Mises justified imperial war as legitimate compulsion to trade
Evidence
Mises was more explicit about the brutal state violence necessary to uphold ‘peaceful’ commerce. He justified the wars waged by England to expand her empire by arguing that, had India and China not been forcefully opened to trade, not only ‘each Chinese and each Hindu, but also each European and each American would be considerably worse off’. Depicting the extension of the international division of labour as being in the interests of all of humanity, he argued that developed nations could not remain indifferent to those who wished to maintain their independence at a lower level of civilisation. Mises developed a ‘just war’ argument for postcolonial times: any country that deprived others of access to its natural resources did an injury to all of humanity, he argued, and could legitimately be compelled to trade. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 261
Categorization
- XREF: Striking that a leading economist of the Austrian school defended coercive commercial opening; connects to the reader’s ethics-of-markets debate around whether markets require or oppose force. — connects to: Mises blamed tariffs and war, not capitalism, for interrupting world prosperity — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 361; Mises saw non-Western peoples as needing market adoption or destruction — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 115; Mises favored retaining European military presence to preserve imperial market integration — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 249 (+1 more)
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does this sit with the popular image of Mises as a pure libertarian opposed to state coercion?
Broader Connections
- Mises favored retaining European military presence to preserve imperial market integration
#exemplifies(0.95) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 249 - Mises tied world peace to unrestricted foreign investment
#complicates(0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 285