Totalitarian Methods:J.R.Nyquist!!
FinancialSense.com
10/24/2011
The pioneers of totalitarianism, Lenin and Hitler, both denounced the capitalism system as rotten. But Lenin was the first to recognize, with the advent of his New Economic Policy, that totalitarianism can wear a capitalist face. Lenin called his version of capitalism “state capitalism,” while Hitler proposed a “social market economy.” In both instances, the central principle was state power over private power. This formula seems to be emerging today in the United States, without the appearance of an overt socialist revolution. In America, socialist totalitarian principles advance by gradualism. Capitalism is overtaken bit by bit, so that most observers do not realize how far things have moved down “the road to serfdom.” Whether it is health care or banking, the automobile industry, fishing or timber – the state successfully interjects itself, asserting ultimate control. The reason is always given that the state can solve problems that the market cannot solve.
In 1944 Yale University press published a book titled Omnipotent Government, by Ludwig von Mises. In this book, Mises explained, “The economist does not substitute his own judgment about the desirability of ultimate ends sought by nations…. He merely asks whether the ends sought by nations … can indeed be attained by the methods actually chosen….” In terms of the state versus the market, which renders the life of the common man more pleasant? Should we look to state intervention to save us from poverty, or should we look to the market? For Ludwig von Mises, the answer was perfectly obvious. The preservation of the market economy based on private ownership of the means of production, grants free competition and consumer sovereignty. State interference with the market restricts productivity, hampers the accumulation of wealth, “and makes people poorer,” wrote Mises, who pleaded with his generation: “do not abolish or cripple the capitalist system which, in spite of all obstacles put in its way by governments and politicians, has raised the standard of living of the masses in an unprecedented way.”
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