What is Socialism | Part 2 of 3

Socialism: Government ownership of means of production.
Communism: From each according to his abilities, and to each according to his needs.

When Americans talk about socialism, they often think of northern European countries as socialist, while viewing countries such as twentieth-century Russia and China as communist. But that distinction is not quite accurate.

The northern European countries are free-market Western democracies with high taxes and generous social programs. By contrast, twentieth-century Russia, China, and much of Eastern Europe are examples of socialist states governed by Communist parties.

That distinction matters, but it is never made clear by proponents of Socialism, and for a good reason. If they told the truth about socialism, nobody would vote for it. Socialists use democracy to gain power, but once they gain power, they destroy the democracy that allowed them to get their power in the first place.

In the previous post, I summarized what Socialism looks like when put into practice. People who have not lived under socialism, or have not studied its history, may be surprised to learn how sharply socialist reality differs from the promises made by socialist advocates during campaigns for political change.

In this post, I looked at how various countries have fared under socialist regimes. This is not an exhaustive list of countries that have "tried" socialism, but the number of examples is probably much larger than you realize. I have used AI for my research, so some details on lesser-known countries are sparse, but the main point is clear: not one of these 32 socialist countries described below had a good outcome. If there was even a single example of democratic socialism, I am sure the Democratic Socialists of America would bring it to our attention.

Origins: From 19th-Century Socialism to Marxism-Leninism

Modern socialism arose in 19th-century Germany in response to the Industrial Revolution. Thinkers and activists proposed common ownership, worker control, cooperative production, or state ownership as alternatives to private capitalism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed the most influential revolutionary version, arguing that capitalism would be replaced by socialism and eventually communism after class struggle led by the working class.

The key historical turning point was Russia in 1917. Before then, socialist movements were mostly parties, unions, and revolutionary groups. After the Bolsheviks seized power, socialism became a system of governance. The Soviet model later shaped governments across Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, parts of Africa, and elsewhere.

The main features of the Soviet-style model

• One-party rule by a communist party

• Confiscation of private means of production by the state, usually referred to as "nationalization" or similar terms

• Forced collectivization of agriculture
• State ownership of all means of production, or at least the heavy industry, finance, transport, agriculture, and major enterprises

• Central planning instead of market allocation

• Suppression of political opposition, restrictions on speech, press, religion, unions, and emigration

• Political police and surveillance, ideological control of education and culture

• Privileged access for party elites to housing, food, medical care, travel, and consumer goods; gross income and opportunity inequality between the ruling political class and everyone else.

The results varied by country and period, but recurring outcomes included rapid mobilization for industrialization (initially successful in some cases), chronic shortages, low productivity, political repression, and high humanitarian costs.

Socialist Countries Around the World

Soviet Union (USSR = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)

Revolution and Civil War, 1917–1921

Russia was the first major country where a communist party took power. In October/November 1917, the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government. Russia soon entered a civil war between the Bolshevik “Reds,” anti-Bolshevik “Whites,” nationalist movements, foreign intervention forces, and peasant rebels.

The Bolsheviks created the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, and suppressed rival socialist parties, liberal parties, monarchists, clergy, independent unions, and peasant opposition. During the civil war, the regime used War Communism, requisitioning grain from peasants, nationalizing industry, and imposing strict state controls.

The economy collapsed. Industrial output fell drastically from prewar levels, transport broke down, cities lost population, and famine spread. The Russian famine of 1921–1922 killed millions. Although war and drought were cited as the reasons for famine, economic breakdown and grain requisitioning were the main causes. Previously, Russia survived many droughts that did not cause famine.

New Economic Policy, 1921–1928

Facing revolt and economic catastrophe, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, or NEP, in 1921. It restored limited private trade, small business, and peasant markets while the state retained control of major industry, banking, and foreign trade.

The NEP produced some economic recovery. Agricultural and industrial output improved compared with the civil war years. But the Communist Party retained a political monopoly. Opposition parties remained banned, censorship continued, and the secret police remained central to governance.

Stalin’s Rule, 1928–1953

After Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin consolidated power. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union launched forced collectivization and Five-Year Plans.

Economy

The state prioritized heavy industry, steel, coal, machinery, armaments, and infrastructure. The USSR achieved rapid industrial growth albeit from a very low base, especially in heavy industry and military production. However, consumer goods, housing, food quality, and agricultural efficiency lagged badly.

