The argument of fascism (capítulo 10 do livro Liberalism, de Mises)

    If liberalism nowhere found complete acceptance, its success in the nineteenth century went so far at least as that some of the most important of its principles were considered beyond dispute.  Before 1914, even the most dogged and bitter enemies of liberalism had to resign themselves to allowing many liberal principles to pass unchallenged.  Even in Russia, where only a few feeble rays of liberalism had penetrated, the supporters of the Czarist despotism, in persecuting their opponents, still had to take into consideration the liberal opinions of Europe; and during the World War, the war parties in the belligerent nations, with all their zeal, still had to practice a certain moderation in their struggle against internal opposition.

     

    Only when the Marxist Social Democrats had gained the upper hand and taken power in the belief that the age of liberalism and capitalism had passed forever did the last concessions disappear that it had still been thought necessary to make to the liberal ideology.  The parties of the Third International consider any means as permissible if it seems to give promise of helping them in their struggle to achieve their ends.  Whoever does not unconditionally acknowledge all their teachings as the only correct ones and stand by them through thick and thin has, in their opinion, incurred the penalty of death; and they do not hesitate to exterminate him and his whole family, infants included, whenever and wherever it is physically possible.

     The frank espousal of a policy of annihilating opponents and the murders committed in the pursuance of it have given rise to an opposition movement.  All at once the scales fell from the eyes of the non-Communist enemies of liberalism.  Until then they had believed that even in a struggle against a hateful opponent one still had to respect certain liberal principles.  They had had, even though reluctantly, to exclude murder and assassination from the list of measures to be resorted to in political struggles.  They had had to resign themselves to many limitations in persecuting the opposition press and in suppressing the spoken word.  Now, all at once, they saw that opponents had risen up who gave no heed to such considerations and for whom any means was good enough to defeat an adversary.  The militaristic and nationalistic enemies of the Third International felt themselves cheated by liberalism.  Liberalism, they thought, stayed their hand when they desired to strike a blow against the revolutionary parties while it was still possible to do so.  If liberalism had not hindered them, they would, so they believe, have bloodily nipped the revolutionary movements in the bud.  Revolutionary ideas had been able to take root and flourish only because of the tolerance they had been accorded by their opponents, whose will power had been enfeebled by a regard for liberal principles that, as events subsequently proved, was overscrupulous.  If the idea had occurred to them years ago that it is permissible to crush ruthlessly every revolutionary movement, the victories that the Third International has won since 1917 would never have been possible.  For the militarists and nationalists believe that when it comes to shooting and fighting, they themselves are the most accurate marksmen and the most adroit fighters.

     The fundamental idea of these movements—which, from the name of the most grandiose and tightly disciplined among them, the Italian, may, in general, be designated as Fascist—consists in the proposal to make use of the same unscrupulous methods in the struggle against the Third International as the latter employs against its opponents.  The Third International seeks to exterminate its adversaries and their ideas in the same way that the hygienist strives to exterminate a pestilential bacillus; it considers itself in no way bound by the terms of any compact that it may conclude with opponents, and it deems any crime, any lie, and any calumny permissible in carrying on its struggle.  The Fascists, at least in principle, profess the same intentions.  That they have not yet succeeded as fully as the Russian Bolsheviks in freeing themselves from a certain regard for liberal notions and ideas and traditional ethical precepts is to be attributed solely to the fact that the Fascists carry on their work among nations in which the intellectual and moral heritage of some thousands of years of civilization cannot be destroyed at one blow, and not among the barbarian peoples on both sides of the Urals, whose relationship to civilization has never been any other than that of marauding denizens of forest and desert accustomed to engage, from time to time, in predatory raids on civilized lands in the hunt for booty.  Because of this difference, Fascism will never succeed as completely as Russian Bolshevism in freeing itself from the power of liberal ideas.  Only under the fresh impression of the murders and atrocities perpetrated by the supporters of the Soviets were Germans and Italians able to block out the remembrance of the traditional restraints of justice and morality and find the impulse to bloody counteraction.  The deeds of the Fascists and of other parties corresponding to them were emotional reflex actions evoked by indignation at the deeds of the Bolsheviks and Communists.  As soon as the first flush of anger had passed, their policy took a more moderate course and will probably become even more so with the passage of time.

