A Soviet Response to Mises: Professor Mises as a Theorist of Fascism

Viennese professor Ludwig Mises is a very angry guy and he very strongly dislikes Marx and Marxism. Just speaking between us, he shouldn’t dislike it one bit. If not for Marxism, our professor would have to beg for handouts, since he has never managed to prove himself in science. Crushing Marxism, however, is a very profitable business.

“The science of the so-called Marxists,” states Mises, “can be no more than ‘scholasticism.’” Mises talks about “men and women who are in this business” with total disregard. They beat the air, live by canonized Marxian dogmas, with their writings mattering only because it helps their political careers; their “science” only pursues party goals; and the whole argument about revisionism and dictatorship is not scholarly, but is purely political.

--Ludwig von Mises, Between the Two World Wars: Monetary Disorder, Interventionism, Socialism, and the Great Depression, vol. 2 of Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, ed. Richard M. Ebeling (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 381-382.