Ludwig von Mises Quotes
Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.
von Mises, Ludwig. Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War. Yale University Press, 1944.
The Italian Communists were culturally and ideologically very different from the Russian Communists. The Italian view was a more nationalistic one and was closer to a Socialist Democracy than a “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Much more tolerant of diversity and not as ideological. See {637829} as a big example of the difference. Yet this was still in the midst of the Red Scare in America and some other areas of the West. After WWII, the CIA had secretly spent millions to get Italians to vote for the non-Communist candidates and helped organize Italian anti-Communist politicians who didn’t want the Communists to alter the Italian government to reflect any Communist or Socialist ideas. Meanwhile, the Italian party was under great pressure from Russia and some of the other Communist satellite countries to adopt a hardline revolutionary communist programs. Berlinquer and other Italian Communist leaders had many misgivings about Russian style Communism and they had to play off one side against the other for years.
The revolutionists were disorganized and unfocused after the Coup that brought them to power. This speech provided some focus for a while. Early in his career, as a Journalist working in Leiden, Holland, he was very active and helpful to the Dutch Patriots and Revolutionaries in their takeover of the government. He helped draft the New Dutch Constitution and participated in most of the new governments conventions.
Grady, representing what he called the New South pole kindly of Blacks in the North (See Quotation 643652), but gave his highly racist views to his Southern brethren—see Quotation 643649. He overtly in the North advocated liberty and the right to vote for Blacks (more than most Southerners at the time, but wanted the Federal role limited so that the enforcement of Black liberty and the voting franchise to be left to the States. And that is what occurred for the next half century. However, the state governments not only did not provide liberty and the voting franchise, the Southern States passed legislation and opted policies allowing KKK and other terror and intimidation so that Blacks would not exercise their rights to vote and be free. It is had to tell whether he was naive enough to believe that the Souther States would do what he claimed in the North or whether he not only realized what was likely to happen with the states in charge, but presented a moderate picture deliberately to keep the Federal government from interfering with the prerogative of the states to discriminate against Blacks. His racist views in his Southern speeches (for example, see quotation 643649) lead many to believe the latter view.
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian School economist, historian, logician and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberalism. He is best known for his work on praxeology, a study of human choice and action.
