Oskar R. Lange
Oskar Ryszard Lange was a Polish economist and diplomat. He is best known for advocating the use of market pricing tools in socialist systems and providing a model of market socialism. During his stay in the United States, Lange was a sought-after academic teacher and researcher in mathematical economics. In communist Poland, he was a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party and a believer in centrally-managed economy. Lange was born in Tomaszów Mazowiecki as son of Sophie Albertine Rosner, his ancestors had emigrated at the beginning of the 19th century from Germany to Poland. He studied law and economics at the University of Kraków, where he defended a doctoral dissertation in 1928 under Adam Krzyżanowski. From 1926 to 1927 Lange worked at the Ministry of Labor in Warsaw, was a research assistant at the University of Kraków, he married Irene Oderfeld in 1932. In 1934, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship brought him to England, from where he emigrated to the United States in 1937.
Lange became a professor at the University of Chicago in 1938 and was naturalized as a U. S. citizen in 1943. Joseph Stalin, who identified Lange as a person of leftist and pro-Soviet sympathies, prevailed on President Franklin D. Roosevelt to obtain a passport for Lange to visit the Soviet Union in an official capacity, so that Stalin could speak with him personally; the State Department was opposed to Lange traveling as an emissary because they felt that his political views represented neither Americans of Polish descent nor American public opinion in general. Lange's trip to the Soviet Union in 1944 caused further controversy, as the newly-establish Polish American Congress condemned him and defended the interests of the London-based Polish government-in-exile. Lange returned to the United States at the end of May and met, at Roosevelt's request, with Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk of the government-in-exile, on a visit in Washington. Lange stressed how reasonable Stalin was prepared to be, asked the State Department to put pressure on the exiled Polish leadership to reach an understanding with the Soviet leader.
Towards the end of World War II, Lange broke with the Polish government-in-exile and transferred his support to the Lublin Committee sponsored by the Soviet Union. Lange served as a go-between for Roosevelt and Stalin during the Yalta Conference discussions on post-war Poland. After the war ended in 1945, Lange returned to Poland, he renounced his American citizenship and went back to the US in the same year as the Polish People's Republic's first ambassador to the United States. In 1946, Lange served as Poland's delegate to the United Nations Security Council. From 1947 he lived in Poland. Oskar Lange worked for the Polish government while continuing his academic pursuits at the University of Warsaw and the Main School of Planning and Statistics, he was deputy chairman of the Polish Council of State in 1961–65, as such one of four acting chairmen of the Council of State. The bulk of Lange's contributions to economics came during his American interlude of 1933–45. Despite being an ardent socialist, Lange deplored the Marxian labor theory of value because he was much a believer in the neoclassical theory of price.
In the history of economics, he is best known for his work On the Economic Theory of Socialism published in 1936, where he famously put Marxian economics and neoclassical economics together. In the book, Lange advocated the use of market tools in economic planning of Marxism, he proposed that central planning boards set prices through "trial and error", making adjustments as shortages and surpluses occur rather than relying on a free price mechanism. Under this system, central planners would arbitrarily pick a price for products manufactured in government factories and raise it or reduce, depending on whether it resulted in shortages or gluts. After this economic experiment had been run a few times, mathematical methods would be employed to plan the economy: if there were shortages, prices would be raised. Raising the prices would encourage businesses to increase production, driven by their desire to increase profits, in doing so eliminate the shortage. Lowering the prices would encourage businesses to curtail production in order to prevent losses, which would eliminate the surplus.
In Lange's opinion, such simulation of market mechanism would be capable of managing supply and demand. Proponents of this idea argued that it combines the advantages of a market economy with those of socialist economy. With the utilization of this idea, Lange claimed, a state-run economy would be at least as efficient as a capitalist or private market economy, he argued that this was possible, provided the government planners used the price system as if in a market economy and instructed state industry managers to respond parametrically to state-determined prices. Lange's argument was one of the pivots of the socialist calculation debate with the Austrian School economists. At that time, the view among English socialists of the Fabian Society was that Lange had won the debate, his works provided the earliest model of market socialism. Lange made contributions in various other areas, he was one of the leading lights of the "Paretian Revival" in general equilibrium theory during the 1930s. In 1942, he provided one of the first proofs of the Second Welfare Theorems.
