Title page from Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

Published in 1944, during World War II, Omnipotent Government was written and published after Mises arrived in the United States. In this volume Mises provides in economic terms an explanation of the international conflicts that caused both world wars. Mises’s main theme still stands: government interference in the economy leads to conflicts and wars. According to Mises, the last and best hope for peace is liberalism—the philosophy of liberty, free markets, limited government, and democracy.

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Key Quotes

Socialism & Interventionism

The most important event in the history of the last hundred years is the displacement of liberalism by etatism. Etatism appears in two forms: socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state, the social apparatus of compulsion…

Socialism & Interventionism

The prices set on the unhampered market correspond to an equilibrium of demand and supply. Everybody who is ready to pay the market price can buy as much as he wants to buy. Everybody who is ready to sell at the market price can sell as much as he wants to sell. If the government, without a…

The State

It has been necessary to dwell upon these truisms because the mythologies and metaphysics of etatism have succeeded in wrapping them in mystery. The state is a human institution, not a superhuman being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion. He who says: There should be a law concerning…