Socialism

"This book must be the most devastating analysis of socialism of all time," wrote Henry Hazlitt for the New York Times in 1938—and that still holds true, almost a hundred years after its first publication. Socialism is a rigorous refutation of the economics of socialism, but it is much more than that. Mises also discusses, among other things, inequality, religion, love, and their relationship to socialism and capitalism.

The admirable breadth and depth of Mises's intellectual scope allow him to analyse all arguments for socialism. Most of the works he draws upon have not been translated into English to this day. After forty years of socialist tyranny, the Czech reader does not need to be told that socialism does not work.

However, this book offers a veritable encyclopaedia of reasons why socialism cannot work—anywhere, ever.