Palmer's lengthy screed came in the form of a letter to Liberty magazine found here. His argument boiled down to three points, none of them coherently maintained:
1. The collective sins of Crown Prince Otto's ancestors going back seven centuries illustrate that the Habsburg dynesty is incompatible with Ludwig von Mises' own espousal of libertarian "republicanism" (a term that Palmer uses confusedly and interchangably when describing the concept of democracy).
2. Ludwig von Mises' libertarianism fundamentally contradicts the old Austria of the Habsburg era, and his own historical affiliations with that era are essentially negligible and meaningless pieces of political trivia, born out of a bizarre mixture of political convenience and survival instinct amidst the horrors of World War II.
3. Lew Rockwell is a bad man who abuses the legacy of Ludwig von Mises when he claims lineage from it.
Ralph Raico, the distinguished libertarian historian and student of Mises and Hayek, easily dispensed with Palmer's absurd first argument in a subsequent issue of Liberty:
Tom Palmer replied with outrage to Rockwell's letter, even affecting to defend Mises against the Mises Institute. There is little point in subjecting Palmer's critique to a detailed critique in turn -- noting, for instance, his confusion of republicanism with democracy; or filling in a few gaps in his ten-word interpretation of the origins of the First World War; or correcting his dismissive description of the "obsequious" Edmund Burke; or informing him why Lew Rockwell is not alone in judging the Habsburgs to have been guardians of European civilization (hint: it has something to do with the Turks). What would be gained by trying to demolish the attempted demolition of what was, when all is said and done, basically a promotional letter(In fairness, it should be noted that Palmer attempted his own response to Raico with a shrill and rambling tome about how he had been sleighted by Mises Institute-affiliated economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe. In Palmeristic fashion, this final retort almost completely obscures his original arguments by sidestepping its many faults and instead hurls insult after venomous insult at Rockwell, Hoppe, and others).
Points 2 and 3 are notable though, because Palmer and his "surrogates" raised a nearly identical arguments on his blog last week. Adding to the earlier charges, he contends that Mises would have reacted in horror to the Mises Institute of today. Why? Because the Mises Institute's personel have said critical things about the concept of unbridled popular democracy that Palmer so frequently confuses with libertarian "republicanism," and they've neglected, in his mind, to sufficiently condemn non-democratic systems of government. It was pointed out at the time that the real Ludwig von Mises was a prominent participant in the historically praiseworthy but distinctly non-democratic Austrian governments that resisted and suppressed the growing Nazi and communist movements during the tumultuous interwar years of the 1920's and 30's. Palmer, in turn, responded as he usually does by calling this involvement "peripheral" and completely shutting off the comments on his blog to curtail any additional scrutiny of his hysterics. Except that Mises' historical involvement, which Palmer so flippantly dismissed as "peripheral" much as he dismissed von Mises' relationship with Otto von Habsburg, was anything but...
Mises and the Interwar Austrian Government
Ludwig von Mises was one of his country's leading intellectuals during the interwar period, and as such became an active and frequent economic advisor to the Austrian government, particularly during the Chancellorships of Fr. Ignaz Seipel and Dr. Englebert Dollfuss. Though relegated to obscurity today, Seipel and Dollfuss are noted to history for the bold, though unpopular, stances they took against the evils that were facing Austria during this period.
Neither Seipel nor Dollfuss are known for their devotion to popular "democracy" of the type that Palmer purports to identify with the legacy of Ludwig von Mises. Seipel (governed 1922-24 and 1926-29) was a committed philosophical monarchist. He utilized nearly unilateral power to attack Austria's inflationary crisis by abolishing the Austrian central bank and implementing monetary reforms against the wishes of his own party (a move he made incidentally on Ludwig von Mises' advice, see Mises' autobiographical Notes and Recollections, p. 79) In 1927 Seipel forcefully suppressed the Republikanischer Schutzbund, a communist paramilitary organization that aimed to overthrow the Austrian government. Dollfuss (governed 1932-1934) exercised even greater unilateral authority in 1933, when he adjourned the Austrian legislature to prevent the emerging Nazi party from seizing control of the government, banned the Nazi party and several communist organizations from Austria, and mobilized the military to forcefully suppress Nazi paramilitary forces. Dollfuss paid for this action with his life when he was assassinated by Nazi agents at Adolph Hitler's behest on July 25, 1934. Though the severity of these events was undoubtedly shaped by the emerging Nazi threat that Dollfuss and Seipel faced, neither man could be said a devotee of "libertarian" ideals that Palmer associates with the historical Ludwig von Mises. If anything, Seipel and Dollfuss were philosophically committed to the quasi-theocratic Catholic doctrine of corporatism laid out in the 1891 papal encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Mises was nonetheless active in the government of both chancellors in ways that extended far beyond the periphery. Mises became an economic advisor to Seipel shortly after the priest's election as Chancellor in 1922. Mises and fellow economist Wilhelm Rosenberg prevailed upon Seipel to curtail the Austrian government's intentional inflationary policy. Mises later wrote that Seipel "adopted fully my ideas about sound money" (Hulsmann, Mises: the Last Knight of Liberalism, p. 484). Shortly after Mises was appointed head of the Austrian Bureau of Claims and Settlements, where he immediately went to work placing students of the Austrian school in positions throughout the Austrian government's economic bureaus and ministries.
Mises would later state his admiration for Chancellor Seipel, writing:
The statesman differs from the demagogue in that he prefers right over that which brings applause. There wer not many politicians in Austria who thought that way. I have felt the highest respect for the high and honest character of this noble priest whose world view and conception of life remained alien to me. He was a great personality. (Notes and Recollections, p. 80).In January 1935 he unequivocally endorsed a continuation of Seipel's monetary reforms in a paper on Austrian financial policy. "What Seipel began must no be continued. A design for this has been provided through the collaboration of the economic circles. In 1930 an Economic Commission met in the Federal Chancellery that was composed of the representatives of the professions represented in the Chambers of Commerce, Trade, and Industry, int he Chambers of Agriculture, and in the Chambers of Workers and Employees. In December 1930 the tripartite editorial committee of this Economic Commission, to which the later Federal Chancellor Dr. Dollfuss belonged...published its report, the financial policy content of which is still valid." (Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, Vol. 2., Richard Ebeling, Ed. pp. 289-290)
This report had been written by Mises himself along with Dollfuss and Labor Minister Edmund Palla. The three together were the members of the tripartite committee of the Chancellery to which Mises referred.
Palmer's dismissal of Ludwig von Mises' interwar activities as "peripheral" demonstrates only his own ignorance of the life of the man he falsely purports to be defending against the Institute that bears his name and his wife Margit's sanction. Argument #3, which incidentally involves a particularly nasty insinuation against Mrs. Mises by Palmer, will be addressed in a coming installation.
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