Thursday, November 24, 2011

Ludwig von Mises on the First 'Occupy Wall Street'

In his book Bureaucracy, Ludwig von Mises discussed the German youth movement that occurred in Germany the decade before the First World War. The similarity with OWS is quite remarkable (My bold):
In the decade preceding the First World War Germany, the country most advanced on the path toward bureaucratic regimentation, witnessed the appearance of a phenomenon hitherto unheard of: the youth movement. Turbulent gangs of untidy boys and girls roamed the country, making much noise and shirking their school lessons. In bombastic words they announced the gospel of a golden age. All preceding generations, they emphasized, were simply idiotic; their incapacity has converted the earth into a hell. But the rising generation is no longer willing to endure gerontocracy, the supremacy of impotent and imbecile senility. Henceforth the brilliant youths will rule. They will destroy everything that is old and useless, they will reject all that was dear to their parents, they will substitute new real and substantial values and ideologies for the antiquated and false ones of capitalist and bourgeois civilization, and they will build a new society of giants and supermen.

The inflated verbiage of these adolescents was only a poor disguise for their lack of any ideas and of any definite program. They had nothing to say but this: We are young and therefore chosen; we are ingenious because we are young; we are the carriers of the future; we are the deadly foes of the rotten bourgeois and Philistines. And if somebody was not afraid to ask them what their plans were, they knew only one answer: Our leaders will solve all problems.

It has always been the task of the new generation to provoke changes. But the characteristic feature of the youth movement was that they had neither new ideas nor plans. They called their action the youth movement precisely because they lacked any program which they could use to give a name to their endeavors. In fact they espoused entirely the program of their parents. They did not oppose the trend toward government omnipotence and bureaucratization. Their revolutionary radicalism was nothing but the impudence of the years between boyhood and manhood; it was a phenomenon of a protracted puberty. It was void of any ideological content.

7 comments:

  1. Does the entire workforce have a vision and understand all of the elements of running a successful business? No, but despite that we manage to get a lot done in this country.

    Do most of the Occupy protesters have a clear vision of where to go next or what the true causes of their discontent are? No, but despite that we will manage to effect a lot of change in this country, hopefully beginning with the election of Dr. Paul as President.

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  2. There is no bold, but I believe you would have bold this:

    They called their action the youth movement precisely because they lacked any program which they could use to give a name to their endeavors. In fact they espoused entirely the program of their parents. They did not oppose the trend toward government omnipotence and bureaucratization. Their revolutionary radicalism was nothing but the impudence of the years between boyhood and manhood; it was a phenomenon of a protracted puberty. It was void of any ideological content.

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  3. Mises was a great observer of humans behaviours and actions, like Rothbard, if he didn't ever contribute to economic thought he'd have gone down as a highly notable historian.

    No surprise really given the ideas of Austrian economics provide a great frame at which to look at history.

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  4. Matthew you are naive. Workers who do not understand their role, and the overall goal of the enterprise are poorly motivated and tend to do shoddy work, not aware of how their work impacts the overall project. Informed, engaged workers put forward their best efforts and accomplish great things.


    A traveler came upon a group of three hard-at-work stonemasons, and asked each in turn what he was doing.

    The first said, “I am sanding down this block of marble.”

    The second said, “I am preparing a foundation.”

    The third said, “I am building a cathedral.”

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  5. Matthew,

    Though I believe there is an element of truth to your premise your conclusion is a non-sequitur.

    You really are comparing apples to oranges and if most of the Occupy protesters are whom you are relying on at this point, I believe you are going to be very disappointed (though I do agree the election of RP would effect good [in the true moral sense of the word] changes.

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  6. Anonymous, I agree with you in principle, but I'm afraid it is you who are naive. Apparently you've never tried to staff the night shipping crew in a warehouse for something like a food distribution company. Literacy is not even guaranteed, much less sobriety. That's reality. But somehow, all that product manages to get where it's supposed to go.

    Larry, I'm already not disappointed. If all I get for the money and time I've invested in OWS is the video footage from UC Davis and Oakland, then I think I've gotten my money's worth. After all, what is more free market than being to able to join with others to purchase protest and agitation services from otherwise unemployed people? (heck, we don't even have to deal with a minimum wages!) The UCD footage is worth its weight in gold in terms of its ability to make a few more people start to question things. And before you can effectively campaign for someone like Dr. Paul, you've got to have that questioning process going on.

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  7. The issue with the youth movement today is they are not reading Von Mises, they are reading Marx and Engels.

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