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Mis e s and Hayek DehomogenizedJoseph T. Salerno*

A Man of Principle: Essays in Honor o f H an s Z? SennholzJohn W . Robbins and Mark Spangler, eds. Grove City,Pennsylvania: Grove City College Press, 1992.

n important contributing factor to the resurgence of Autr ian economics in the 1970s was the appearance of a hanful of articles which drew the attention of the economi

profession to the distinctiveness of the tradition of economic theori

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the scholarly conferences on Austrian economics held annually btween 1974-and 1976, th is article and the others mentioned abobroadened and reinforced recognition of and interest in contemporaAustrian economics as a n alternative to the prevailing neoclassicparadigm.

But the Mengerian tradition was developed in very differedirections by his brilliant followers, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk aFriedrich von Wieser, and by their own students and followeWithout tracing out this doctrinal development in any detail, suffii t to say that today the term "Austrian economics" s used to designatwo very different paradigms. One derives from Wieser and may termed the "Hayekian" paradigm, because it represents an elabotion and systematization of the views held by F. A. Hayek, a studeof Wieser's at the University of Vienna. Although it is yet to generally recognized by Austrians, Wieser's influence on Hayek w

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The Hayekian paradigm stresses the fragmentat ion of knowledge aits dispersion among the multitude of individual consumers aproducers a s the primary problem of social an d economic cooperatiand views the market's price system a s the means by which sudispersed knowledge is ferreted out and communicated to the revant decision-makers in th e production process.4

The other paradigm is the "Misesian" paradigm, so called becauLudwig von Mises was the first to systematically expound it. Thparadigm represents a development of Bohm-Bawerk's thought afocuses on monetary calculation using actual market prices as tnecessary precondition for the rational allocation of resources witha n economic system featuring specialization and division of labor.

Unfortunately, the majority of those who currently regard themselves as "Austrian economists" have failed to recognize the conserable differences between the se two paradigms. And because Mis

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predecessor's.6 The result is that attention has been deflected frothe Misesian paradigm, and those seeking to deepen and extendhave found i t increasingly difficult to gain recognition for their owefforts or to channel the interests and efforts of younger Austriascholars into the same endeavor. There thu s currently exists a presing need, especially for Misesians, to undertake the task of a courgeous and thoroughgoing doctrinal dehomogenization of Hayek anMises.

Evidence of this need is presented in some of the contributionsth is Festschrift honoring Hans Sennholz-ironically, a student Mises's whose writings on most topics fall squarely within the Miesian paradigm. While this volume contains many informative, istructive, or inspiring papers by individuals who have been assocated with Dr. Sennholz in various capacities or who have beeprofoundly influenced by his prodigious and insightful writings on

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and is thus incapable of analyzing "those systematic market proesses which are so central to Misesian economics" (p. 244).While Kirzner still ascribes a central role to the concept

purposefulness in his re interpretation of Mises, it is a concept purgof explicit reference to economizing and choice and completely redfined in terms of alertness and discovery. Thus for Kirzner, "tpurposefulness of human action . . . is the essential key to tdiscovery by agents tha t they a re in fact not in the 'given situationwhich they had hitherto assumed to be relevant," and it is t"purposefulness which defines and identifies conscious human ation" tha t motivates "alertness to the dynamic world in which we liv(pp. 245, 247). These essential attributes of purposefulness asummed up elsewhere by Kirzner in the s tatement t ha t "purposihuman action involves a posture of aler tness toward the discovery as yet unperceived opportunities and their e ~ ~ l o i t a t i o n . " ~o be su r

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to Kirzner's 1960 book, Kirzner responds that Mises did not "explitly articulate" the insights yielded by this perspective and therefomay well have believed that what was implicit in his own positiowas also implicit in Kirzner's "superficial exposition" of that positioOr, alternatively and even less plausibly, Kirzner speculates thMises himself may not have been consciously aware of these mometous implications of his own thought (p. 249, n. 1).I would like to suggest however that the simplest and moplausible explanation for Mises's uncensorious Foreword is the corect one: Kirzner's concluding chapter gave a full and accurate expcation of what Mises knew to be his own "economic point of viewwhose central element Mises himself repeatedly and explicitly chaacterized as purposive human action describable in terms of choiand the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Moreover, contraryKirzner's contention, Mises did indeed succeed in deducing from th

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of monetary profit. These calculations permit his ranking of talternative investments under consideration, which then enablhim to purposefully and efficiently allocate his resources at tmoment of choice.

