Chapter ǴǷ: Mises and His Critics on Ethics, Rights, and Law ȃȁȆforestall embarrassment, it is better not to argue any case but simply to
postulate freedom as a supreme value. Admittedly, someone who mounts
no arguments need fear no refutations; but why, then, should he expect
anyone to pay attention? As for freedom’s supposedly just happening, as a
bonus, to promote “the well-being of society,” Mises might well ask what
could constitute that well-being except the well-being of individuals. And
how, apart from entering into or contributing to their well-being, could
freedom be a supreme value?
Murray Rothbard repeatedly criticizes utilitarianism, including Mises’s
formulations. One of his criticisms is similar to Vaughn’s. Ļe utilitarian
will rarely adopt a principle as an absolute and consistent yardstick to
apply to the varied concrete situations of the real world. He will only
use a principle, at best, as a vague guideline or aspiration, as atendency
which he may choose to override at any time.... [N]ineteenth-century
laissez-faire liberals came to use laissez-faire as a vague tendency rather
than as an unblemished yardstick, and therefore increasingly and fatally
compromised the libertarian creed. To say that a utilitarian cannot be
“trusted” to maintain libertarian principle in every specific application
may sound harsh, but it puts the case fairly. A notable contemporary
example is ... Professor Milton Friedman who ... holds to freedom as
against state intervention as a general tendency, but in practice allows
a myriad of damaging exceptions, exceptions which serve to vitiate the
principle almost completely. (RothbardȀȈȆȂ, p.ȁȃ)Ļis charge is first, and rather inconsistently, utilitarian itself: utili-
tarianism tempts its adherents into considering and sometimes even rec-
ommending unwise, nonlibertarian, policies. Second, the charge suggests
that an alternative philosophical stance can guard its adherents from
falling into error. Unfortunately, no doctrine can provide such built-in
protection against its being misunderstood or misused or improperly set
aside. It is an illegitimate test of a doctrine to expect it to do what no
doctrine can do. Nothing can substitute for the constant discipline of fact
and logic.
Rothbard called Mises “an opponent of objective ethics” (ȀȈȆȅ, p.ȀǿȄ).
I wonder if this is a fair description. Certainly Mises was not an ethi-
cal relativist or nihilist, scornful of all judgments of right and wrong and
complacent about however individuals might behave, even violating the
rights of others, in pursuit of narrow and short-run self-interest. On the
contrary, Mises was concerned with whether behavior and precepts of