"Men are fighting... because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being"
About this Quote
War, Mises suggests, is less a tragic accident than a perverse business plan: destroy the other side to secure your own comfort. The line is doing double duty. On the surface, it’s a bleak description of why people fight. Underneath, it’s an indictment of a particular kind of political imagination - one that confuses prosperity with domination and treats human beings as obstacles rather than potential trading partners.
As an economist of the Austrian school, Mises is preaching the moral logic of exchange: in a functioning market order, my gain doesn’t require your ruin. Violence enters when that logic collapses, usually because politics reframes the world as a zero-sum contest. “Convinced” is the giveaway word. He’s not saying extermination actually promotes well-being; he’s saying people can be sold the belief that it does. That points to propaganda, nationalism, racial ideology, and the seductive simplification of complex economic pain into a single scapegoat.
The context matters. Mises wrote in the shadow of Europe’s early-20th-century catastrophes, when modern states acquired unprecedented capacity to mobilize populations, police borders, and industrialize killing. His liberalism is not soft; it’s preventative. If you want fewer wars, don’t just plead for peace - build institutions and incentives where cooperation pays better than conquest, and where political leaders can’t convert economic anxiety into a mandate for elimination.
The sentence lands because it refuses heroic framing. No glory, no destiny - just a cold account of how “well-being” can be weaponized into a rationale for annihilation.
As an economist of the Austrian school, Mises is preaching the moral logic of exchange: in a functioning market order, my gain doesn’t require your ruin. Violence enters when that logic collapses, usually because politics reframes the world as a zero-sum contest. “Convinced” is the giveaway word. He’s not saying extermination actually promotes well-being; he’s saying people can be sold the belief that it does. That points to propaganda, nationalism, racial ideology, and the seductive simplification of complex economic pain into a single scapegoat.
The context matters. Mises wrote in the shadow of Europe’s early-20th-century catastrophes, when modern states acquired unprecedented capacity to mobilize populations, police borders, and industrialize killing. His liberalism is not soft; it’s preventative. If you want fewer wars, don’t just plead for peace - build institutions and incentives where cooperation pays better than conquest, and where political leaders can’t convert economic anxiety into a mandate for elimination.
The sentence lands because it refuses heroic framing. No glory, no destiny - just a cold account of how “well-being” can be weaponized into a rationale for annihilation.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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