Thus, for Mises, the moment of choice coincides with the emegence of a value scale t h a t i s t h e raison dJetre an d consummatioof the actor's previous "discoveryn activi ties and that provides tframework for purposive behavior. Choice and action can only be coceived as occurring within such a "a given situation." Contrary Kirzner's later interpretation of Mises, discovery cannot serve as tcore of the central axiom in a praxeological system, precisely becauthere is no possibility of inferring from i t the "given situation" prereuisite to the moment of choice. Abeing who is ever seeking to "discovchanges that have occurred" in his s itua tion can never act on thodiscoveries because he is incapable of creating the framework f

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tha t the entrepreneur desires to efficiently allocate his resources service of his goal of maximizing profit (and ultimately, utility) thdrives both his quest for understanding of future market conditioand, when th is quest culminates i n the purposive choice of productioprocesses, the dynamic market process.

But what of Kirzner's claim that a theorematic system derivfrom a concept of purposefulness lacking an independent discovedimension is unable to elucidate "those dynamic processes througwhich the market absorbs and responds to exogenous changes" anwhich are central to Misesian economics (p. 245). In fact Misesicatallactics is exactly the spinning out of th e implications of purposful behavior engaged in by individuals who perceive the benefits specialization and exchange described by the law of comparatiadvantage and whose productive activities are oriented by monetacalculation to sat isfying anticipated consumer demands in the chea

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formulated his catallactic theory, based on Bohm-Bawerkian pritheory and his own theory of the promoter-entrepreneur, to analythe operation of this process. For purposes of arguing that Kirzneview of the market process has much more in common with Haythan Mises, allow me to briefly enumerate the most salient featurof Mises's understanding of the dynamic market process as toutcome of calculable actions.I focus first on the characteristics of the prices that are generatby the market process and serve as the data for economic calculatioThese are realized prices; or, in other words, they are the actuoutcome of the historical market process a t each moment in time anare determined by the value scales of the marginal pairs in eamarket. They are, therefore, also market-clearing prices the estalishment of which coincides with a momentary situation, whMises calls the "plain sta te of rest" (PS R), '~ n which no mark

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about current conditions is necessarily incomplete and arbitraprocesses do not operate i n s t a n t a n e o ~ s l ~ . ' ~Second, for Mises, the market process is open-ended and etrepreneurial. It is open-ended because the continual exogenochanges in the economic data preclude it from ever reaching a s taof long-run equilibrium or what Mises refers to as a "final state restn (FSR), in which all commodity prices and the purchasing powof money are perfectly arbitraged, speculative holding of commodistocks is absent, and profits and losses have been completely eradcated.15 The FSR is an imaginary construct that enables the econmist to isolate and describe the entire sequence of adjustment, incluing the time-consuming reorientation of the production structuwhich results from a given change in the economic data. In FSanalysis, the economist begins with an initial FSR, introduces aalteration in the data, i.e., in tastes, technology, money supply, et

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the reallocations of productive resources undertaken by entreprneurs seeking to exploit anticipated profit opportunities-if anwhen such profits are realized-result in a relatively improvstate of want satisfaction for consumers; or it can mean that tcomplex of autonomous yet coordinated choices and actions thconstitute the marke t process, a t any given moment in historictime, is aimed at establishing an optimum state of consumsatisfaction and would eventua te in such a sta te in the absencefurther change in th e data.

But despite its usefulness, FSR analysis was never intended bMises to provide a grasp of the function of the entrepreneur "promoter," whose activities drive the open-ended market proceactually unfolding in time. For Mises, the promoter concept gobeyond the category of the pure entrepreneur derived from thaction axiom, and its construction embodies cognition of a fund

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course of a ceteris paribus or "systematic" (as Kirzner terms market process smoothly progressing toward the FSR.Third, and finally, Mises conceives the market process as coor

native, "the essence of coordination of all elements of supply andemand."" This means that the structure of realized (disequilibriuprices, which continually emerges in the course of the market proceand whose elements a re employed for monetary calculation, performthe indispensable function of clearing all markets and, in the procecoordinating the productive employments and combinations of aresources with one another and with the anticipated preferences consumers. Such "price coordination," by insuring that scarce rsources are secured by the entrepreneurs bidding the highest pricealso insures that at each instant Bohm-Bawerk's "Law of Costprevails, that is, that the constellation of resource prices themerges on a market unhampered by legal restrictions always r