He initiated the analysis of stability of
Hugh Dalton
Edward Hugh John Neale Dalton, Baron Dalton, was a British Labour Party economist and politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1945 to 1947. He shaped Labour Party foreign policy in the 1930s, opposing pacifism and promoting rearmament against the German threat, opposed the appeasement policy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Dalton served in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition cabinet; as Chancellor, he pushed his policy of cheap money too hard, mishandled the sterling crisis of 1947. His political position was in jeopardy in 1947, when, he inadvertently, revealed a sentence of the budget to a reporter minutes before delivering his budget speech. Prime Minister Clement Attlee accepted his resignation, his biographer Ben Pimlott characterised Dalton as peevish, given to poor judgment and lacking administrative talent. Pimlott recognised that Dalton was a genuine radical and an inspired politician. Hugh Dalton was born in Wales, his father, John Neale Dalton, was a Church of England clergyman who became chaplain to Queen Victoria, tutor to the princes George and Albert Victor, a canon of Windsor.
Dalton was educated at Summer Fields School and at Eton College. He went up to King's College, where he was active in student politics. Whilst at Cambridge he was President of the Cambridge University Fabian Society, he did not succeed in becoming President of the Cambridge Union Society, despite three unsuccessful attempts to be elected Secretary. He went on to study at the London School of the Middle Temple. During the First World War he was called up into the Army Service Corps transferring to the Royal Artillery, he served as a lieutenant on the French and Italian fronts, where he was awarded the Italian decoration, the Medaglia di Bronzo al Valor Militare, in recognition of his "contempt for danger" during the retreat from Caporetto. Following demobilisation, he returned to the LSE and the University of London as a lecturer, where he was awarded a DSc for a thesis on the principles of public finance in 1920. There have been suggestions that he was homosexual, but they are rejected by his major biographer Ben Pimlott, who states "no evidence exists that Dalton had a sexual relationship with another man, his private life seems to have been one of blameless monogamy."
Dalton stood unsuccessfully for Parliament four times: at the 1922 Cambridge by-election, in Maidstone at the 1922 general election, in Cardiff East at the 1923 general election, the 1924 Holland with Boston by-election, before entering Parliament for Peckham at the 1924 general election. At the 1929 general election, he succeeded his wife Ruth Dalton as Labour Member of Parliament for Bishop Auckland in 1929. Respected for his intellectual achievements in economics, he rose in the Labour Party's ranks, with election in 1925 to the shadow cabinet and, with strong union backing, to the Labour Party National Executive Committee, he gained ministerial and foreign policy experience as Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in Ramsay MacDonald's second government, between 1929 and 1931. He lost this position when he, most Labour leaders, rejected MacDonald's National Government; as with most other Labour MPs, he lost his seat in 1931. Dalton published Practical Socialism for Britain, a bold and influential assessment of a future Labour government's policy options, in 1935.
The book revived updated nuts-and-bolts Fabianism, out of favour, could be used to attack the more militant Left. His emphasis was on using the state as a national planning agency, an approach that appealed well beyond Labour. Turning his attention to the looming crisis in Europe, he became the Labour Party's spokesman on foreign policy in Parliament. Pacifism had been a strong element in Labour Party, but the Spanish Civil War changed that, as the Left moved to support arms for the Republican cause. Aided by union votes, Dalton moved the party from semi-pacifism to a policy of armed deterrence and rejection of appeasement, he was a bitter enemy of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. When war came, Chamberlain's position became untenable after many Conservative MPs refused to support him in the Norway Debate in April 1940, Dalton and other senior Labour leaders made clear they would join any coalition government except one headed by Chamberlain. After Chamberlain resigned early in May, Lord Halifax had declined the position, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister.
During Churchill's coalition government Dalton was Minister of Economic Warfare from 1940 to 1942. He established the Special Operations Executive, was a member of the executive committee of the Political Warfare Executive, he became President of the Board of Trade in 1942. After the unexpected Labour victory in the 1945 general election Dalton wished to become Foreign Secretary, but the job was instead given to Ernest Bevin. Dalton, with his skills in economics, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Alongside Bevin, Clement Attlee, Herbert Morr
Friedrich Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Anglo-Austrian economist and philosopher best known for his defence of classical liberalism. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for his "pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic and institutional phenomena". Hayek was a major social theorist and political philosopher of the 20th century and his account of how changing prices communicate information that helps individuals co-ordinate their plans is regarded as an important achievement in economics, leading to his Nobel Prize. Hayek served in World War I and said that his experience in the war and his desire to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war drew him into economics. Hayek lived in Austria, Great Britain, the United States and Germany and became a British subject in 1938, he spent most of his academic life at the London School of Economics, the University of Chicago and the University of Freiburg.
