Human Action: dagarna 26, 27

Nu återstår endast två kapitel av Human Action, vilket är synd, eftersom det är en så väldigt bra bok.
I kapitlet Confiscation and Redistribution visar Mises hur höga skatter och andra former av konfiskering av egendom alltid leder till att kapitalackumulationen bromsas ned, eller till och med stannas upp, eller i allra värsta fall, att kapital konsumeras.

When the Vikings turned their backs upon a community of autarkic peasants whom they had plundered, the surviving victims began to work, to till the soil, and to build again. When the pirates returned after some years, they again found things to seize. But capitalism cannot stand such reiterated predatory raids. Its capital accumulation and investments are founded upon the expectation that no such expropriation will occur. If this expectation is absent, people will prefer to consume their capital instead of safeguarding it for the expropriators. This is the inherent error of all plans that aim at combining private ownership and reiterated expropriation.

Och progressiv skatt hämmar nyföretagande och innovation:

Every ingenious man is free to start new business projects. He may be poor, his funds may be modest and most of them may be borrowed. But if he fills the wants of consumers in the best and cheapest way, he will succeed by means of ”excessive” profits. He ploughs back the greater part of his profits into his business, thus making it grow rapidly. It is the activity of such enterprising parvenus that provides the market economy with its ”dynamism.” These nouveaux riches are the harbingers of economic improvement. Their threatening competition forces the old firms and big corporations either to adjust their conduct to the best possible service of the public or to go out of business.

But today taxes often absorb the greater part of the newcomer’s ”excessive” profits. He cannot accumulate capital; he cannot expand his own business; he will never become big business and a match for the vested interests. The old firms do not need to fear his competition; they are sheltered by the tax collector. They may with impunity indulge in routine, they may defy the wishes of the public and become conservative. It is true, the income tax prevents them, too, from accumulating new capital. But what is more important for them is that it prevents the dangerous newcomer from accumulating any capital. They are virtually privileged by the tax system. In this sense progressive taxation checks economic progress and makes for rigidity. While under unhampered capitalism the ownership of capital is a liability forcing the owner to serve the consumers, modern methods of taxation transform it into a privilege.

Nästa kapitel behandlar syndikalismen. Här finns ett stycke som medlemmar i osynliga partiet (har de ens medlemmar?) verkligen borde läsa.

What the syndicalist considers the most serious defect of the capitalist system and disparages as the brutality and callousness of autocratic profit-seekers is precisely the outcome of the supremacy of the consumers. Under the competitive conditions of the unhampered market economy the entrepreneurs are forced to improve technological methods of production without regard to the vested interests of the workers. The employer is forced never to pay workers more than  corresponds to the consumers’ appraisal of their achievements. If an employee asks for a raise because his wife has borne him a new baby and the employer refuses on the ground that the enfant does not contribute to the factory’s effort, the employer acts as the mandatary of the consumers. These consumers are not prepared to pay more for any commodity merely because the worker has a large family. The naivete of the syndicalists manifests itself in the fact that they would never concede to those producing the articles which they themselves are using the same privileges which they claim for themselves.

Kapitel 34 handlar om krig. Mises menar att det är interventionism som skapar incitamenten för erövringskrig. För på den ohämmade marknaden finns det inget att vinna genom att utöka sitt eget lands territorium, det kan bara finnas sådana incitament om det finns handelsbarriärer. Jag gillade Mises analys av hur ”war socialism” är meningslöst och skadligt.

Of course, in the long run war and the preservation of the market economy are incompatible. Capitalism is essentially a scheme for peaceful nations. But this does not mean that a nation which is forced to repel foreign aggressors must substitute government control for private enterprise. If it were to do this, it would deprive itself of the most efficient means of defense. There is no record of a socialist nation which defeated a capitalist nation. In spite of their much glorified war socialism, the Germans were defeated in both World Wars.

What the incompatibility of war and capitalism really means is that war and high civilization are incompatible. If the efficiency of capitalism is directed by governments toward the output of instruments of destruction, the ingenuity of private business turn out weapons which are powerful enough to destroy everything. What makes war and capitalism incompatible with one another is precisely the unparalleled efficiency of the capitalist mode of production.

Därefter kommer ett av de bästa kapitlen: The Welfare Principle versus the Market Principle. Läs hela kapitlet! Det sista kapitlet handlar om hur interventionismen kommer upphöra, förr eller senare. Pengarna måste komma ifrån någonstans och de växer inte på träd. Det går inte att krama mer pengar ur skattebetalarna. Interventionismen måste kollapsa, och mänskligheten välja mellan socialism eller kapitalism.

An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when this fountain is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.

Mises avslutar den sjätte delen av boken genom att sammanfatta sina slutsatser så här:

Optimists hope that at least those nations which have in the past developed the capitalist market economy and its civilization will cling to this system in the future too. There are certainly as many signs to confirm as to disprove such an expectation. It is vain to speculate about the outcome of the great ideological conflict between the principles of private ownership and public ownership, of individualism and totalitarianism, of freedom and authoritarian regimentation. All that we can know beforehand about the result of this struggle can be condensed in the following three statements:

1. We have no knowledge whatever about the existence and operation of agencies which would bestow final victory in this clash on those ideologies whose application will secure the preservation and further intensification of societal bonds and the improvement of mankind’s material well-being. Nothing suggests the belief that progress toward more satisfactory conditions is inevitable or a relapse into very unsatisfactory conditions impossible.

2. Men must choose between the market economy and socialism. They cannot evade deciding between these alternatives by adopting a ”middle-of-the-road” position, whatever name they may give to it.

3. In abolishing economic calculation the general adoption of socialism would result in complete chaos and the disintegration of social cooperation under the division of labor.

Jag vill tillägga: Quod Erat Demonstradum.