George Reisman > Quotes

“Liberty should be understood as freedom from the government, specifically, freedom from the initiation of physical force by the government.”
― George Reisman

“Monopoly is a market, or part of a market, reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force by the government, or with the sanction of the government. Monopoly exists insofar as the freedom of competition is violated, with the freedom of competition being understood as the absence of the initiation of physical force as the preventive of competition. Where there is no initiation of physical force to violate the freedom of competition, there is no monopoly. The freedom of competition is violated only insofar as individuals are excluded from markets or parts of markets by means of the initiation of physical force. Monopoly is thus a market or part of a market reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more sellers by means of the initiation of physical force. It is thus something imposed upon the market from without—by the government. (Private individuals—gangsters—can initiate force to reserve markets only if the government allows it and thereby sanctions it.)
Thus, monopoly is not something which emerges from the normal operation of the economic system, and which the government must control.”
― George Reisman

“Now I think that a fundamental fact that explains the all-round reign of terror found under socialism is the incredible dilemma in which a socialist state places itself in relation to the masses of its citizens. On the one hand, it assumes full responsibility for the individual’s economic well-being. Russian or Bolshevik-style socialism openly avows this responsibility—this is the main source of its popular appeal. On the other hand, in all of the ways one can imagine, a socialist state makes an unbelievable botch of the job. It makes the individual’s life a nightmare.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“the individual is the best judge of his own interests,”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“The demand for A is the demand for A”
― George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics

“Rising prices as a chronic social problem are a consequence of governments overthrowing the use of gold and silver as money and putting in their place unbacked paper currencies and checking deposits whose quantity can be increased without limit and virtually without cost.”
― George Reisman, The Government Against the Economy

“The workers who make possible the horizontal and vertical expansion of the division of labor come to be known as businessmen and capitalists. They are responsible for the increase in production—the progressive increase in production—that is possible only in a division of labor economy.[33]”
― George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death

“the rulers of a socialist state must live in terror of the people.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“It is because of their terror, and their desperate need to crush every breath even of potential opposition, that the rulers of socialism do not dare to allow even purely cultural activities that are not under the control of the state. For if people so much as assemble for an art show or poetry reading that is not controlled by the state, the rulers must fear the dissemination of dangerous ideas. Any unauthorized ideas are dangerous ideas, because they can lead people to begin thinking for themselves and thus to begin thinking about the nature of socialism and its rulers. The rulers must fear the spontaneous assembly of a handful of people in a room, and use the secret police and its apparatus of spies, informers, and terror either to stop such meetings or to make sure that their content is entirely innocuous from the point of view of the state.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“In the nature of being alive, it is thus more important to be alive now than at any other, succeeding time, and more important to be alive in each moment of the nearer future than in each moment of the more remote future. If,”
― George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics

“Socialism cannot be ruled for very long except by terror. As soon as the terror is relaxed, resentment and hostility logically begin to well up against the rulers.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“Marx could be right only if one’s standard of right was human misery and death. Only someone utterly depraved could make such a statement. Only an utterly depraved, despicable newspaper could endorse such a statement, and the feather-weight rationalizations”
― George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death

“freedom of press and speech. A socialist government totally annihilates these freedoms. It turns the press and every public forum into a vehicle of hysterical propaganda in its own behalf, and it engages in the relentless persecution of everyone who dares to deviate by so much as an inch from its official party line.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“what specifically established de facto socialism in Nazi Germany was the introduction of price and wage controls in 1936.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“Marx could be right only if one’s standard of right was human misery and death. Only someone utterly depraved could make such a statement. Only an utterly depraved, despicable newspaper could endorse such a statement, and the feather-weight rationalizations offered in support of it, by printing the piece.”
― George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death

“the requirements merely of enforcing price-control regulations is the adoption of essential features of a totalitarian state,”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“Socialism cannot be ruled for very long except by terror.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“The reason that Social Democrats do not establish socialism when they come to power, is that they are unwilling to do what would be required. The establishment of socialism as an economic system requires a massive act of theft—the means of production must be seized from their owners and turned over to the state. Such seizure is virtually certain to provoke substantial resistance on the part of the owners, resistance which can be overcome only by use of massive force.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“Nevertheless, apart from Mises and his readers, practically no one thinks of Nazi Germany as a socialist state. It is far more common to believe that it represented a form of capitalism, which is what the Communists and all other Marxists have claimed.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“Miss Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism has had a very major influence on my approach to capitalism and economic theory.”
― George Reisman, The Government Against the Economy

