I come now to a point which is, in my opinion, the mainspring and the secret of domination, the support and foundation of tyranny. Whoever thinks that halberds, sentries, the placing of the watch, serve to protect and shield tyrants is, in my judgment, completely mistaken. These are used, it seems to me, more for ceremony and a show of force than for any reliance placed in them. The archers forbid the entrance to the palace to the poorly dressed who have no weapons, not to the well armed who can carry out some plot.

The program of liberalism (in the original sense of the term as it was understood in 19th-century Europe and not in present-day America where it is sometimes a synonym for radical interventionism, or more often for socialism and communism) was based upon cognizance that within the market economy, i.e., within the social system of private ownership of the means of production and the division of labor, harmony prevails among the rightly understood or long-term interests of all individuals and groups of individuals.

We intend to deal with the achievement of Utilitarian Philosophy and Classical Political Economy as far as they constitute a theory of peaceful human cooperation. One of the fundamental theses of Classical Economics is the theory of the harmony of the rightly understood—we prefer today to speak of the long-run—interests of all individuals and groups of individuals within a society of private ownership of the means of production and free enterprise.

What is nowadays called governmental monetary management encompasses two kinds of policy. It is, on the one hand, deficit spending, i.e., undisguised inflation to enable the government to spend over and beyond the amount of funds collected by taxation or borrowed from the public. It is, on the other hand, a policy of easy money, i.e., of attempts to lower the market rate of interest by credit expansion.

A characteristic feature of the contemporary policies of all the not outright socialist nations is animosity against business. Public opinion contrasts the mean selfishness of those engaged in the conduct of business with the lofty altruism of the politicians and the public servants. The profits made by those enterprises that succeed in filling, in the best possible and cheapest way, the most urgent wants of the consumers, i.e., of everybody, are called “unearned” income in the tax laws and are subject to confiscatory and discriminatory imposts.

In the first essay in this section Mises wrote, “The struggle between the two systems of social organization, freedom and totalitarianism . . . depends on ideological factors. The champions of freedom can win only if they are supported by a citizenry fully and unconditionally committed to the ideal of freedom.”

The struggle between the two systems of social organization, freedom and totalitarianism, will be decided in the democratic nations at the polls. As things are today, the outcome in the United States will determine the outcome for all other peoples too. As long as this country does not go socialist, socialist victories in other parts of the world are of minor relevance.

Some people?among them very keen minds?expect either a revolutionary upheaval of the communists, a war with Russia and its satellites, or a combination of both events.

An interview by Professor Percy L. Greaves, Jr., reprinted from the minibook published in 1969 by Constitutional Alliance, Inc.

Professor Greaves: What is the most important political problem for the world today?

Professor Mises: The prevention of a third world war which might doom our entire civilization.

Greaves: What is the most important problem from the viewpoint of domestic economic policies?

Mises: The re-establishment of financial integrity and making an end to inflation.

The inauguration of a systematic science of economics, an achievement of the social philosophy of the Enlightenment that also begot the doctrine of popular sovereignty, was a challenge to the powers that be. Economics shows that there prevails in the succession and interdependence of the market phenomena an inescapable regularity that man must take into full account if he wants to attain ends aimed at.

As the harbingers of socialism tell us again and again, socialism will not only make all people rich but it will also bring perfect freedom to everybody. The transition to socialism, declares Frederick Engels, the friend and collaborator of Marx, is the leap of mankind from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom. Under capitalism, say the Communists, there is bondage for the immense majority; in the Soviet Union alone is there genuine liberty for all.