners can't plan, not because they can't calculate today's prices in order to satisfy today's demands, but because they can't figure out how to rig the prices so as to meet the consumers of today and those of ten years from now and everybody inbetween! The same idea of the unpredictability of prices applies to Mises's argument that macroeconomic indicators (such as the CPI) are totally useless: either they tell you nothing at all, or else they tell you what's completely obvious. Using the CPI to answer the question "has Sam's purchasing power increased over the last year" is a bit like trying to answer the question "is it hot in Los Angeles" by referring to the average temperature in the United States.
In short, this book collects a remarkable set of truly amazing insights. Everyone that can handle it should---must!---read it, and read it carefully. I hope history remembers this book, because yes, it may one day, when everyone understands its contents, be considered one of the most important of the 20th century. If civilization survives that long, that is.
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RENATO BARBOSA DA SILVA RAMOS
5.0 out of 5 stars HUMAN ACTION
Reviewed in Brazil on December 9, 2022
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PREZADOS SRSº,

O PRODUTO APESAR DE NÃO SER O ANUNCIADO , É BRILHANTE !!!
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Oscar Garcia
5.0 out of 5 stars LIBERALISMO
Reviewed in Mexico on July 24, 2020
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Excelente libro, para conocer que es y el origen del LIBERALISMO, que a la lectura se darán cuenta que no tienen nada que ver como usan esa palabra los políticos y en general los que ignorar el tema, pero que simplemente lo repiten.
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Roy
5.0 out of 5 stars un monument
Reviewed in France on December 29, 2017
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L'ouvrage de Mises est une somme tout à fait fascinante tant sa position tranche avec l'économie standard centrée sur la théorie des prix. Ici, c'est de l'homme que l'on parle et cette lecture permet de dépasser les raisonnements standards. Je le conseillerai à quiconque est intéressé par l'économie, même s'il faut en saisir également les biais. Si vous n'avez pas le temps de lire Mises, Kirzner est également une bonne introduction. Il est regrettable que l'économie autrichienne ne soit pas plus présente dans les facultés, car elle est bien plus riche que l'économie néoclassique.
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Fred
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book on finance for all generations
Reviewed in Australia on August 25, 2021
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This book is a true account of the real finances of the word and how it works. Highly recommend for the person who want the truth about money and how people intergrade with it.
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shazam
5.0 out of 5 stars Are we free to choose?
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2015
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Perhaps it is best to start at the end instead of the beginning of this book.How is our freedom to choose restricted?1.physical laws, 2.individual disposition,and 3.the interconnectedness between means and ends(praxeological law).The last sentence of the book is very important:"But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings,they will not annul economics,they will stamp out society and the human race."Sure,this book is the magnum opus of all his work.Did he take giant steps after the studies of Menger and Bohm-Bawerk or did he rest on the shoulder of giants?The Austrian Subjectivists were descriminated against by the German Historical School for many years academically.What they needed was the power to think clearly and to discern in the wilderness of events what is essential from what is merely accidental.The power of ideas go beyond force and might.Contriving the outcome will make truth temporary for such purposes.It's not just about getting over the uneasiness,but how about just being human?That's really what von Mises is all about here.This applies to everybody from the poorest to the richest.If everybody in between applies to a bell curve,so be it. His initial inclination to government intervention is negative.He views it as propaganda.He also recognizes that if social conventions are such,it is possible that we would tolerate it,albeit,with obvious economic dislocations.Governments have to tax so they can spend.They might support minimum wages and maximum prices so workers and producers make more money.The problems are not only debatable. Postlegislative aftermath is right up many economist's alley.von Mises can answer every argument of Karl Marx except one.When the powers that be in a society thrive on the "accidental,"they will only find the seeds of their own destruction.This will not be economical significant. Utterly unremarkable.He takes less time showing how the fall of the Roman Empire was legislatively enabled than Gibbons did.Then,Italy was predominantly an agricultural power heading for feudalism.Let me get to the best part though.von Mises work here does go head and shoulders above his contemporaries in regards to catallactics.That is commodity prices at both spot and future.To a lesser degree there are also option pricing.You can imagine him inventing a machine that allows you to watch supply and demand interact with prices.Bells and whistles for government intervention,etc.Yes,a finely tuned machine.In addition though,it would be worth mentioning that some of the ideas of "creative destruction" is akin to some of von Mises thoughts and ideas.He would call it exploding the fallacy.This is probably a positive way of lightening up,if you will.I suppose I should also mention the appendix:A Critique of Bohm-Bawerk's Reasoning in Support of His Time Preference Theory.von Mises first mentioned this idea in 1912 in his Theory of Money and Credit.He hadn't thought it through at that time.He likens it to the old adage:"a bird in the hand is worth greater than two or three in the bush."This basically means that something ready to be consumed now is worth more now than in the future.He goes one step further by saying there are no exceptions to this.I really should directly quote him because his logic is excellent:"In acting,one must always value a satisfaction at an earlier point in time more than the same kind and amount of satisfaction at a later time.If this were not so,then it would never be possible to decide in favor of a present satisfaction.Whoever uses or consumes anything,whoever seeks by acting to relieve to a greater or lesser extent a felt uneasiness is always expressing a preference for an earlier over a later satisfaction.Whoever eats and consumes anything is making a choice between a satisfaction in the immediate future and one in a more distant future.If he were to decide differently,if he were not to prefer the earlier to the later satisfaction,he would never be able to consume at all.He could not even eat and consume tomorrow,because when tomorrow became today,and the day after tomorrow became tomorrow,the decision to consume would still call for a valuing an earlier satisfaction more than a later satisfaction.Otherwise,consumption would have to be delayed still further."What sort of economic activity was he talking about.Well,in his time he thought we'd be buying iron and gold.We hadn't really started fighting over oil again for a few thousand years.Examples of commodities for von Mises purposes are just that-examples.
Special note:There are some examples where von Mises used examples that could be considered ethnic derogatory.Some people were so good at doing something,everybody went to them to get it done.This could be broken down on an ethnic basis for that reason alone.Can you imagine what he would of said if he was alive when Tata bought Jaguar from Ford?His use of the term "actor" is even more interesting.An economic actor is somebody that might buy or sell but are we really getting into his or her underlying characteristics?Probably not.The intent is to make a profit.They will act accordingly regardless of success or failure.
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