ABSTRACT
Ludwig von Mises has explained the evolution of society—of human cooperation under the division of labor—as the combined result of two factors. These are first, the fact of differences among men (labor) and/or the inequalities of the geographical distribution of the nature-given factors of production (land); and second, the recognition of the fact that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than work performed in self-sufficient isolation. He writes:
If and as far as labor under the division of labor is more productive than isolated labor, and if and as far as man is able to realize this fact, human action itself tends toward cooperation and association; man becomes a social being not in sacrificing his own concerns for the sake of a mythical Moloch, society, but in aiming at an improvement in his own welfare. Experience teaches that this condition—higher productivity achieved under division of labor—is present because its cause—the inborn inequality of men and the inequality in the geographical distribution of the natural factors of production—is real. Thus we are in a position to comprehend the course of social evolution. 1
