Mises

© MMXI V.1.0.3
by Morley Evans

The main issue in present-day political struggles is whether society should be organized on the basis of private ownership of the means of production (capitalism, the market system) or on the basis of public control of the means of production (socialism, communism, planned economy). Capitalism means free enterprise, sovereignty of the consumers in economic matters, and sovereignty of the voters in political matters. Socialism means full government control of every sphere of the individual's life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management. There is no compromise possible between these two systems. Contrary to popular fallacy there is no middle way, no third system possible as a pattern of a permanent social order. The citizens must choose between capitalism and socialism or, as many Americans say, between the American and the Russian way of life.

— Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy [1944]

The problem is that the market we have in the "Free World" is what Mises called the "hampered market." This is not a free market at all. Instead, powerful people use the government to give themselves more, at the expense of the powerless, than they would get in a free market. What we have in the "Free World" is the "Russian way of life." Big Business is fascism, the Mussolini, the NAZI, way of life. (They copied us.) It is 19th century mercantilism. It is not free enterprise. It is not free and the powerless do not benefit — just as the proletariate in Russia did not benefit from communism. In the Soviet Union the czarist aristocrats were replaced by the Soviet aristocrats, the Bolsheviks. The serfs remained serfs. This is the usual arrangement of state level civilization which began to emerge about 5,000 years ago. Those with power benefit in a system that is essentially corrupt and criminal, unless you can justify murder. The state-level system has been called many things, but it is feudalism plain and simple. The serfs hope for a good czar who won't whip them too severely. It's not much to hope for, but serfs usually get less. Serfs who are strong try to fight their way into the ruling caste. In this system, producers don't compete for customers, instead warlords and vassals compete for power. It stinks.