In recent years economists and journalists alike have been heavily emphasizing a new concept—”growth,” and much economic writing is engaged in a “numbers game” on what percentage, or “rate of growth,” “we” should have next year or in the next decade. The discussion is replete with comparisons of the higher rate of country X which “we” must hurriedly counter, etc. Amidst all the interest in growth, there are many grave problems which have hardly been touched upon.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the main indictment of the capitalist system by its intellectual critics was the alleged pervasiveness of “monopoly.” In the 1930’s, mass unemployment and poverty (“one third of a nation”) came to the fore. At the present time growing abundance and prosperity have greatly dimmed the poverty and unemployment theme, and the only serious “monopoly” seems to be that of labor unionism. Let it not be thought, however, that criticism of capitalism has died.

Before ending our discussion of specific governmental activities, we may note in passing a curiously popular form of government expenditure: “social security.” Social security confiscates the income of wage earners, and then, most people presume, it invests the money more wisely than they could themselves, later paying out the money to the former wage earners in their old age. Considered as “social insurance,” this is a typical example of government enterprise: there is no relation between premiums and benefits, the latter changing yearly under the impact of political pressures.

When government ownership or control extends to the entire productive system, then the economic system is called socialism. Socialism, in short, is the violent abolition of the market, the compulsory monopolization of the entire productive sphere by the State. There are two and only two ways that any economy can be organized. One is by freedom and voluntary choice—the way of the market. The other is by force and dictation—the way of the State.