Human Action

By Ludwig von Mises

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Human Action is a unique work of economics.  No where else will you find a foundation approach to the philosophy of economics and the social sciences, economic and general value theory, a case for the impossibility of socialism, a theory of the business cycle, and numerous other topics covered in one book.  It is this wide scope and fastidious attention to detail that brings new readers to Mises’s work every year.  In fact, Human Action is still as revolutionary and iconoclastic in the ideas it presents as it was when it was published in 1949. 

In his masterpiece, Mises develops what he calls “praxeology” or a science of human action.  This science, which basically consists of all the disciplines that we would consider in the realm of social science, is based on the rational working out of the logical implications of the fact that choosing men will always choose to improve their condition by attempting to satisfy their ends, whatever those may be.  Mises also develops a complex, comprehensive account of the implications of the nature of time, human ignorance, and the subjectivity of value, all of which play an important role in his economic system.  Mises then spend the rest of the book methodically working out the implications of his basic assumptions in the realm of price theory, a theory of interest, the business cycle, and international trade among many other topics.  There is basically no important issue in economics that is left untouched by Mises’s economic theory. 

Human Action is not only primarily a work of economics, however.  It is also a profound contribution to the philosophy of the social sciences as well as a staunch defense of Classical Liberal principles and individual liberty.  A student of the science of liberty coming to this work for the first time would be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive and profound text to wrestle with and to learn from.  Mises is more interesting and insightful when he is in error than most thinkers are when they are correct.