Stefán Snævarr birti í gær grein í nettímaritinu Stundinni um skoðanir mínar á tengslum fasisma og sósíalisma. Hann segir þar:

Frjálshyggjumaðurinn Ludwig von Mises lofsöng fasismann ítalska árið 1927 og sagði (í enskri þýðingu úr þýsku): “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history” (Mises (1985): 51). Gerir þetta frjálshyggjuna að systur  nasismann og fasismans? Hannes nefnir ekki þessa athugasemd Mises í bók sinni Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers (2 bindi).

Þetta er rangt. Ég skrifaði langt mál um þessa athugasemd Mises á bls. 94–95 í seinna bindi bókar minnar:

For Mises, a choice always involves trade-offs. Sometimes it is between a greater and a lesser evil. This explains his comment on fascism that left-wing intellectuals are fond of quoting: ‘It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.’ But Mises should not be quoted out of context, because he continues: ‘But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error.’ Mises’ point is the plausible one that for a liberal faced with two evils, fascism and communism, fascism seems the lesser one, not least because it is possibly reversible. It is authoritarian rather than totalitarian: It aims not at total control of mind and body, but rather of body alone. Because it does not abolish private property rights to the means of production, it does not unite all economic control in one body. What Mises was referring to in the 1920s was that the ex-socialist Benito Mussolini in Italy and Admiral Miklós Horthy in Hungary hindered communist takeovers, although in Hungary the communists actually ruled by terror for a few months. Later examples might be Francisco Franco in Spain and Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Be that as it may, European fascism of the 1920s was quite different to Hitler’s national socialism with its horrible antisemitism. It should also be pointed out that in the 1920s Austria was surrounded by hostile neighbours and that her only potential ally and protector then was Mussolini’s Fascist Italy.