Socialismo e Guerra

"Great Britain and all the other countries which in the first World War adopted measures of price control, had to experience the same failure. They too were pushed further and further in their attempts to make the initial decrees work. But they were still at a rudimentary stage of this development when the victory and the opposition of the public brushed away all schemes for controlling prices.

It was different in the second World War. Then Great Britain again resorted to price ceilings for a few vital commodities and had to run the whole gamut proceeding further and further until it had substituted all-around planning of the country's whole economy for economic freedom. When the war came to an end, Great Britain was a socialist commonwealth.

It is noteworthy to remember that British socialism was not an achievement of Mr. Attlee's Labor Government, but of the war cabinet of Mr. Winston Churchill.

What the Labor Party did was not the establishment of socialism in a free country, but retaining socialism as it had developed during the war and in the post-war period. The fact has been obscured by the great sensation made about the nationalization of the Bank of England, the coal mines and other branches of business. However, Great Britain is to be called a socialist country not because certain enterprises have been formally expropriated and nationalized, but because all the economic activities of all citizens are subject to full control of the government and its agencies." Ludwig von Mises

Nota: Sempre achei um pouco deslocado culpar Bismarck pelo Estado Social moderno, uma vez que as suas reformas inovadoras para a época foram tímidos passos comparados com a sua adopção em pleno no mundo anglo-saxónico. Deve-se apenas à mania de culpar a Prússia por tudo, incluindo das culpas de um austriaco desvairado (Hitler), quando foram os Prussos (e os restos da sua aristocracia), na sua última aparição na História, os responsáveis pela última tentativa de revolta (ignorada absurdamente), a qual podia ter evitado o domínio de Estaline na Europa. Por outro, é a Churchill que devem imputadas a decadência do Reino Unido: não só perdeu o Império, não só o mundo perdeu metade da Europa cristã, como os ingleses entraram na espiral do socialismo pela sua mão.