In the course of the twentieth century, Mises and his neoliberal colleagues cast state planning, medical and employment insurance, protective tariffs and welfare states not simply as economic threats, but as threats to individual rights – and ultimately to civilisation itself. Like his Scottish predecessor Adam Ferguson, Mises believed that while the 'most remarkable races of men … have been rude before they were polished', the 'polished' nations might nonetheless slide back along the evolutionary scale. While Ferguson warned that a people might be corrupted by its commercial success, Mises believed it was socialism that was hastening the decline of civilisation. In Asia, he warned, antagonists of European civilisation were gathered under the banner of socialism. And if they were allowed to destroy the division of labour, 'nomad tribes from the Eastern steppes would again raid and pillage Europe, sweeping across it with swift cavalry'.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 114