Mises on piggybanks and pinkos

Yet more from The AntiCapitalistic Mentality by Ludwig von Mises:

All pseudoeconomic doctrines which depreciate the role of saving and capital accumulation are absurd. What con�stitutes the greater wealth of a capitalistic society as against the smaller wealth of a noncapitalistic society is the fact that the available supply of capital goods is greater in the former than in the latter. What has improved the wage earners’ standard of living is the fact that the capital equipment per head of the men eager to earn wages has increased. It is a consequence of this fact that an ever increasing portion of the total amount of usable goods produced goes to the wage earners. None of the passionate tirades of Marx, Keynes and a host of less well known authors could show a weak point in the statement that there is only one means to raise wage rates permanently and for the benefit of all those ea�ger to earn wages — namely, to accelerate the increase in capital available as against population. If this be “unjust,” then the blame rests with nature and not with man.

[emphasis added]

camouflaged as superliberalism

More from The AntiCapitalistic Mentality by Ludwig von Mises:

No less a man than Bismarck, among the nineteenth-century statesmen the foremost foe of liberty, bears witness to the fact that even in the Prussia of Frederick William III the Gymnasium was a stronghold of republicanism. The passionate endeavors to eliminate the classical studies from the curriculum of the liberal education and thus virtually to destroy its very character were one of the major manifestations of the revival of the servile ideology.

It is a fact that a hundred years ago only a few people anticipated the overpowering momentum which the antiliberal ideas were destined to acquire in a very short time. The ideal of liberty seemed to be so firmly rooted that everybody thought that no reactionary movement could ever succeed in eradicating it. It is true, it would have been a hopeless venture to attack freedom openly and to advocate unfeignedly a return to subjection and bondage. But antiliberalism got hold of people’s minds camouflaged as superliberalism, as the fulfillment and consummation of the very ideas of freedom and liberty. It came disguised as socialism, communism, and planning.

No intelligent man could fail to recognize that what the socialists, communists, and planners were aiming at was the most radical abolition of the individual’s freedom and the establishment of government omnipotence. Yet the immense majority of the socialist intellectuals were convinced that in fighting for socialism they were fighting for freedom. They called themselves left-wingers and democrats, and nowadays they are even claiming for themselves the epithet liberals.

our fair share of machines

From The AntiCapitalistic Mentality by Ludwig von Mises:

The World Council of Churches, an ecumenical organi�za�tion of Protestant Churches, declared in 1948: “Justice demands that the inhabitants of Asia and Africa, for in�stance, should have the benefits of more machine produc�tion.” This makes sense only if one implies that the Lord presented mankind with a def�inite quantity of machines and expected that these contrivances will be distributed equally among the various nations. Yet the capitalistic countries were bad enough to take possession of much more of this stock than “justice” would have assigned to them and thus to deprive the inhabitants of Asia and Africa of their fair portion. What a shame!

The truth is that the accumulation of capital and its in�vest�ment in machines, the source of the comparatively greater wealth of the Western peoples, are due exclusively to laissez-faire capi�talism which the same document of the churches passionately misrepresents and rejects on moral grounds. It is not the fault of the capitalists that the Asiatics and Afri�cans did not adopt those ideologies and policies which would have made the evolution of autochthonous capitalism possi�ble. Neither is it the fault of the capitalists that the policies of these nations thwarted the attempts of foreign investors to give them “the benefits of more machine production.” No one contests that what makes hundreds of mil�lions in Asia and Africa destitute is that they cling to primitive methods of production and miss the benefits which the employ�ment of better tools and up-to-date technological designs could be�stow upon them. But there is only one means to relieve their distress — namely, the full adoption of laissez-faire capitalism. What they need is private enterprise and the accumulation of new capital, capitalists and entrepreneurs. It is nonsensical to blame capitalism and the capitalistic nations of the West for the plight the backward peoples have brought upon themselves. [...]

All those rejecting capitalism on moral grounds as an unfair system are deluded by their failure to comprehend what capital is, how it comes into existence and how it is maintained, and what the benefits are which are derived from its employment in production processes.

[emphasis added]