Interventionism Format: Paperback

Interventionism provides Mises’s analysis of the problems of government interference in business from the Austrian School perspective. Written in 1940, before the United States was officially involved in World War II, this book offers a rare insight into the war economies of Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Mises criticizes the pre–World War II democratic governments for favoring socialism and interventionism over capitalist methods of production. Mises contends that government’s economic role should be limited because of the negative political and social consequences of the economic policy of interventionism.

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of economics throughout most of the twentieth century.

Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar and trustee of the Foundation for Economic Education and was a senior staff member at FEE from 1951 to 1999.

The Midwest Book Review
April 2011

To understand economics, you have to understand people. Interventionism: An Economic Analysis looks at the work of Ludwig von Mises, an Austrian economist who has gained renown among his peers even with his teachings that went against mainstream economic theory. Stating that economy must be free or controlled and not something in between, his thoughts, while not popular, have proven quite thoughtful and prove to be required reading for blossoming economists. Interventionism is a thoughtful study and solid addition to any community library economics collection.

Reference and Research Book News
April 2011

This reprint of the original 1940 work of Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises provides renewed access to one of the major works of this important pillar of radical free-market economic libertarianism. Von Mises argues for a binary analysis of political influence on economies, that there is only the natural state of a totally free economic system or socialist dictatorship and that an interventionist "third way" that seeks to regulate business for the betterment of society in fact simply damages both.