The “National Income” Approach Is an Abortive Attempt to provide a Justification for the Marxian Idea that under Capitalism Goods Are “Socially” Produced and then “Appropriated” by Individuals

The “national income” approach is an abortive attempt to provide a justification for the Marxian idea that under capitalism goods are “socially” (gesellschaftlich) produced and then “appropriated” by individuals. It puts things upside down. In reality, the production processes are activities of individuals cooperating with one another. Each individual collaborator receives what his fellow men—competing with one another as buyers on the market—are prepared to pay for his contribution. For the sake of argument one may admit that, adding up the prices paid for every individual’s contribution, one may call the resulting total national income. But it is a gratuitous pastime to conclude that this total has been produced by the “nation” and to bemoan—neglecting the inequality of the various individuals’ contributions—the inequality in its alleged distribution.

--Ludwig von Mises, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method, ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006), 77-78.