Socialism, Like Dracula, Rises Again from the Grave

Socialism, Like Dracula, Rises Again from the Grave

https://www.libertarianism.org/essays/socialism-dracula-rises-again-grave

Excerpt: The human cost of the great socialist experiment to remake man and humanity for a new collectivist heaven on earth did not come cheap. Historians of the communist experience around the world have estimated that as many as 200 million people—innocent men, women, and children—may have been killed in the socialist meat grinders: 64 million in the Soviet Union and up to 80 million in China, with millions more in the other socialist societies around the global. (See my article, “The Human Cost of Socialism in Power.”) Did these sacrifices for that better socialist future pay off? Did it deliver on its promises? In every socialist centrally-planned society, shortages, shoddy goods, and stagnant standards of living enveloped the lives of the vast majority of the citizens of these countries. Anyone who had the opportunity to visit the Soviet Union (as I did in its last years) could not help but notice the zombie-like emptiness in the faces of many on the streets of Moscow, as they trudged on foot from one government retail store to another in desperate search for the basic essentials of everyday life. There would be long lines of people at one store waiting to purchase some poor quality consumer item or basic food products. At other government stores, there would be empty shelves with no customers. All of the stores were manned by listless, bored, and indifferent government employees just waiting for their shift to end. (See my articles, “Witness to the End of Soviet Power: Twenty-Five Years Ago” and “The 25th Anniversary of the End of the Soviet Union.”) What else could be expected from an economic system that prevented any individual initiative or incentive to work, save, and invest, since private enterprise had been abolished and declared to be the basis of exploitation and injustice? (In the last five years of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had allowed small and limited private business enterprises, and these, however few and restricted, were the only pockets of economic vibrancy.)