Liberty and Property.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

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.