Ludwig von Mises, “Aussprache: zweite Wortmeldung” (1925)

This second intervention in a recorded discussion (pp. 313–315) clarifies Mises’s position on renewed inflation, identifies the targets of his criticism of anti-gold-standard arguments, and contests his responsibility for Austrian monetary policy. Its three successive replies distinguish public expectations from official intentions, polemical attribution from documented criticism, and intellectual advocacy from institutional power.

Mises first explains that his expectation that renewed note-printing inflation would be blocked in the near term rests neither on better-informed governments nor on their unwillingness to inflate:

Ich bin frei von jenem Aberglauben, der das Heil von der Einsicht der Obrigkeit erwartet.

English translation: I am free of that superstition which expects salvation from the insight of the authorities.

The constraint instead comes from individuals who have learned to watch exchange rates. Renewed depreciation would immediately prompt the wider population to act as only those stigmatized as “Schieber” had acted during the preceding inflation. Such generalized adjustment would prevent governments from relying on note printing as an effective source of finance for years. The argument thus turns on a change in the public’s economic responses, not an improvement in official judgment.

Answering Bortkiewicz, Mises denies attributing to Knapp the view that the gold standard was an English invention harmful to continental economies. Having spoken without preparation, he had avoided naming authors whose words he could not quote exactly. Following Diehl’s interjection naming Liefmann, Mises accepts that example and identifies Alfred Schmidt-Essen as another intended target. A footnote added in proof supplies the reference to Schmidt-Essen’s “Goldwahn” of 17 July 1924, which represented the gold standard as serving American and English interests while harming Germany. This exchange matters because Mises preserves his substantive criticism while correcting its personal attribution.

The longest reply challenges Spitzmüller’s account of the Austro-Hungarian Bank. Mises rejects the claim that gold-standard advocates controlled its policy before and during the war:

Soweit österreichischer Einfluß bei der gemeinsamen Bank mächtig war, war er in der letzten Zeit vor dem Kriege und im Kriege durchaus inflationistisch und etatistisch.

English translation: In so far as Austrian influence was powerful in the joint bank, it was, in the last period before the war and during the war, thoroughly inflationist and etatist.

He acknowledges that Hungary generally showed greater support for gold, while insisting that some Hungarian influence also operated in the inflationist direction. He then separates his own public advocacy from the authority exercised by ministers and central-bank governors. His influence, he states, was confined to writings and lectures; among the Austrian monetary measures adopted, only the stabilization of monetary value in 1922 accorded with his position. He had publicly opposed measures such as foreign-exchange regulations and had failed to persuade Spitzmüller privately:

Das, was durchgeführt wurde, entsprach durchaus nicht meinen Ideen.

English translation: What was carried out by no means corresponded to my ideas.

Mises closes by questioning Spitzmüller’s retrospective criticism of the stabilization rate, given his participation in setting it and his present unwillingness to change it. The intervention’s significance lies in these precise distinctions: inflation is constrained by learned public behavior, while responsibility for monetary policy belongs to those empowered to implement it, not automatically to economists prominent in its discussion.