All Forms of Socialism--Russian Style, Social-Democratic Style, Conservatism, and Social Engineering--Are Ideological Responses to the Challenge Posed by (Classical) Liberalism

All forms of socialism are ideological responses to the challenge posed by the advance of liberalism; but their stand taken against liberalism and feudalism—the old order that liberalism had helped to destroy—differs considerably. The advance of liberalism had stimulated social change at a pace, to an extent, and in variations unheard of before. The liberalization of society meant that increasingly only those people could keep a given social position once acquired who could do so by producing most efficiently for the most urgent wants of voluntary consumers with as little cost as possible, and by relying exclusively on contractual relationships with respect to the hiring of factors of production and, in particular, of labor. Empires upheld solely by force were crumbling under this pressure. And as consumer demand to which the production structure now increasingly had to adapt (and not vice versa) was changing constantly, and the upspring of new enterprises became increasingly less regulated (insofar as it was the result of original appropriation and/or contract), no one’s relative position in the hierarchy of income and wealth was secure anymore. Instead, upward and downward social mobility increased significantly, for neither particular factor-owners nor owners of particular labor services were any longer immune to respective changes in demand. They were no longer guaranteed stable prices or a stable income.

--Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2010), 89.