Mises on War
By Ludwig von Mises
Waris harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things. Only economic action has created the wealth around us; labor, not the profession of arms, brings happiness. Peace builds, war destroys. (Socialism, p. 59)
The market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts asunder when the citizens turn into warriors and, instead of exchanging commodities and services, fight one another. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 817 ; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 821)
Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 152)
The market economy means peaceful cooperation and peaceful exchange of goods and services. It cannot persist when wholesale killing is the order of the day. (Interventionism: An Economic Analysis, p. 67)
War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 154)
There have been...in all other nations, eulogists of aggression, war, and conquest. (Omnipotent Government, p. 232)
War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 154)
[T]he essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting of wealth and income. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 158)
War is a destroyer and annihilator, in short, as an evil that strikes all, victor as well as vanquished. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 86)
The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of consistent application of these doctrines. (1st Ed. Human Action, p. 683; 3rd Ed. Human Action, p. 687)
Whoever wishes peace among peoples must fight statism. (Nation, State, and Economy, p. 77)
Modern society, based as it is on the division of labor, can be preserved only under conditions of lasting peace. (Liberalism, p. 44)
[O]nly tolerance can create and preserve the condition of social peace without which humanity must relapse into the barbarism and penury of centuries long past. (Liberalism, p. 56)
Modern war is not a war of royal armies. It is a war of the peoples, a total war. It is a war of states which do not leave to their subjects any private sphere; they consider the whole population a part of the armed forces. Whoever does not fight must work for the support and equipment of the army. Army and people are one and the same. The citizens passionately participate in the war. For it is their state, their God, who fights. (Omnipotent Government, p. 104)
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