Mises on the State Theory of Money (1912)

Found in The Theory of Money and Credit

In his path-breaking book The Theory of Money and Credit (1912) the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) contrasts two very different ways by which money gets its value - either by “the command of the state”, or “on the estimation of commerce”:

Another acatallactic doctrine seeks to explain the value of money by the command of the state. According to this theory the value of money rests on the authority of the highest civil power, not on the estimation of commerce. The law commands, the subject obeys. This doctrine can in no way be fitted into a theory of exchange; for apparently it would have a meaning only if the state fixed the actual level of the money prices of all economic goods and services as by means of general price regulation. Since this cannot be asserted to be the case, the state theory of money is obliged to limit itself to the thesis that the state command establishes only the Geltung or validity of the money in nominal units, but not the validity of these nominal units in commerce.

Mises path-breaking book The Theory of Money and Credit was first published in German 100 years ago in 1912. It became a foundation stone in the emerging “Austrian” theory of money and later to the Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle which was developed by Mises, Friedrich Hayek and others. Mises’ innovation in “Money and Credit” was to apply the subjectivist theory of value and price to money and banking which led to a number of important insights such as the fact that money emerges spontaneously out of economic activity without any need for intervention by the state. In an Appendix to the book Mises devotes a short essay to the historical view which he opposed, namely “The State Theory of Money”, from which this quotation comes. Much of what Mises wrote in 1912 was prescient in a way he could not have conceived of at the time. He was about to live through one of the greatest inflationary periods in history brought about by the massive debts and expenditures caused by the demands of fighting the World War and the crude attempts to pay off these debts after the conflict ended by dramatically expanding the supply of money, especially in Weimar Germany in 1923. Mises played an important policy role in Austria during this period thus adding practical experience to his deep theoretical insights.