Freedom, Society, and State - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Spa n ish - Arne ric a n War, the two Wo rId Wa r sand the Co 1d
War. Man y I i be r tar ian s are inag r e erne n t wit h the rev i ­
s ion i s t his tor ian Rob e r t S mit h, wh 0 c I aims t hat the
United States "wanted to preserve an international
order in which the country could have the fruits of an
imperial position. The British and French empires were
important elements in the maintenance of this system•.•
Thus ,when the Fr-ench collapsed and the British began
to falter in mid-1940, the United States officials were
faced with the di lemma of when and. how militarily to
engage the disruptors of the status quo."(21) Thus,
the Roosevelt administration had a vested economic interest
in the adoption of a policy of imperialism and
war.
They also believe that the Truman Doctrine, which
is the basis of the United States Cold War policy, has
merely supplied a new ideological justification for the
consistent American foreign policy of economic expansion
and global hegemony. While the American policy
rna k e r ssp 0 k e 0 f c 0 mm un i s taggres s ion and the powe r 0 f
the Soviet Union, this was primarily a ploy to generate
popular support. In actual fact, they believe, far
from fear of Soviet power, the American policy makers
were well aware of the Soviet weakness vis-a-vis the
United States and used this advantage to expand American
economic and political controls.(22)
But a pol icy 0 f pIanned s car cityen t a i Is two s i gnificant
ramifications. Not only is there unemployment
resulting from the reduced production,but the result
of the monopoly profits on the one hand, together with
the restriction of production on the other, results in
the ph e nomen 0 n 0 f sur p Ius capit a I. Wh i lethe I a t t e r
may be solved by overseas expansion as Stromberg sugges
t s, the problem of unemployment remains. The traditional
method of handling unemployment in the intervent
ionist system is to make government invest the savings
that private business will not. But the government investment
must be in areas outside the economic system,
for otherwise the additional production in the
areas where the government invests will force some of
the private firms out of business. In that case, government
investment would simply replace private investment
in those areas, and neither additional investment
nor job s w i I I ha ve res u I ted . Wh i leothe r pro j e c t s rna y
be found, Flynn feels that since the project [1] must
be 0 net hat w i I I sat i s f yeo n s e r vat i ve and t a x paying
elements of the country, and [2] must be, at least in a
federal system, handled entirely at the federal level,
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