Synopses & Reviews
In
The Anti-capitalistic Mentality, the respected economist Ludwig von Mises plainly explains the causes of the irrational fear and hatred many intellectuals and others feel for capitalism. In five concise chapters, he traces the causation of the misunderstandings and resultant fears that cause resistance to economic development and social change. He enumerates and rebuts the economic arguments against and the psychological and social objections to economic freedom in the form of capitalism. Written during the heyday of twentieth-century socialism, this work provides the reader with lucid and compelling insights into human reactions to capitalism.
Ludwig von Mises (18811973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of Economics throughout most of the twentieth century. He earned his doctorate in law and economics from the University of Vienna in 1906. In 1926, Mises founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. From 1909 to 1934, he was an economist for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. Before the Anschluss, in 1934 Mises left for Geneva, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940, when he emigrated to New York City. From 1948 to 1969, he was a visiting professor at New York University.
Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar, trustee, and longtime staff member of the Foundation for Economic Education. She has written and lectured extensively on topics of free market economics. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Human Events, Reason, and The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. A student of Mises, Greaves has become an expert on his work in particular and that of the Austrian School of economics in general. She has translated several Mises monographs, compiled an annotated bibliography of his work, and edited collections of papers by Mises and other members of the Austrian School.
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Introduction xi
CHAPTER 1 The Social Characteristics of Capitalism and
the Psychological Causes of Its Vilification 1
1 The Sovereign Consumer 1
2 The Urge for Economic Betterment 2
3 Status Society and Capitalism 3
4 The Resentment of Frustrated Ambition 7
5 The Resentment of the Intellectuals 9
6 The Anti-capitalistic Bias of American Intellectuals 11
7 The Resentment of the White Collar Workers 13
8 The Resentment of the “Cousins” 15
9 The Communism of Broadway and Hollywood 18
CHAPTER 2 The Ordinary Man’s Social Philosophy 21
1 Capitalism as It Is and as It Is Seen by the
Common Man 21
2 The Anti-capitalistic Front 26
CHAPTER 3 Literature under Capitalism 29
1 The Market for Literary Products 29
2 Success on the Book Market 30
3 Remarks about the Detective Stories 31
4 Freedom of the Press 33
5 The Bigotry of the Literati 35
6 The “Social” Novels and Plays 40
CHAPTER 4 The Noneconomic Objections to Capitalism 44
1 The Argument of Happiness 44
2 Materialism 45
3 Injustice 48
4 The “Bourgeois Prejudice” for Liberty 54
5 Liberty and Western Civilization 59
CHAPTER 5 “Anticommunism” versus Capitalism 64
Index 69