Ludwig von Mises Socialism Quotations

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

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

Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy.

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.

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

Aggressors cannot wage total war without introducing Socialism.

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.

The system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.

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.

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

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

Almost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions.

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

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.

Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy.

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.