Wealth & Money Quote by Ludwig von Mises

Mises is doing something more surgical than praising markets: he is trying to repossess the word "capitalism" from its most effective rhetorical enemy, the monopolist. The line is a preemptive counterpunch to the familiar story that monopoly is the natural endgame of unfettered capitalism. In Mises's framing, monopoly is not a market pathology but a political artifact - the offspring of tariffs, licensing, cartel privileges, and regulatory choke points that convert competition into paperwork.

The intent is polemical, but not sloppy. Notice the precision of "manufacturing and commercial" monopolies: he is not talking about temporary dominance from innovation or scale, but durable control over entry and trade. "Owe their origin" is a causal claim aimed at shifting blame. If monopoly is born from policy, then the remedy is not more policy of the same type (antitrust as a new layer of discretion) but the removal of the protections that make monopoly sustainable.

The subtext is also a warning about moral misdirection. Public anger at "big business" can be real and justified, Mises implies, yet it often targets the wrong mechanism. The villain is not mere size; it is the state-created moat. That reframes corporate power as a lobbying problem rather than a purely economic one, casting businessmen as both beneficiaries and symptoms of political favoritism.

Context matters: Mises wrote in a century when cartelization, protectionism, and war economies blurred the line between private enterprise and state planning. His provocation is designed to make readers reclassify "capitalism's" alleged sins as interventions masquerading as market outcomes - a move that keeps laissez-faire not only defensible, but newly suspicious of government "solutions."