Socialism and the Cultural Revolution

The grand total of victims of communism was between 85 and 100 million for the twentieth century as a whole. The various socialist regimes could not even justify their murderous behavior by providing those they spared with higher living standards than their counterparts living under capitalism. Collectivisation of agriculture invariably reduced farming productivity. A substantial proportion of the victims of communism lost their lives because of the famines that resulted from collectivisation in the soviet union and china. Central planning was a miserable failure, for reasons long ago identified by fich von mises, friedrich haye and janosh kornei among others.