The Best Characterization of Destructionism Is the Financial Policy of the Jacobins (Consume in the Present at the Expense of the Future), and It Applies to the German Inflation Policy of 1923

The best characterization of destructionism is in the words with which Stourm tried to describe the financial policy of the Jacobins: “The financial spirit of the Jacobins consisted exclusively of this: Consume in the present to the utmost at the expense of the future. Tomorrow never counted for them: Activities were conducted each day as if that day were the last: Such was the distinctive spirit of all the actions of the Revolution. Such is also the secret of its surprising duration: The daily plundering of the accumulated reserves of a rich and powerful nation brought forth resources beyond all expectations.” And it applies word for word to the German inflation policy of 1923 when Stourm goes on: “The assignats, so long as they were worth anything, as little as that might be, flooded the country in ever-increasing quantities. The prospect of their collapse did not stop the emissions for a single instant; they stopped issuing them only when the public absolutely refused to accept, even when dirt cheap, any kind of paper money.”

--Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, trans. J. Kahane (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), 452n.