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in the affected markets, they do not in any way alter the coordinatiquality of the market process.21From the Misesian perspective, price coordination is thus t

very essence of the market and a necessary attribute of its reexistence. As such it is an ex post concept. In the absence of pricoordination, e.g., in a regime of all-around price controls, the alloction of scarce resources within the social system of want satisfactibecomes purposeless and chaotic. The concept of equilibration, on tother hand, is an ex an te concept expressing recognition that entrpreneurs responding to the lure of expected monetary profits seekanticipate and remove the continually emerging maladjustmenbetween means and ends and that their success in doing so wouculminate in a state of optimum satisfaction, i.e., nonaction. Equibration therefore presupposes price coordination in the same wthat, in a nonsocial process of individual want satisfaction, purpos

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above. The latter concept, as I have argued, refers to a realizcoordination of all the disparate and contingent individual buyinand selling plans underlying the market demand and supply curvth at actually exist a t any given moment in a changing and uncertaworld. Plan coordination, on the o ther hand, describes an imaginasituation in which automatons endlessly repeat a logically consistepat tern of actions, a situation that is akin to the perfect adaptatiof the elements of a completely robotized factory to one another.

In fact, Kirzner's discovery perspective does not originate Mises's concept of human action but in Hayek's conception of tmarket as a means for disseminating the knowledge which systematically guides decentralized and initially ignorant decision-maketoward a full, ex ante coordination of their various production aconsumption plans.23But since ex an te plan coordination can only achieved in long-run equilibrium-is a condition defining such equ

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substitutes for detailed qualitative knowledge of past and futumarket conditions in guiding the production process holds true. producer-arbitrageurs act to exploit newly-discovered discrepancibetween prevailing input and output prices, ignorance of mutualbeneficial exchange opportunities among market participants meaurably diminishes, the buying and selling plans of individuals aprogressively coordinated (in the ex ante sense), and prices are sytematically driven toward their final equilibrium values.

Once we drop the assumption of an absence of exogenous chanin analyzing the market process, Kirzner's characterizations of tentrepreneur a s an alert discoverer of existing opportunities, of tmarket process as the means for plan coordination, and of realizprices as a surrogate for qualitative knowledge about the economdata all fall to the ground. And th is we indeed must do in interpretinMises, because he does not employ such a n assumption for analyzi

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128 The Review of Austrian Economics Vol. 6, No

of Capital, he argued that the "justification" of the concept of equlibrium "is not th at i t allows us to explain why real conditions shouever in any degree approximate towards a s tate of equilibrium, bthat observation shows tha t they do to some extent so approximaand th at the functioning of the existing economic system will depeon the degree to which i t approaches such a condition."25Affirmithe "tendency" of market prices to conform to thei r equilibrium leveHayek clearly indicates that he considers the historical market usually operate in close proximity to the equilibrium s tate . Thus defines "tendency" in the following terms: "A given phenomenon mtend to [approximate towards] a certain magnitude if in a grenumber of cases i t may be expected to be fairly near t hat magnitudeven if the re is no reason to expect th a t i t will ever actually reachhowever long the time allowed for the ad j u ~ t m e n t . " ~ ~

Indeed, as Hayek points out , i n order for prices to fulfill the

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economies display."28 But, if this i s t he case, Kirzner must logicaconclude, which he does not, that market economies are not veefficient at all, because h e has already argued th at t he market procenever proceeds very f ar toward the ideally efficient stat e of perfeplan c oo rd in a t i ~ n .~ ~his point aside, Kirzner's theory of the discoerer-entrepreneur, whose activities systematically drive markprices toward thei r equilibrium configuration, can be viewed a s attempt to liberate Hayek's notion of catallactic efficiency as th eante coordination of decentralized plans from its dependence upthe vague and untenable assumption of proximal equilibrium as tnormal state of the historical market economy. However, Kirznerattempt itself implicitly invokes the ideas of quiescent calendperiods which separate successive exogenous shocks and duriwhich equilibrating endogenous changes are given scope to wothemselves out to some extent.