     This moderation is the result of the fact that traditional liberal views still continue to have an unconscious influence on the Fascists.  But however far this may go, one must not fail to recognize that the conversion of the Rightist parties to the tactics of Fascism shows that the battle against liberalism has resulted in successes that, only a short time ago, would have been considered completely unthinkable.  Many people approve of the methods of Fascism, even though its economic program is altogether antiliberal and its policy completely interventionist, because it is far from practicing the senseless and unrestrained destructionism that has stamped the Communists as the archenemies of civilization.  Still others, in full knowledge of the evil that Fascist economic policy brings with it, view Fascism, in comparison with Bolshevism and Sovietism, as at least the lesser evil.  For the majority of its public and secret supporters and admirers, however, its appeal consists precisely in the violence of its methods. 

    Now it cannot be denied that the only way one can offer effective resistance to violent assaults is by violence.  Against the weapons of the Bolsheviks, weapons must be used in reprisal, and it would be a mistake to display weakness before  murderers.  No liberal has ever called this into question.  What distinguishes liberal from Fascist political tactics is not a difference of opinion in regard to the necessity of using armed force to resist armed attackers, but a difference in the fundamental estimation of the role of violence in a struggle for power.  The great danger threatening domestic policy from the side of Fascism lies in its complete faith in the decisive power of violence.  In order to assure success, one must be imbued with the will to victory and always proceed violently.  This is its highest principle.  What happens, however, when one's opponent, similarly animated by the will to be victorious, acts just as violently?  The result must be a battle, a civil war.  The ultimate victor to emerge from such conflicts will be the faction strongest in number.  In the long run, a minority—even if it is composed of the most capable and energetic—cannot succeed in resisting the majority.  The decisive question, therefore, always remains: How does one obtain a majority for one's own party?  This, however, is a purely intellectual matter.  It is a victory that can be won only with the weapons of the intellect, never by force.  The suppression of all opposition by sheer violence is a most unsuitable way to win adherents to one's cause.  Resort to naked force—that is, without justification in terms of intellectual arguments accepted by public opinion—merely gains new friends for those whom one is thereby trying to combat.  In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.

     Fascism can triumph today because universal indignation at the infamies committed by the socialists and communists has obtained for it the sympathies of wide circles.  But when the fresh impression of the crimes of the Bolsheviks has paled, the socialist program will once again exercise its power of attraction on the masses.  For Fascism does nothing to combat it except to suppress socialist ideas and to persecute the people who spread them.  If it wanted really to combat socialism, it would have to oppose it with ideas.  There is, however, only one idea that can be effectively opposed to socialism, viz., that of liberalism.

     It has often been said that nothing furthers a cause more than creating, martyrs for it.  This is only approximately correct.  What strengthens the cause of the persecuted faction is not the martyrdom of its adherents, but the fact that they are being attacked by force, and not by intellectual weapons.  Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect—better because they alone give promise of final success.  This is the fundamental error from which Fascism suffers and which will ultimately cause its downfall.  The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property.  The next episode will be the victory of Communism.  The ultimate outcome of the struggle, however, will not be decided by arms, but by ideas.  It is ideas that group men into fighting factions, that press the weapons into their hands, and that determine against whom and for whom the weapons shall be used.  It is they alone, and not arms, that, in the last analysis, turn the scales. 

