Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

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Liberty and Property 23IIIWhat vitiates entirely the socialists’economic critique of capitalismis their failure to grasp the sovereigntyof the consumers in the market economy.They see only hierarchical organizationof the various enterprises and plans, and areat a loss to realize that the profit system forcesbusiness to serve the consumers. In theirdealings with their employers, the unionsproceed as if only malice and greed were toprevent what they call management from payinghigher wage rates. Their shortsightednessdoes not see anything beyond the doorsof the factory. They and their henchmen talkabout the concentration of economic power,and do not realize that economic power isultimately vested in the hands of the buyingpublic of which the employees themselves23
24Liberty and Propertyform the immense majority. Their inabilityto comprehend things as they are is reflectedin such inappropriate metaphors as industrialkingdom and dukedoms. They are toodull to see the difference between a sovereignking or duke who could be dispossessed onlyby a more powerful conqueror and a “chocolateking” who forfeits his “kingdom” as soonas the customers prefer to patronize anothersupplier. This distortion is at the bottom of allsocialist plans. If any of the socialist chiefs hadtried to earn his living by selling hot dogs, hewould have learned something about the sovereigntyof the customers. But they were professionalrevolutionaries and their only jobwas to kindle civil war. Lenin’s ideal was tobuild a nation’s production effort accordingto the model of the post office, an outfit thatdoes not depend on the consumers, becauseits deficits are covered by compulsory collectionof taxes. “The whole of society,” he said,was to “become one office and one factory.” V.I. Lenin, State and Revolution (New York: InternationalPublishers, s.d.) p. 84.
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Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

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