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 anybody but itself. The reason for this is plain: each activity that the State takes unto itself reduces the scope of social activity, adds to its personnel, and improves its position vis-à-vis Society. That is, its power increases in proportion to the number of "social services" it engages in. The process of acquisition is self-accelerating. In a highly integrated Society, where specialization is rife and each specialization impinges on another, so that none can stand up alone, the invasion of the market place by the State in one field soon brings it into contact with another, so that it is pushed by the logic of necessity into designating more and more occupations as "social" in character. Once started on this process of preemption the State cannot, if it would, contain itself; it must go on. Eventually it must abolish the market-place technique entirely; everything that man would do for himself to better his circumstances is the proper sphere of political power. Thus, the ideal of "social services" is the complete State, or communism.

Whenever the State appropriates or engages in a field of economic activity it either monopolizes it outright or surrounds it with conditions that are peculiar and advantageous unto itself, so that private operators in that field are put to flight. In the first place, the State does not tax itself and thus is relieved of a cost its competitors must bear. It is under no necessity so to manage its business that its income shall meet its expenses, for it can make up for losses by taxation. In the second place, the bookkeeping of the State is a meaningless invention of its own. Competition with the State, even when it is permitted, becomes impossible. Indeed, the State knows that it is unable to meet the performance of private business and therefore refuses to face the test of the market place. Its 101