how cooperation is the foundation of social life?
Answers
Explanation:
I’ve heard that story before, but this time it got me thinking: Would the free-market movement have been perceived differently by the outside world if Mises had used the other title? With the question phrased so narrowly, the answer is probably no. So let’s broaden it: Would the free-market movement be perceived differently if its dominant theme was social cooperation rather than (rugged) individualism, self-reliance, independence, and other synonyms we’re so fond of?
Maybe.
There’s no mystery why that other title occurred to Mises. I haven’t tried to make a count, but I would guess that “social cooperation” (or “human cooperation”) is the second most-used phrase in the book. The first is probably “division of labor,” which is another way of saying “social cooperation.” Human Action is about social cooperation or it isn’t about anything at all. The first matter Mises takes up after his opening disquisition on the nature of action itself is . . . cooperation. He begins, “Society is concerted action, cooperation. . . . It substitutes collaboration for the—at least conceivable—isolated life of individuals. Society is division of labor and combination of labor. In his capacity as an acting animal man becomes a social animal.”
It is through cooperation and the division of labor that we all can live better lives. Naturally, Mises laid great stress on the need for peace, since the absence of peace is the breakdown of that vital cooperation. This put Mises squarely in the pacifistic classical-liberal tradition as exemplified by Richard Cobden, John Bright, Frédéric Bastiat, Herbert Spencer, and William Graham Sumner. Mises wrote in Liberalism: