12/21/10 – Lew Rockwell – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
You might remember I missed the show last week because I was giving a speech to a small crowd in Santa Monica at the Peace and Prosperity Rally.
The subject was Central Banking and War.
War and Central Banking.
And my favorite guest for my favorite topic, the combination of the symbiosis between the Central Bankers and the war makers, it's Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
He's anti-state, anti-war, and pro-market.
You can check out his website at lewrockwell.com.
I'll let you know that I keep his blog lewrockwell.com/blog open all day long on whichever computer I happen to be working on.
And he's also the author of the books, Speaking of Liberty, a great collection of speeches, as well as The Left, The Right, and The State, which will knock your socks off.
Welcome back to the show, Lew.
How are you doing?
Scott, great to be with you.
I'm very happy to have you here.
So, listen, I wanted to ask you all about Ron Paul and the new subcommittee that he'll be the chairman of, and then we can talk all about Central Banking and War.
But first, I wanted to ask you, because I saw that you recently republished a speech from, what, 12 years ago about a new edition of Human Action by Ludwig von Mises being published, I guess by the Mises Institute, and I was just wondering if you could sort of clue people in on who Ludwig von Mises was, and what is his book, or what is Human Action, and what's the importance of Human Action?
Ludwig von Mises was an Austrian economist, historian, philosopher, born in the 19th century, studied at the University of Vienna, eventually fled Austria because he saw the Nazis were going to be coming to power, and came to this country, and he really was one of the most, in my view, one of the most extraordinary thinkers in the history of the West.
I mean, he was that sort of man, and I'll just mention a few of his achievements.
He was the first one to show in a book published in 1912 called The Theory of Money and Credit that an institution like the Federal Reserve, which was founded in 1913, one year later, would be a device to enrich the government and the special interest at the cost of everybody else, but it would also bring on a business cycle.
So it would also not only cause inflation, it would cause prices to go up, and that's of course why central banks are established.
Don't listen to any of the propaganda about them.
Their basic reason is to inflate, to expand the money supply for the benefit of the big banks, which they serve, and the government, which they serve.
So what he said was, not only is this going to bring about inflation, not only is this going to bring about an institution like the Fed, not only is it going to bring about redistribution of wealth from regular people to people connected to the government, not only is it going to do all those things, it's also going to bring about the business cycle.
It's going to bring about artificial booms and then recessions and depressions.
These are not natural to the marketplace, they do not exist in the absence of government fooling around with the money.
We've had these sorts of things all throughout American history, and we can talk about other countries' history too, but in America we've had them.
Every time it's been the government fooling with the money, whether it was the continental currency, or some of the colonial inflations in Massachusetts and where they had first at least in our part of the world first invented paper money.
So, just a horrific amount of human suffering of much less general prosperity than would otherwise be the case.
But they're happy to pay this price because the big banks, the government-connected rich, and the government itself do very well off of it.
So that would also mean that then that would be enough of an achievement for a scholar and a teacher to have produced something like that.
He also was the first one to show that socialism, in a famous article in 1920, and then in a book in 1922, these books, by the way, are all still in print, all very readable, especially socialism.
And we're going to talk about human action in a second.
But socialism he showed that if you had government ownership of the means of production as under communism, or partially, as we have partially in the United States, or other countries have more or less of it, but if you have total government ownership of the means of production as existed in the Soviet Union or in Red China or in other communist countries, that it would be an unbelievable, poverty-producing, chaotic disaster and destruction of civilization.
And, of course, he was exactly right, and if you want, we can go into why that is, but he indicated that that would be the case long before anybody else saw it.
He wrote a great book called Liberalism about the philosophy of freedom and he talks a lot about war in there, and about, for example, some people say that war brings prosperity, and he said, well, you know, that's like saying disease is good for the undertakers.
Well, maybe, but, you know, that's not a reason to promote disease, and it's not a reason to promote war, either.
And then his magnum opus, and he has many other books, many other important articles, is Human Action, and this is a 900-page book that really sums up all of economics and shows us, really, for the first time, thoroughly how to look at the economy, how to analyze the economy, and why any government intervention whatsoever is destructive.
So, this is an extraordinary book.
He wrote it first in German during World War II while he was living in Switzerland.
It was published in the German language, but disappeared in the maelstrom of that war, and he then rewrote it in English in the late 1940s, and it was published, and it's been in print ever since.
And for this sort of serious book, it actually was a bestseller.
It was actually a selection of the Book of the Month Club.
