Yet Mises apparently considers even voluntary solidarism an objectionable form of socialism, because it “places above the owner an authority — indifferent whether Law and its creator, the State, or conscience and its counselor, the Church — which is to see that the owner uses his property correctly.” Once the owner’s use of property is placed under any set of social norms, even voluntary ones, property “ceases to be the basic and ultimate element in the social order” and so “ownership is abolished, since the owner, in administering his property, must follow principles other than those imposed on him by his property interests” — even, apparently, if the imposition is carried out by the Church’s powers of moral suasion unaided by coercion.

This seems to me a very odd position for a value-subjectivist to take; if capitalism as Mises defines it means that private owners are free to make any peaceful use they choose of their property, and if the owners’ subjective preference is to make their use of their property in such a way as to conform to some widely propagated moral code, then is that not precisely the owner’s interest?

Mises says this, because he believes that you are supposed to do what you want, not what some allegedly higher power forces you to do, through threats and against your will. He has nothing but contempt for the Kantian “duty for duty’s sake” or any kind of duties at all. Values are ultimate givens for him, only as long as they are 100% self-made. And they must not be due to any kind of servile fear, whether of the state or God or the Church, but arise only out of self-interest, such that to satisfy them is to increase in happiness. Slavish fear of punishment for breaking an alleged moral law is no better than state coercion, in Mises’s view.

Consider his argument against Christian influence on the motives of entrepreneurs which he tackles in Human Action, XXVII. The Government and the Market, 4, p. 724: “What is needed [, according to the Christian social reformers,] is not a reform of government and the laws of the country, but the moral purification of man, a return to the Lord’s commandments and to the precepts of the moral code, a turning away from the vices of greed and selfishness. Then it will be easy to reconcile private ownership of the means of production with justice, righteousness, and fairness. The disastrous effects of capitalism will be eliminated without prejudice to the individual’s freedom and initiative. People will dethrone the Moloch capitalism without enthroning the Moloch state.”

However, “It is not enough to tell a man not to buy on the cheapest market and not to sell on the dearest market. It is not enough to tell him not to strive after profit and not to avoid losses. One must establish unambiguous rules for the guidance of conduct in each concrete situation.” Hence government interference is inevitable: “No deviation from the unhampered market economy is thinkable without authoritarian regimentation. Whether the authority in which these powers are vested is called lay government or theocratical priesthood makes no difference.”

Mises’s ethics is free from any appeal to moral law. For example, he writes, “What the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion achieves is that individuals whom malice, shortsightedness or mental inferiority prevent from realizing that by indulging in acts that are destroying society they are hurting themselves and all other human beings are compelled to avoid such acts.” He says that one should be good entirely out of self-interest and not out of fear: “Praxeology and economics do not say that men should peacefully cooperate within the frame of societal bonds; they merely say that men must act this way if they want to make their actions more successful than otherwise. Compliance with the moral rules which the establishment, preservation, and intensification of social cooperation require is not seen as a sacrifice to a mythical entity, but as the recourse to the most efficient methods of action, as a price expended for the attainment of more highly valued returns.” The problem, of course, is that this fails to distinguish between a possible short-term advantage of theft over honest toil and the merely long-term harmony of interests.

You have to understand how self-sufficient Mises was. E.g., “When I once expressed this opinion in a lecture, a young man in the audience objected. ‘You are asking too much of an economist,’ he observed; ‘nobody can force me to employ my time in studying all these sciences.’ My answer was: ‘Nobody asks or forces you to become an economist.’” (The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science) He was beyond even encouraging his own students! His basic attitude was: I only help you with the means to your inner-created ends; it’s your job to supply the ends themselves.