II

INFLATION AND DEFLATION

79

of Lenin had consciously conceived. Theprofiteers are a consequence and not a cause ofrising prices. By combining a popular hatredof the class of entrepreneurs with the blowalready given to social security by the violentand arbitrary disturbance of contract and ofthe established equilibrium of wealth which isthe inevitable result of inflation, these Govern-ments are fast rendering impossible a con-tinuance of the social and economic order of thenineteenth century. But they have no plan forreplacing it.