Mises As Mentor an Interview with George Reisman
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Mises as Mentor An Interview With George Reisman Fall 2001 — Volume 21, Number 3 Front cover: Fritz Machlup and Ludwig von Mises. THE AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER Fall 2001 — Volume 21, Number 3 Copyright © 2001 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama 36832-4528 phone (334) 321-2100; fax (334) 321-2119 email [email protected]; web site www.mises.org The Austrian Economics Newsletter is published quarterly by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. An Interview With George Reisman MISES AS MENTOR AEN: How did you first come to find out that Mises was teach- ing in New York? REISMAN: My economic opinions were pretty well formed by the time I entered graduate school. My introduction to eco- nomics came when I was eleven years old, way back in 1948. I saw a short documentary in a movie theater. It pointed out that the U.S. had 6 percent of the world’s population but produced 40 percent of the world’s wealth. I was impressed. Meanwhile, I was reading some good newspapers: The Journal GEORGE REISMAN American carried Westbrook Pegler and George Sokolsky, who both provided a dissenting voice. I was developing political opinions, but I was also increasingly aware that I was in the George Reisman received his Ph.D. in 1963 under the direction minority. of Ludwig von Mises, and he currently teaches economics at AEN: So you weren’t getting this in school? Pepperdine University. REISMAN: I was in seventh grade at Joan of Arc Junior High, He is the author of The Govern- and my teacher told us that he regretted that he did not live in ment Against the Economy (1979), Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics the district represented by Vito Marcantonio, who was practi- (1996), and many monographs cally a communist. I recognized that I was being fed the left- on economic topics, and is the liberal line. I once made the point about American productivity translator of Mises’s Epistemological that I had seen in that film. He came back at me and said, yes, Problems of Economics (1976). but 10 percent of the population owns 90 percent of the wealth! As president of the Jefferson School, he writes frequently for the All my classmates were leftists. Our straw polls showed over- popular press on energy economics, whelming support for Democrats. At first I figured it was just environmentalism, and antitrust, the people that surrounded me, or maybe it was New York. But and has published several articles then I went to summer camp in Maine and was surrounded by in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian people from all over, and they all held leftist views. After that, I Economics. figured that practically everyone was leftist. The AEN interviewed Dr. Reisman while he was on the Mises Campus I recall being struck by a biography of Julius Caesar, written in for Mises University 2001. the nineteenth century, that I read that summer at camp. The author made a remark about how much Caesar’s government LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE interfered with the lives of Roman That appeared to be just a statisti- wanted to read that because it citizens. But in this country, the cal analysis. I was looking for logi- sounded right up my alley. But it author went on, people realize that cal argumentation. turned out to be too expensive to no matter what the government purchase. But I did get Jevons’s can do for them, it can do twice as I used my birthday money to buy State in Relation to Labor, which is a much to them. That remark rein- Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, good book. It had many good crit- forced my sense that there was a which was widely promoted as a icisms of labor unions. It put me in pro-freedom tradition somewhere. defense of capitalism. But it didn’t a position to answer my teachers. I I just had to find it. live up to expectations. I was then started his Theory of Political extremely disappointed. From the Economy and got my first exposure AEN: But at the age of eleven you Marxism I was picking up around to marginal utility and thus the encountered difficulties in finding me, and the preface by socialist answer to the labor theory of literature that seemed to back your Max Lerner, it seemed to me that value. intuitions. Smith, with his theory of value, was just preparing the ground for Then I went back to Mises, and REISMAN: Yes, but I kept looking. Marx. tried to tackle his book Socialism. At the age of thirteen I found This was in 1951, and it was a In the fall of 1950, I entered brand-new edition. But it was just a Stuyvesant High School. George bit beyond me at that point. But a READING Sokolsky had a Sunday night radio year later, I bought the book and I broadcast. In one of these broad- was able to read it. It fascinated me. SOCIALISM casts, he mentioned a magazine I recall reading on the sly during called The Freeman. I bought it, shop class, keeping it in my drawer WAS THE and in that issue was Mises’s article, and sneaking a look when I could. “Lord Keynes and Say’s Law.” Reading that book was the single SINGLE MOST That was my first exposure to most enlightening experience I had Mises’s writing. I could see for the up to that point. I became aware of ENLIGHTENING first time that here was someone one thing after another. It is a mas- EXPERIENCE who was arguing, very authorita- terful book. tively, in defense of capitalism. I HAD UP TO AEN: You were still reading The AEN: Who was next on your read- Freeman in those days? THAT POINT. IT ing list? REISMAN: Yes, and Henry Hazlitt IS A MASTERFUL REISMAN: I picked up a history of wrote much of their editorial mat- economic thought that described ter. So long as he was one of the BOOK. David Ricardo as a “harsh advocate editors, the quality was outstand- of laissez-faire.” I thought: “Well, I ing. I read it from cover to cover. will certainly have to give him a try!” Unfortunately, he had some dis- Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, But again, I was disappointed and pute and left in 1953, and the qual- Socialism, and Democracy. He has a became bogged down in the open- ity never recovered. statement in there that socialism ing chapter on value, which seemed looks superior on paper but it to me to be pre-Marxian again. His By the spring of 1952, I had trans- doesn’t work out in practice. I was chapter on land rent was pretty ferred to the Bronx High School of astounded. If you say “on paper,” good, and there were some interest- Science, and we used to have mock that means as far as we can know and ing arguments. But it wasn’t enough. political debates. I was speaking on understand. I knew that couldn’t be behalf of Robert Taft, before the true. I also checked out Carl I learned that Jeremy Bentham had convention, imputing positions to Snyder’s Capitalism the Creator. written a defense of usury, so I him that we could only wish that he 4 AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS NEWSLETTER LUDWIG VON MISES INSTITUTE [Mises] wrote it in my copy of Human Action. We had a long con- versation with him, and he invited the two of us to his seminar, on the condition that we didn’t make noise. AEN: Did he recognize you from the previous encounter? REISMAN: Thankfully not. AEN: You two must have been the youngest members of the Mises Seminar. REISMAN: Yes, but there were others who were young by any standard. Murray Rothbard had just turned twenty-six in the Ph.D. had actually held. A little character in sell subscriptions to The Freeman. a tasseled hat came up to me. I was We hoped that would engage him MISES INVITED used to constant hostility and harass- and we could talk. ALPH AICO ment, so I greeted him with: “What’s R R on your small mind?” Well, I was So we walked up to his apartment AND ME TO amazed when it turned out that he and rang the doorbell. Mises was for Taft, too! He also turned out answered the door. He was prepar- HIS SEMINAR, ON to be the young Ralph Raico.* ing to go out to dinner in a tuxedo. He was standing there in his THE CONDITION Ralph and I made quite a team. We trousers, dress shirt, and sus- used to set up a table on the street penders. We announced that we THAT WE near the New York Public Library. were selling subscriptions to The We would invite crowds of people Freeman. He said: “I have The Free- DIDN’T MAKE to debate with us about politics. He man.” Then he closed the door! Of used to joke that one of us could course, we felt terrible. Mises must NOISE. take the place of the other in the have thought that the publication middle of a sentence. That was a had young kids going around the program at Columbia. Ralph, Mur- good experience, and a lot of fun. city bothering people to subscribe. ray, and I would go out after the seminar. I recall that once I entered AEN: You still hadn’t met Mises. AEN: So you had to figure out Columbia, I had to skip a few ses- some other way to meet him.