Mises, Ludwig von. Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution

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192 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

heard and imitate what they have seen. If the world

were peopled only by such as these, there would not

be any change and any history. What produces change

is new ideas and actions guided by them. What distin-

guishes one group from another is the effect of such in-

novations. These innovations are not accomplished by

a group mind; they are always the achievements of in-

dividuals. What makes the American people different

from any other people is the joint effect produced by

the thoughts and actions of innumerable uncommon

Americans.

We know the names of the men who invented and

step by step perfected the motorcar. A historian can

write a detailed history of the evolution of the automo-

bile.

We do not know the names of the men who, in the

beginnings of civilization, made the greatest inventions

—for example lighting a fire. But this ignorance does

not permit us to ascribe this fundamental invention to

a group mind. It is always an individual who starts a

new method of doing things, and then other people imi-

tate his example. Customs and fashions have always

been inaugurated by individuals and spread through

imitation by other people.

While the group-mind school tried to eliminate the

individual by ascribing activity to the mythical Volks-

geist, the Marxians were intent on the one hand upon

depreciating the individual's contribution and on the

other hand upon crediting innovations to common men.

Thus Marx observed that a critical history of technology

would demonstrate that none of the eighteenth cen-

tury's inventions was the achievement of a single indi-

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 193

vidual.

What does this prove? Nobody denies that tech-

nological progress is a gradual process, a chain of suc-

cessive steps performed by long lines of men each of

whom adds something to the accomplishments of his

predecessors. The history of every technological con-

trivance, when completely told, leads back to the most

primitive inventions made by cave dwellers in the ear-

liest ages of mankind. To choose any later starting point

is an arbitrary restriction of the whole tale. One may

begin a history of wireless telegraphy with Maxwell

and Hertz, but one may as well go back to the first ex-

periments with electricity or to any previous techno-

logical feats that had necessarily to precede the con-

struction of a radio network. All this does not in the

least affect the truth that each step forward was made

by an individual and not by some mythical impersonal

agency. It does not detract from the contributions of

Maxwell, Hertz, and Marconi to admit that they could

be made only because others had previously made other

contributions.

To illustrate the difference between the innovator

and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even im-

agine that any improvement is possible, we need only

refer to a passage in Engels* most famous book.

Here,

in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military

weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress

of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible."

Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by

Das Kapital, 1, 335, n. 89.

Herrn Eugen Diihrings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft, 7th ed.

Stuttgart, 1910.

194 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evo-

lution is in this regard essentially closed/'

This com-

placent conclusion shows in what the achievement of

the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other peo-

ple believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.

Engels, who considered himself an expert in the art

of warfare, liked to exemplify his doctrines by referring

to strategy and tactics. Changes in military tactics, he

declared, are not brought about by ingenious army

leaders. They are achievements of privates who are

usually cleverer than their officers. The privates invent

them by dint of their instincts (instinktmdssig) and put

them into operation in spite of the reluctance of their

commanders.

Every doctrine denying to the "single paltry individ-

ual*'

any role in history must finally ascribe changes

and improvements to the operation of instincts. As those

upholding such doctrines see it, man is an animal that

has the instinct to produce poems, cathedrals, and air-

planes. Civilization is the result of an unconscious and

unpremeditated reaction of man to external stimuli.

Each achievement is the automatic creation of an in-

stinct with which man has been endowed especially for

this purpose. There are as many instincts as there are

human achievements. It is needless to enter into a

critical examination of this fable invented by impotent

people for slighting the achievements of better men

Ibid., pp. 17&-7.

Ibid., pp. 172-6.

5. Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des

Staates (6th ed. Stuttgart, 1894), p. 186.

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 195

and appealing to the resentment of the dull. Even on

the basis of this makeshift doctrine one cannot negate

the distinction between the man who had the instinct

to write the book On the Origin of Species and those

who lacked this instinct.

Planning History

Individuals act in order to bring about definite re-

sults.

Whether they succeed or not depends on the suit-

ability of the means applied and the response their ac-

tions encounter on the part of fellow individuals. Very

often the outcome of an action differs considerably from

what the actor was eager to achieve. The margin within

which a man, however great, can act successfully is

narrow. No man can through his actions direct the

course of affairs for more than a comparatively short

period of the future, still less for all time to come.

