Hayek e a Austria

Ja agora, falando de Guerras e Hayek, este por acaso serviu na Primeira Guerra Mundial pela Austria (que perdeu 75% do territorio - como afirmou desesperado o ministro de negocios estrangeiros na altura: "A Austria desistiu de viver") e escrevia em Alemao, antes de ir para Londres. A Escola Austriaca quase desapareceu da Economia nao so por causa da Keynes mas porque muito do produzido por ela permaneceu sem traduçao (incluindo os trabalhos de Mises) durante muito tempo e tudo que era escrito em Alemao...

Embora isso esteja quase apagado da memoria colectiva, Viena (e o triangulo que formava com Praga e Budapeste), para alem da capital do Imperio Austro-Hungaro e herdeiro do antigo Imperio Sacro Romano Germanico (onde as coroaçoes eram feitas pelo Papa e a monarquia era electiva, tal como o foi na Polonia - curiosamente, ambas monarquias electivas eram Catolicas, tal como o Vaticano...), era o centro da produçao cultural e intelectual na Europa. Aquilo que a caracterizava ainda se consegue vislumbrar em filmes como a "Musica no Coracao" (altura em que uma Austria que constituia o contraponto da Prussia ja nao existia porque os "aliados" - principalmente Woodrow Wilson - fizeram questao disso, o que tornou a anexaçao de Hitler um passo "facil") e o filme sobre os bons tempos "Sissi".

Como uma lista da cultura produzida (e que consegue ser reconhecida mesmo por quem pouco entendido):

The list includes Ludwig Boltzmann, Franz Brentano, Rudolph Carnap, Edmund Husserl, Ernst Mach, Alexius Meinong, Karl Popper, Moritz Schlick, and Ludwig Wittgenstein among philosophers; Kurt Goedel, Hans Hahn, Karl Menger, and Richard von Mises among mathematicians; Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, Gottfried von Haberler, Friedrich von Hayek, Carl Menger, Fritz Machlup, Ludwig von Mises, Oskar Morgenstern, Joseph Schumpeter, and Friedrich von Wieser among economists; Rudolph von Jhering, Hans Kelsen, Anton Menger, and Lorenz von Stein among lawyers and legal theorists, Alfred Adler, Joseph Breuer, Karl Buehler, and Sigmund Freud among psychologists; Max Adler, Otto Bauer, Egon Friedell, Heinrich Friedjung, Paul Lazarsfeld, Gustav Ratzenhofer, and Alfred Schuetz among historians and sociologists; Hermann Broch, Franz Grillparzer, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Karl Kraus, Fritz Mauthner, Robert Musil, Arthur Schnitzler, Georg Trakl, Otto Weininger, and Stefan Zweig among writers and literary critics; Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Adolf Loos, and Egon Schiele among artists and architects; and Alban Berg, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Franz Lehar, Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schoenberg, Johann Strauss, Anton von Webern, and Hugo Wolf among composers. "

O que aconteceu foi que "In Europe, the militarily defeated Romanovs, Hohenzollerns, and Habsburgs had to abdicate or resign: Russia, Germany, and Austria...Turkey and Greece(...) "

When in March 1917 the U.S.-allied Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate and a new democratic-republican government was established in Russia under Kerenski, Wilson was elated. With the Czar gone, the war had finally become a purely ideological conflict: of good against evil.

Wilson and his closest foreign policy advisors, George D. Herron and Colonel House, disliked the Germany of the Kaiser, the aristocracy, and the military elite. But they hated Austria.

As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn has characterized the views of Wilson and the American left,

"Austria was far more wicked than Germany. It existed in contradiction of the Mazzinian principle of the national state, it had inherited many traditions as well as symbols from the Holy Roman Empire (double-headed eagle, black-gold colors, etc.); its dynasty had once ruled over Spain (another bete noire); it had led the Counter-Reformation, headed the Holy Alliance, fought against the Risorgimento, suppressed the Magyar rebellion under Kossuth (who had a monument in New York City), and morally supported the monarchical experiment in Mexico. Habsburg - the very name evoked memories of Roman Catholicism, of the Armada, the Inquisition, Metternich, Lafayette jailed at Olmuetz and Silvio Pellico in Bruenn's Spielberg fortress. Such a state had to be shattered, such a dynasty had to disappear." (...)

The new German republic was burdened with heavy long-term reparations. Germany was demilitarized, the German Saarland was occupied by the French, and in the East large territories had to be ceded to Poland (West Prussia and Silesia).

However, Germany was not dismembered and destroyed. Wilson had reserved this fate for Austria. With the deposition of the Habsburgs the entire Austrian-Hungarian Empire was dismembered.

As the crowning achievement of Wilson's foreign policy, two new and artificial states:

Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, were carved out of the former Empire.

Austria herself, for centuries one of Europe's great powers, was reduced in size to its small German-speaking heartland; and, as another of Wilson's legacies, tiny Austria was forced to surrender its entirely German province of Southern Tyrolia - extending to the Brenner Pass - to Italy." Hans-Hermann Hoppe

E este e o enquadramento necessario para perceber as dificuldade da Escola Austriaca para ser divulgada, desaparecidano nevoeiro da historia, a falsa ciencia de Keynes, e a sobre-valorizaçao do que depois foi produzido no mundo anglo-saxonico. A sorte foi Hayek ter ido para Londres e Mises para os EUA. Este ultimo praticamente ignorado, começou a ser lembrado quando o seu aluno Hayek ganhou o premio nobel da economia (ainda assim, passou muitas dificuldades com os seus colegas economistas da Escola de Chicago que simplesmente ignoravam e ignoram ainda com antagonismo, o cerne da metodologia austriaca) muito merecidamente pela sua produçao (estranhamente ignorada) na economia (quando o que o torna conhecido, a filosofia politica, tem uma qualidade mediana) no ano seguinte a morte de Mises.