The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

1972 FREE ENTERPRISE AND THE RUSSIANS 463for instance, has a rather limitedpolitical freedom but a great dealof economic liberty. Brazil has amilitary dictatorship but its economyrests on free enterprise. ContinentalEurope before 1848 hada free market economy under royalabsolutism. But the USSR boastsa democratic label and has practicallyno freedom, neither economic,nor intellectual, nor religious.It knows not even the freedomof residence.Old Imperial ("Czarist") Russia,however, had a far-reachingeconomic freedom. Of course, wealways ought to distinguish Russiabefore the liberation of theserfs from the Russia between1861 and the issuing of the Constitution(1905), and the latterfrom the liberal monarchy between1905 and the Revolution. The freedomof expression during this"terminal" period was nearly complete.In 1912 the Pravda" foundedin broad daylight, violentlyattacked the government. Therewere, moreover, Bolshevik delegatesin the Duma (Diet), but noAnarchists ("Social Revolutionaries"),a party which indeed representedtotal individualism, butalso murder and arson. (It wasbanned by law, but Kerenski secretlyadhered to it). As a matterof fact, the government favoredthe Social Democrats, with theirmenshevik and ',:~olshevik wings,over the Anarchists, the latterclaiming not Marx, but Bakunin(a nobleman) and Prince Kropotkin,who died in 1921, as theirfounding· fathers and spokesmen.(Incidentally, the great bolshevikleaders beginning with Lenin werefrequently members of the nobility.)Progress through freedomIt was thanks to economic freedomthat Russian industry, thoughlate getting started, enjoyed afabulous development in the quartercentury before the Red Revolution.The annual increase of Russia'sindustrial output and capacityin those years was far larger thanthat of any other modern nation,including that of the UnitedStates. Evidence may be found, ofall places, in the Illustrated Historyof the Russian Revolution(New York, 1928), a Communistpublication. Obviously, Russianlabor, largely lacking skills, discipline,and the famous "Protestantwork ethics," could not bewell paid any more than in anyother "emerging nation" in thefirst phase of industrializationwhen heavy investments are necessaryand the purchasing powerof the masses is still exceedinglylow. The new class of Russian entrepreneurs,needless to say, werenot members of the old upper layers,but homines novi - industri-