Communism and Socialism Failures Can’t be Explained Away

What increasingly has become the political battle lines. (r/The_Donald)

Communism failed because they did not do it properly. This same argument is also advanced for the failure of socialism. If only the people under a communist/socialist system implemented the right concepts and did the right things, communism or socialism would’ve succeeded. Such societies would be prosperous.

One common counter-argument to these claims involves personal incentives. People will work towards economic incentives. The more effort a person puts in, the more they do the right things, the more they exercise proper judgment, etc., the chances increase that they would achieve their goals.

But, what happens when you shift the incentive from one of personal gain to one where someone else gets it… Regardless of everybody else’s efforts? Will people subject themselves to stress intoxication if it means that someone who isn’t working as much gets the economic reward?

From the Washington Post:

To this day, defenders of socialist central planning argue that communism failed for avoidable contingent reasons, rather than ones intrinsic to the nature of the system. Perhaps the most popular claim of this sort is that a planned economy can work well so long as it is democratic. The Soviet Union and other communist states were all dictatorships. But if they had been democratic, perhaps the leaders would have had stronger incentives to make the system work for the benefit of the people. If they failed to do so, the voters could “throw the bastards out” at the next election.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that a communist state could remain democratic for long, even it started out that way. Democracy requires effective opposition parties. And in order to function, such parties need to be able to put out their message and mobilize voters, which in turn requires extensive resources. In an economic system in which all or nearly all valuable resources are controlled by the state, the incumbent government can easily strangle opposition by denying them access to those resources. Under socialism, the opposition cannot function if they are not allowed to spread their message on state-owned media, or use state-owned property for their rallies and meetings. It is no accident that virtually every communist regime suppressed opposition parties soon after coming to power.

Even if a communist state could somehow remain democratic over the long run, it is hard to see how it could solve the twin problems of knowledge and incentives. Whether democratic or not, a socialist economy would still require enormous

concentration of power, and extensive coercion. And democratic socialist planners would run into much the same information problems as their authoritarian counterparts. In addition, in a society where the government controls all or most of the economy, it would be virtually impossible for voters to acquire enough knowledge to monitor the state’s many activities. This would greatly exacerbate the already severe problem of voter ignorance that plagues modern democracy.

This is an old article, but it covers human nature. Human nature is an ingredient that makes capitalism more practical and communism/socialism impractical. It’s a reason why capitalism has done more to lift societies out of poverty while communism/socialism has pushed societies into poverty.

The Washington Post has the full article here. It is a thorough counter-argument to the claims that people have yet to practice communism or socialism properly.

Tags: Communism, Socialism

Category: Politics