of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him...He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.More broadly, Gray remarks 'that each individual should have the opportunity of developing all his faculties, physical and mental in all directions, is a dream which will cheer the vision only of the simple-minded, oblivious of the restrictions imposed by the narrow limits of human life'. 'For life', Gray points out, 'is a series of acts of choice, and each choice is at the same time a renunciation...'. The necessity of choice, Gray perceptively reminds us, will exist even under communism.
--Murray N. Rothbard, Classical Economics, vol. 2 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), 325.
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