Agriculture was collectivized by force. Peasants were compelled into collective farms; wealthier peasants, labeled kulaks, were deported, imprisoned, or killed. Livestock was slaughtered on a massive scale by peasants resisting collectivization. Agricultural productivity suffered for years.

Humanitarian Toll

The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 was the first major catastrophe of the socialist rule. It included the famine in Ukraine as well as famine in Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus, and other areas. Millions died. Causes included forced collectivization, excessive grain procurements, repression of peasants, restrictions on movement, and state policy.

Stalin also built the Gulag forced-labor camp system. Millions passed through camps, colonies, prisons, and special settlements. Prisoners built canals, mines, railways, industrial sites, and logging operations under brutal conditions.

During the Great Terror of 1936–1938, hundreds of thousands were executed and many more imprisoned. Targets included Communist Party officials, military officers, intellectuals, ethnic minorities, clergy, workers, peasants, and ordinary citizens accused of sabotage, espionage, or “anti-Soviet” activity.

Deaths attributable to Stalin-era policies remain debated by historians, but the toll from famine, executions, deportations, camps, and forced labor was in the many millions.

Human Rights

The Stalinist system eliminated meaningful civil liberties. There were no free elections, no independent press, no independent judiciary, no freedom of association, and no legal opposition. Religious institutions were persecuted. Ethnic groups were deported en masse, including Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans, Ingush, Kalmyks, and others.

Leaders’ Wealth and Privilege

Officially, Soviet leaders rejected capitalist wealth. In practice, the ruling elite enjoyed major privileges: special stores, country houses called dachas, chauffeur-driven cars, better apartments, better hospitals, special food supplies, and access to goods unavailable to ordinary citizens. Stalin personally did not accumulate wealth in a normal capitalist sense, but he controlled the state and lived with enormous material privilege compared with average Soviet citizens.

Post-Stalin USSR, 1953–1991

After Stalin died in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev denounced some of Stalin’s crimes and reduced mass terror. Many prisoners were released from the Gulag. However, the Communist Party monopoly remained.

Economy

The USSR achieved successes in education, science, military power, space technology, and industrial capacity. It became a superpower and defeated Nazi Germany at immense human cost.

But by the 1960s–1980s, central planning produced chronic problems:

• Shortages of consumer goods.

• Low-quality products.

• Long queues.

• Poor incentives for innovation.

• Wasteful production targets.

• Agricultural inefficiency despite large investment.

• Technological lag behind advanced market economies.

• Heavy military spending.

The Soviet economy grew rapidly in earlier decades but slowed sharply under Leonid Brezhnev. By the 1980s, stagnation was evident.

Human Rights

Post-Stalin repression was less murderous but still serious. Dissidents were imprisoned, exiled, placed in psychiatric hospitals, fired from jobs, or harassed by the KGB. Censorship remained. Emigration was restricted. Religious and national movements were monitored or suppressed.

Collapse

Under Mikhail Gorbachev, reforms called glasnost and perestroika loosened censorship and attempted economic restructuring. The system unraveled. The USSR dissolved in 1991, ending the world’s first communist state.

China

Communist Victory & Early Rule, 1949–1957

The Chinese Communist Party won the civil war and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949 under Mao Zedong. The defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan.

The new regime carried out land reform, redistributing land from landlords to peasants. The campaign involved mass violence, public denunciations, executions, and persecution of landlords and “class enemies.” Industry was nationalized (through confiscation) , private commerce was restricted, and the party established one-party rule.

Great Leap Forward, 1958–1962

The Great Leap Forward was Mao’s campaign to rapidly industrialize and collectivize China through communes, backyard steel furnaces, inflated production targets, and state grain procurement.

It caused one of the worst famines in human history. Local officials exaggerated harvests; the state took grain based on false figures; peasants were prevented from moving freely; communal dining and collectivization disrupted production; and repression silenced criticism. Tens of millions died from starvation and related causes between 1959 and 1961.

Economically, the campaign was disastrous. Agricultural output collapsed, industrial targets were irrational, and enormous labor was wasted.

Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976

Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to reassert control and attack perceived enemies within the party and society. Students organized as Red Guards attacked teachers, officials, intellectuals, religious sites, and cultural heritage. Millions were persecuted, humiliated, imprisoned, tortured, sent to the countryside, or killed. Education and administration were disrupted.

The economy suffered, though some basic industrial growth continued. Human rights were widely violated through arbitrary violence, political purges, forced labor, censorship, and ideological campaigns.

Post-Mao Reforms

After Mao’s death in 1976, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China’s key leader. From 1978 onward, China dismantled communes, allowed household farming, opened special economic zones, permitted private enterprise, and integrated into global markets.

The result was one of the largest economic expansions in history. Hundreds of millions were lifted from extreme poverty. However, the political system remained under Communist Party monopoly. The 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests were crushed by force. Censorship, surveillance, restrictions on religion, repression in Tibet and Xinjiang, and imprisonment of dissidents continued.

Leaders’ Wealth and Privilege

Under Mao, top leaders had special residences, medical care, transport, food access, and political power far beyond ordinary citizens. Mao’s personal authority was immense. Later Chinese Communist Party elites and their families gained access to privileged education, business opportunities, state assets, and political protection.  For people closely tied to the party network, China’s post-1978 economy created immense private fortunes. But millions of ordinary Chinese were also lifted from poverty.

Eastern Europe & the Warsaw Pact

After World War II, the Soviet Union imposed or backed communist regimes across Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact eventually included the USSR, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania. Albania later broke with Moscow. Yugoslavia was communist but independent of the Warsaw Pact.

Common Features

Eastern European communist regimes nationalized (confiscated) industry, collectivized or controlled agriculture to varying degrees, imposed one-party rule, controlled media, controlled courts, and used secret police. They joined Soviet-dominated economic structures such as COMECON.

These countries often achieved industrialization, expanded literacy, increased women’s labor-force participation (through work mandates), and built welfare systems (which only provided for very meager subsistence). They suffered from inefficient planning, environmental damage, shortages of basic goods, debt, technological lag, and political repression.

Poland

Poland became communist after World War II under Soviet pressure. Agriculture remained more private than in many communist states, but industry was nationalized (confiscated). The economy faced repeated crises, shortages, and worker unrest.

Major protests occurred in 1956, 1970, 1976, and 1980. The Solidarity trade-union movement emerged in 1980 and was suppressed under martial law in 1981. Poland’s communist system ended through negotiated elections in 1989.

Human rights abuses included censorship, imprisonment of dissidents, secret police surveillance, and repression of strikes. Party elites had access to better housing, shops, travel, and services.

East Germany

The German Democratic Republic was one of the more industrially advanced communist states. It achieved relatively high living standards compared with other Eastern Bloc countries, but still lagged behind West Germany.

The regime built the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop mass emigration. The Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, created one of the most extensive surveillance systems in history. Citizens were monitored by informants, mail interception, workplace surveillance, and political files.

The economy produced industrial goods and maintained social services, but consumer choice and innovation lagged. The state collapsed in 1989, and Germany reunified in 1990.

Hungary

Hungary became communist after World War II. In 1956, a popular uprising demanded political freedom and withdrawal from Soviet domination. Soviet forces crushed the revolution, killing thousands and imprisoning many more.

Afterward, Hungary adopted somewhat more flexible economic policies known as “goulash communism,” allowing limited market mechanisms. This improved consumer conditions relative to harsher systems but did not create political freedom. Hungary transitioned away from communism in 1989.

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia had a communist coup in 1948. It was industrialized before communism (it had the world's 10th largest economy with only about 14 million people), but central planning destroyed its economy. In 1968, reform communists led by Alexander Dubček attempted “socialism with a human face,” including freer speech and political reforms. The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact allies invaded and crushed the Prague Spring.

Afterward, “normalization” restored strict party control. Dissidents such as Charter 77 activists were harassed and imprisoned. The communist government fell during the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

Romania

Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu was one of the most repressive Eastern Bloc regimes. Ceaușescu pursued forced industrialization, food exports to pay foreign debt, and austerity. Ordinary Romanians faced shortages of food, heat, electricity, and basic goods.