I don't know if people remember the Book of the Month Club, but that was a huge book distribution system in the days before the Internet.
And so it sold very well, and this wonderful new edition is $10.
It's like a pocket-sized paperback, very readable, of the whole book, and you know, it's just something everybody should have on their bookshelf, and it's always been very exclusive before, because it had a great big hardback, but now to have this in a $10 paperback, well, it's quite extraordinary, and we're very proud of it.
And then, so, do I have it right that people like Hayek and Rothbard and Hansenholz and the rest of these guys basically consider themselves intellectual descendants of Mises?
He comes first and their work builds on his work?
Yes, I'm not so sure Hayek would have considered himself that, although he certainly thought of himself as heavily influenced by Mises and a colleague of Mises, but Rothbard saw himself as a Misesian, Hansenholz, Henry Hazlitt, yes, many other great economists do think and build on Mises, and thought that he was, you know, obviously we have other great geniuses like Murray Rothbard, but they all saw themselves as standing on Mises' shoulders, and so he was quite, he was really an extraordinary man, and if you look at Mises.org, you can read about him, you can read everything of his, it's free online there, take a look at it, and he also was not only teaching and writing all these scholarly books, but he worked as an advisor to the Chamber of Commerce, economic advisor to the Austrian Chamber of Commerce and to the Austrian government, where many people credited him with preventing Austria from following Germany down the path to total destruction of the currency.
They only went part way, part way down the path, but that was better than, of course, going all the way.
He was a very, very prolific newspaper writer, when he wrote up what we would call op-eds on a whole host of subjects.
He was always trying to educate people, and...
And now you mentioned his destruction of the fallacy of war being good for the economy, but how hardcore of a piece-nick was he?
Well, he was...
If you look at the...
My favorite portions are in in, uh, Nazi-Nahle-Economie, which is the...
Which just means economics, which was the title of Human Action when it was published in German.
I would say it was pretty good.
There's nobody like Rothbard on that topic, I will say.
Indeed.
I mean, this was pretty good.
Not 100% good, but pretty darn good.
All right, now hold it right there.
It's Lou Rockwell, he's the president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and we'll be right back.
Anti-war radio.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton, and on the line is Lou Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
So we're talking about Ludwig von Mises and his book, Human Action.
And, uh, that's kind of the foundation, really, I guess, Lou, right, of Austrian school economics?
Yeah, I mean, it actually probably, if we go back to the 19th century, and then we look at Carl Menger's great book, Principles of Economics, that's really the foundation stone.
But it's full development as reached in both Human Action, and then also Murray Rothbard's State.
So now let's talk a little bit about...
Not that there's not further development going on.
I don't mean to say it's a closed system, because it's not.
There continues to be improvement and development.
Sure, sure.
All right, now let's talk a little bit about the importance of anti-imperialism to libertarianism as Rothbard conceived it.
It seems like, especially if you go back a few years ago, a lot of people who call themselves libertarians seem to be pretty wishy-washy on going to war, and kind of mix their current government of the USA up with the principles of the Declaration of Independence they believe in, and tend to support especially Republicans going to war.
And yet, my understanding, I guess, is well, hell, I've read some Rothbard, and it seems like the Rothbardian school, at least, of libertarianism these days brooks no dissent in that way.
Y'all are all completely anti-war, as anti-war as can be.
You know, it's terrible that libertarians, yes, have not always been anti-war.
If you look at the first platform of the libertarian party, maybe if you look at the current platform, I'm less familiar with that, but originally pro-war, pro- empire, pro-CIA, pro-NSA, pro- every kind of horrible excrescence of the national security state and the warfare state.
But, yeah, I think thanks to Murray Rothbard is the one who showed us all just that war is the key issue.
You know, the famous cliche now, Randolph Bourne's comment that war is the health of the state, Rothbard really demonstrated as to why that is, and all of a sudden, you know, if you're at war then dissent becomes unpatriotic, wanting to give the government all your money is unpatriotic, and all the rest.
The one thing that, of course, changed the money aspect for the government was the creation of a central bank, which then they didn't have to borrow or tax the money, they could just print it.
So probably the worst thing from the history of peace, as well as prosperity and human civilization, they mentioned the central bank.
But yeah, Rothbardians, who are the key anti-central bankers, too, by the way, there are libertarians who actually like the central bank, or like Milton Friedman, think that it's a wonderful institution that just needs to act in X ways versus Y way.
So there are libertarians who are in favor of fractional reserve banking and central banking, and are in favor of quote-unquote national defense, which is not national defense at all, it's offense, and it's world empire.
