Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis Ludwig von Mises. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010.
ASIN: B003E7F2PO; 601 pages.
Kevin Baldeosingh
The meltdown in Venezuela now taking place was predicted 80 years ago by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises.
He didn’t predict the specific event, of course, but this book comprehensively outlines why socialism does not work and never can work. Indeed, in the preface to the 1932 German edition, von Mises wrote: “We stand on the brink of a precipice which threatens to engulf our civilization.” Seven years later, the Second World War started.
In this regard, it is telling that everything von Mises wrote eight decades ago about socialism’s defects should still apply in the 21st century. It is also telling that socialists have not learned the lessons of history.
Even in his own day, this attitude was the same, with von Mises noting: “I know only too well how hopeless it seems to convince impassioned supporters of the Socialistic idea by logical demonstration that their views are preposterous and absurd. I know too well that they do not want to hear, to see, or above all to think, and that they are open to no argument.”
He devotes several chapters to the socialist mindset, outlining its roots in Christian concepts of salvation and Heaven. The socialist, he notes, “presupposes, as obviously self-evident, that the socialist condition would be better, nobler, and more beautiful than the non-socialist.” Indeed, even as the Venezuelan economy collapses, you hear rhetoric about Chavez’s noble intentions to help the poor—the very poor who are suffering the most now.
Von Mises’s exegesis on capitalism is similarly interesting in revealing how little attitudes have changed, even in our far more prosperous century.
“Capitalism’ expressed, for our age, the sum of all evil,” he writes. He then argues that socialist ideas have infected even those who are against socialism. “If one complains that the system of economic and social organisation which is based on private property in the means of production does not sufficiently consider the interests of the community, that it serves only the purposes of a single strata, and that it limited productivity…then one has fundamentally accepted the principle of the socialist programme,” he writes.
He treats with several policies which have resonance for T&T. In respect to the “mixed economy,” which was championed in the heyday of Dr Eric Williams and is still extant today, von Mises shows why this variant of socialism was doomed to fail. Similarly, in respect to idea of profit sharing, recently touted in the aftermath of the ArcellorMittal steel plant closure, he points out that this will not lead to greater productivity from a worker because “the prospect of getting a fraction of the net profit of the undertaking would not induce him to do more than just as much as is formally necessary.”
There have been many other anti-socialism books written since von Mises’, which draw on more economic data and history. But in terms of sheer breadth and treatment with all aspects of socialism, this book has never been surpassed. After all, there is even a chapter titled, Socialism and the sexual problem.