|  In
the libertarian movement, Richard M. Ebeling has earned a laudable reputation
as a professor, writer, and editor. But what may turn out to be his
most memorable contribution to the history of libertarian thought is
an event that, were it a movie, might be called Indiana Jones Meets
Ludwig von Mises. It's a bit of intellectual archeology that involves
Nazis, the Soviet Army, and documents buried in a secret Moscow archive
for five decades.
It all started in 1996, when Ebeling traveled to Moscow. There, he uncovered
the "lost papers" of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises.
The papers (more than 10,000 pages in all) had been looted by Nazi soldiers
from von Mises' apartment in Vienna in 1938. At the end of World War
II, they were grabbed by the marauding Soviet Army and shipped to Moscow.
They were stored in a hidden archive for more than 50 years by Soviet
overlords who either had no idea of the explosive intellectual power
of what they had seized -- or understood it all too well.
Ebeling was able to procure photocopies of almost every page of the
priceless historic treasure, and bring them back to the United States.
Now, Ebeling is overseeing the translation of the lost papers. They
will be published in three volumes by the Liberty Fund (of Indianapolis,
Indiana) as Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises: The Political
Economy of International Reform and Reconstruction -- and will
help round out the historic legacy of a seminal figure in the history
of free-market thought.
While historical sleuthing may be the most exciting element of Ebeling's
resume, it is by no means his only accomplishment. As befitting his
rescue of von Mises' papers, Ebeling is the Ludwig von Mises Professor
of Economics at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is also
the president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), which
promotes individual freedom, private property, limited government, and
free trade. The Irvington-on-Hudson, New York-based FEE produces a monthly
magazine, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, publishes books, and
hosts seminars for adults and undergraduates. In addition, Ebeling serves
as vice president of academic affairs for the Virginia-based Future
of Freedom Foundation.
As a writer, Ebeling contributes monthly articles and book reviews in
the Future of Freedom Foundation's publication, Freedom Daily.
His articles have also appeared in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty,
Reason, Libertarian Review, Critical Review, Political Studies, The
Austrian Economics Newsletter, the American Journal of Economics
and Sociology, and other publications.
As an editor, he has overseen the books Money, Method and the Market
Process, Essays by Ludwig von Mises (1990); Austrian Economics:
A Reader (1991); The Global Collapse of Socialism (1992);
Global Free Trade: Rhetoric and Reality (1993); Can Capitalism
Cope? Free Market Reform in the Post-Communist World (1994); Disaster
in Red: The Failure and Collapse of Socialism (1995), and others.
He is working on an intellectual biography of von Mises.
Ebeling has also consulted with the government of Lithuania and with
members of the Russian Parliament on free-market reforms and the privatization
of socialist economies.
-- Bill Winter |
