Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

This is not von Mises’ best work. It dates from 1944 and uses a sort of history of Germany to remake the points against totalitarianism and socialism the he made more clearly in other works. The view taken in the work is that classical liberalism (free markets, democracy, and capitalism) is a freer and more productive environment than socialism, communism, and government planning; that restrictions on trade should be avoided along with government inflation through paper only monies.

The historical value of the work was that it was written and published in English before most of his other and better work was translated. Unless you desire a full read of all his works, you’d be advised to skip this one and go directly to ‘Socialism’, ‘Interventionism’, ‘The Free-Market and its Enemies’, and his masterwork ‘Human Action’. ( )