The trend toward collectivism in the capitalist economies of all nations in the world is the result of the ever-renewed quest for profit which is at the basis of these systems. The consequence of the quest for profit is the accumulation of huge masses of capital that increase the productive powers of society. At the same time, because of the gross inequalities of income between the different classes engaged in the process of production, the effective purchasing power of the masses for consumers goods is reduced. The disproportion becomes progressively acute, resulting on the one hand in the narrowing of the field for profitable investment and in large-scale unemployment. More and more the State steps in as a partner in industry and sometimes as independent producer in an attempt to keep production going, to induce new capital investments, and to relieve the growing burden and political dangers of unemployment. Left to the rationale of its own processes, capitalist economy cannot guarantee profits, generate full employment, and provide a standard of living commensurate with the technological potentialities of modern industry. It periodically convulses itself in crises that can only be partially resolved at ever-growing social costs.
The trend toward collectivism and the intervention of the State into economy are “unavoidable.” To hark back to the era of free enterprise is just another futile call, of the same kind but not of the same desperate degree as the call to return to an agrarian economy. We can make the attempt, but the overwhelming probability is that we shall disastrously fail. Where our intelligent choice lies is not in trying to contest what seems an irreversible trend but in determining who the State shall be, how it shall intervene, and the extent to which collectivism in production shall go. Therein lies our freedom. Whether in the collectivist economy there will exist certain sectors of private enterprise will be decided by the State. If those who control the State are not interested in preserving the traditional freedoms of democracy, citizens who work in the free sectors will have no greater safeguard from persecution than those who work in the collectivized sector, just as under a Fascist régime professors in private universities have no more freedom of inquiry than professors in public universities. On the other hand, a democratic collectivist society can evolve adequate safeguards against the economic outlawing of heretics by writing into its Bill of Rights the provisions that every citizen has a vested interest in a job,
