Written by Sabrina, edited by Otakuapologist
Despite more than a century of failed experiments, economic collapse and authoritarian governments, socialism continues to attract supporters around the world. That raises an obvious question:
Why?
The answer is surprisingly simple. Most people aren’t attracted to socialism because of its history. They’re attracted to what they believe socialism is supposed to be. For many people, socialism represents fairness. It’s a society where nobody goes hungry, everyone has access to healthcare and education, wealth is shared more equally and average Joes aren’t exploited by the wealthy. On paper, it’s difficult not to sympathize with those goals. Most people, regardless of their political beliefs, would like to live in a society that is prosperous, fair and compassionate.
The problem is that political systems shouldn’t be judged by what they promise. They should be judged by what happens when they’re actually implemented.
History gives us no shortage of socialist experiments to examine, and the results have been remarkably consistent. Nations that attempted to replace markets with central planning, private ownership with state ownership, and economic freedom with government control repeatedly experienced declining productivity, shortages, corruption, political repression and, in many cases, outright dictatorship.
This essay isn’t arguing against helping the poor or reducing inequality. Those are goals shared across much of the political spectrum. Instead, it looks at why socialism repeatedly fails to achieve the society it promises. Why so many people continue to believe in it despite its historical record and why its underlying assumptions about economics and human nature are fundamentally flawed.
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The Socialist Ideal
One of the reasons socialism remains popular is because most supporters don’t define it by history. They define it by its ideals.
Ask someone why they support socialism and you’ll usually hear the same reasons: equality, fairness, workers’ rights, universal healthcare, affordable education and an economy that serves ordinary people instead of corporations. The belief that wealth and the means of production should be owned collectively rather than privately, allowing society to distribute resources more fairly.
For many supporters, socialism isn’t about government oppression or economic planning. It’s about eliminating poverty, reducing inequality and ensuring that everyone has access to the necessities of life. Democratic socialists in particular argue that these goals can be achieved peacefully through elections rather than revolution, presenting socialism as a more compassionate alternative to capitalism.
It’s an attractive vision because it appeals to our sense of fairness. Most people don’t want to see others struggle unnecessarily, and socialism promises a world where those struggles no longer exist.
The problem is that this vision bears very little resemblance to what has actually happened whenever socialism has been attempted on a national scale.
From Theory to Tyranny
History has consistently shown that socialism works very differently in practice than it does in theory.
Throughout the twentieth century, countries such as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, North Korea and Cambodia all attempted to build socialist economies. Although each differed in important ways, they shared several common characteristics: state ownership of industry, central economic planning and extensive government control over economic life.
Instead of creating prosperous, classless societies, these countries experienced chronic shortages, economic stagnation and declining living standards. Central planners simply couldn’t process the enormous amount of information required to allocate resources efficiently across an entire economy. Without market prices reflecting supply and demand, governments frequently produced too much of what people didn’t need and too little of what they did.
The concentration of economic power also led to the concentration of political power. Once the government controls employment, housing, food production and industry, it inevitably gains tremendous influence over every aspect of people’s lives. Opposition becomes increasingly difficult because the state controls not only politics but also the economy.
Rather than eliminating privilege, socialist systems simply created a new privileged class. Party officials and senior bureaucrats often enjoyed better housing, access to scarce consumer goods and political influence that ordinary citizens never possessed. Equality, in practice, usually meant that everyone became poorer together while political elites remained comfortably insulated from the hardships experienced by everyone else.
Why Socialism Remains Appealing
If socialism has such a poor historical record, why does it continue to attract new supporters?
Part of the answer is that ideals are naturally more appealing than history.
Socialism promises fairness, compassion and equality. Those are values most people already support, so it’s easy to associate socialism with good intentions. Capitalism, by comparison, openly accepts that people act in their own self-interest. That can sound morally uncomfortable even if it often produces better economic outcomes.
Many people also confuse socialism with the welfare systems found in countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark. These nations certainly have extensive social programs, but they remain fundamentally capitalist economies built on private ownership, competitive markets and strong protection of property rights. Their governments redistribute wealth generated by capitalism rather than replacing capitalism altogether.
As a result, debates about socialism often become debates about healthcare, education or welfare rather than discussions about collective ownership and central economic planning. These are very different issues, but they’re frequently treated as though they’re the same.
Socialism and Globalism: A Troubling Nexus
If domestic socialism has a troubled history, its relationship with globalism is even more disturbing. Supporters often present socialism as a force for international solidarity: Workers of the world uniting across borders, building a global community based on cooperation rather than competition. It sounds noble. But the historical record tells a very different story.
The Soviet Union, the first major socialist state, created the Communist International in 1919 with the stated goal of spreading revolution worldwide. The rhetoric was about liberation. The reality was about control. In practice, the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union dominated the Comintern so completely that other communist parties effectively became Soviet fifth columns operating in their own countries. The call for world revolution wasn’t about freeing people. It was about extending Moscow’s reach.
