What Goes Wrong With Socialism?

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Richter presents three different theories on what went wrong with socialism. One theory suggests that all power tends to corrupt, while another opinion argues that the totalitarian state attracts bad people. Richter's own theory, the Born Bad Story, posits that socialists were never nice people but deluded zealots who sincerely believed in a cause involving doing terrible things to people, similar to Lenin and Castro.

Bryan Caplan of George Mason University and blogger at EconLog talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about two books: Eugene Richter's Pictures of the Socialistic Future and F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. Both books warn against the dangers of socialism. Pictures of a Socialistic Future, published in 1891 is a dystopian novel imagining what life would be like after a socialist revolution. The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, explores the links between economic freedom and political freedom and the inherent similarities between communism and fascism. Both books look at the German roots of centralized planning and the nature of the people who rise to power when the State is powerful. The conversation includes discussion of the these topics as well as the rule of law and the amount of state control of the economy in Nazi Germany.