The Alleged Absence of Depressions Under Totalitarian Management

Many socialist authors emphasize that the recurrence of economic crises and business depressions is a phenomenon inherent in the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, they say, a socialist system is safe against this evil.

As has already become obvious and will be shown later again, the cyclical fluctuations of business are not an occurrence originating in the sphere of the unhampered market, but a product of government interference with business conditions designed to lower the rate of interest below the height at which the free market would have fixed it. At this point we have only to deal with the alleged stability as secured by socialist planning.

--Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007), 2:565.