capitalism. Christians should attack capitalism and see it replaced by socialism. Nash agrees with the first claim, but argues that attacking capitalism and seeing it replaced by socialism will achieve precisely the opposite goals sought out by liberation theologians, arguing that socialism as a means of liberation is both tragic and ironic. Liberation theologians have rejected the one system that offers real economic hope for the masses they wish to assist. Instead, they have taken a path that will not only deny their people food but also deprive them of liberty due to socialism's central control. According to Nash, when such a movement calls itself liberation theology, the label is truly ironic. Socialism Nash states that the majority of academics in his day had a strong bias against capitalism. People blamed capitalism for nearly every evil in contemporary society including greed, selfishness, materialism, fraudulent behavior, the debasement of society's tastes, the pollution of the environment, alienation, despair, and the vast disparities of wealth. Even racism and sexism are treated as effects of capitalism. Nash argued that criticisms of capitalism were really just slogans unsupported by anything resembling evidence. An undesirable feature is noted in an alleged capitalistic society, and one where a market economy supposedly functions. Then it is simply asserted that capitalism is the cause of this problem. This is known in logic as the fallacy of false cause. Mere coincidence does not prove a causal connection. Such critics of capitalism conveniently overlook the fact that the features of capitalist societies they find so offensive also exist in socialist societies. Socialism is an umbrella term, often referring to economies with centralized control. Nash argued that the main flaw in all forms of socialism has been recognized in the 1920s by Ludwig von Mises. Mises argued that a fully centrally controlled economy can never attune to what people want unless there is a free market. Without markets, there is no way of doing cost accounting. Without cost accounting, there is no way to determine whether a good's value is worth its cost of production. This results in chaos for the economy. The way that socialist countries have been able to avoid this collapse is through monitoring the pricing information in existing free markets, and then applying this information to set prices in their own economies. The great paradox of socialism is the fact that socialism needs capitalism in order to