The workers may have gotten screwed, but they got screwed in many other places and times without the specific type of problems that the Soviet Union had. The primary point of failure in the Soviet Union was indeed the socialist system. Government ownership of the means of production, and government planning of what is produced and to an extent how its consumed. Its true that the Soviet Union had many corrupt or otherwise poor planers and leaders, but its the nature of such a system to attract such people. In any case even the wisest, most intelligent and most benevolent group of planners ever assembled could not adequately plan a large complex economy.
Corruption will corrupt any system whether its socialism, communism or capitalism. In addition, the Soviet Union was not a democracy. That prevented the people from stopping the corruption. Bottom line: the Soviet Union was no test of socialism or communism. It was an autocratic oligarchy that got overextended and into too many wars.
Their are numerous faults of a primarily socialist system, but two primary ones stand out. The first is the most widely recognized problem with socialism and communism. The 2nd is probably an even more severe issue, even if it doesn't get as much attention.
1 - A problem with incentives. If you don't get more by working, longer, harder and smarter, then you are less likely to work longer, harder and smarter. If you can't benefit from taking risks, than you won't take risks.
2 - While its possible to get limited groups of people, or large groups of people for a limited time, sufficiently motivated to produce enough even if they don't benefit from their increased efforts, and could free-ride off others if others increase their efforts; you still have a major problem in determining what should be produced, and how much of each item should be produced. In a free market system, you have real prices, and a profit motive that causes people to respond to these prices. If the price goes up its a signal that more needs to be produced and/or less consumed. If the price goes down its the opposite signal. In a communist or fully socialist system you destroy the information contained by prices. Sure a good might have an arbitrarily determined price but its meaningless.
If a socialistic society is successful, then everyone benefits from that success.....that's the motivation. If an Israeli kibbutz has a product that sells well, then everyone in the kibbutz does better.....bigger houses and more toys. Why capitalists don't like socialism is because its harder to amass more money than your neighbor. |
