The memoirs of the indefatigable economist Ludwig von Mises, written from his exile in Geneva in 1940, contain this moving, even tragic, passage:
“Occasionally I entertained the hope that my writings would bear practical fruit and show the way for policy. Constantly I have been looking for evidence of a change in ideology. But…I have come to realize that my theories explain the degeneration of a great civilization; they do not prevent it. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.”
Reading the whole of Mises’s works, it is clear what he means by decline: the deliberate wrecking of civilization itself, through the rise of the total state. 
(Read more from mises.org)