Hayek was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1984 for "services to the study of economics". He was the first recipient of the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize in 1984, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991 from President George H. W. Bush. In 2011, his article "The Use of Knowledge in Society" was selected as one of the top 20 articles published in The American Economic Review during its first 100 years. Friedrich August von Hayek was born in Vienna to August von Felicitas Hayek, his father, from whom he received his middle name, was born in 1871 in Vienna. He was a medical doctor employed by the municipal ministry of health with a passion for botany, about which he wrote a number of monographs. August von Hayek was a part-time botany lecturer at the University of Vienna, his mother was born in 1875 to a wealthy land-owning family. As her mother died several years prior to Hayek's birth, Felicitas received a significant inheritance, which provided as much as half of her and her husband's income during the early years of their marriage.
Hayek was the oldest of three brothers and Erich, who were one-and-a-half and five years younger than him. His father's career as a university professor influenced Hayek's goals in life. Both of his grandfathers, who lived long enough for Hayek to know them, were scholars. Franz von Juraschek was a leading economist in Austria-Hungary and a close friend of Eugen Böhm von Bawerk, one of the founders of the Austrian School of Economics. Hayek's paternal grandfather, Gustav Edler von Hayek, taught natural sciences at the Imperial Realobergymnasium in Vienna, he wrote works in the field of biological systematics, some of which are well known. On his mother's side, Hayek was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, his mother played with Wittgenstein's sisters and had known him well. As a result of their family relationship, Hayek became one of the first to read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus when the book was published in its original German edition in 1921. Although he met Wittgenstein on only a few occasions, Hayek said that Wittgenstein's philosophy and methods of analysis had a profound influence on his own life and thought.
In his years, Hayek recalled a discussion of philosophy with Wittgenstein when both were officers during World War I. After Wittgenstein's death, Hayek had intended to write a biography of Wittgenstein and worked on collecting family materials and assisted biographers of Wittgenstein, he was related to Wittgenstein on the non-Jewish side of the Wittgenstein family. Since his youth, Hayek socialized with Jewish intellectuals and he mentions that people speculated whether he was of Jewish ancestry; that made him curious, so he spent some time researching his ancestors and found out that he has Jewish ancestors which date back five generations. Surname Hayek is German spelling of Czech surname Hájek. Hayek displayed an intellectual and academic bent from a young age, he read fluently and before going to school. At his father's suggestion, as a teenager he read the genetic and evolutionary works of Hugo de Vries and August Weismann and the philosophical works of Ludwig Feuerbach. In school, Hayek was much taken by one instructor's lectures on Aristotle's ethics.
In his unpublished autobiographical notes, Hayek recalled a division between him and his younger brothers who were only a few years younger than him, but he believed that they were somehow of a different generation. He preferred to associate with adults. In 1917, Hayek joined an artillery regiment in the Austro-Hungarian Army and fought on the Italian front. Much of Hayek's combat experience was spent as a spotter in an aeroplane. Hayek was decorated for bravery. During this time, Hayek survived the 1918 flu pandemic. Hayek decided to pursue an academic career, determined to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war. Hayek said of his experience: "The decisive influence was World War I. It's bound to draw your attention to the problems of political organization", he vowed to work for a better world. At the University of Vienna, Hayek earned doctorates in law and political science in 1921 and 1923 and studied philosophy and economics. For a short time, when the University of Vienna closed he studied in Constantin von Monakow's Institute of Brain Anatomy, where Hayek spent much of his time staining brain cells.
Hayek's time in Monakow's lab and his deep interest in the work of Ernst Mach
Edwin Cannan
Edwin Cannan, the son of David Cannan and artist Jane Cannan, was a British economist and historian of economic thought. He was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1895 to 1926; as a partisan of Jevonianism, Edwin Cannan is best known for his logical dissection and destruction of Classical theory in his famous 1894 tract A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution. Although Cannan had personal and professional difficulties with Alfred Marshall, he was still "Marshall's man" at the LSE from 1895 to 1926. During that time during his long stretch as chairman after 1907, Edwin Cannan shepherded the LSE away from its roots in Fabian socialism into tentative Marshallianism; this period was only to last, until his protégé, Lionel Robbins, took over with his more "Continental" ideas. Though Cannan, in his early years as an economist, was a critic of classical economics and an ally of interventionists, he moved to the side of classical liberalism in the early 20th century.
He favored a simplicity and common sense in the exposition of economics. According to Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Cannan "emphasised the institutional foundation of economic systems". Elementary Political Economy. London: Henry Frowde. 1888. Retrieved 10 May 2018 – via Internet Archive; the Origin of the Law of Diminishing Returns, 1813-15, 1892, The Economic Journal. Ricardo in Parliament, 1894, EJ. Cannan, Edwin, ed.. "Preface, Introduction". Lectures on Justice, Police and Arms delivered in the University of Glasgow by Adam Smith and reported by a Student in 1763. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved 12 May 2018 – via Internet Archive. A History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political Economy from 1776 to 1848, 1898. "Preface, Notes, Marginal Summary". An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. London: Methuen. 1904. Retrieved 12 May 2018 – via Online Library of Liberty; the Economic Outlook, 1912. Wealth, 1914. Early History of the term "Capital", 1921, QJE.
An Application of the Theoretical Apparatus of Supply and Demand to Units of Currency, 1921, EJ. Money: Its connexion with rising and falling prices, 1923. Monetary Reform, with J. M. Keynes and Milner, 1924, EJ An Economist's Protest, 1927 A Review of Economic Theory, 1929 Modern Currency and the Regulation of Its Value, London: D. S. King and Son, 1932. Collected Works of Edwin Cannan, edited by Alan Ebenstein William Harold Hutt Works by or about Edwin Cannan at Internet Archive Edwin Cannan at cepa.newschool.edu Cannan index at socserv2.socsci.mcmaster.ca Catalogue of Edwin Cannan papers at London School of Economics Archives Edwin Cannan's Library at LSE Archives
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements; the knights so created were known as "Knights of the Bath". George I "erected the Knights of the Bath into a regular Military Order", he did not revive the Order of the Bath, since it had never existed as an Order, in the sense of a body of knights who were governed by a set of statutes and whose numbers were replenished when vacancies occurred. The Order consists of the Sovereign, the Great Master, three Classes of members: Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross Knight Commander or Dame Commander Companion Members belong to either the Civil or the Military Division. Prior to 1815, the order had Knight Companion, which no longer exists. Recipients of the Order are now senior military officers or senior civil servants. Commonwealth citizens who are not subjects of the Queen and foreign nationals may be made Honorary Members.
The Order of the Bath is the fourth-most senior of the British Orders of Chivalry, after The Most Noble Order of the Garter, The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, The Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick. In the Middle Ages, knighthood was conferred with elaborate ceremonies; these involved the knight-to-be taking a bath during which he was instructed in the duties of knighthood by more senior knights. He was put to bed to dry. Clothed in a special robe, he was led with music to the chapel. At dawn he made confession and attended Mass retired to his bed to sleep until it was daylight, he was brought before the King, who after instructing two senior knights to buckle the spurs to the knight-elect's heels, fastened a belt around his waist struck him on the neck, thus making him a knight. It was this accolade, the essential act in creating a knight, a simpler ceremony developed, conferring knighthood by striking or touching the knight-to-be on the shoulder with a sword, or "dubbing" him, as is still done today.
In the early medieval period the difference seems to have been that the full ceremonies were used for men from more prominent families. From the coronation of Henry IV in 1399 the full ceremonies were restricted to major royal occasions such as coronations, investitures of the Prince of Wales or Royal dukes, royal weddings, the knights so created became known as Knights of the Bath. Knights Bachelor continued to be created with the simpler form of ceremony; the last occasion on which Knights of the Bath were created was the coronation of Charles II in 1661. From at least 1625, from the reign of James I, Knights of the Bath were using the motto Tria juncta in uno, wearing as a badge three crowns within a plain gold oval; these were both subsequently adopted by the Order of the Bath. Their symbolism however is not clear. The'three joined in one' may be a reference to the kingdoms of England and either France or Ireland, which were held by English and British monarchs; this would correspond to the three crowns in the badge.
Another explanation of the motto is. Nicolas quotes a source who claims that prior to James I the motto was Tria numina juncta in uno, but from the reign of James I the word numina was dropped and the motto understood to mean Tria juncta in uno; the prime mover in the establishment of the Order of the Bath was John Anstis, Garter King of Arms, England's highest heraldic officer. Sir Anthony Wagner, a recent holder of the office of Garter, wrote of Anstis's motivations: It was Martin Leake's opinion that the trouble and opposition Anstis met with in establishing himself as Garter so embittered him against the heralds that when at last in 1718 he succeeded, he made it his prime object to aggrandise himself and his office at their expense, it is clear at least that he set out to make himself indispensable to the Earl Marshal, not hard, their political principles being congruous and their friendship established, but to Sir Robert Walpole and the Whig ministry, which can by no means have been easy, considering his known attachment to the Pretender and the circumstances under which he came into office...