     So much for the domestic policy of Fascism.  That its foreign policy, based as it is on the avowed principle of force in international relations, cannot fail to give rise to an endless series of wars that must destroy all of modern civilization requires no further discussion.  To maintain and further raise our present level of economic development, peace among nations must be assured.  But they cannot live together in peace if the basic tenet of the ideology by which they are governed is the belief that one's own nation can secure its place in the community of nations by force alone.

     It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization.  The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.  But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success.  Fascism was an emergency makeshift.  To view it as something more would be a fatal error.

Mises ESCRACHANDO em uma crítica a livro de Rothbard

In every chapter of his treatise, Dr. Rothbard, adopting the best of the teachings of his

predecessors, and adding to them highly important observations, not only develops

the correct theory but is no less anxious to refute all objections ever raised against

these doctrines. He exposes the fallacies and contradictions of the popular

interpretation of economic affairs. Thus, for instance, in dealing with the problem of

unemployment he points out: in the whole modern and Keynesian discussion of this

subject the missing link is precisely the wage rate. It is meaningless to talk of

unemployment or employment without reference to a wage rate. Whatever supply of

labor service is brought to market can be sold, but only if wages are set at whatever

rate will clear the market. If a man wishes to be employed, he will be, provided the

wage rate is adjusted according to what Rothbard calls his discounted marginal value

product, i.e., the present height of the value which the consumers — at the time of the

final sale of the product — will ascribe to his contribution to its production.

Whenever the job seeker insists on a higher wage, he will remain unemployed. If

people refuse to be employed except at places, in occupations, or at wage rates they

would like, then they are likely to be choosing unemployment for substantial periods.

The full import of this state of affairs becomes manifest if one gives attention to the

fact that, under present conditions, those offering their services on the labor market

themselves represent the immense majority of the consumers whose buying or

abstention from buying ultimately determines the height of wage rates.

Less successful than his investigations in the fields of general praxeology and

economics are the author's occasional observations concerning the philosophy of law

and some problems of the penal code. But disagreement with his opinions concerning

these matters cannot prevent me from qualifying Rothbard's work as an epochal

contribution to the general science of human action, praxeology, and its practically

most important and, up to now, best-elaborated part, economics. Henceforth all

essential studies in these branches of knowledge will have to take full account of the

theories and criticisms expounded by Dr. Rothbard.

The publication of a standard book on economics raises again an important question,

viz., for whom are essays of this consequence written: only for specialists, the

students of economics, or for all of the people?

To answer this question we have to keep in mind that the citizens, in their capacity as

voters, are called upon to determine ultimately all issues of economic policies. The

fact that the masses are ignorant of physics and do not know anything substantial

about electricity does not obstruct the endeavors of experts who utilize the teachings

of science for the satisfaction of the wants of the consumers. From various points of

view, one may deplore the intellectual insufficiency and indolence of the multitude.

But their ignorance regarding the achievements of the natural sciences does not

endanger our spiritual and material welfare.

It is quite different in the field of economics. The fact that the majority of our

contemporaries, the masses of semi-barbarians led by self-styled intellectuals, entirely

ignore everything that economics has brought forward, is the main political problem

of our age. There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects

the market economy, the capitalistic free-enterprise system that provided the nation

with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all

activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties. The individual

is to be deprived of his moral, political, and economic responsibility and autonomy,

and to be converted into a pawn in the schemes of a supreme authority aiming at a

"national" purpose. His "affluence" is to be cut down for the benefit of what is called

the "public sector," i.e., the machine operated by the party in power. Hosts of authors,

writers, and professors are busy denouncing alleged shortcomings of capitalism and

exalting the virtues of "planning." Full of a quasi-religious ardor, the immense

majority is advocating measures that step by step lead to the methods of

administration practiced in Moscow and in Peking.

The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science [ de Mises]

[Nona Seção do Capítulo Quarto]

The Examination of Praxeological Theorems

The epistemologist who starts his lucubrations from the

analysis of the methods of the natural sciences and whom blinkers

prevent from perceiving anything beyond this field tells us

merely that the natural sciences are the natural sciences and

that what is not natural science is not natural science. About the

sciences of human action he does not know anything, and therefore

all that he utters about them is of no consequence.

