Some fun recently over on Twitter where someone was totally missing the fact that Mises was mocking Louis XIV, Mussolini, etc. when he called them “the most peace-loving of all men” in the face of their paper-thin justifications for their aggression.
It’s worth noting that this sort of very subtle sarcasm is common in Mises’s writing. Sometimes the sarcasm would go on for several sentences with no sign of it except a nagging feeling in your gut that Mises has suddenly changed his position radically and without warning.
Here’s another great example, from the first section of Chapter 34 of Human Action.
“The only cause of armed conflict is the greed of autocrats. The substitution of representative government for royal despotism will abolish war altogether. Democracies are peaceful. It is no concern of theirs whether their nation’s sovereignty stretches over a larger or smaller territory. They will treat territorial problems without bias and passion. They will settle them peacefully. What is needed to make peace durable is to dethrone the despots. This, of course, cannot be achieved peacefully. It is necessary to crush the mercenaries of the kings. But this revolutionary war of the people against the tyrants will be the last war, the war to abolish war forever.”
That is ten sentences of vintage Austrian sarcasm. I remember reading this recently and stopping to look at it again. This was clearly not Mises’s position a few pages ago, I thought. Sure enough, he eventually returns to smack it down:
“This idea was already dimly present in the minds of the French revolutionary leaders when, after having repelled the invading armies of Prussia and Austria, they embarked upon a campaign of aggression. Of course, under the leadership of Napoleon they themselves very soon adopted the most ruthless methods of boundless expansion and annexation until a coalition of all European powers frustrated their ambitions.”
See his point? The notion that democracies are peaceful was not just wrong, it was a fig leaf for the commission of vast atrocities by supposedly democratic and peaceful governments.
Mises won’t tell you when he’s being sarcastic. Not directly. But as long as you don’t try to “gotcha” him by snipping out a little excerpt, he’ll get you where you need to go eventually.