For several generations now, one of the loudest criticisms of capitalism is summed up by dismissively characterizing the working class under free markets as being “free to starve.”

For instance, this 2017 Socialist Worker article described Marx’s critique of capitalism as a system in which “workers are free in a ‘double sense’— free to work or free to starve.”

In other words, workers face no choice other than to sell their labor to owners of capital to ensure their own survival.

Everyone interested in Austrian economics owes a great debt to the editors of the vast collection of articles by Israel Kirzner, one of the foremost students of Ludwig von Mises. Readers will find that Kirzner stresses certain themes repeatedly, and I should like to comment on two of these.