http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionismBetween capitalism and socialism, is there a stable middle way? In these six essays from the 1920s, translated by Hans F. Sennholz, Ludwig von Mises argues there is not.Writing as government intervention was becoming the reigning policy of Europe and America, he shows that isolated measures like price ceilings and minimum wages fail on their own terms: a controlled price empties the shelves, and each intervention calls forth the next, until the economy is either freed or fully socialized.Along the way Mises takes on the German "Socialists of the Chair," traces how a self-styled "anti-Marxism" absorbed the very ideas it claimed to oppose, and weighs proposals to nationalize credit. The result is one of his sharpest cases for economic law—and against the interventionist state.enLudwig von MisesSerialnohttps://cdn.mises.org/images/2026-07/Interventionism_2400_1.jpghttp://mises.orgMises Institutemisesmedia@gmail.comhttp://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/forewordMargit von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 07:53:02 -0500145482Margit von Mises introduces the collection, recalling that these essays date from the 1920s and noting that the final essay was added to the later German edition.

]]>noBiographies, Interventionism1http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/introductionHans F. SennholzMon, 13 Jul 2026 07:57:05 -0500145483Hans F. Sennholz, the translator, lays out Mises’s target—the belief in a “third system” of a hampered market economy standing between capitalism and socialism—and why that middle way cannot hold.

]]>noEconomic Policy, Interventionism, Socialism2http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/prefaceLudwig von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 07:59:59 -0500145484Mises’s 1929 preface, written in Vienna for the original German edition, presenting the essays as a sustained critique of interventionism, then the reigning economic policy across Europe and America.

]]>noEconomic Policy, Interventionism3http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/interventionismLudwig von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 08:09:11 -0500145485The central essay: interventionism as a supposed economic system, the real nature of intervention, and how price ceilings, minimum wages, and similar measures defeat their own aims—leaving only a choice between the free market and socialism.

]]>noInterventionism, Price Controls, Socialism4http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/hampered-market-economyLudwig von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 08:28:02 -0500145486Mises examines the doctrine of a “hampered” or regulated market as a distinct third system and answers Schmalenbach’s thesis that free enterprise was giving way to a bound economy.

]]>noEconomic Policy, Interventionism, Planning5http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/social-liberalismLudwig von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 08:58:27 -0500145487A critique of the German “Socialists of the Chair” and their social policy—by way of the Methodenstreit, the clash of control versus economic law, and Max Weber—showing how “social liberalism” abandons liberalism itself.

]]>noLiberalism, Other Schools of Thought, Philosophy and Methodology6http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/anti-marxismLudwig von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 09:01:20 -0500145488How German “anti-Marxism,” including national (anti-Marxian) socialism, absorbed the very Marxian ideas it claimed to oppose, with Werner Sombart as the case study of a thinker Marxist and anti-Marxist by turns.

]]>noOther Schools of Thought, Political Theory, Socialism7http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/theory-price-controlsLudwig von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 09:38:25 -0500145489Mises’s focused analysis of price controls: why fixing prices produces shortages and demands for still more controls, and what that reveals for the theory of social organization as a whole.

]]>noInterventionism, Price Controls, Prices8http://mises.org/podcasts/critique-interventionism/nationalization-creditLudwig von MisesMon, 13 Jul 2026 10:21:34 -0500145491The essay added later to the collection: a critique of proposals to nationalize banking and credit, weighing bureaucratic against profit management and warning of credit overexpansion and immobilization.

]]>noBureaucracy and Regulation, Interventionism, Money and Banking9