One Place Mises Went Very Wrong, and Marx Was Correct
Mises held that labor is (almost) always something to be avoided in life, that it has disutility , and that the only point of it is to be able to purchase consumer goods. Interestingly, he recognized an exception: himself. He didn't dislike his work; in fact, he lived for it. So he created a separate category of human being to explain this: the creative genius . But the truth about labor is that life is incomplete without it: everyone needs meaningful work in their life: "As a former Marxist, his analysis always held labor, particularly when self-directed or done voluntarily in cooperation with others, in high esteem because of the ethic of responsibility it produced. Work wasn’t, or shouldn’t be, just a means to put food on the table or a roof over your head. Rather it provided meaning, dignity, and moral instruction, something not found by repeating mind-numbing tasks over and over at someone else’s direction."