While one could certainly make the argument that Mises’s views on the enforcement of property rights are erroneous (and people have), it’s not fair to make the claim that Mises was inconsistent. Mises is clear, there is either capitalism or socialism. You can’t say that one part of an economy is socialist, or that a policy is socialist. A socialist economy is an economy characterized by the collective ownership of the means of production.

Force is monopolized by the state. This does not mean that we therefore live in a socialist economy. The majority of the means of production are still privately owned. All the same, protective services are mostly organized and funded by the government. These organizations may not be privately owned, but it does not follow that therefore they are socialist. Socialism doesn’t refer to particular portions of an economy. It characterizes all the means of production.

Regarding Rothbard, it is safe to say that he was an intelligent thinker. It doesn’t make sense for Rothbard to discard the majority of Mises’s ideas, just because he disagrees with Mises on political organization. For what it’s worth, there was a complete break between Mises and Rothbard in regards to politics. One believed in the value of government, the other was an anarchist.

-LvM, in Chapter 2, 5. Interventionism.

Ok, so what did Mises have to say about the provision of protection services? Well, he was clear enough when sneering at anarchists in the very same book from which the quote above was taken. Monopoly must prevail. In other words, the “entire management of the production” of security must be in the hands of the government. “Everybody in. Nobody out”, as Pat Quinn, governor of Illinois, likes to say.

It follows that Mises chose socialism. The irony is that section four of Ch. 2 is titled “The Impracticability of Socialism”. By the time you finish Ch. 3, Liberal Foreign Policy, Mises is daydreaming about the good that could be done by ein Ueberstaat der Staaten, a superstate of states, and ein Weltueberstaat, a world superstate, and that in spite of excoriating the League of Nations for its flaws.

Of course, there’s no logical basis for supposing that either the morality or the laws of economics which apply to other services cease to be at work when security is provided. Even Mises observed that “[a]ll state activity is human action, an evil inflicted by men on men.” (Ch. 1, 13. The State and Antisocial Conduct.) Sure enough, Mises had his rationalizations for his necessary evil.

It’s difficult to see how the incoherency in Mises’ thinking did not lead to a complete break between Mises and Rothbard, who was fully aware of Mises’ obstinate conservatism and muddleheaded thinking about society and aggression. Perhaps Rothbard granted Mises a free pass given his accomplishments in economic theory. Whatever the reason, it’s not hard to figure out why Catholics and other Christians would be drawn to the LvMI. Their objective, too, is ein Weltueberstaat, albeit with a nasty little theocratic twist and a whole lot of priestcraft. Sure enough, the rationalizations include a burning desire for world peace.

Acts 5:1-11.