… is from page 205 of the original edition of Walter Lippmann’s sometimes deeply flawed but profoundly insightful and important 1937 book, The Good Society:
And so I insist that collectivism, which replaces the free market by coercive centralized authority, is reactionary in the exact sense of the word. Collectivism not only renders impossible the progressive division of labor, but requires, wherever it is attempted, a regression to a more primitive mode of production.
DBx: Yes.
Show me an advocate of full-on socialism and I’ll show you someone whose preferred policies, if implemented, would destroy modern civilization. Show me an advocate of partial socialism – for example, an advocate of industrial policy – and I’ll show you someone whose preferred policies, if implemented, would inflict great damage on modern civilization, with the amount of damage being a positive function of the extent to which the industrial policy displaces market-directed allocations of resources.
