Inflation Is the True Opium of the People and It Is Administered to Them by Anticapitalist Governments and Parties

The Marxian socialists once indulged in reveries concerning a fabulous increase in riches to be expected from the socialist mode of production. The truth is that every infringement of property rights and every restriction of free enterprise impairs the productivity of labor. One of the foremost concerns of all parties hostile to economic freedom is to withhold this knowledge from the voters. The various brands of socialism and interventionism could not retain their popularity if people were to discover that the measures whose adoption is hailed as social progress curtail production and tend to bring about capital decumulation. To conceal these facts from the public is one of the services inflation renders to the so-called progressive policies. Inflation is the true opium of the people and it is administered to them by anticapitalist governments and parties.

--Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, trans. H. E. Batson (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), 484-485.