Mises, Ludwig Von Nation, State And Economy

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their demands for other goods will also increase; the rise of prices
and sales will therefore progress even further and spread to an ever
larger number of articles, and finally to all."12
If the decline in the value of money were to pervade the entire
economy at one stroke and be registered against all goods to the
same extent, then it would cause no redistribution of income and
wealth. For in this respect there can only be a question of
redistribution. The national economy as such gains nothing from
it, and what the individual gains others must lose. Those who
bring to market the goods and services whose prices are caught up
first in the upward price movement are in the favorable position of
already being able to sell at higher prices while still able to buy the
goods and services that they want to acquire at the older, lower
12
Cf. Auspitz and Lieben, Untersuchungen �ber die Theorie des Preises (Leipzig: 1889), pp. 64 f.
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Nation, State, and Economy
prices. On the other hand, again, those who sell goods and
services that rise in price only later must already buy at higher
prices while they themselves, in selling, are able to obtain only the
older, lower prices. As long as the process of change in the value
of money is still under way, such gains of some and losses of
others will keep occurring. When the process has finally come to
an end, then these gains and losses do also cease, but the gains and
losses of the interim are not made up for again. The war suppliers
in the broadest sense of the word (also including workers in war
industries and military personnel who received increased war
incomes) have therefore gained not only from enjoying good
business in the ordinary sense of the word but also from the fact
that the additional quantity of money flowed first to them. The
price rise of the goods and services that they brought to market was
a double one: it was caused first by the increased demand for their
labor, but then too by the increased supply of money.
That is the essence of so-called war prosperity; it enriches some
by what it takes from others. It is not rising wealth but a shifting
of wealth and income.13
The wealth of Germany and of German-Austria was above all
an abundance of capital. One may estimate the riches of the soil
and the natural resources of our country ever so high; yet one must
still admit that there are other countries that are more richly
endowed by nature, whose soil is more fruitful, whose mines are
more productive, whose water power is stronger, and whose
territories are more easily accessible because of location relative to
the sea, mountain ranges, and river courses. The advantages of the
German national economy rest not on the natural factor but on the
13
Cf. Mises, Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel (Munich: 1912), pp. 222 ff.; second edition
translated by H. E. Batson as The Theory of Money and Credit (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics,
1981), pp. 251 ff. A dear description of conditions in Austria during the Napoleonic Wars is found
in Gr�nberg, Studien zur �sterreichischen Agrargeschichte (Leipzig: 1901), pp. 121 ff. also Broda,
"Zur Frage der Konjunktur im und nach dem Kriege," Archiv f�r Sozialwissenschaft, vol. 45, pp. 40
ff.; also Rosenberg, Valutafragen (Vienna: 1917), pp. 14 ff.
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War and Economy
human factor of production and on a historically given head start.
These advantages showed themselves in the relatively great
accumulation of capital, mainly in the improvement of lands used
for agriculture and forestry and in the abundant stock of produced
means of production of all kinds, of streets, railroads, and other
means of transportation, of buildings and their equipment, of
machines and tools, and, finally, of already produced raw materials
and semifinished goods. This capital had been accumulated by the
German people through long work; it was the tool that German
industrial workers used for their work and from whose application
they lived. From year to year this stock was increased by thrift.
The natural forces dormant in the soil are not destroyed by
appropriate use in the process of production; in this sense they
form an eternal factor of production. The amounts of raw
materials amassed in the ground represent only a limited stock that
man consumes bit by bit without being able to replace it in any
way. Capital goods also have no eternal existence; as produced
means of production, as semifinished goods, which they represent
in a broader sense of the term, they are transformed little by little
in the production process into consumption goods. With some,
with so-called circulating capital, this takes place more quickly;
with others, with so-called fixed capital, more slowly. But the
latter also is consumed in production. Machines and tools also
have no eternal existence; sooner or later they become worn out
and unusable. Not only the increase but even the mere
maintenance of the capital stock therefore presupposes a continual
renewal of capital goods. Raw materials and semifinished goods [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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