Mises saw non-Western peoples as needing market adoption or destruction

Evidence

The key distinction between East and West, according to Mises, is that the East was ‘foreign to the Western spirit that has created capitalism’. As a result, he contended that, ‘if the Asiatics and Africans really enter into the orbit of Western civilisation, they will have to adopt the market economy without reservation’. Adopting the market did not merely mean adopting a technical means of allocating goods; it required a profound cultural, moral and subjective transformation. Market peoples are peace loving, Mises warned, but would fight to the death against anyone who interfered with this division of labour, and ‘repel the barbarian aggressors whatever their numbers may be’. Earlier, he had suggested that, if only some nations became socialist, the cause would not be lost. The remaining capitalist ones – driven by the ‘fundamental social law’ to extend the global division of labour – would ‘impose culture upon the backward nations or destroy them if they resisted’. Conversion or destruction were the only options available to those who sought to exist outside the world market. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 115

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘conversion or destruction’ dichotomy resonates with the coexistence-of-coercion-and-civilizing-ideology claims across the colonial books in the library. — connects to: Neoliberalism required culturally transforming non-capitalist societies to extend markets — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 88; Mises blamed Asia’s poverty on egalitarian moral economies that blocked property accumulation — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 298; Resistance to Western influence was pathological as backwardness rather than legitimate agency (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing how this early Mises coercion language sits against later human-rights-based defenses of markets — the book’s core tension.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 115

Broader Connections

• Mises justified imperial war as legitimate compulsion to trade #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 261
• Mises blamed Asia’s poverty on egalitarian moral economies that blocked property accumulation #expands (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 298
• Resistance to Western influence was pathological as backwardness rather than legitimate agency #corroborates (0.80)
• Neoliberalism required culturally transforming non-capitalist societies to extend markets #corroborates (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 88