There Is Really No Essential Difference Between the Unlimited Power of the Democratic State and the Unlimited Power of the Autocrat

And he also stressed that democracy must not be conceived as the unlimited rule of the general will:

There is really no essential difference between the unlimited power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the autocrat. The idea that carries away our demagogues and their supporters, the idea that the state can do whatever it wishes, and that nothing should resist the will of the sovereign people, has done more evil perhaps than the caesar-mania of degenerate princelings.

Mises concluded that “only within the framework of Liberalism does democracy fulfill a social function. Democracy without Liberalism is a hollow form.” The great danger inherent in democracy is to turn the libertarian postulate of equality before the law into the postulate of economic equality.

Here is a fertile field for the demagogue. Whoever stirs up the resentment of the poor against the rich can count on securing a big audience. Democracy creates the most favourable preliminary conditions for the development of this spirit, which is always and everywhere present, though concealed. So far all democratic states have foundered on this point. The democracy of our own time is hastening towards the same end.

—Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), 412-413.

Following Wieser's “Natural Value,” Businessmen, Like a Socialist Planning Board, Could Theoretically Do Without Money Prices and Perform Their Calculations Directly in Terms of Value

Wieser’s view was rooted in his theory of the relationship between value and prices. Recall that Wieser believed that economic value is subject to arithmetic operations, just as money prices are used in the calculations of businessmen. Thus, there is in this respect no fundamental difference between value and price. Prices are merely “objective exchange value”—they are “subjective exchange value” made visible. Businessmen could theoretically do without money prices and perform their calculations directly in terms of value and so could a socialist planning board. This is still a widely held view among economic laymen. Wieser’s achievement was to give a sophisticated presentation of this view and to develop it through the doctrine of his second book, with the telling title Der natürliche Werth (Natural Value).

--Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), 158.

The Great Divide between the Austrian and the Gossen Schools: Analyzing Hypothetical Equilibrium Prices or Analyzing Actual Market Prices

Just as the classical economists had done before them, the Gossen School analyzed prices as they would be if certain special conditions were fulfilled: they analyzed hypothetical equilibrium prices rather than actual market prices. It is here, then, that we find the great divide between the Austrian and the Gossen Schools. Menger paved the way for dealing with real-world prices. His work made economics more scientific in the true sense of the word—increasing knowledge about real things—while the writings of Gossen, Jevons, and Walras dealt not with matters of fact, but only conjectures.

--Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), 134.

The Differences between Menger and Gossen, Jevons, and Walras Play a Major Role in the Development of Austrian Economics

By following Gossen, Jevons and Walras developed a marginal-utility theory of prices that was markedly less successful at describing observed reality than was Menger’s marginal-value approach. The differences between Menger on the one hand, and Gossen, Jevons, and Walras on the other, might seem arcane, but they came to play a major role in the development of Austrian economics, and it is against this background that one must appreciate the significance of Mises’s contributions.

Jevons’s marginal utility thus played structurally the same role that marginal value played in Menger’s theory—it delivered an explanation of market prices—but where marginal utility explains the price of a good by the good’s direct impact on human feelings, Menger’s marginal value explains the price of a good by how the good ranks in importance compared to other goods, according to the needs of the individuals involved in the pricing process.

--Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007), 129, 132.