When we say that the persistence of competition is ensured by fate, we mean that individual freedom is so guaranteed. The one thing to which fate binds us is liberty.

In the brief preface is expressed the hope that 'it may be found that these principles settle questions of agrarian socialism. … Though the process was savage the outlook which it afforded was not wholly evil.

John Bates Clark (January 26 1847 – March 21 1938) was an American neoclassical economist.