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In the alternative interpretation of Mises's view of the markprocess that I have been expounding, the notion of allocative eciency has nothing to do with the Hayekian criterion of plan coornation. Rather, it derives from an analysis of principles of purposefbehavior. Thus, from the ex ante standpoint, the market economyperfectly efficient, because entrepreneurial decisions based upomonetary calculation always result in the appraisement and alloction of resources in strict accordance with anticipated consumpreferences, in the same manner in which the choices of a n individuactor produce a pattern of resource use reflecting his value rankinof expected satisfactions. Thus the Bohm-Bawerkian law of cosaccording to which the money price of each and every resource alwacorresponds to the lowest appraised of the employments for which available quantity just suffices, i.e., its expected marginal revenproduct, is the perfect catallactic equivalent of the law of margin

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because it enables individuals to calculate and therefore to mameaningfully choices to reap the overwhelming benefits described the law of comparative advantage and not because it yields absoluor approximate certitude about the outcomes of these choices (whiis, in any event, also denied to autarkic choosers). In sum, tunhampered market is socially efficient because it provides tincentive for social action by establishing a tight producer-consumnexus that gives full sway to consumer choice in determining tallocation of resource^.^^ On the other hand, any coercive interventiointo the market, which necessarily distorts or annuls its intricacalculational nexus coordinating consumer preferences and etrepreneurial choices, ipso facto generates a less efficient allocatiof resources, i.e., one that does not completely and exclusively reflethe anticipated preferences of the participants in the social divisiof labor, and lowers social welfare. We may thus conclude that eve

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132 The Review ofAustrian Economics El. 6, No

from the market the relatively unastute and inefficient entreprneurs while transferring the power to choose the best uses antechnical combinations of productive resources to the more farsightand technically proficient entrepreneurs.33

In th e Kirznerian interpretation there is no clear and meaningfdistinction drawn between ex an te and ex post efficiency because tentrepreneur as h o m o q u a e r e n s never confronts the moment choice, which would involve him in the purposeful allocation resources or "Robbinsian economizing." Nor, for the same reason, cthe historical market process in th is interpretation possess a meaof systematically eliminating less successful entrepreneurs and shiing control over productive processes to the more successful. Nevburdened with the necessity of choos ing , discoverer-entrepreneuneed never place any resources a t risk of loss in de c id in g to seizeprofit opportunity. In criticizing the term "decision-making" whi

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process that provides the objective data for economic calculatioAccording to Mises, such an endeavor mus t begin with "that brilliaachievement of the classical economists . . . essentially a theory calculated action" and then broaden i t into a "a system dealing wiall human choices, a general theory of action."36 Elsewhere Miswrote that "supply and demand are only the links in a chain phenomena, one end of which has . . . visible manifestation in tmarket, while the other is anchored deep in the human mind."37fur ther indication that Mises perceived the task of modern economito be that of explicating the connection between individual purpoand the objective catallactic foundations of society is Mises's letter Hayek in which he relates t hat he was initially undecided whether entitle his mag num opus Hum an Action or Social Cooperat ion.Richard M. Ebeling's contribution to the volume "Variations othe Demand for Money Theme: Ludwig von Mises and Some Twen

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134 TheReview of Austrian Economics Vol. 6, No

economic community is nothing but the sum of the demands fmoney of the individual economic agents composing it." 38 While sua seemingly innocuous aggregate of homogeneous quantities mvery well violate some unwritten canon of the Hayekian "~ubjec tivparadigm, Mises clearly recognized that without reference to tdemand for and supply of money it would be impossible to carry othe core of his own research program: integrating value and monetatheory to permit the explanation of the unified structure of monprices whose existence is the sine qua non for economic calculatioand the purposeful allocation of resources within the framework an economy based upon the division of labor.

In support of his anti-aggregation interpretation, Ebeling aduces Mises's insights that: (1) the purchasing power of money is na single price but an array of the alternative quantities of the variogoods which the monetary unit commands in exchange and (2)chang

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on to write that the type of monetary theory whose development looks forward to "will be no longer a theory of the value of money general, but a theory of the influence of money on the different ratiof exchange between goods of all kinds."42 Lest i t be thought thHayek is here objecting only to the concept of a statis tical price levit should be noted that his critique of Menger and Mises was advancdespite his explicit recognition that thei r notion of the general valof money ". . . has nothing to do with any measurable value, in tsense of some price By challenging the very notion of tgeneral purchasing power of money, Hayek, of course, is implying tuselessness of the concept of an aggregate demand for money.44

In contrast to the Wieser-Hayek position,45however, Mises het h a t th e socia l appra i seme nt of product ive fac tors via etrepreneurial competition in resource markets, which is the vebasis of economic calculation and purposive action, can only proce

