Foreword

This book, which reproduces Ralph Raico’s lectures on the history of liberalism at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is many things. First and foremost, it is a delightful tribute to a brilliant historian—and fine human being. Raico’s lifework encompassed a surprising range of scholarly activities: editor, lecturer, essayist, historian, and university professor. His massive knowledge and impressive mind were obvious to anyone who listened to his lectures, read his books and articles, or simply listened to his jokes and stories over dinner.

Ralph enjoyed a rare distinction in postwar America in that he studied extensively with both Mises and F.A. Hayek (he had already read Human Action at age fifteen!). During his sixty-five years as a student of liberty, he was closely affiliated with his longtime friend Mur-ray Rothbard. Apart from Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek, Ralph knew many, many other prominent liberty-minded scholars and intellectuals: Lew Rockwell, Milton Friedman, George Reisman, George Stigler, David Gordon, Alberto Mingardi, Hans Hoppe—to name a few. With many of them he worked closely in one capacity or another.

His scholarly activities as a working historian constitute an impressive life’s work. He wrote half a dozen books on libertarian ideas and history. His meticulous scholarship informed all of these. In particular, his work on nineteenth-century French and German liberalism was groundbreaking. Among the many insights he contributed to the school of Austrian economics and to the community of scholars of European history, his 1999 book Party of Freedom: Studies on the History of German Liberalism (published in German) stands as a remarkable historical contribution, rescuing, as it did, Eugen Richter and his circle

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8 Ralph Raico

of hard-nosed, libertarian-minded German liberals (and opponents of Bismarck) after many decades of neglect by historians. The same careful crafting and scholarship informed his array of articles and essays on a vast range of topics (a search of the Mises website alone yields 138 items!).

Among many notable passages from these lectures, Ralph’s brief comments on the personal styles of Mises and Hayek in disputation are especially interesting (lecture 6). Comparing the hard-nosed approach of Mises to the more “polite” style of Hayek in intellectual disputes, he concludes that Hayek’s willingness to assume the best of his “opponents” tended to soften Hayek’s arguments. Mises was famously perfectly willing to come out blazing in disputes. These comments appear in the context of Raico’s specific discussion of capitalism and the intellectuals. But they cause me to remember sitting in many group discussions with Ralph. Despite his urbane kindliness and wry wit, his approach was decidedly Misesian in serious discussions, both written and in person; like his mentor, Ludwig von Mises, Ralph was a lion in what the Middle Ages called disputation. Clearly, these lectures under-score the same fierce quality.

The volume at hand gives us vintage Ralph Raico in his roles of lecturer and professor. In these lectures he weaves together the daily life of the past, competing intellectual traditions, the history of the modern state, and the international background to create a broad and compelling narrative. He pulls no intellectual punches. But in these erudite talks, he presents to students a complex story in such a way that his mastery of learned disputes from a hundred, or from five hundred, years ago reaches us as living, breathing history.

Ralph’s treatment of history itself—one might say, historiography—will be especially meaningful to students and practitioners of history—that is to say, historians. Having deeply internalized the pre-cepts he found in Mises, his attention to the subjectivity of human action and individual choice, along with his emphasis on human liberty, provides the framework of every lecture. And his use of the tools of the historian (wide reading, intensive research, careful judgment of historical evidence) is displayed at every turn. More directly, his comments on revisionist history and the need for it (lecture 10) articulate the urgent necessity for the continual revision of the state’s party line. May these comments, and more generally this book, inspire all of us who seek to interpret the past in ways which truly challenge the myths left behind by state actors and their apologists.

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Finally, a note on the creation of this book. It is no easy task to translate the intricacies of spoken lectures such as these to the printed page. Ryan McMaken has done excellent work in bringing Ralph’s informal, often very humorous, lecturing style to print. It is a fine book, supremely accessible, yet full of deep insights from Ralph Raico, the leading libertarian historian of his generation.

T. HUNT TOOLEY

Sherman, Texas