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1. Austrian Sociology, Lecture 5
David Gordon
Mises Academy, April 9, 2013
Chapter IX, pp. 188-194

2. Importance of Ideology
• For action to occur, you need an end and beliefs
about how to attain the end.
• This makes ideas primary in explaining action.
• Mises argues this makes ideology, i.e., views
about what actions in politics and society should
be undertaken, primary in explaining history.
• He rejects doctrines like Marxism that take ideas
to be determined by other factors, like the forces
and relations of production.

3. Social Rationalism
• Society begins by people grasping the
advantages of trade.
• It does not follow from this that people have
planned the entire structure of society.
• It’s not likely that people said, at the
beginning of history, “If we all got together,
we could benefit from a highly specialized
division of labor, accompanied by extensive
trade.”

4. Social Rationalism Continued
• Mises is often contrasted with Hayek, who
stresses the unintended consequences of
human action.
• Mises doesn’t disagree with this, because he
doesn’t say that people foresee all the
consequences of their actions.
• People realized the benefits of trade, not all
the results of this.

5. Might
• Mises says something that at first seems
surprising given his stress on ideas.
• He says that “might” is fundamental in
running society.
• This doesn’t contradict what he says about the
importance of ideas.
• By “might”, he means getting other people to
do what you want.

6. More Might
• “Might” isn’t confined to using or threatening
force against people, although that of course
can be a way of getting people to do what you
want.
• This concept is taken from Max Weber, who
was a friend of Mises.
• The American political scientist Harold
Lasswell also used it.

7. Influence Over Others
• A society can’t be ruled entirely by physical
force.
• Even in an oppressive dictatorship, where
most people would gladly overthrow the
government if they could, the dictator can’t
rule over everybody else by threatening force.
• There must be a group of people who obey his
commands willingly.

8. Government
• Mises goes further. It is consistent with his
claim that a society can’t depend entirely on
threats of force to imagine a society with only
a very small class of people who willingly obey
the dictator. This small group would be
enough to coerce everybody else.

9. Government Continued
• Mises doesn’t think this is the usual case.
• He tends to assume that all governments have a
strong measure of popular support. They couldn’t
stay in power otherwise.
• We could imagine another situation in which
people go along with the government, in the
sense they think revolt is futile and more people
cooperate it than imagined in my previous case,
but most people don’t like the government.

10. An Unpopular Government
• Mises doesn’t think this case is usual either.
Again, he thinks that governments do have a
large measure of popular support.
• He thought this was true of Nazi Germany and
Soviet Russsia.

11. Empires
• In empires, a small group of people can
sometimes exercise control over a large
subject group.
• To do so, they will ally with part of the native
ruling class or adopt the dominant ideology of
the native society.
• British rule in India is an example.

12. Traditionalism
• Mises doesn’t have much sympathy for the
ideology he calls “traditionalism.”
• This view holds that we should obey rules and
customs because of they have lasted a long time.
• Often, the customs favored by traditionalism
aren’t really that old. The traditionalist’s stress on
customs isn’t really the product of historical
research. Traditionalism is just an ideology to
keep society together and promote certain
interests.

13. Traditionalism Continued
• Mises anticipated later work here.
• There is a very influential collection of essays
edited by Terence Ranger, The Invention of
Tradition, that advances arguments like those
of Mises.
• Trevor-Roper has an essay on the invention in
the 19th century of the Scottish highland
tradition.

14. Progress
• Mises opposes the view that there is a cosmic
teleology. Purpose is a category that be
applied only to human action.
• Things are not automatically getting better or
progressing (“meliorism”) Whether things
improve depend on human choices.
• Mises also rejects the view that the masses
usually know what is best.