Omnipotent Government - Generic Cover

Printed in 1985 (reprint of the 1944/1969 edition)

At the close of the Second World War, Mises saw the destruction of the old world and the beginnings of a new one that did not look promising, especially for European politics. Socialism appeared to sweep all before it, and the social democratic variety in the West was not much of an improvement. Mises set out to explain and bitterly denounce the trends toward the total state, and demonstrate that Communism and Nazism were both species of interventionism.

In some ways, this might be the most bitterly anti-Nazi book ever written, especially powerful because it reaches to the very core of the Nazi doctrine and its economic implications for national policy. The awesome reasoning power on display here is made all the more effective with Mises's rhetorical fury. Mises never wrote a more emotionally charged work. The Hitler regime was, after all, the country that invaded his beloved Austria and sent him into flight to Geneva and then finally America.

Though Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom was more widely promoted, and achieved a far greater fame, this Mises work, which appeared in the same year, offers a more consistent critique of industrial central planning, warfare, and the welfare state. There are no concessions to the prevailing social democratic consensus, and Mises is no less harsh on interventionism of the democratic form. The last chapter is a prescient critique of the idea of world government, including world trade agreements.

This volume includes:

• Part I. The Collapse of German Liberalism
  • I. German Liberalism
    • The Ancien Regime and Liberalism
    • The Weakness of German Liberalism
    • The Prussian Army
    • The Constitutional Conflict in Prussia
    • The "Little German" Program
    • The Lassalle Episode
  • II. The Triumph of Militarism
    • The Prussian Army in the New German Empire
    • German Militarism
    • The Liberals and Militarism
    • The Current Explanation of the Success of Militarism
• Part II. Nationalism
  • III. Etatism
    • The New Mentality
    • The State
    • The Political and Social Doctrines of Liberalism
    • Socialism
    • Socialism in Russia and in Germany
    • Interventionism
    • Etatism and Protectionism
    • Economic Nationalism and Domestic Monopoly Prices
    • Autarky
    • German Protectionism
  • IV. Etatism and Nationalism
    • The Principle of Nationality
    • The Linguistic Group
    • Liberalism and the Principle of Nationality
    • Aggressive Nationalism
    • Colonial Imperialism
    • Foreign Investment and Foreign Loans
    • Total War
    • Socialism and War
  • V. Refutation of Some Fallacious Explanations
    • The Shortcomings of Current Explanations
    • The Alleged Irrationality of Nationalism
    • The Aristocratic Doctrine
    • Misapprehended Darwinism
    • The Role of Chauvinism
    • The Role of Myths
• Part III. German Nazism
  • VI. The Peculiar Characteristics of German Nationalism
    • The Awakening
    • The Ascendency of Pan-Germanism
    • German Nationalism Within an Etatist World
    • A Critique of German Nationalism
    • Nazism and German Philosophy
    • Polylogism
    • Pan-Germanism and Nazism
  • VII. The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany
    • The Legend
    • Marxism and the Labor Movement
    • The German Workers and the German State
    • The Social Democrats Within the German Caste System
    • The Social Democrats and War
  • VIII. Anti-Semitism and Racism
    • The Role of Racism
    • The Struggle Against the Jewish Mind
    • Interventionism and Legal Discrimination Against Jews
    • The "Stab in the Back"
    • Anti-Semitism as a Factor in International Politics
  • IX. The Weimar Republic and Its Collapse
    • The Weimar Constitution
    • The Abortive Socialization
    • The Armed Parties
    • The Treaty of Versailles
    • The Economic Depression
    • Nazism and German Labor
    • The Foreign Critics of Nazism
  • X. Nazism as a World Problem
    • The Scope and Limitations of History
    • The Fallacy of the Concept of "National Character"
    • Germany's Rubicon
    • The Alternative
• Part IV. The Future of Western Civilization
  • XI. The Delusions of World Planning
    • The Term "Planning"
    • The Dictatorship Complex
    • A World Government
    • Planned Production
    • Foreign Trade Agreements
    • Monetary Planning
    • Planning International Capital Transactions
  • XII. Peace Schemes
    • Armament Control
    • A Critique of Some Other Schemes Proposed
    • The Union of the Western Democracies
    • Peace in Eastern Europe
    • The Problems of Asia
    • The Role of the League of Nations