Yet every action adds something to history, affects

the course of future events, and is in this sense a his-

torical fact. The most trivial performance of daily rou-

tine by dull people is no less a historical datum than is

the most startling innovation of the genius. The aggre-

gate of the unvarying repetition of traditional modes of

acting determines, as habits, customs and mores, the

course of events. The common man's historical role con-

sists in contributing a particle to the structure of the

tremendous power of consuetude.

History is made by men. The conscious intentional

actions of individuals, great and small, determine the

course of events insofar as it is the result of the inter-

196 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

action of all men. But the historical process is not de-

signed by individuals. It is the composite outcome of

the intentional actions of all individuals. No man can

plan history. All he can plan and try to put into effect

is his own actions which, jointly with the actions of

other men, constitute the historical process. The Pilgrim

Fathers did not plan to found the United States.

Of course, there have always been men who planned

for eternity. For the most part the failure of their de-

signs appeared very soon. Sometimes their construc-

tions lasted quite a while, but their effect was not what

the builders had planned. The monumental tombs of

the Egyptian kings still exist, but it was not the inten-

tion of their builders to make modern Egypt attractive

for tourists and to supply present-day museums with

mummies. Nothing demonstrates more emphatically the

temporal limitations on human planning than the ven-

erable ruins scattered about the surface of the earth.

Ideas live longer than walls and other material arti-

facts.

We still enjoy the masterpieces of the poetry and

philosophy of ancient India and Greece. But they do

not mean for us what they meant to their authors. We

may wonder whether Plato and Aristotle would have

approved of the use later ages have made of their

thoughts.

Planning for eternity, to substitute an everlasting

state of stability, rigidity, and changelessness for histor-

ical evolution, is the theme of a special class of litera-

ture. The Utopian author wants to arrange future condi-

tions according to his own ideas and to deprive the rest

of mankind once and for all of the faculty to choose

and to act. One plan alone, viz., the author's plan,

CONCEPT OF HISTORICAL INDIVIDUALITY 197

should be executed and all other people be silenced.

The author, and after his death his successor, will

henceforth alone determine the course of events. There

will no longer be any history, as history is the composite

effect of the interaction of all men. The superhuman

dictator will rule the universe and reduce all other peo-

ple to pawns in his plans. He will deal with them as

the engineer deals with the raw materials out of which

he builds, a method pertinently called social engi-

neering.

Such projects are very popular nowadays. They en-

rapture the intellectuals. A few skeptics observe that

their execution is contrary to human nature. But their

supporters are confident that by suppressing all dis-

senters they can alter human nature. Then people will

be as happy as the ants are supposed to be in their hills.

The essential question is: Will all men be prepared

to yield to the dictator? Will nobody have the ambition

to contest his supremacy? Will nobody develop ideas at

variance with those underlying the dictator's plan? Will

all men, after thousands of years of "anarchy" in think-

ing and acting, tacitly submit to the tyranny of one or a

few despots?

It is possible that in a few years all nations will have

adopted the system of all-round planning and totali-

tarian regimentation. The number of opponents is very

small, and their direct political influence almost nil.

But even a victory of planning will not mean the end

of history. Atrocious wars among the candidates for the

supreme office will break out. Totalitarianism may wipe

out civilization, even the whole of the human race.

Then, of course, history will have come to its end too.

Chapter 10. Historicism

The Meaning of Historicism

HISTORICISM developed from the end of the eight-

eenth century on as a reaction against the social phi-

losophy of rationalism. To the reforms and policies ad-

vocated by various authors of the Enlightenment it

opposed a program of preservation of existing institu-

tions and, sometimes, even of a return to extinct insti-

tutions. Against the postulates of reason it appealed to

the authority of tradition and the wisdom of ages gone

by. The main target of its critique was the ideas that

had inspired the American and the French Revolutions

and kindred movements in other countries. Its cham-

pions proudly called themselves antirevolutionary and

emphasized their rigid conservatism. But in later years

the political orientation of historicism changed. It be-

gan to regard capitalism and free trade—both domestic

and international—as the foremost evil, and joined

hands with the "radical" or "leftist" foes of the market

economy, aggressive nationalism on the one hand and

revolutionary socialism on the other. As far as histori-

cism still has actual political importance, it is ancillary

to socialism and to nationalism. Its conservatism has

almost withered away. It survives only in the doctrines

of some religious groups.