It is not a discovery made by these authors that the theories of

praxeology cannot be refuted by experiments nor confirmed by

their successful employment in the construction of various gadgets.

These facts are precisely one aspect of our problem.

The positivist doctrine implies that nature and reality, in

providing the sense data that the protocol sentences register,

write their own story upon the white sheet of the human mind.

The kind of experience to which they refer in speaking of

verifiability and refutability is, as they think, something that

does not depend in any way on the logical structure of the human

mind. It provides a faithful image of reality. On the other hand,

they suppose, reason is arbitrary and therefore liable to error

and misinterpretation.


 

This doctrine not only fails to make allowance for the fallibility

of our apprehension of sense objects; it does not realize that

perception is more than just sensuous apprehension, that it is an

intellectual act performed by the mind. In this regard both

associationism and Gestalt psychology agree. There is no reason

to ascribe to the operation the mind performs in the act of becoming

aware of an external object a higher epistemological dignity

than to the operation the mind performs in describing its own

ways of procedure.


 

In fact, nothing is more certain for the human mind than

what the category of human action brings into relief. There is

no human being to whom the intent is foreign to substitute by

appropriate conduct one state of affairs for another state of affairs

that would prevail if he did not interfere. Only where there is

action are there men.


 

What we know about our own actions and about those of other

people is conditioned by our familiarity with the category of

action that we owe to a process of self-examination and introspection

as well as of understanding of other peoples' conduct.

To question this insight is no less impossible than to question

the fact that we are alive.



 

He who wants to attack a praxeological theorem has to trace it

back, step by step, until he reaches a point in which, in the chain

of reasoning that resulted in the theorem concerned, a logical

error can be unmasked. But if this regressive process of deduction

ends at the category of action without having discovered a vicious

 

link in the chain of reasoning, the theorem is fully confirmed.

Those positivists who reject such a theorem without having

subjected it to this examination are no less foolish than those

seventeenth-century astronomers were who refused to look

through the telescope that would have shown them that Galileo

was right and they were wrong.

MISES

Primeiro capítulo [The Distribution of Consumption Goods in the Socialist Commonwealth] do famoso livro em que Mises detona A MERA POSSIBILIDADE de algum cálculo econômico em uma economia planificada. [COMPLETO AQUI]

"Under socialism all the means of production are the property of the community. It is the community alone which can dispose of them and which determines their use in production. It goes without saying that the community will only be in a position to employ its powers of disposal through the setting up of a special body for the purpose. The structure of this body and the question of how it will articulate and represent the communal will is for us of subsidiary importance. One may assume that this last will depend upon the choice of personnel, and in cases where the power is not vested in a dictatorship, upon the majority vote of the members of the corporation.

The owner of production goods, who has manufactured consumption goods and thus becomes their owner, now has the choice of either consuming them himself or of having them consumed by others. But where the community becomes the owner of consumption goods, which it has acquired in production, such a choice will no longer obtain. It cannot itself consume; it has perforce to allow others to do so. Who is to do the consuming and what is to be consumed by each is the crux of the problem of socialist distribution.

It is characteristic of socialism that the distribution of consumption goods must be independent of the question of production and of its economic conditions. It is irreconcilable with the nature of the communal ownership of production goods that it should rely even for a part of its distribution upon the economic imputation of the yield to the particular factors of production. It is logically absurd to speak of the worker's enjoying the "full yield" of his work, and then to subject to a separate distribution the shares of the material factors of production. For, as we shall show, it lies in the very nature of socialist production that the shares of the particular factors of production in the national dividend cannot be ascertained, and that it is impossible in fact to gauge the relationship between expenditure and income.

