316
FRANCIS GOLFFIN&
Production and consumption define, between them, man's funda–
mental experience, as they do for the Marxist. "Only the economic
gOOds are the substratum of action." Yet unlike the Marxists von
Mises assumes an unalterable basis for human action, and so for
the social process. "The category of action," he writes, "is logically
antecedent to any concrete act. The fact that man does not have
the creative power to imagine categories at variance with the funda–
mental logical relations and the principles of causality and teleology
enjoins upon us what may be called
methodological apriorism."
Man, then, is free to act within the conditions of his nature, which
is fixed. Part of that nature is his intelligence and purposefulness,
which dictate the terms on which action-both its means and ends
-is to be realized. But as praxeologist von Mises disclaims any in–
terest in the substantive ends of action; to define these is the office
of ethics or theology. What praxeology studies is the adjustment of
means to ends; more precisely, the rational use of rational means
to presumably rational ends. These ends are partly taken over
from Utilitarianism and partly from Aristotle, but since they are
irrelevant to his scheme von Mises never bothers to discuss, let alone
justify, them. The closest he comes to a definition is the following
statement, in his book on
Human Action:
"Strictly speaking, the
end, goal, or
aim
of any action is always the relief from a felt un–
easiness." This description, reminiscent both of Bentham's calculus
of pleasure and pain and of Freud's pleasure principle, is rather
negative and hence not very satisfactory, but it is as far as von
Mises will go. That relief from uneasiness is not only a basic but
also a reasonable stimulus to action nobody is likely to dispute.
Since his theory of action is neutral in terms of value, strictly
operational, he has understandably little use for history. "History
cannot teach us any general rule, principle or law. There is no
means to abstract from a historical experience a posteriori any
theories or theorems concerning human conduct and policies." That
settles the matter and von Mises is left free to develop his philoso–
phy of human action on an a priori basis.
It is obvious that such a "radical" position must invite trouble,
and that trouble is not far to seek. Von Mises never examines pres–
ent realities for what they are worth--cannot examine them, since
they are not within the operational field-and though he allows
