The Rebirth of Austrian Economics— in Light of Austrian Economics

Since human beings are not disembodied minds who instantly and costlessly absorb new knowledge, every scientific movement, if it is to flourish and advance, requires an institutional framework. By the institutional framework of a science, I mean a complementary set of means aimed at developing its ideas and theories, disseminating them among its active researchers and teachers, and inculcating them into its students and sympathetic public intellectuals. The institutions that constitute this framework include research institutes and libraries, graduate schools, regular conferences and colloquia, book series, and scholarly journals. Of course, the construction of such an institutional framework requires the power of disposal over real resources, that is property, and the will to employ such property exclusively and without deviation for the advancement of the science.1 The travesties of National Socialist “biology,” Soviet Socialist “physics” and the Keynesian “New Economics” should teach us that the property base that composes a science’s institutional framework must be entirely private and independent of the State. There is an exception to this key sociological principle of scientific progress. A creative genius such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, or Murray Rothbard working in isolation and outside a well-developed institutional framework may significantly