The main object of Anstis's next move, the revival or institution of the Order of the Bath was that which it in fact secured, of ingratiating him with the all-powerful Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. The use of honours in the early eighteenth century differed from the modern honours system in which hundreds, if not thousands, of people each year receive honours on the basis of deserving accomplishments; the only honours available at that time were hereditary peerages and baronetcies and the Order of the Garter, none of which were awarded in large numbers The political environment was significantly different from today: The Sovereign still exercised a power to be reckoned with in the eighteenth century. The Court remained the centre of the political w
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a British political theorist, economist and lecturer. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party during 1945–1946, was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950, he first promoted pluralism, emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as labour unions. After 1930, he shifted to a Marxist emphasis on class conflict and the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders. Laski's position on democracy came under further attack from Winston Churchill in the 1945 general election, the Labour party had to disavow Laski, its chairman. Laski was one of Britain's most influential intellectual spokesmen for socialism in the interwar years. In particular, his teaching inspired men who became leaders of new nations in Asia and Africa as the British Empire dissolved, he was the most prominent intellectual in the Labour Party for those on the left who shared his trust and hope in Stalin's Soviet Union.
He was distrusted by the Labour politicians who were in charge, such as Prime Minister Clement Attlee, was never given a major government position or a peerage. Harold Laski was born in Manchester on 30 June 1893 to Sarah Laski, he had a disabled sister named Mabel. His elder brother was Neville Laski, while a cousin was the founder of the Royal Court Theatre and father of the author and publisher Anthony Blond. Nathan Laski was a leader of the Liberal Party. Harold attended the Manchester Grammar School. In 1911, he studied eugenics under Karl Pearson for six months; the same year he married Frida Kerry, a lecturer of eugenics. His marriage to Frida, a gentile and eight years his senior, antagonised his family, he repudiated his faith in Judaism, claiming that reason prevented him from believing in God. In 1914, he obtained a degree in history from Oxford, he was awarded the Beit memorial prize during his time at New College. He failed his medical eligibility tests and thus missed fighting in World War I.
After graduation he worked at the Daily Herald under George Lansbury. His daughter Diana was born in 1916. In 1916, Laski was appointed as a lecturer of modern history at McGill University and started lecturing at Harvard University, he lectured at Yale in 1919–20. For his outspoken support of the Boston Police Strike of 1919, Laski received severe criticism, he was involved with the founding of The New School for Social Research in 1919. Laski cultivated a large network of American friends centred at Harvard, whose law review he had edited, he was invited to lecture in America and wrote for The New Republic. He became friends with Felix Frankfurter as well as Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, Edmund Wilson, Charles A. Beard, his long friendship with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was cemented by weekly letters, which have been published. He knew many powerful figures, claimed to know many more. Critics have commented on Laski's repeated exaggerations and self-promotion, which Holmes tolerated.
His wife commented that he was "half-man, half-child, all his life."Laski returned to England in 1920 and began teaching government at the London School of Economics. In 1926, he was made professor of political science at the LSE. Laski was an executive member of the socialist Fabian Society during 1922–1936. In 1936, he co-founded the Left Book Club along with John Strachey, he was a prolific writer, producing a number of books and essays throughout the 1930s. While at the LSE in the 1930s, Laski developed a connection with scholars from the Institute for Social Research, more known today as the Frankfurt School. In 1933, with all the Institute's members now in exile, Laski was among a number of British socialists, including Sidney Webb and R. H. Tawney, to arrange for the establishment of a London office for the Institute's use. After the Institute's move to Columbia University in 1934, Laski was one of its sponsored guest lecturers invited to New York. Laski played a role in bringing Franz Neumann to join the Institute.
After fleeing Germany immediately after Hitler's takeover, Neumann did graduate work in political science under Laski and Karl Mannheim at the LSE, writing his dissertation on the rise and fall of the rule of law. It was on Laski's recommendation that Neumann was invited to join the Institute in 1936; as a lecturer, Laski was brilliant, but he would alienate his audience by humiliating people who asked questions. However, he was popular amongst his students, was influential among Asian and African students who attended LSE. Describing Laski's popularity, Kingsley Martin wrote in 1968: He was still in his late twenties and looked like a schoolboy, his lectures on the history of political ideas were brilliant and delivered without a note. Ralph Miliband, another student of Laski, praised his teaching as follows: His lectures taught more, much more than political science, they taught a faith that ideas mattered, that knowledge was important and its pursuit exciting... His seminars taught tolerance, the willingness to listen although one disagreed, the values of ideas being confronted.
