I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

298 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
first edition is a seamless web and I’m so pleased that it is back in print in a scholar’s edition.
It’s been flying out of our offices.
By the way, what economics text of 900 pages is still a huge seller fifty years after it
first appeared? I can’t think of one. Facts like this tell me that Mises is here to stay. In the
next century, I’m convinced he’ll have a much higher profile that he did in this one. He
was a prophet and a fantastic genius. Not that his work shouldn’t ever be improved or criticized.
We have such papers at every session of our Austrian Scholars Conferences. But we
have to have the material available to learn from before it can be revised, improved, and
reinterpreted.
The first book the Mises Institute printed was Mises’s Theory and History, with an
introduction by Murray. It is still a big seller. We have brought Murray’s Ethics of Liberty
back into print, along with two dozen monographs on the Austrian School that we have
distributed all over the world.
Our book The Costs of War has been called the most important piece of anti-war revisionist
scholarship in the second half of this century. Our book Secession, State, and Liberty is a
success. We brought Man, Economy, and State back into print, as well as a dozen other books.
We even have a new edition of Murray’s America’s Great Depression, with an introduction by
Paul Johnson, and an Austrian economics text for smart high-school students, in the works.
Oddly, I never envisioned the Mises Institute as a publishing house, though it could
easily be mistaken for one. We are funding the research and writing of a major intellectual
biography of Mises, a massive two-volume project. We want one of Rothbard as well.
And we have five regular periodicals: a newsletter on current trends, an interview publication,
a literary review, a scholarly journal, and a news and information sheet on the
Austrian School.
Meanwhile, our summer Mises University has put a host of Ph.D. students in economics
through a rigorous program that would otherwise be unavailable. We’ve trained
plenty of historians, philosophers, theologians, and others too. We’ve also started a summer
Rothbard Graduate Seminar for advanced Ph.D. students and post-docs, and been
overwhelmed by the worldwide response. There’s also our weekly Austrian Economics
Workshop.
We spend the bulk of our money on students and student programs. When we take
on a graduate student in economics, we stick by him or her for up to six years. That’s a huge
investment, but look at the results. We now have professors honeycombed through academia,
and they have made Austrian economics a vital part of their curricula.
Our Mises and Rothbard Fellows are in demand, and not only because more and more
departments seek genuine diversity at a time of Austrian renaissance. They are among the
best young economists working today. Not only can they run rings around the mainstream
with the mainstream’s own tools, but their praxeological grounding gives them a real leg-up
in understanding actual economic events. They are also blessed with the vocation to teach,
to be scholars in the classical tradition. This is no way to get rich, and it’s not for everyone,
but in the secular world, there is no higher calling.
Over the long term, this will be where the Mises Institute makes the biggest difference.
Seventeen years ago, Austrians had a hard time finding positions, much less holding on to