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not perfect, indicator of the ir likely future configuration. For Hayei t is only when th e money spending stream expands or shri nks t hi t has a nonneu tral impact on the economy by causing reversibchanges in the ruling bart er ra te s of exchange and jarring teconomy temporarily out of its proximal equilibrium. For Mises, th e other hand, it is only the existence of a real and tangible mediuof exchange, with a market and, hence, a driving force all its owthat permits the operation of market processes a t all. From Misestandpoint, then, i t is not the inescapable fact of money's inconstency with a n imaginary state approximating equilibrium but montary intervention misdirecting the dynamic appraisement procethat falsifies entrepreneurial calculations, undermines efficient rsource allocation, and discoordinates the economy.

Sanford Ikeda's contribution, entitled "The Dynamics of Goverment Intervention: Theory and Implications" (pp. 201-121, is

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that there may be "unforeseen" long-run consequences of any intevention, he attributes them not to an inevitable and irremediabcondition associated with the Hayekian "knowledge problem," butantisocial and deliberately obscurantist ideologies that blind tmasses to the conclusions of economic theory.

Moreover, Mises's analysis of the interventionist process does npreclude the possibility tha t the proponents of an intervention reconize and intend i ts generally unforeseen consequences. Thus uniosupport minimum wage laws precisely because these laws prilow-skilled workers out of the labor market and increase the demafor skilled union workers, while bureaucrats manning municiprent-control boards may welcome the growing apartment shortaresulting from rent control because i t increases their power, prestigand the value of the favors they can bestow. Indeed, i t is precisely tgoal of many radical environmental ists to cripple capital formati

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138 The Review of Austrian Economics Vol. 6, N o

ing on the resource costs of supplying the medium of exchange whiinsuring th at the issuance of fiduciary media is regulated in accorance with the desideratum of a neutral money, i.e., a money that donot impinge upon or distort the underlying real processes of teconomy. It was Adam Smith, the acknowledged father of free baning, who introduced into monetary theory the proposition that a puspecie money involved a waste of scarce resources, while it was Haywho originated the concept of, if not the term, "neutral moneyAccording to Hayek in his most mature writings, the "nearest pratical approximation" to such an admittedly "fictitious" ideal ismonetary system in which "increased demand for liquidityn is met increases in the money supply aimed a t maintaining stability of index of raw materials prices that serve as a proxy for the averaprices of the original factors of production, land and labor.49 s s u mno increase in the stocks of the original factors, the practical attai

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Mises believed might be entailed by an outright legal prohibition fractional reserves.In fact, White's interpretation of Mises's views on fractional r

serves and free banking is based on his unwarranted, if unintentionahomogenization of Mises with Smith on the question of the criterof an ideal monetary system. White falls into error because overlooks important passages in the very works of Mises that he citeand because he ignores significant developments in Mises's theory money that occurred between the publication of the first Germaedition of T h e T h eo ry o fMo n ey a n d Cr ed it in 1912 and the publicatioof Nationalokomie (the German language forerunner of H u m a n At i o n ) in 1940. In his 1940 work, Mises tells us, his "monetary theoachieve[d] completion" with the merger of "the theory of indireexchange with that of direct exchange into a coherent system human action.52These developments resulted in an important mod

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overexpansion of f i d u c i a ry m ed i a b y ce n t r a l b an k s u n r e s t r a i n e d bco m p e t it iv e m ar k e t f o rce s. H o w ev er , Mi se s's ch ap t e r o n t h e b u s i n ecyc le , fo llo w in g d i r ec tl y u p o n t h e ch ap t e r en u m er a t i n g t h e b en e fiof f id u c ia r y m ed i a w h i ch W h i t e c i t e s i n su p p o r t o f h i s o w n i n t e r p rt a t i ~ n , ~ ~a k e s i t p ellu cid ly c l e a r t h a t t h e n e c e s s ar y a n d s u ff ic iecau s e of t h e cyc le i s t h e u n s u s t a i n ab l e d i v e r g en ce b e t w een t h e " lo aand "na tu ra l " r a t es o f in te res t e f f ec ted by the c rea t ion o f f iduc ia rmedia . For Mises , then , cyc l i ca l d i scoord ina t ion o f the economy i n d e e d a d i s a d v a n t a g e t o b e c o u n t ed a g a i n s t f id u c i ar y m e d i a per sAccordingly , i t i s o nly after f ul ly d i sc u s s in g b o t h t h e a d v a n t a g e s a nd i sad v an t a g es of fi d u c i a r y m ed i a , t h a t Mi se s , i n a s ec t i o n co m p r i s it h e co ncluding f ive pag es of th e book-which is n o t r e f e r red t o bW h i t e -ad d re s ses t h e '% as is q u e s t i o n s of f u t u r e cu r r en cyH er e , Mi se s r ep r i n t s t h e co n c l u si o n of t h e first G e r m a n e d it io n ( t hEn g l i sh ed i t io n is a t r a n s l a t i o n of t h e s e co n d G e r m a n e d i ti o n p u b li s