“The truth is, as Smith and Ricardo established long before Marx, all branches of production tend to earn the same rate of profit. This is because insofar as some industries are more profitable than others, capital tends to move from the less profitable industries into the more profitable ones,”
― George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death

“Professor Reisman shows that given the nature of the cause of rising prices, the imposition of price controls to deal with the problem is as illogical a solution as trying to hold down expanding pressure in a boiler by manipulating the needle in the boiler’s pressure gauge—and is just as dangerous. Price controls, he argues, do not solve the problem of inflation at all. They merely combine with it to produce a much worse problem. Instead of the problem being inflation alone, it becomes inflation plus the destruction of the price system.”
― George Reisman, The Government Against the Economy

“Literally everything the government does is ultimately a threat to point a gun at someone and use it if necessary.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“It follows that capitalists do not impoverish wage earners, but make it possible for people to be wage earners. For, as I have shown, they are responsible not for the phenomenon of profit, but for the phenomenon of wages. They are responsible for the very existence of wages in the production of products for sale.”
― George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death

“The Communists were and are willing to apply such force, as evidenced in Soviet Russia. Their character is that of armed robbers prepared to commit murder if that is what is necessary to carry out their robbery. The character of the Social Democrats in contrast is more like that of pickpockets, who may talk of pulling the big job someday, but who in fact are unwilling to do the killing that would be required, and so give up at the slightest sign of serious resistance. As for the Nazis, they generally did not have to kill in order to seize property. This was because, as we have seen, they established socialism by stealth, through price controls, which served to maintain the outward guise and appearance of private ownership. The private owners were thus deprived of their property without realizing it and thus felt no need to defend it by force. In sum, I think I have shown that socialism—actual socialism—is totalitarian by its very nature.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“The last thing the United States needs is “gun control” in the sense of depriving its citizens of their right to own guns. What it does need is control over the use of guns by its government.”
― George Reisman, GUN CONTROL: CONTROLLING THE GOVERNMENT’S GUNS

“The reason that Social Democrats do not establish socialism when they come to power, is that they are unwilling to do what would be required. The establishment of socialism as an economic system requires a massive act of theft—the means of production must be seized from their owners and turned over to the state. Such seizure is virtually certain to provoke substantial resistance on the part of the owners, resistance which can be overcome only by use of massive force. The Communists were and are willing to apply such force, as evidenced in Soviet Russia. Their character is that of armed robbers prepared to commit murder if that is what is necessary to carry out their robbery. The character of the Social Democrats in contrast is more like that of pickpockets, who may talk of pulling the big job someday, but who in fact are unwilling to do the killing that would be required, and so give up at the slightest sign of serious resistance. As for the Nazis, they generally did not have to kill in order to seize property. This was because, as we have seen, they established socialism by stealth, through price controls, which served to maintain the outward guise and appearance of private ownership. The private owners were thus deprived of their property without realizing it and thus felt no need to defend it by force.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“A mentality that treats as the same, two cases in which a worker works to avoid pain, neglecting that in the one case the pain is caused by a master and in the other, caused by nature and prevented by a capitalist. A mentality, in other words, that sees no difference between slavery and freedom, and thus can claim justification for Marxists/Socialists robbing and murdering capitalists on the grounds that the free workers of the capitalists are their slaves.”
― George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death

“Of course, socialism does not end the chaos caused by the destruction of the price system. It perpetuates it. And if it is introduced without the prior existence of price controls, its effect is to inaugurate that very chaos. This is because socialism is not actually a positive economic system. It is merely the negation of capitalism and its price system. As such, the essential nature of socialism is one and the same as the economic chaos resulting from the destruction of the price system by price and wage controls. (I want to point out that Bolshevik-style socialism’s imposition of a system of production quotas, with incentives everywhere to exceed the quotas, is a sure formula for universal shortages, just as exist under all around price and wage controls.) At most, socialism merely changes the direction of the chaos. The government’s control over production may make possible a greater production of some goods of special importance to itself, but it does so only at the expense of wreaking havoc throughout the rest of the economic system. This is because the government has no way of knowing the effects on the rest of the economic system of its securing the production of the goods to which it attaches special importance.”
― George Reisman, Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

“What the socialist barbarians destroy is private ownership of the means of production, the profit motive, private saving and capital accumulation, competition, and the price system.”
― George Reisman, Marxism/Socialism, A Sociopathic Philosophy Conceived In Gross Error And Ignorance, Culminating In Economic Chaos, Enslavement, Terror, And Mass Murder: A Contribution To Its Death