Capitalism Is the Only Feasible System of Social Organization Based on the Division of Labor

Every examination of the different conceivable possibilities of organizing society on the basis of the division of labor must always come to the same result: there is only the choice between communal ownership and private ownership of the means of production. All intermediate forms of social organization are unavailing and, in practice, must prove self-defeating. If one further realizes that socialism too is unworkable, then one cannot avoid acknowledging that capitalism is the only feasible system of social organization based on the division of labor.

--Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), 59.