ABSTRACT
The phony elections in totalitarian countries, the ballots with only one party and one list of candidates, are not the mere tricks of a cynical dictator, they are intrinsic to a state-planned economy. Taking human nature as it functions in average life, they have shown that the competitive market and the price system are the basis of whatever real political freedom exists, or can be imagined to exist, where there is an elaborate division of labor. There is no conflict between freedom so conditioned and a humane regard on the part of the state for people who fail utterly in the competitive struggle. Equality apart, however, there is something vitally democratic, as well as impersonal, in the control exercised by the market. The old liberal movement grew out of the struggle against absolutism and feudal oppression. The freedom fought for in that struggle included free trade as a matter of course.
