As the responses to his article show, the problem runs much deeper than what Tucker thinks. Catholics and others who deny the science of economics are suckers for Marxism.

“The revolt against reason was directed against another target. It did not aim at the natural sciences, but at economics. The attack against the natural sciences was only the logically necessary outcome of the attack against economics. It was impermissible to dethrone reason in one field only and not to question it in other branches of knowledge also.”

“The great upheaval was born out of the historical situation existing in the middle of the nineteenth century. The economists had entirely demolished the fantastic delusions of the socialist utopians… The communist ideas were done for. The socialists were absolutely unable to raise any objection to the devastating criticism of their schemes and to advance any argument in their favor. It seemed as if socialism was dead forever.

“Only one way could lead the socialists out of this impasse. They could attack logic and reason and substitute mystical intuition for ratiocination. It was the historical role of Karl Marx to propose this solution. Based on Hegcl’s dialectic mysticism he blithely arrogated to himself the ability to predict the future. Hegel pretended to know that Geist, in creating the universe, wanted to bring about the Prussian monarchy of Frederick William 111. But Marx was better informed about Geist’s plans. He knew that the final cause of historical evolution was the establishment of the socialist millennium.”

“There was still the main obstacle to overcome: the devastating criticism of the economists. Marx had a solution at hand. Human reason, he asserted, is constitutionally unfitted to find truth. The logical structure of mind is different with various social classes. There is no such thing as a universally valid logic. What mind produces can never be anything but “ideology,” that is in the Marxian terminology, a set of ideas disguising the selfish interests of the thinlter’s own social class. Hence, the “bourgeois” mind of the economists is utterly incapable of producing more than an apology for capitalism. The teachings of “bourgeois” science, an offshoot of “bourgeois” logic, are of no avail for the proletarians, the rising class destined to abolish all classes and to convert the earth into a Garden of Eden.”

Mises, Human Action

Luke, you make an interesting point. Mises was very anti-Christian, until his stay in the US. In Europe he knew only socialist Christians and that is what he reacted against. But in the US most of his supporters were devout Christians and as a result he took a second look. Later he became an avid reader of Barth and softened a great deal on Christianity. As with any great man, Mises had his flaws, but to dismiss his economics because of his early ideas about religion is to commit the ad hominem fallacy.

Hayek, Mises’ greatest student, was a huge cheerleader of the School of Salamanca, Spain and wanted to hold a meeting of his Montpelier society there in honor of those Catholic scholars. The research on the School of Salamanca came too late for Mises, but had it come earlier I’m certain he would have embraced it as Hayek did.