Critique the concept of Socialism using appropriate examples
Socialism
Socialists are fond of saying that socialism has never failed because it has never been tried. But in truth, socialism has
failed in every country in which it has been tried, from the Soviet Union beginning a century ago to three modern countries
that tried but ultimately rejected socialism—Israel, India, and the United Kingdom. While there were major political
differences between the totalitarian rule of the Soviets and the democratic politics of Israel, India, and the U.K., all three of
the latter countries adhered to socialist principles, nationalizing their major industries and placing economic decisionmaking
in the hands of the government. The Soviet failure has been well documented by historians. In 1985, General Secretary
Mikhail Gorbachev took command of a bankrupt disintegrating empire. After 70 years of Marxism, Soviet farms were unable
to feed the people, factories failed to meet their quotas, people lined up for blocks in Moscow and other cities to buy bread
and other necessities, and a war in Afghanistan dragged on with no end in sight of the body bags of young Soviet soldiers.
The economies of the Communist nations behind the Iron Curtain were similarly enfeebled because they functioned in
large measure as colonies of the Soviet Union. With no incentives to compete or modernize, the industrial sector of Eastern
and Central Europe became a monument to bureaucratic inefficiency and waste, a “museum of the early industrial age.”
As the New York Times pointed out at the time, Singapore, an Asian city-state of only 2 million people, exported 20 percent
more machinery to the West in 1987 than all of Eastern Europe.
And yet, socialism still beguiled leading intellectuals and politicians of the West. They could not resist its siren song, of a
world without strife because it was a world without private property. They were convinced that a bureaucracy could make
more-informed decisions about the welfare of a people than the people themselves could. They believed, with John
Maynard Keynes, that “the state is wise and the market is stupid”. Israel, India, and the United Kingdom all adopted
socialism as an economic model following World War II. The preamble to India’s constitution, for example, begins, “We,
the People of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic .
. .” The original settlers of Israel were East European Jews of the Left who sought and built a socialist society. As soon as
the guns of World War II fell silent, Britain’s Labour Party nationalized every major industry and acceded to every socialist
demand of the unions. At first, socialism seemed to work in these vastly dissimilar countries. For the first two decades of
its existence, Israel’s economy grew at an annual rate of more than 10 percent, leading many to term Israel an “economic
miracle.” The average
among the more prosperous developing nations. GDP growth in Great Britain averaged 3 percent from 1950 to 1965, along
with a 40 percent rise in average real wages, enabling Britain to become one of the world’s countries that are more affluent.
However, the government planners were unable to keep pace with increasing population and overseas competition. After
decades of ever-declining economic growth and ever rising
turned toward capitalism and the free market. The resulting prosperity in Israel, India, and the U.K. vindicated freemarketers
who had predicted that socialism would inevitably fail to deliver the goods. As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
observed, “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Critique the concept of Socialism using appropriate examples
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