Ludwig von Mises, Economic Teaching at the Universities (1952)

Ludwig von Mises’s article, originally published as “Our Leftist Economic Teaching,” argues that university instruction systematically excludes serious criticism of socialism and interventionism. Its subject is not simply the political convictions of professors, but the institutional conditions under which students encounter economic arguments. Across four sections, Mises moves from textbook selection and classroom practice to accusations of bias, interpretations of industrial history, and the recruitment of future economists. His central distinction is between the freedom to advocate a doctrine and the academic responsibility to expose that doctrine to informed opposition.

The opening anecdote concerns a government-employed doctor who reportedly could not understand what presenting both sides of compulsory national health insurance would mean. Mises treats this response as symptomatic of progressive intellectuals’ inability to recognize legitimate objections to expanding government control. Yet his proposed remedy is not the removal of teachers whose views he rejects:

The essential question is not how to get rid of inept teachers and poor textbooks. It is how to give the students an opportunity to hear something about the ideas of economists rejecting the tenets of the interventionists, inflationists, Socialists and Communists.

This formulation establishes the article’s institutional argument: intellectual freedom requires sustained access to competing explanations, not merely permission for established faculty to express their convictions. Mises nevertheless writes as a committed participant in the dispute. His descriptions of rival schools as fallacious and his own position as sound economics make his defense of open criticism inseparable from a substantive defense of capitalism.

The first section develops this argument through Paul M. Sweezy’s volume on socialism in the Harvard-associated “Economics Handbook Series,” edited by Seymour E. Harris. Mises explicitly acknowledges Sweezy’s right to publish a socialist defense. His objection concerns its educational placement: inexperienced readers may mistake the authority of its author and academic sponsors for evidence that its claims are uncontested.

The shortcoming of the committee is not to be seen in the fact that they have published such a book, but in the fact that their series contains only this book about socialism.

A companion volume defending capitalism, Mises argues, cannot replace a direct critical examination of socialist doctrines and institutions. His substantive example is Sweezy’s comparison of Soviet and American constitutional ideals. Against this comparison, Mises distinguishes a declaration of rights from enforceable law: an independent judiciary and access to legal remedies determine whether constitutional guarantees restrain power. The example connects his educational criticism to his account of liberty. Formal acknowledgment of rights, like nominal acknowledgment of opposing views, is insufficient without institutions that make them effective.

Occasional invitations to dissenting lecturers likewise fail his test. Reproducing part of a letter declining such an invitation, Mises explains that a short address cannot undo years of instruction attributing depression, unemployment, monopoly, imperialism, and poverty to capitalism. Unanswered objections would remain apparently decisive. His demand is therefore for an enduring place within the curriculum, not a ceremonial appearance by an outsider.

The second section challenges the use of personal bias as a substitute for examining arguments:

The only thing that matters is whether a doctrine is sound or unsound. This is to be established by facts and deductive reasoning.

Psychological explanations may interest a biographer, but they cannot establish whether an economic theory is correct. Mises then offers his own account of professors’ attraction to government authority: service in administrative agencies, he claims, encourages them to identify state action with impartiality and opposition with hostility to the public good. His criticism of the opposition between planning and its absence makes the conceptual issue especially clear. Private individuals also make plans; describing only government direction as planning prejudges the choice between centralized command and decentralized action.

The third section extends the diagnosis beyond economics departments to history, sociology, politics, and literature. Mises attacks the narrative that industrialization destroyed an earlier prosperity and impoverished workers for the benefit of a wealthy minority. His counterargument turns on the market served by industrial production:

The truth is that the characteristic feature of capitalism was and is mass production for the needs of the masses.

Factories, he maintains, initially supplied inexpensive goods to broad populations; improved living standards subsequently widened demand for better products. The worker must therefore be understood as a consumer whose purchases influence entrepreneurial success, rather than solely as a subordinate producer. This account of consumer sovereignty also supports his attack on explanations that attribute poverty, illness, and other longstanding human afflictions indiscriminately to capitalism. The section offers a forceful counterinterpretation of industrial history, rather than a detailed historical demonstration.

The final section traces exclusion into the reproduction of the academic profession. Mises claims that anticipated hostility from universities, reviewers, and publishers drives talented graduates into business or law, leaving teaching increasingly to conformists. The resulting damage is cumulative: restricted debate discourages precisely the scholars who might restore it.

True economists must be given the same opportunity in our faculties which only the advocates of socialism and interventionism enjoy today.

The article’s lasting relevance lies in its distinction between formal freedom of expression and effective intellectual competition. Textbook authority, appointments, curricular duration, and professional incentives all shape what students can seriously consider. Its limitation is equally visible: broad assertions about academic monopoly and opponents’ motives outrun the specific textbook example. Even so, its organizing demand remains clear—economic education should make rival arguments available for sustained examination rather than settle their standing through institutional exclusion.