Regardless of the Fact That It Holds Power, Socialism Must Still Keep Trying to appear as an Oppressed and Persecuted Sect

Socialism has only one way out of this position. Regardless of the fact that it holds power, it must still keep trying to appear as an oppressed and persecuted sect, impeded by hostile powers from pushing through the essential parts of its program, and so shift onto others the responsibility for the nonappearance of the prophesied state of happiness. Along with that, however, the struggle against these enemies of general salvation becomes an unavoidable necessity for the socialist commonwealth. It must bloodily persecute the bourgeoisie at home; it must take the offensive against foreign countries that are not yet socialist. It cannot wait until the foreigners must turn to socialism voluntarily. Since it can explain the failure of socialism only by the machinations of foreign capitalism, it necessarily arrives at a new concept of the offensive socialist international. Socialism can be realized only if the whole world becomes socialist; an isolated socialism of one single nation is said to be impossible. Therefore, every socialist government must immediately concern itself with the extension of socialism abroad.

--Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Time, trans. Leland B. Yeager, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006), 174.