What basis will be chosen for the distribution of consumption goods among the individual comrades is for us a consideration of more or less secondary importance. Whether they will be apportioned according to individual needs, so that he gets most who needs most, or whether the superior man is to receive more than the inferior, or whether a strictly equal distribution is envisaged as the ideal, or whether service to the State is to be the criterion, is immaterial to the fact that, in any event, the portions will be meted out by the State.

Let us assume the simple proposition that distribution will be determined upon the principle that the State treats all its members alike; it is not difficult to conceive of a number of peculiarities such as age, sex, health, occupation, etc., according to which what each receives will be graded. Each comrade receives a bundle of coupons, redeemable within a certain period against a definite quantity of certain specified goods. And so he can eat several times a day, find permanent lodgings, occasional amusements and a new suit every now and again. Whether such provision for these needs is ample or not, will depend on the productivity of social labor.

Moreover, it is not necessary that every man should consume the whole of his portion. He may let some of it perish without consuming it; he may give it away in presents; he many even in so far as the nature of the goods permit, hoard it for future use. He can, however, also exchange some of them. The beer tippler will gladly dispose of non-alcoholic drinks allotted to him, if he can get more beer in exchange, whilst the teetotaler will be ready to give up his portion of drink if he can get other goods for it. The art lover will be willing to dispose of his cinema tickets in order the more often to hear good music; the Philistine will be quite prepared to give up the tickets which admit him to art exhibitions in return for opportunities for pleasure he more readily understands. They will all welcome exchanges. But the material of these exchanges will always be consumption goods. Production goods in a socialist commonwealth are exclusively communal; they are an inalienable property of the community, and thus res extra commercium.

The principle of exchange can thus operate freely in a socialist state within the narrow limits permitted. It need not always develop in the form of direct exchanges. The same grounds which have always existed for the building-up of indirect exchange will continue in a socialist state, to place advantages in the way of those who indulge in it. It follows that the socialist state will thus also afford room for the use of a universal medium of exchange--that is, of money. Its role will be fundamentally the same in a socialist as in a competitive society; in both it serves as the universal medium of exchange. Yet the significance of money in a society where the means of production are State controlled will be different from that which attaches to it in one where they are privately owned. It will be, in fact, incomparably narrower, since the material available for exchange will be narrower, inasmuch as it will be confined to consumption goods. Moreover, just because no production good will ever become the object of exchange, it will be impossible to determine its monetary value. Money could never fill in a socialist state the role it fills in a competitive society in determining the value of production goods. Calculation in terms of money will here be impossible.

The relationships which result from this system of exchange between comrades cannot be disregarded by those responsible for the administration and distribution of products. They must take these relationships as their basis, when they seek to distribute goods per head in accordance with their exchange value. If, for instance 1 cigar becomes equal to 5 cigarettes, it will be impossible for the administration to fix the arbitrary value of 1 cigar = 3 cigarettes as a basis for the equal distribution of cigars and cigarettes respectively. If the tobacco coupons are not to be redeemed uniformly for each individual, partly against cigars, partly against cigarettes, and if some receive only cigars and others only cigarettes, either because that is their wish or because the coupon office cannot do anything else at the moment, the market conditions of exchange would then have to be observed. Otherwise everybody getting cigarettes would suffer as against those getting cigars. For the man who gets one cigar can exchange it for five cigarettes, and he is only marked down with three cigarettes.

Variations in exchange relations in the dealings between comrades will therefore entail corresponding variations in the administrations' estimates of the representative character of the different consumption-goods. Every such variation shows that a gap has appeared between the particular needs of comrades and their satisfactions because in fact, some one commodity is more strongly desired than another.

The administration will indeed take pains to bear this point in mind also as regards production. Articles in greater demand will have to be produced in greater quantities while production of those which are less demanded will have to suffer a curtailment. Such control may be possible, but one thing it will not be free to do; it must not leave it to the individual comrade to ask the value of his tobacco ticket either in cigars or cigarettes at will. If the comrade were to have the right of choice, then it might well be that the demand for cigars and cigarettes would exceed the supply, or vice versa, that cigars or cigarettes pile up in the distributing offices because no one will take them.

