A body of literature called the New History of Capitalism argues (incorrectly, I believe) that Western prosperity is built on legacies of exploitation like colonialism and slavery. Economists are very skeptical because the New Historians of Capitalism rest much of their case on fundamental misunderstandings of basic economic concepts like national income accounting. Economists have criticized some of the movement’s foundational texts in the blogosphere and scholarly journals.
There is a related body of work I’ve called the New Intellectual History of Capitalism, focusing on post World War II neoliberalism and the alleged conspiracy beginning with Mont Pelerin Society’s first meeting in April 1947. Examples of this genre include Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, which stirred public choice circles in 2017 by attempting to link James M. Buchanan to Virginia segregationism in the 1950s and which Michael Munger called “speculative historical fiction.” Other contributions include work by Quinn Slobodian purporting to locate fascist sympathies in the judiciously selected and carefully minced words of Ludwig von Mises.
MacLean’s treatment of Buchanan is conspicuous, like Naomi Klein’s treatment of Milton Friedman in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which I reviewed here. Other incorrect interpretations come from Quinn Slobodian’s treatments of Ludwig von Mises in multiple places and his treatment of W.H. Hutt in his book Globalists. Sandy Darity, M’Balou Camara, and MacLean pick up on Slobodian’s portrayal of Hutt and misrepresent an argument Phil Magness, Ilia Murtazashvili, and I make (Magness and I respond here; the published version of their paper is here, along with Murtazashvili, we respond here).
Consider the insinuation that Mises and F.A. Hayek were fascist sympathizers. Mises did write, hyperbolically, that lovers of liberty should thank the fascists for vanquishing the communists, but this was not because he thought the fascists were good but because he thought the communists were worse. It’s like the Battle of Stalingrad in Enemy at the Gates. There are no good guys, just bad guys (the Soviets) and worse guys (the Nazis). Being glad the Soviets helped defeat Hitler is hardly an endorsement of communism.
Mises’s opposition to totalitarian socialism of the right (Naziism) and totalitarian socialism of the left (communism) was so complete that he ended up being the subject of a 1998 issue of The Batman Chronicles titled “The Berlin Batman.” It features a short story asking, “What if Bruce Wayne had actually been a Jewish artist named ‘Baruch Wane’ in 1930s Berlin?” When Baruch Wane heard that the Nazi Kommisar had to meet a train because they had seized the books and library of Ludwig von Mises, he worked to stop them (perhaps he delayed them and did not stop them). Still, it correctly explained that Mises was anti-Nazi and correctly portrayed Mises’s Human Action as a volume that repudiated totalitarian doctrines and embraced liberty.
Is a comic book portrayal definitive evidence? No, but it is suggestive: if Misesian anti-Nazi liberalism is so obvious that it became the subject of a Batman comic, perhaps there isn’t much to read between the lines.
[Editor’s note: Readers may also be interested in this Liberty Matters forum led by Phil Magness, Why We Don’t Need a “New” History of Capitalism.)
Art Carden is Professor of Economics & Medical Properties Trust Fellow at Samford University.
