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• Human Action: a Treatise On Economics: Vol. 3. Part 5: Social Cooperation Without a Market
• Chapter 25: The Imaginary Construction of a Socialist Society
• 1: The Historical Origin of the Socialist Idea
• 2: The Socialist Doctrine
• 3: The Praxeological Character of Socialism
• Chapter 26: The Impossibility of Economic Calculation Under Socialism
• 1: The Problem
• 2: Past Failures to Conceive the Problem
• 3: Recent Suggestions For Socialist Economic Calculation
• 4: Trial and Error
• 5: The Quasi-market
• 6: The Differential Equations of Mathematical Economics
• Part 6: The Hampered Market Economy
• Chapter 27: The Government and the Market
• 1: The Idea of a Third System
• 2: The Intervention
• 3: The Delimitation of Governmental Functions
• 4: Righteousness As the Ultimate Standard of the Individual’s Actions
• 5: The Meaning of Laissez Faire
• 6: Direct Government Interference With Consumption
• Corruption
• Chapter 28: Interference By Taxation
• 1: The Neutral Tax
• 2: The Total Tax
• 3: Fiscal and Nonfiscal Objectives of Taxation
• 4: The Three Classes of Tax Interventionism
• Chapter 29: Restriction of Production
• 1: The Nature of Restriction
• 2: The Price of Restriction
• 3: Restriction As a Privilege
• 4: Restriction As an Economic System
• Chapter 30: Interference With the Structure of Prices
• 1: The Government and the Autonomy of the Market
• 2: The Market’s Reaction to Government Interference
• Observations On the Causes of the Decline of Ancient Civilization
• 3: Minimum Wage Rates
• The Catallactic Aspects of Labor Unionism
• Chapter 31: Currency and Credit Manipulation
• 1: The Government and the Currency
• 2: The Interventionist Aspect of Legal Tender Legislation
• 3: The Evolution of Modern Methods of Currency Manipulation
• 4: The Objectives of Currency Devaluation
• 5: Credit Expansion
• The Chimera of Contracyclical Policies
• 6: Foreign Exchange Control and Bilateral Exchange Agreements
• Chapter 32: Confiscation and Redistribution
• 1: The Philosophy of Confiscation
• 2: Land Reform
• 3: Confiscatory Taxation
• Confiscatory Taxation and Risk-taking
• Chapter 33: Syndicalism and Corporativism
• 1: The Syndicalist Idea
• 2: The Fallacies of Syndicalism
• 3: Syndicalist Elements In Popular Policies
• 4: Guild Socialism and Corporativism
• Chapter 34: The Economics of War
• 1: Total War
• 2: War and the Market Economy
• 3: War and Autarky
• 4.: The Futility of War
• Chapter 35: The Welfare Principle Versus the Market Principle
• 1: The Case Against the Market Economy
• 2: Poverty
• 3: Inequality
• 4: Insecurity
• 5: Social Justice
• Chapter 36: The Crisis of Interventionism
• 1: The Harvest of Interventionism
• 2: The Exhaustion of the Reserve Fund
• 3: The End of Interventionism
• Part 7: The Place of Economics In Society
• Chapter 37: The Nondescript Character of Economics
• 1: The Singularity of Economics
• 2: Economics and Public Opinion
• 3: The Illusion of the Old Liberals
• Chapter 38: The Place of Economics In Learning
• 1: The Study of Economics
• 2: Economics As a Profession
• 3: Forecasting As a Profession
• 4: Economics and the Universities
• 5: General Education and Economics
• 6: Economics and the Citizen
• 7: Economics and Freedom
• Chapter 39: Economics and the Essential Problems of Human Existence
• 1: Science and Life
• 2: Economics and Judgments of Value
• 3: Economic Cognition and Human Action

1

The Philosophy of Confiscation

Interventionism is guided by the idea that interfering with property rights does not affect the size of production. The most naïve manifestation of this fallacy is presented by confiscatory interventionism. The yield of production activities is considered a given magnitude independent of the merely accidental arrangements of society’s social order. The task of the government is seen as the “fair” distribution of this national income among the various members of society.

The interventionists and the socialists contend that all commodities are turned out by a social process of production. When this process comes to an end and its fruits ripen, a second social process, that of distribution of the yield, follows and allots a share to each. The characteristic feature of the capitalist order is that the shares allotted are unequal. Some people—the entrepreneurs, the capitalists, and the landowners—appropriate to themselves more than they should. Accordingly, the portions of other people are curtailed. Government should by rights expropriate the surplus of the privileged and distribute it among the underprivileged.

Now in the market economy this alleged dualism of two independent processes, that of production and that of distribution, does not exist. There is only one process going on. Goods are not first produced and then distributed. There is no such thingas an appropriation ofportions out ofastock ofownerless goods. The products come into existence as somebody’s property. If one wants to distribute them, one must first confiscate them. It is certainly very easy for the governmental apparatus of compulsion and coercion to embark upon confiscation and expropriation. But this does not prove that a durable system of economic affairs can be built upon such confiscation and expropriation.

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.