If one adopts the standpoint of the labor theory of value, the problem freely admits of a simple solution. The comrade is then marked up for every hour's work put in, and this entitles him to receive the product of one hour's labor, less the amount deducted for meeting such obligations of the community as a whole as maintenance of the unfit, education, etc.

Taking the amount deducted for covering communal expenses as one half of the labor product, each worker who had worked a full hour would be entitled only to obtain such amount of the product as really answered to half an hour's work. Accordingly, anybody who is in a position to offer twice the labor time taken in manufacturing an article, could take it from the market and transfer to his own use or consumption . For the clarification of our problem it will be better to assume that the State does not in fact deduct anything from the workers towards meeting its obligations, but instead imposes an income tax on its working members. In that way every hour of work put in would carry with it the right of taking for oneself such amount of goods as entailed an hour's work.

Yet such a manner of regulating distribution would be unworkable, since labor is not a uniform and homogeneous quantity. Between various types of labor there is necessarily a qualitative difference, which leads to a different valuation according to the difference in the conditions of demand for and supply of their products. For instance, the supply of pictures cannot be increased ceteris paribus, without damage to the quality of the product. Yet one cannot allow the laborer who had put in an hour of the most simple type of labor to be entitled to the product of an hour's higher type of labor. Hence, it becomes utterly impossible in any socialist community to posit a connection between the significance to the community of any type of labor and the apportionment of the yield of the communal process of production. The remuneration of labor cannot but proceed upon an arbitrary basis; it cannot be based upon the economic valuation of the yield as in a competitive state of society, where the means of production are in private hands, since--as we have seen--any such valuation is impossible in a socialist community. Economic realities impose clear limits to the community's power of fixing the remuneration of labor on an arbitrary basis: in no circumstances can the sum expended on wages exceed the income for any length of time.

Within these limits it can do as it will. It can rule forthwith that all labor is to be reckoned of equal worth, so that every hour of work, whatever its quality, entails the same reward; it can equally well make a distinction in regard to the quality of work done. Yet in both cases it must reserve the power to control the particular distribution of the labor product. It will never be able to arrange that he who has put in an hour's labor shall also have the right to consume the product of an hour's labor, even leaving aside the question of differences in the quality of the labor and the products, and assuming moreover that it would be possible to gauge the amount of labor represented by any given article. For, over and above the actual labor, the production of all economic goods entails also the cost of materials. An article in which more raw material is used can never be reckoned of equal value with one in which less is used."

começando pelo começo [human action]

"ECONOMICS is the youngest of all sciences. In the last two hundred years, it is true, many new sciences have emerged from the disciplines familiar to the ancient Greeks. However, what happened here was merely that parts of knowledge which had already found their place in the complex of the old system of learning now became autonomous. The field of study was more nicely subdivided and treated with new methods; hitherto unnoticed provinces were discovered in it, and people began to see things from aspects different from those of their precursors. The field itself was not expanded. But economics opened to human science a domain previously inaccessible and never thought of. The discovery of a regularity in the sequence and interdependence of market phenomena went beyond the limits of the traditional system of learning. It conveyed knowledge which could be regarded neither as logic, mathematics, psychology, physics, nor biology.

Philosophers had long since been eager to ascertair. the ends which God or Nature was trying to realize in the course of human history. They searched for the law of mankind's destiny and evolution. But even those thinkers whose inquiry was free from any theological tendency failed utterly in these endeavors because they were committed to a faulty method. They dealt with humanity as a whole or with other holistic concepts like nation, race, or church. They set up quite arbitrarily the ends to which the behavior of such wholes is bound to lead. But they could not satisfactorily answer the question regarding what factors compelled the various acting individuals to behave in such a way that the goal aimed at by the whole's inexorable evolution was attained. They had recourse to desperate shifts: miraculous interference of the Deity either by revelation or by the delegation of God-sent prophets and consecrated leaders, preestablished harmony, predestination, or the operation of a mystic and fabulous "world soul" or "national soul." Others spoke of a "cunning of nature" which implanted in man impulses driving him unwittinglv along precisely the path Nature wanted him to take. 