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It would be a mistake to assume that the modern organization ofexchange is bound to continue to exist. I t carr ies within itself thegermof its own destruction; the development of fiduciary media mustnecessarily lead to its breakdown. . . . It will be a ta sk for the futu reto erect safeguards against the inflationary misuse of the monetarysystem by the government and agains t the extension of the circula-tion of fiduciary media by the banks.55I t is hardly to be concluded from the passage I have emphasiz

in the foregoing quotation that Mises looked with equanimity, lalone favor, upon the further creation of fiduciary media by bankwhether "free" or not.

White (p. 520) cites a part of a paragraph from a later, 1928woof M i ~ e s ' s , ~ ~n which Mises reiterates the point that a suppressionthe issue of fiduciary media would have given rise to historic

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Far from rejecting the Currency school program, as White wouhave us believe, it is clear Mises desired to reformulate it on a soundtheoretical basis in order to strengthen its practical applicatioThus, contrary to White, Mises supported a free banking regimprecisely because it would eventually result in "extreme restraint the issue of fiduciary media." Free bankers would learn such restraifrom their experiences of the crises and bank runs that would inetably occur during the historical course of development of fiduciamedia. Once such lessons were absorbed by the more astute bankientrepreneurs, policies of extreme caution and restraint would enforced on the entire banking system as less responsible banpersisting in the further creation of fiduciary media would be immdiately confronted by the twin threats of adverse interbank clearinand of loss of confidence by a once or twice chastened and now mosophisticated bank ~lientele.~'t this point the program of the Cu

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he was willing to forego such advantages for the greater advantaof maintaining the integrity of monetary calculation and preventidisruptions of the price-and-interest-rate coordination of the ecoomy. By the time he came to write Human Action, however, his vieon entrepreneurship, monetary calculation, and money had evolvto the point where he was able to recognize that the benefits he honce attributed to the creation of fiduciary media were largely illsory. In particular, the later Mises abandoned his earlier belief than increase in the purchasing power of money is somehow disadvatageous for the market economy.

Regarding a world in which there occurs a persistent "goods-duced" rise in the purchasing power of money resulting from seculgrowth in the supplies of commodities and services in conjunctiowith a rigidly fixed nominal money supply, Mises argued in HumAction that such a sta te of affairs would not disrupt the moment-

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intertemporal allocation of resources, and precipitating the businecycle. This later assessment of the massive imbalance in favor of tdisadvantages of fiduciary media may finally have led Mises overcome his earlier fears of the expansion of political interferenwith banking that he foresaw as a possible ramification of the ul trhardcore neo-Currency school program legally debarring all furthadditions to the outstanding circulation of fiduciary media, includidemand deposits as well as notes. Thus, in his 1952 essay on "Montary Reconstruction," which was included a s Part Four in the secoEnglish edition of Theory of Money and Credit, Mises proposed jusuch a program as the basis for "the United Sta tes return to a soucurrency."65

I conclude, then, that White's attempt to portray Mises's views fractional reserves and free banking as prototypical of the modefree banking school, whose members draw their analytical orient

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146 The Review of Au strian Economics Vol. 6, Nolargely defines this paradigm as it currently stands. And the edeavor by White and the modern free banking school to give thparadigm a contemporary macroeconomic expression rests on tKirznerian conception of the market process. Ikeda's essay, his at tbutions to Mises notwithstanding, is a promising initial step in tdirection of adumbrating a Hayekian theory of interventionism, aEbeling's essay, for the most par t, does capture the uniqueness afruitfulness of the Misesian approach to the demand for moneHaving said this, I still insist that the homogenization of the viewof two brilliant but very different thinkers serves no purpose todbut to significantly impede the quest for knowledge and t ru th amothose working within the Mengerian tradition.