And it was all immense fun, an exciting game that had meaning, it was a sieve of ideas, a gymnastics of the mind carried on with vigour and directed unobtrusively with superb craftsmanship. I think I know now why he gave himself s
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian School economist and sociologist. Mises lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism, he is best known for his work on a study of human choice and action. Mises emigrated from Austria to the United States in 1940. Since the mid-20th century, the libertarian movement in the United States has been influenced by Mises's writings. Mises's student Friedrich Hayek viewed Mises as one of the major figures in the revival of liberalism in the post-war era. Hayek's work "The Transmission of the Ideals of Freedom" pays high tribute to the influence of Mises in the 20th century libertarian movement. Mises's Private Seminar was a leading group of economists. Many of its alumni, including Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern, emigrated from Austria to the United States and Great Britain. Mises has been described as having seventy close students in Austria; the Ludwig von Mises Institute was founded in the United States to continue his teachings. Ludwig von Mises was born to Jewish parents in the city of Lemberg, Austria-Hungary.
The family of his father, Arthur Edler von Mises, had been elevated to the Austrian nobility in the 19th century and they had been involved in financing and constructing railroads. His mother Adele was a niece of Dr. Joachim Landau, a Liberal Party deputy to the Austrian Parliament. Arthur von Mises was stationed in Lemberg as a construction engineer with the Czernowitz railway company. By the age of 12, Mises spoke fluent German and French, read Latin and could understand Ukrainian. Mises had a younger brother, Richard von Mises, who became a mathematician and a member of the Vienna Circle, a probability theorist; when Ludwig and Richard were still children, their family moved back to Vienna. In 1900, Mises attended the University of Vienna. Mises's father died in 1903. Three years Mises was awarded his doctorate from the school of law in 1906. In the years from 1904 to 1914, Mises attended lectures given by Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, he graduated in February 1906 and started a career as a civil servant in Austria's financial administration.
After a few months, he left to take a trainee position in a Vienna law firm. During that time, Mises began lecturing on economics and in early 1909 joined the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry. During World War I, Mises served as a front officer in the Austro-Hungarian artillery and as an economic adviser to the War Department. Mises was chief economist for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and was an economic adviser of Engelbert Dollfuss, the austrofascist but anti-Nazi Austrian Chancellor. Mises was economic adviser to Otto von Habsburg, the Christian democratic politician and claimant to the throne of Austria. In 1934, Mises left Austria for Geneva, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940. While in Switzerland, Mises married Margit Herzfeld Serény, a former actress and widow of Ferdinand Serény, she was the mother of Gitta Sereny. In 1940, Mises and his wife fled the German advance in Europe and emigrated to New York City in the United States.
He had come to the United States under a grant by the Rockefeller Foundation. Like many other classical liberal scholars who fled to the United States, he received support by the William Volker Fund to obtain a position in American universities. Mises became a visiting professor at New York University and held this position from 1945 until his retirement in 1969, though he was not salaried by the university. Businessman and libertarian commentator Lawrence Fertig, a member of the New York University Board of Trustees, funded Mises and his work. For part of this period, Mises studied currency issues for the Pan-Europa movement, led by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, a fellow New York University faculty member and Austrian exile. In 1947, Mises became one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. In 1962, Mises received the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art for political economy at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D. C. Mises died at the age of 92 in New York, he is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in New York.
Grove City College houses the 20,000-page archive of unpublished works. The personal library of Mises was given to Hillsdale College as bequeathed in his will. At one time, Mises praised the work of writer Ayn Rand and she looked on his work with favor, but the two had a volatile relationship, with strong disagreements for example over the moral basis of capitalism. Mises lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism. In his magnum opus Human Action, Mises adopted praxeology as a general conceptual foundation of the social sciences and set forth his methodological approach to economics. Mises was an anti-imperialist, he referred to the Great War as such a watershed event in human history and wrote that "war has become more fearful and destructive than before because it is now waged with all the means of the developed technique that the free economy has created. Bourgeois civilization has built railroads and electric power plants, has invented explosives and airplanes, in order to create wealth.
Imperialism has placed the tools of peace in the service of destruction. With modern means it would be easy to wipe out humanity at one blow."In 1920, Mises introduced in an article his Economic Calculation Proble
