Friedrich August von Hayek, Nationalökonomie. Theorie des Handelns und des Wirtschaftens (1941)

Hayek’s review assesses Ludwig von Mises’s Nationalökonomie (1940) as a systematic synthesis whose significance extends beyond economic theory to the philosophy of human action and contemporary policy. Its governing judgment is that Mises’s achievement lies less in accumulating separate discoveries than in showing how economic analysis, social cooperation, and liberal political conclusions belong to a consistent intellectual framework. Hayek admires that coherence without treating it as sufficient proof of every argument. His review combines strong support for Mises’s methodological project with reservations about particular theories and his limited engagement with contemporary economics.

The review follows the architecture of the book while shifting emphasis away from its largest section. Hayek first considers the central treatment of economic theory, identified as pages 188–628, then turns to the concluding discussions of policy and the opening account of human action. Readers of Mises’s earlier work on money, socialism, and social-scientific method will recognize much of the economic argument. Yet the systematic presentation gives familiar positions greater precision and makes their connections more visible. Hayek also stresses the changed reception of those positions: ideas once attacked or ridiculed have become common intellectual property. This history makes Mises’s earlier controversies evidence of influence, rather than simply of intellectual isolation.

That vindication nevertheless has a cost. Hayek sees continuing development in Mises’s thought, but largely as an internal process rather than an exchange with the wider discipline:

What growth there is appears to be decidedly autonomous, and one even feels that the author, having been so often attacked for what later proved to be correct views, has developed a certain contempt for contemporary economics which has prevented him from deriving much advantage from it.

The criticism concerns both intellectual receptiveness and exposition. In the theory of competition, Hayek suggests, a more sympathetic treatment of competing approaches would have made Mises’s own position easier to understand. He also singles out the newly developed theory of interest: its psychological elaboration of the Böhm-Bawerkian argument is illuminating in places but, on a first reading, less convincing overall than most of the book. These qualifications remain deliberately bounded. Hayek does not attempt a technical refutation within a short review, and his assessment of the interest theory is explicitly provisional.

The most revealing example of Mises’s theoretical achievement is his generalization of comparative costs. Instead of restricting the principle to international trade, Mises treats it as explaining the formation of society through exchange and cooperation. Hayek presents this as a conceptual enlargement: an established economic law becomes a foundation for understanding the existence of an exchange society. The significance of the theoretical section thus lies in the perspective generated by a common philosophy, not merely in the novelty of its individual propositions.

The policy sections similarly consolidate arguments previously dispersed across books and essays. Their historical illustrations and application to contemporary circumstances help turn that consolidation into a comprehensive social philosophy:

Yet there were perhaps even greater opportunities for the author to fill in gaps, and the result is a really imposing unified system of a liberal social philosophy.

Hayek distinguishes the resemblance of Mises’s conclusions to nineteenth-century liberalism from the philosophical grounds supporting them. The work’s affinity with laissez-faire does not make it a simple repetition of an inherited position. Its foundations have developed substantially, although in a direction different from that taken by much contemporary thought. This distinction lets Hayek identify the book’s liberal commitments while insisting that its intellectual contribution must be judged through its underlying account of action and society.

The opening methodological sections receive the review’s strongest endorsement. Mises develops a general theory of human action, named “praxeology,” within which economics is a special domain. His earlier defence of the a priori character of economic reasoning becomes a systematic argument for the autonomy of social-scientific method and against importing unsuitable methods from the natural sciences. Hayek anticipates considerable resistance, but regards the argument as unusually consistent and worthy of sustained discussion. His agreement is substantive without being unqualified:

Although the reviewer would put many things differently, he must confess, at the risk of being condemned with Professor Mises as holding views conflicting with the whole trend of modern scientific development, that on the main point Professor Mises' lone voice seems to him considerably nearer the truth than the commonly accepted views.

The review consequently matters as a statement of Hayek’s own methodological allegiance as well as an appraisal of Mises. It identifies a shared defence of the distinctive requirements of studying human action, while leaving differences of formulation and particular economic arguments unresolved.

Hayek closes by making breadth itself an intellectual virtue:

And yet, or perhaps because of this, one feels throughout much nearer reality, and is constantly recalled from the discussion of technicalities to the consideration of the great problems of our time.

Mises’s scrutiny of prevailing dogmas can lead him to dismiss refinements too readily, but it also keeps technical analysis connected to larger social questions. Hayek’s final judgment is therefore neither blanket agreement nor mere admiration for ambition: this is a work whose systematic reach makes engagement necessary even for readers who reject much of it.