Freedom, Society, and State - Ludwig von Mises Institute

FOOTNOTES
(l)See Rudolph Rocker, "Anarchism and Anarcho­
Syndicalism," appendix to Paul Eltzbacher, Anarchism
(New York: Chip's, n.d.), pp. 227-72; and George
Woodcock, "Syndicalism, the Industrial Expression of
Anarchism," Patterns of Anarchy. eds. L. I.
Krimmerman and L. Perry (New York: Anchor, 1966), pp.
38-42. Also see Mulford Sibley, Political Ideas and
Ideologies (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 547­
48; and Get D. H. Cole, Social Theory (London: 1920),
especially pp. 128-43.
(2)Peter Kropotkin, "Fields, FactorieS and Workshops,"
The Essent ial Kropotkio. eds. E. Caporya and
K. Thomp kin s ( New Yo r k : L i verigh t, 19 7 S), pp. 27 0 - 7 2 ;
and Alexander Berkman, The ABC of Anarchism (London:
F r e e d om Pre s s, 1973), p. 76.
(3)Kropotkin, p. 282.
(4)Ibid., p. 272.
(S)Berkman, pp. 68-69. Such statements as these
by Berkman and Kropotkin abound in the literature. They
c I ear I yindieate ami sun d e r s tanding 0 f how e con om i c
systems -- all economic systems -- function. The purpose
of an economic system is to produce and distribute
goo d san d s e r vice s • But, a s Thoma s S owe 11 po i n t S ou t ,
"what is crucial for understanding the way it functions
is that it is a system for rationing goods and services
that are inadequate to supply all that people want."
This is true for all economic systems, including communism.
Because goods were so abundant that rationing
was not necessary, "the Garden of Eden was not an economic
system." Writers such as Berkman and Kropotkin
seem to assume that scarcity is not a fact of nature
but a product of the capitalist economic system. Scarci
ty will disappear when the economic system is changed
to socialism. Witness Berkman's comment that under socialism
"as much food will be raised as the country
needs." But, as Sowell notes, "because economic systems
are essentially systems of rationing, any successfu
1 funct ion ing economic system would have unmet needs
everywhere. The alternative would be to completely
satisfy all of some category of needs -- the most urgent,
the moderately important, and the trivially marginal
thereby leaving still more unsatisfied (and
far more urgent) needs unmet elsewhere in the economy
The mundane fact of insufficiencv must be insisted
upon and reiterated because so many discussions of 'unmet
needs' proceed as if 'better' policies, practices,
ora t tit u des wo u Id's 0 1ve' the prob I em a t han d wit h 0 u t
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