The U.S. is the biggest, most, maybe the most destructive empire, I don't know, but we'll see by the time it comes to an end, but very, very destructive of American freedom, and of course of the freedom and the lives of people in the colonies and the various states that are attacked by the U.S. empire.
So yeah, we have today a government, and Rothbard helped us see this clearly, and if you look at his writings on war and the state, they're just so clear and so convincing, and we can just look at what's happening around us today as our own freedoms are being stripped away from us in the name of war and national security.
These are the two issues that apparently always work, at least for some time in the 19th century.
This is what brought about the end of classical liberalism in Europe, when governments discovered that they could start wars and then all of a sudden they could suppress people's desire for freedom.
And of course, from the point of view of the bankers, the bigger the government's spending, the more money creation, the more they get away with themselves.
So you often see, at least in history, forces like the Rockefellers at the Chase Bank, behind the war makers, or the policy makers at the Council on Foreign Relations, arranging the wise men, arranging all our wars around the world.
Well, that's absolutely right.
War is very profitable.
I mean, we think of it as being, if we think about these things at all, you're not supposed to think about these things.
They're very profitable for the undertaker.
Well, it's very good for Boeing and Lockheed and Martin Marietta and a thousand and one other companies, but it's especially profitable for the banks.
The big banks that are the cartel of big banks that are headed by the Federal Reserve.
Because of here, almost a hundred years we've had of Federal Reservism in this country, we've reached the point where probably we live in a bankocracy.
I mean, if we were to actually look at where the real power in American society resides is with the big banks, and of course, with the government empowering them, the Federal Reserve empowering them.
Those are the key institutions, so that they actually, despite total opposition from the American people, hurt us in order to bail out the banks.
Alright, wait, now, I'm sorry, because we're really short on time here, Lou, and I would say that all of this leads us to our man in the House of Representatives, Dr. Ron Paul, and he's now going to be the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy.
Is this going to be a riot, or what?
Well, it's going to be great fun, because this is the man who understands the role of the Fed in warfare and in welfare, in banksterism, in the loss of our freedom, and for the first time ever, there's going to be somebody in that position who understands the Fed, knows what they're about, and wants to target them and expose them for what they are.
So, I think we can look forward to a lot of fun.
He's going to hold some very historic and wonderful hearings.
He's going to be teaching the American people, as he's done for some time, about these issues, and already we see Paul Krugman and other shills for the Federal Reserve attacking him personally for daring to be preparing to do this.
So, there's going to be a lot of attacks on Ron.
The supporters of Ron need to get in back of him, and I think we're going to have a fun year ahead.
I don't know if you have any inside knowledge as to this.
I know I don't.
It still remains to be seen from this end whether he's going to run for President again, but if he does, it would be starting in, what, March?
Boy, you talk about a Ron Paul revolution in 2007 and 2008, Lou.
Can you imagine?
Well, you know, he has not made up his mind.
He's most recently said he was 50-50 was the chances of his running again.
So, we'll just have to see, and I think he knows best if he decides not to do it, then that was the best thing to do.
Well, and he'd still make for a great interviewee to comment on the debate throughout the entire thing, too, and they'll turn to him now if he doesn't run.
He'll still have a great teaching position on cable TV news, even though they don't believe in anything he believes in.
They sure like him anyway.
He's such a nice old guy, and you know what I like?
And, Ron, I can't remember him letting me down since 1997 or something, but I saw him on the C-SPAN interview where they're asking him all these questions about the economy, and again and again he says, look, as long as you want a trillion-dollar-a-year empire, you can't do it.
If you want fiscal health, you gotta abolish the empire.
They ask him about social security and education, he says, abolish the empire.
No matter what they ask him, he says, look at how much money we're spending occupying the planet.
And that's, man, that at the presidential campaign level for another year and a half or two would just be beautiful.
Well, he's gonna keep teaching that, and you are too, Scott, so thanks for all you do.
Yeah, well, thank you.
I appreciate it, and I know for a fact of, you know, personal experience of people who heard Ron Paul say the word Austrian economics, they went and they found Mises.org.
I know one guy who went and read Bomberwick and Menger and every single one of these guys in chronological order, all of their works, and is now a hardcore anarcho-capitalist peacenik like you and me, and there's, we're making a lot of progress along those lines if not in changes in what we want our government to be doing.
We're certainly making some headway with the American people, and LewRockwell.com and Mises.org, of course, are leading the way in that, so thanks a lot.
Thanks for your time on the show today.
Thank you, Scott.