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When he fled Austria in 1934, Ludwig von Mises left behind a wealth of writings that, he supposed, were lost forever. Seized by the Nazi Gestapo, the papers were subsequently captured by the Soviet KGB and were archived in Moscow. Their discovery in 1996, by Professors Richard and Anna Ebeling of Hillsdale College, received widespread attention. In cooperation with Hillsdale College, Liberty Fund will make available these long-lost writings, many of which have not previously appeared in English, as part of a three-volume edition of selected writings by one of the unsurpassed economists of the twentieth century. In the first of the volumes to be published are contained separate previously unpublished works that Mises wrote from 1940 through 1944, when much of the world was at war. The papers include “Guiding Principles for the Reconstruction of Austria” (1940); “An Eastern Democratic Union: A Proposal for the Establishment of a Durable Peace in Eastern Europe” (1943); “Aspects of American Foreign Trade Policy” (1943); “Mexico’s Economic Problems” (1943); “The Main Issues in Present-Day Monetary Controversies” (1944); and, “A Non-Inflationary Proposal for Post-War Monetary Reconstruction” (1944).

During his first years in the United States, Mises devoted a significant portion of his time to analyzing the nature and causes of the political and ideological trends that had brought the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s to the abyss of war and destruction. He also attempted to outline a set of policies through which a post-war Europe could recover from the consequences of conflict and collectivism.
Many of the essays and monographs that Mises wrote between 1940 and 1944 on these themes have remained unpublished until now.
In 254 pages, Mises presents and articulates the political economic agenda for a post-collectivist world, a world of individual freedom, international peace and global prosperity. Though written in the 1940s, Ludwig von Mises' essays offer the true agenda for the society of tomorrow, the free society of the 21st century.

Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (1881-1973) was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian School of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’ writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science which Mises called “praxeology”. He taught at the University of Vienna and later at New York University. Mises wrote many works on two related economic themes: 1. monetary economics, inflation, and the role of government, and 2. the differences between government-controlled economies and free trade. His influential work on economic freedoms, their causes and consequences, brought him to highlight the interrelationships between economic and non-economic freedoms in societies, and the appropriate role for government.