Other philosophers were more reaIistic. They did not try to guess the designs of Nature or God. They loolted at human things from the viewpoint of government. They were intent upon establishing rules of political action, a technique, as it were, of government and statesmanship. Speculative minds drew ambitious plans for a thorough reform and reconstruction of society. The more modest were satisfied with a collection and systematization of the data of historical experience. But all were fully convinced that there was in the course of social events no such regularity and invariance of phenomena as had already been found in the operation of human reasoning and in the sequence of natural phenomena. They did not search for the laws of social cooperation because they thought that man could organize society as he pleased. If social conditions did not fulfill the wishes of the reformers, if their utopias proved unrealizable, the fault was seen in the moral failure of man. Social problems were considered ethical problems. What was needed in order to construct the ideal society, they thought, was good princes and virtuous citizens. With righteous men any utopia might be realized. 

The discovery of the inescapable interdependence of market phenomena overthrew this opinion. Bewildered, people had to face a new view of society. They learned with stupefaction that there is another aspect from which human action might be viewed than that of good and bad, of fair and unfair, of just and unjust. In the course of social events there prevails a regularity of phenomena to which man must adjust his action if he wishes to succeed. It is futile to approach social facts with the attitude of a censor who approves or disapproves from the point of view of quite arbitrary standards and subjective judgments of value. One must study the laws of human action and social cooperation as the physicist studies the laws of nature. Human action and social cooperation seen as the object of a science of given relations, no longer as a normative discipline of things that ought to be - this was a revolution of tremendous consequences for knowledge and philosophy as well as for social action."

Liberty and Property, de von Mises

"The market process is a daily repeated plebiscite, and it ejects inevitably from the ranks of profitable people those who do not employ their property according to the orders given by the public. But business, the target of fanatical hatred on the part of all contemporary governments and selfstyled intellectuals, acquires and preserves bigness only because it works for the masses. The plants that cater to the luxuries of the few never attain big size. The shortcoming of nineteenth-century historians and politicians was that they failed to realize that the workers were the main consumers of the products of industry. In their view, the wage earner was a man toiling for the sole benefit of a parasitic leisure class. they labored under the delusion that the factories had impaired the lot of the manual workers. If they had paid any attention to statistics they would easily have discovered the fallaciousness of their opinion. Infant mortality dropped, the average length of life was prolonged, the population multiplied, and the average common man enjoyed amenities of which even the well-todo of earlier ages did not dream. 

However this unprecedented enrichment of the masses were merely a by-product of the Industrial Revolution. Its main achievement was the transfer of economic supremacy from the owners of land to the totality of the population. The common man was no longer a drudge who had to be satisfied with the crumbs that fell from the tables of the rich. The three pariah castes which were characteristic of the pre-capitalistic ages—the slaves, the serfs, and those people whom patristic and scholastic authors as well as British legislation from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries referred to as the poor—disappeared"

AÇÃO HUMANA, 3ª edição do Instituto Liberal [pp 1102 e 1103 ]

"Todo homem engenhoso pode iniciar uma nova atividade econômica. Pode ser pobre, seus recursos podem ser escassos e a maior parte deles pode ter sido obtida por empréstimo. Mas, se satisfaz o desejo do consumidor de uma maneira melhor e mais barata, obterá lucros “excessivos” e vencerá. Reinvestirá a maior parte de seus lucros no seu negócio, fazendo-o crescer rapidamente. É a atividade desses novos empresários que imprime à economia de mercado o seu “dinamismo”. Esses nouveaux-riches são os precursores do progresso econômico. A ameaça de sua concorrência força as firmas mais antigas e as grandes companhias a ajustarem sua conduta, de modo a servir melhor o público, para não serem obrigadas a encerrar suas atividades.

