Socialism Has Always Failed

Richard Rahn of the Discovery Institute explains in the Washington Times the complete failure of socialism through the years. (Hat tip to Market Center Blog for the link.) Still, socialism is praised by people around the world, including within the U.S. (yes, this means you Berkeley, Seattle, Vermont and Massachusetts). Despite history, socialists continue to be ignorant to the system's failure, whatever the form:

The "national socialists" caused the death of tens of millions of people. The communists in Russia, China, Cambodia and elsewhere caused the collective deaths of more than 100 million people and impoverished billions of others.

The Third World socialists have kept their countries unnecessarily mired in poverty for a half-century. The democratic socialists gained control in England in 1945 under Clement Attlee. As a result, the British economy was run into the ground. Hence the British people voted to reprivatize their economy under Margaret Thatcher beginning in 1979.

Rahn also points out the biggest reason people are so oblivious to socialism's failures:

People do not know the history of socialist disasters because the educational establishment and much of the news media have engaged in a massive cover-up. The large majority of teachers throughout the world are government employees or depend on government grants. All too many are thus understandably hostile to the idea government enterprises do not work as advertised and, hence, reluctant to both teach and allow materials in the classroom that show the socialist model neither works in practice or theory.

I disagree with Rahn on one point. He says that "If people knew the real history of all the socialist experiments and its flawed theory, very few (other than the delusional or mean-spirited) would be socialists." I think there are a lot of people who would rather see economic equality, even if that means everyone is worse off because of it.