Mises Socialism Quotes & Sayings

What pushes the masses into the camp of socialism is, even more than the illusion that socialism will make them richer, the expectation that it will curb all those who are better than they themselves are. — Ludwig Von Mises

Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage. — Ludwig Von Mises

Inflationism, however, is not an isolated phenomenon. It is only one piece in the total framework of politico-economic and socio-philosophical ideas of our time. Just as the sound money policy of gold standard advocates went hand in hand with liberalism, free trade, capitalism and peace, so is inflationism part and parcel of imperialism, militarism, protectionism, statism and socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

The idea of Socialism is at once grandiose and simple ... We may say, in fact, that it is one of the most ambitious creations of the human spirit, ... so magnificent, so daring, that it has rightly aroused the greatest admiration. If we wish to save the world from barbarism we have to refute Socialism, but we cannot thrust it carelessly aside. — Ludwig Von Mises

Without exception all political parties promise their supporters a higher real income. There is no difference in this respect between nationalists and internationalists and between the supporters of a market economy and the advocates of either socialism or interventionism. If a party asks its supporters to make sacrifices for its cause, it always explains these sacrifices as the necessary temporary means for the attainment of the ultimate goal, the improvement of the material well-being of its members. Each party considers it as an insidious plot against its prestige and its survival if somebody ventures to question the capacity of its projects to make the group members more prosperous. Each party regards with a deadly hatred the economists embarking upon such a critique. — Ludwig Von Mises

Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark. Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy. — Ludwig Von Mises

The first socialists were the intellectuals; they, and not the masses, are the backbone of Socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Most conservatives know better than to promote the state funding of art. The result of such funding is the mess that modern art has become. Atonal music is to music what subsidized art is to art ... The fact that cacophony has reigned almost supreme since 1900 is a testimony to Mises' original observation. Atonal music is to music what socialism is to economics: planned chaos. — Gary North

What can prevent the coming of totalitarian socialism is only a thorough change in ideologies. What we need is an open positive endorsement of that system to which we owe all the wealth that distinguished our age from the conditions of ages gone by. — Ludwig Von Mises

The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

It suffices here to say that the planned economy which the advocates of dictatorship wish to set up is precisely as socialistic as the Socialism propagated by the self-styled Social Democrats. — Ludwig Von Mises

Liberalism and capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts. — Ludwig Von Mises

Socialism is the expression of the principle of violence crying from the workers' soul, just as Imperialism is the principle of violence speaking from the soul of the official and the soldier. — Ludwig Von Mises

Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build, it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created. — Ludwig Von Mises

Aggressors cannot wage total war without introducing Socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Socialism in Russia has not brought about an improvement in the conditions of the average man which can be compared with the improvement of conditions, during the same period, in the United States. — Ludwig Von Mises

Today the apologists of socialism are forced to distort facts and to misrepresent the manifest meaning of words when they want to make people believe in the compatibility of socialism and freedom. — Ludwig Von Mises

Romanticism is man's revolt against reason, as well as against the condition under which nature has compelled him to live. — Ludwig Von Mises

German Marxian's coined the dictum: If socialism is against human nature, then human nature must be changed. — Ludwig Von Mises

Everything brought forward in favor of Socialism during the last hundred years, in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make socialism workable. — Ludwig Von Mises

Therefore it is not arrogance or narrow-mindedness that leads the economist to discuss these things from the standpoint of economics. No one, who is not able to form an independent opinion about the admittedly difficult and highly technical problem of calculation in the socialist economy, should take sides in the question of socialism versus capitalism. No one should speak about interventionism who has not examined the economic consequences of interventionism. An end should be put to the common practice of discussing these problems from the standpoint of the prevailing errors, fallacies, and prejudices. It might be more entertaining to avoid the real issues and merely to use popular catchwords and emotional slogans. But politics is a serious matter. Those who do not want to think its problems through to the end should keep away from it. — Ludwig Von Mises

The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments. — Ludwig Von Mises

Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps. — Ludwig Von Mises

Etatism, as a theory, is the doctrine of the omnipotence of the State, and, as a policy, the attempt to regulate all mundane affairs by authoritative commandment and prohibition. The ideal society of etatism is a particular sort of socialistic community; it is usual in discussions involving this ideal society to speak of State Socialism, or, in some connexions, of Christian Socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Wherever Europeans or the descendants of European emigrants live, we see Socialism at work to-day; and in Asia it is the banner round which the antagonists of European civilization gather. If the intellectual dominance of Socialism remains unshaken, then in a short time the whole co-operative system of culture which Europe has built up during thousands of years will be shattered. For a socialist order of society is unrealizable. All efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill, towns will be deserted. The population of the industrial territories will die out or migrate elsewhere. The farmer will return to the self-sufficiency of the closed, domestic economy. Without private ownership in the means of production there is, in the long run, no production other than a hand-to-mouth production for one's own needs. — Ludwig Von Mises

Capitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

The masses favor socialism because they trust the socialist propaganda of the intellectuals. The intellectuals, not the populace, are molding public opinion. — Ludwig Von Mises

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution. — Ludwig Von Mises

The main propoganda trick of supporters of the allegedly "progressive" policy of government control is to blame capitalism for all that is unsatisfactory in present-day conditions and to extol the blessings of socialism. They have never attempted to prove their fallacious dogmas, all they did was to call their adversaries names and cast suspicion upon their motives. And, unfortunately, the average citizen cannot see through these stratagems. The liars must be afraid of the truth and are therefore driven to suppress its pronouncement. — Ludwig Von Mises

There is no room at all for independent enterprise under any variety of State Socialism. Prices are to be regulated authoritatively; authority is to fix what is to be produced, and how, and in what quantities. There is to be no speculation, no 'excessive' profit, no loss. There is to be no innovation unless it be decreed by authority. The official is to direct and supervise everything. — Ludwig Von Mises

Where Nietzsche's response to the equation of socialism and morality was to question the value of morality, at least as it had been customarily understood, economists like Mises and Hayek pursued a different path, one Nietzsche would never have dared to take: they made the market the very expression of morality. — Ludwig Von Mises

The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. — Ludwig Von Mises

Every type of socialism is unworkable because economic calculation is impossible in a socialist community. — Ludwig Von Mises

Granted, many of them replied, that socialism may not result in riches for all but rather in a smaller production of wealth; nevertheless the masses will be happier under socialism, because they will share their worries with all their fellow citizens, and there will not be wealthier classes to be envied by poorer ones. The starving and ragged workers of Soviet Russia, they tell us, are a thousand times more joyful than the workers of the West who live under conditions which are luxurious compared to Russian standards; equality in poverty is a more satisfactory state than well-being where there are people who can flaunt more luxuries than the average man. — Ludwig Von Mises

A government always finds itself obliged to resort to inflationary measures when it cannot negotiate loans and dare not levy taxes, because it has reason to fear that it will forfeit approval of the policy it is following if it reveals too soon the financial and general economic consequences of that policy. Thus inflation becomes the most important psychological resource of any economic policy whose consequences have to be concealed; and so in this sense it can be called an instrument of unpopular, i.e. of anti-democratic, policy, since by misleading public opinion it makes possible the continued existence of a system of government that would have no hope of the consent of the people if the circumstances were clearly laid before them. That is the political function of inflation. It explains why inflation has always been an important resource of policies of war and revolution and why we also find it in the service of socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state. — Ludwig Von Mises

These self-styled liberals and progressives are honestly convinced that they are true democrats. But their notion of democracy is just the opposite of that of the nineteenth century. They confuse democracy with socialism. They not only do not see that socialism and democracy are incompatible but they believe that socialism alone means real democracy. Entangled in this error, they consider the Soviet system a variety of popular government. — Ludwig Von Mises

To the masses, the catchwords of Socialism sound so enticing ... so they will continue to work for Socialism, helping thereby to bring about the inevitable decline of the civilization which the nations of the West have taken thousands of years to build up. — Ludwig Von Mises

Daily experience proves clearly to everybody but the most bigoted fanatics of socialism that governmental management is inefficient and wasteful. — Ludwig Von Mises

There is simply no other choice than this: either to abstain from interference in the free play of the market, or to delegate the entire management of production and distribution to the government. Either capitalism or socialism: there exists no middle way. — Ludwig Von Mises

Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings. — Ludwig Von Mises

It is certain that many intellectuals envy the higher income of prosperous businessmen and that these feelings drive them toward socialism. They believe that the authorities of a socialist commonwealth would pay them higher salaries than those that they earn under capitalism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Almost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions. — Ludwig Von Mises

Marx and Engels openly declared that the progressive income tax and the death tax are 'economically untenable' and that they advocated them only because 'they necessitate further inroads' upon the capitalist system and are 'unavoidable' as a means of bringing about socialism. — Ludwig Von Mises

Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy. — Ludwig Von Mises

In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy. — Ludwig Von Mises

The word "Capitalism" expresses, for our age, the sum of all evil. Even the opponents of Socialism are dominated by socialist ideas. — Ludwig Von Mises

For it is an essential difference between capitalist and socialist production that under capitalism men provide for themselves, while under Socialism they are provided for. — Ludwig Von Mises

In the bureaucratic machine of socialism the way toward promotion is not achievement but the favor of the superiors. — Ludwig Von Mises

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 individuals life and the unrestricted supremacy of the government in its capacity as central board of production management. — Ludwig Von Mises