The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

460 THE FREEMAN Augustited by inalienable personal rights.State sovereignty was encompassedby the individual rights to life,liberty, and property. This conceptof limited state sovereignty,which true friends of freedomcontinue to embrace, denies theright of any government to seizeor nationalize any enterprise withoutthe owner's consent.Are we Marxians now? MostAmericans will indignantly answerthis question in the negative.After all, they neither condonedictatorship with its one-partysystem nor the ruthless suppressionof dissent and brutal treatmentof dissenters, which characterizeall communist countries.They are "civilized" and thereforeabhor all manifestations of inhumanity.But unfortunately, manyAmericans unwittingly share importantphilosophical, sociological,and economic beliefs with Marxiansthe world over. These beliefsgive rise to policies that pleasethe Marxians. Ultimately, they willbreed the very political and economictyranny which Americansso abhor.fJA Useful ProductIDEAS ONLIBERTYTHE BUSINESS GENIUS who makes and markets a useful productand furnishes employment at good wages to hundreds of fathers,serves his community more usefully than a councilman who votesthe appropriation of public funds to build playgrounds.Without the steady production of wealth, the makers of publicbudgets would be helpless. For this reason the man richly endowedwith business sense serves his fellow men best if he continues athis desk to the end of his days.This line of thought does not win easy acceptance because it isonly within recent generations that the social significance of businessprosperity has been properly valued. It is now becomingmore generally recognized that a nation cannot have too manycompetent businessmen. Prosperity is more a matter of men thannatural resources. Poverty and ignorance have cursed and humbledmankind from the beginning. Intelligent direction of businesswill eliminate both.From The William Feather Magazine, April, 1972