Mas, atualmente, os impostos freqüentemente absorvem a maior parte dos lucros “excessivos” dos novos empresários, que ficam, assim, impedidos de acumular capital, expandir o seu próprio negócio, crescer e enfrentar os interesses estabelecidos. O próprio fisco se encarrega de evitar que as firmas mais antigas tenham de enfrentar a competição das mais novas. Podem, assim, impunemente, condescender com a rotina, desprezar os desejos do público e resistir às mudanças, tornando-se conservadoras. É claro que o imposto sobre a renda também as impede de acumular novos capitais; mas o mais importante para elas é que se impeça aos perigos os recém-chegados de acumular capital. O sistema fiscal as privilegia. Nesse sentido, o imposto progressivo impede o progresso econômico e fomenta a rigidez e o imobilismo. Enquanto no mercado não obstruído a propriedade do capital é um passivo que  força o proprietário a servir o consumidor, os métodos tributários modernos transformam-no num privilégio.

Os intervencionistas alegam que a grande empresa está se tornando rígida e burocrática e que já não é possível às novas e talentosas pequenas empresas ameaçar os interesses estabelecidos das famílias ricas mais antigas. Entretanto, essa alegação só se justifica na medida em que tal situação é o resultado das próprias políticas intervencionistas.

Os lucros são a força motriz da economia de mercado. Quanto maior forem os lucros, melhor estarão sendo atendidas as necessidades dos consumidores. Porque, no mercado livre, só se pode auferir lucros eliminado-se os obstáculos existentes entre os desejos dos consumidores e a configuração existente da atividade produtora. Quem melhor servir o público, maiores lucros terá. Ao combater o lucro, os governos deliberadamente sabotam o funcionamento da economia de mercado."

AÇÃO HUMANA, 3ª edição do Instituto Liberal [pp 1030 e 1031]

"A ciência econômica não afirma que a restrição seja um mau sistema de produção. Afirma que a restrição não é, de modo algum, um sistema de produção; é muito mais um sistema de quase-consumo. A maior parte dos objetivos que os intervencionistas pretendem atingir por meio de medidas restritivas não pode ser alcançada dessa maneira. Mas, mesmo que as medidas restritivas sejam adequadas à consecução dos objetivos pretendidos, continuam sendo apenas restritivas. 

A enorme popularidade do restricionismo hoje em dia se deve ao fato de que as pessoas não percebem suas conseqüências. Ao lidar com o problema de redução da jornada de trabalho por decreto do governo, o público não se dá conta do fato de que deverá haver uma queda na produção e de que muito provavelmente o padrão de vida dos assalariados também diminuirá. Um dos dogmas da "heterodoxia"  atual é a crença de que tal medida "prótrabalhador" é uma "conquista social" dos trabalhadores cujos custos serão inteiramente suportados pelos empregadores. Quem se atrever a questionar esse dogma é estigmatizado como sicofanta, defensor dos iníquos interesses dos exploradores. Passa a ser perseguido impiedosamente, acusado de querer a miséria para os assalariados, e de querer restabelecer as longas jornadas de trabalho dos primeiros tempos do industrialismo moderno. <br><p>

Face a essas calúnias, é importante enfatizar uma vez mais que a riqueza e o bem-estar são frutos da produção e não da restrição. O fato de que nos países capitalistas o assalariado médio possa consumir mais, usufruir um maior lazer do que os seus ancestrais e sustentar sua mulher e filhos sem obrigá-los a trabalhar não é uma conquista social e nem decorre de medidas governamentais. É o resultado do maior capital acumulado e investido pelas empresas que visam o lucro e que, assim, aumentam a produtividade marginal do trabalho."