This pattern didn’t end with the Comintern. Throughout the Cold War, socialist states built an elaborate network of global connections, creating what they called an alternative international realm. But these connections were never characterized by equality or mutual benefit. Instead, they were defined by hierarchy and domination, with the Soviet Union and its satellites treating developing nations in the Global South as pawns in a larger geopolitical game.
The contemporary left hasn’t abandoned this vision. The Socialist International, reestablished in 1951, claims to empower politically, socially and economically weak people around the world. They call for multilateral cooperation and reform of global governance to reduce inequalities.
It sounds reasonable. Who wouldn’t want to reduce global inequality?
But the vision is built on a dangerous fantasy. It assumes that a global socialist order would be more just and equitable than the current system, ignoring the overwhelming historical evidence that socialist states have been among the most oppressive and exploitative regimes in human history.
Both socialist internationalism and its cousin, globalism, share a common flaw: they replace local community and national identity with an abstract political identity that isn’t rooted in any particular place. They undermine democratic accountability, strip away cultural distinctiveness and concentrate power in the hands of unaccountable elites who answer to no one.
This isn’t a vision of freedom and cooperation. It’s a vision of control and coercion, dressed in the language of solidarity.
The Inherent Corruption
Perhaps the most damning indictment is the systematic tendency toward corruption. This isn’t a coincidence or an aberration.
Think about it. When the state controls the means of production, allocates resources and distributes wealth, it creates enormous opportunities for those who control the state to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. The result isn’t a fair and just society. It’s a system where rent-seeking and corruption serve as the primary goals of governing.
The historical record is replete with examples. In the Soviet Union, (the nomenklatura system) created a privileged class that enjoyed access to goods, services and power far beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. This was corruption institutionalized. The workers’ paradise turned out to be a paradise only for the rulers.
Take Venezuela, which Transparency International ranks as the second most corrupt country on earth. Under socialist rule, distributive policies designed to help the poor and underprivileged have instead caused their suffering. The state has been weakened by corruption, mismanagement and the politicization of every public institution.
Albania offers another stark lesson. The country has been governed by the Socialist Party for three consecutive terms, in a context where allegations of corruption are frequent and several former senior officials have ended up under investigation or in prison. The Socialist Party governs through a clientelist system, aided by the use of state institutions for party purposes.
South Africa provides yet another case study. Under the African National Congress, which has governed since the end of apartheid, the nation’s economy has reeled under the weight of widespread corruption, state capture and self-enrichment conducted under the guise of Black Economic Empowerment. The very policies designed to redress historical injustices have become vehicles for elite enrichment, costing the country billions in stifled growth and overspending on corrupt tenders while accomplishing nothing but enriching corrupt elites.
These examples aren’t anomalies. When the state controls the economy, the only way to get ahead is to capture the state. Those who control political power can direct resources to themselves, and the result is a system of pervasive rent-seeking, corruption and poor regulatory quality.
The lesson is clear. The corruption isn’t a bug in the system. It’s a feature that emerges inevitably whenever governments seize control of the economy and concentrate power in their own hands.
The Practical Problems
Socialism’s greatest weakness is that it asks governments to perform tasks that no government has ever been able to perform successfully.
Running a modern economy requires billions of individual decisions every day. Consumers constantly change their preferences, businesses respond to shortages and surpluses, entrepreneurs identify new opportunities and investors allocate capital based on future expectations. Market prices communicate this information automatically.
Central planners cannot replicate this process.
Without accurate price signals and the incentives created by profit and competition, resources are inevitably allocated less efficiently. Innovation slows, productivity declines and shortages become increasingly common.
Socialism also assumes that concentrating economic power in government will produce fairer outcomes. History suggests the opposite. The more authority governments possess over the economy, the greater the temptation to suppress dissent, reward political allies and punish opponents. Economic freedom and political freedom have repeatedly proven difficult to separate.
Perhaps the most fundamental flaw is socialism’s view of human nature. It assumes people will consistently place collective interests above personal incentives once the economic system changes.
History suggests otherwise.
People respond to incentives regardless of ideology, and no political system can simply wish those incentives away. Socialism survives because people continue to judge it by its intentions rather than its results.
The ideals behind socialism are admirable. Few people would argue otherwise. But history demonstrates that good intentions are not enough to build a successful economic system.
Again and again, attempts to replace markets with central planning have produced weaker economies, less individual freedom and greater concentrations of political power. Rather than eliminating inequality, socialist systems often replace one elite with another while leaving ordinary people worse off than before.
That doesn’t mean capitalism is perfect.
It isn’t.
Like any system, it has flaws that require regulation, accountability and sensible public policy. But when comparing the two systems, the historical evidence overwhelmingly suggests that societies built on economic freedom, private property and competitive markets have consistently produced greater prosperity, innovation and personal liberty than those built on socialist principles.
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” — Antonio Gramsci, Italian politician, 1924.
