- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Conscription and Socialism

Posted by: borg ( Anarchy, Inc. ) on March 31, 1999 at 17:38:07:


To:
Subject: Conscription and Socialism
Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 10:33:34 -0600

Sender: miseslist-owner@mises.org

"Market economy and total war are incompatible. In the soldiers' war only the soldiers fight; for the great majority war is only a passing suffering of evil, not an active pursuit. While the armies are combating each other, the citizens, farmers, and workers try to carry on their normal activities.

"The first step which led from the soldiers' war back to total war was the introduction of compulsory military service. It gradually did away with the difference between soldiers and citizens. The war was no longer to be only a matter of mercenaries; it was to include everyone who had the necessary physical ability. The slogan ‘a nation in arms' at first expressed only a program which could not be realized completely for financial reasons. Only part of the able-bodied male population received military training and were placed in the armed, services. But once this road is entered upon it is not possible to stop at halfway measures.

"Eventually the mobilization of the army was bound to absorb even the men indispensable to production at home who had the responsibility of feeding and equipping the combatants. It was found necessary to differentiate between essential and nonessential occupations. The men in occupations essential for supplying the army had to be exempted from induction into the combat troops. For this reason disposition of the available manpower was placed in the hands of the military leaders.

"Compulsory military service proposes putting everyone in the army who is able-bodied; only the ailing, the physically unfit, the old, the women, and the children are exempted. But when it is realized that a part of the able-bodied must be used on the industrial front for work which may be performed by the old and the young, the less fit and the women, then there is no reason to differentiate in compulsory service between the able-bodied and the physically unfit.

"Compulsory military service thus leads to compulsory labor service of all citizens who are able to work, male and female. The supreme commander exercises power over the entire nation, he replaces the work of the able-bodied by the work of less fit draftees, and places as many able-bodied at the front as he can spare at home without endangering the supply of the army. The supreme commander then decides what is to be produced and how. He also decides how the products are to be used. Mobilization has become total; the nation and the state have been transformed into an army; war socialism has replaced the market economy."

Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1940)
by Ludwig von Mises
(Irvington, NY: FEE, 1998)
pp. 69-70
http://www.mises.org/product.asp?sku=B252



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