Chapter ǴǸ: Ļe Moral Element in Mises’sHuman Action ȃȄȄapproving social cooperation, questions of social organization and the
conduct of social action are not problems of ultimate principles and of
world views, but ideological issues. Ļey are technical problems with
regard to which some arrangement is always possible. No party would
wittingly prefer social disintegration, anarchy, and a return to primitive
barbarism to a solution which must be bought at the price of the sacrifice
of some ideological points. (ȀȈȃȈ/ȀȈȅȅ, p.ȀȇȀ)řŕşőş ōŚŐ ŚōŠšŞōŘ ŞŕœŔŠş
Mises’s own position on natural law and rights is an embarrassment for
some of his disciples. Nature is alien to the idea of right and wrong,
he observes, questioning the notion of an eternally established standard.
Right and wrong are utilitarian judgments. As for natural law, people
deduce clashing implications from their arbitrary notions of it. “De lege
ferendathere is no such a thing as justice. Ļe notion of justice can log-
ically only be resorted tode lege lata.” In enacting or changing laws, the
issue is not justice but social expediency and social welfare. “Ļere is nei-
ther right nor wrong outside the social nexus.... Ļe idea of justice always
refers to social cooperation” (MisesȀȈȃȈ/ȀȈȅȅ, pp.Ȇȁǿ–ȆȁȀ).
Utilitarian philosophy and classical economics have nothing to do
with the doctrine of natural rights, says Mises. All that matters for them
is social utility. Mises even quotes Bentham on the “nonsense” of natu-
ral rights. Utilitarians recommend democratic government, private prop-
erty, freedom, and equality under the law not on illusory grounds of nat-
ural law and human equality but because they are beneficial (ȀȈȃȈ/ȀȈȅȅ,
p.ȃȆȄ).
Elsewhere,ȀMises insisted, “Utilitarian Liberalism had nothing to do
with these natural rights fictions. Ļe Utilitarians themselves must be cred-
ited with the merit of having once and for all refuted them” (ȀȈȈǿ, p.ȁȁȇ).
To quote Henry Hazlitt, who wrote largely under Mises’s inspiration,
the inviolability of rights rests “not ... on some mystical yet self-evident
‘law of nature’... [but] ultimately (though it will shock many to hear this)
on utilitarian considerations” (ȀȈȅȃ, p.ȁȅȃ).
Some of the formulations quoted above are sharper than I myself
would have expressed them, but Mises was nothing if not forthright. Pre-
cisely because human rights and human dignity are important values, they
ȀAȀȈȃȄessay commenting on ideas not only of natural law, but also of government
by social contract.