People have again and again stressed the congenial-

ity of historicism and artistic and literary romanticism.

198

HISTORICISM 199

The analogy is rather superficial. Both movements had

in common a taste for the conditions of ages gone by

and an extravagant overestimation of old customs and

institutions. But this enthusiasm for the past is not the

essential feature of historicism. Historicism is first of all

an epistemological doctrine and must be viewed as

such.

The fundamental thesis of historicism is the proposi-

tion that, apart from the natural sciences, mathematics,

and logic, there is no knowledge but that provided by

history. There is no regularity in the concatenation and

sequence of phenomena and events in the sphere of

human action. Consequently the attempts to develop

a science of economics and to discover economic laws

are vain. The only sensible method of dealing with hu-

man action, exploits, and institutions is the historical

method. The historian traces every phenomenon back

to its origins. He depicts the changes going on in human

affairs. He approaches his material, the records of the

past, without any prepossessions and preconceived

ideas.

The historian utilizes sometimes, in preliminary,

merely technical, and ancillary examination of these

sources, the results of the natural sciences, as for in-

stance in determining the age of the material on which

a document of disputed authenticity is written. But in

his proper field, the exposition of past events, he does

not rely upon any other branch of knowledge. The

standards and general rules to which he resorts in deal-

ing with the historical material are to be abstracted

from this very material. They must not be borrowed

from any other source.

200 EPISTEMOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

The extravagance of these claims was later reduced

to a more modest measure when Dilthey stressed the

role psychology plays in the work of the historian.

The

champions of historicism accepted this restriction and

did not insist on their extreme description of the histor-

ical method. They were merely interested in the con-

demnation of economics and had no quarrel with psy-

chology.

If the historicists had been consistent, they would

have substituted economic history for the—in their

opinion counterfeit—science of economics. (We may

pass over the question how economic history could be

treated without economic theory.) But this would not

have served their political plans. What they wanted

was to propagandize for their interventionist or socialist

programs. The wholesale rejection of economics was

only one item in their strategy. It relieved them from

the embarrassment created by their inability to explode

the economists' devastating critique of socialism and

interventionism. But it did not in itself demonstrate

the soundness of a prosocialist or interventionist policy.

In order to justify their "unorthodox" leanings, the his-

toricists developed a rather self-contradictory discipline

to which various names were given such as realistic

or institutional or ethical economics, or the economic

aspects of political science (wirtschaftliche Staatsutis-

senschaften)

See below, p. 312.

For various other names suggested see Arthur Spiethoff in the

Preface to the English edition of his treatise on "Business Cycles,"

International Economic Papers, No. 3 (New York, 1953), p. 75.

HISTORICISM 201

Most champions of these schools of thought did not

bother about an epistemological explanation of their

procedures. Only a few tried to justify their method.

We may call their doctrine periodalism and their sup-

porters periodalists.

The main idea underlying all these attempts to con-

struct a quasi-economic doctrine that could be em-

ployed to justify policies fighting the market economy

was borrowed from positivism. As historicists the peri-

odalists talked indefatigably about something they

called the historical method, and claimed to be histor-

ians.

But they adopted the essential tenets of positiv-

ism,

which rejected history as useless and meaningless

chatter, and wanted to inaugurate in its place a new

science to be modeled after the pattern of Newtonian

mechanics. The periodalists accepted the thesis that it

is possible to derive from historical experience a pos-

teriori laws which, once they are discovered, will form

a new—not yet existing—science of social physics or

sociology or institutional economics.

Only in one regard did the periodalists' version of

this thesis differ from that of the positivists. The posi-

tivists had laws in mind that would be valid universally.

The periodalists believed that every period of history

has its own economic laws different from those of other

periods of economic history.

The periodalists distinguish various periods in the

course of historical events. Obviously the criterion ac-

cording to which this distinction is made is the charac-

teristics of the economic laws determining economic

becoming in each period. Thus the periodalists' argu-