Ludwig von Mises, “Antimarxismus” (1925)

This file is a single-author scholarly essay, first published in 1925. Mises examines “scientific” anti-Marxism in republican Germany and Austria: a movement hostile to Marxism but often no less hostile to capitalism. His thesis is that German anti-Marxism fails because it attacks Marxist politics while retaining Marxist categories, above all class conflict, anti-capitalist ressentiment, and contempt for theoretical economics.

Ausgangspunkt, Denk- und Kampfweise und Ziele der Bewegung sind keineswegs einheitlich; das Gemeinsame liegt vornehmlich in der Ansage des Kampfes gegen den Marxismus.

English translation: The starting point, the modes of thought and struggle, and the aims of the movement are by no means uniform; what they have in common lies chiefly in the declaration of war against Marxism.

Mises begins by sharply separating anti-Marxism from liberalism. The movement is not a defense of private property or capitalism; it is frequently another socialism, competing with Marxism for the title of the “true” socialism.

Wohlgemerkt: nicht der Sozialismus wird angegriffen, sondern der Marxismus, und dem marxistischen Sozialismus wird zum Vorwurf gemacht, daß er gar nicht der richtige, der wahre, der allein anzustrebende Sozialismus sei.

English translation: Note well: it is not socialism that is attacked, but Marxism, and Marxist socialism is reproached for not being the correct, the true, the only socialism worth striving for.

The first section reconstructs Marxism’s intellectual conquest of German social science. Party Marxism is dismissed as scholastic repetition; Marx and Engels mattered because German historicism, state socialism, and ignorance of modern economic theory left scholars defenseless before Marxian categories.

Nur Marx und Engels, keiner ihrer Epigonen, haben auf die deutsche Wissenschaft eingewirkt.

English translation: Only Marx and Engels, none of their epigones, have exerted influence on German scholarship.

Mises’s central conceptual move is to oppose utilitarian-liberal sociology to all “struggle” sociologies. Society is not explained by metaphysical collectivism or by class, race, or national combat, but by the productivity of cooperation under division of labor.

Gesellschaft ist Arbeitsteilung und Arbeitsvereinigung.

English translation: Society is the division and combination of labor.

Against Marxist class struggle and nationalist race-or-nation struggle alike, Mises argues that such theories explain conflict but not association. They cannot show why cooperation exists within the favored collective but must cease beyond it.

Der beiden Gruppen der Kampfsoziologie gemeinsame Fehler liegt in der Außerachtlassung der Aufzeigung eines Assoziationsprinzips.

English translation: The error common to both groups of conflict sociology lies in their failure to demonstrate a principle of association.

The second section turns to national, anti-Marxist socialism. Mises presents it as the mirror image of Marxism: Marxism wants class war without national war; national socialism wants class peace at home and national struggle abroad. Its test is the German national problem—border minorities, emigration, and access to world markets.

Das große politische Problem des deutschen Volkes ist das nationale.

English translation: The great political problem of the German people is the national one.

Here Mises is strikingly critical of German nationalism. Violence cannot solve mixed-language borderlands, overseas settlement, or trade dependence; it only produces encirclement. German minorities abroad, he argues, need democracy and economic liberty, because interventionist states become instruments of denationalization. Thus anti-Marxist nationalism fails precisely where it claims competence.

Der nationalpolitische Antimarxismus hat sich gerade in dem Punkte nicht als schöpferisch erwiesen, auf den er selbst das entscheidende Gewicht legen muß: im Problem der Außenpolitik.

English translation: National-political anti-Marxism has shown itself to be uncreative precisely on the point to which it must itself attach decisive weight: the problem of foreign policy.

The third section uses Werner Sombart as the exemplary case. Sombart’s new work occasions the essay because he appears to renounce Marxism while preserving its deepest assumptions. Mises grants Sombart’s importance in bringing Marx into German academic culture, but insists that his categories remain Marxist.

Marxistisch ist schon die Problemstellung seines einflußreichen Hauptwerkes »Der moderne Kapitalismus«.

English translation: The very framing of the problem in his influential principal work, "Modern Capitalism," is Marxist.

Sombart criticizes proletarian socialism culturally and nationally, not scientifically. He dislikes Marxism’s internationalism, pacifism, industrialism, and proletarian ethos; yet he does not refute the class theory, the economic critique of capitalism, or the feasibility of socialism. For Mises, this is anti-Marxism still caught inside Marxism.

Noch hat sich Sombart aus den Banden dieser Lehre nicht so weit freigemacht, wie er wohl selbst glauben mag.

English translation: Sombart has not yet freed himself from the bonds of this doctrine to the extent he may himself believe.

The final section states the essay’s governing judgment. Anti-Marxism is politically useful only if it becomes a scientific overcoming of Marxism. Ressentiment against capitalism, even when nationalist or conservative, cannot replace theory.

Doch mit Ressentiment kann man keine Wissenschaft betreiben, übrigens auch keine Politik, höchstens Demagogie.

English translation: But one cannot pursue science with resentment—nor, for that matter, politics; at most demagoguery.

The essay’s relevance lies in its early diagnosis of anti-capitalist nationalism as an intellectual relative, not an opposite, of Marxism. Mises calls for German social science to abandon historicism, recover theoretical economics and utilitarian sociology, and stop overestimating Marx as science.

Nur wer die Welt unbefangen ohne die marxistischen Scheuklappen zu betrachten vermag, darf sich an die großen Probleme der Soziologie heranwagen.

English translation: Only he who is able to view the world impartially, without the Marxist blinders, may venture to approach the great problems of sociology.