The secret police, the Securitate, suppressed dissent. Ceaușescu and his family lived in extreme luxury compared with average citizens, including palaces and privileged access to goods. His rule ended violently in 1989 when he and his wife Elena were tried and executed after a revolution.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria remained closely aligned with the USSR. It industrialized under communist rule but suffered from inefficiency, limited freedoms, and secret-police control. The regime also forcibly assimilated ethnic Turks in the 1980s, including name changes and repression. Communism ended in 1989–1990.

Albania

Albania under Enver Hoxha was among the most isolated and repressive communist states. It broke with Yugoslavia, then the USSR, then China. The regime banned religion, built hundreds of thousands of bunkers, collectivized agriculture, and maintained strict surveillance. Albania remained extremely poor by European standards. Party elites had privileges while ordinary citizens endured isolation and scarcity. The system collapsed in the early 1990s.

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito was communist but independent from Stalin after 1948. It developed a system of worker self-management and allowed more openness and foreign travel than Soviet Bloc states. The economy performed relatively well for a time, supported partly by Western loans and remittances from workers abroad.

However, Yugoslavia remained a one-party state. Political opponents, nationalists, and dissidents were imprisoned. After Tito’s death in 1980, economic problems and nationalist tensions worsened. Yugoslavia dissolved violently in the 1990s, though the wars were driven by nationalism, state collapse, and political manipulation as much as by communist economic policy.

North Korea, Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia

North Korea

North Korea was established after World War II under Kim Il Sung, backed by the Soviet Union. It became a hereditary communist dictatorship under the Kim family.

Economy

Initially, North Korea was more industrialized than the South and received Soviet and Chinese aid. Over time, central planning, militarization, isolation, and lack of reform led to stagnation. South Korea far surpassed it economically.

In the 1990s, after the collapse of Soviet support and amid policy failures and natural disasters, North Korea suffered a catastrophic famine known as the Arduous March. Hundreds of thousands, possibly more, died.

Human Rights

North Korea has one of the world’s most repressive systems. It maintains political prison camps, collective punishment of families, strict censorship, no free elections, no independent media, severe travel restrictions, and pervasive surveillance.

Leadership Wealth

The Kim family and elite enjoy luxury residences, imported goods, special food, cars, entertainment facilities, and privileges far beyond the living conditions of ordinary citizens, many of whom have faced chronic malnutrition.

Vietnam

Vietnam’s communist movement, led by Ho Chi Minh, fought French colonial rule, then South Vietnam and the United States. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnam was unified under communist rule.

Economy

After reunification, Vietnam imposed collectivization and central planning, which produced poor performance, shortages, and stagnation. In 1986, Vietnam introduced Đổi Mới, market-oriented reforms similar in some ways to China’s. These reforms increased agricultural output, exports, foreign investment, and growth. Vietnam became a major manufacturing and agricultural exporter.

Human Rights

Vietnam remains a one-party state. Independent parties, dissident media, and many forms of political activism are restricted. Religious groups and activists have faced harassment and imprisonment.

Humanitarian Toll

The Vietnam War caused immense deaths and destruction, involving communist forces, anti-communist forces, the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and others. After 1975, reeducation camps, repression of former South Vietnamese officials, and the flight of “boat people” caused further suffering.

Laos

Laos became communist in 1975 under the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. The state nationalized sectors of the economy and imposed one-party rule. Laos remained poor and dependent on aid. It later introduced market reforms. Human rights remain restricted, with limits on speech, religion, and political opposition.

Cambodia 

Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, took power in 1975 and created one of the most extreme revolutionary regimes in history.

Economy and Society

The Khmer Rouge abolished money, markets, private property, religion, urban life, and formal education. Cities were emptied by force. People were sent to rural labor camps. The regime attempted an agrarian communist utopia through forced labor and total social control.

Human Rights

Human rights were almost entirely absent. The regime used mass execution, torture centers such as S-21, forced labor, family separation, starvation, and total surveillance.

Humanitarian Toll

Between 1975 and 1979, roughly one-quarter of Cambodia’s population died from execution, starvation, disease, and overwork. Victims included intellectuals, professionals, ethnic Vietnamese, Cham Muslims, Buddhist monks, former officials, and ordinary people accused of disloyalty. The regime was overthrown by Vietnam in 1979.

Latin America and South America

Latin America saw a variety of socialist, communist, Marxist, nationalist, and left-populist movements. Some took state power and created one-party or dominant-party systems; others operated electorally; others fought guerrilla wars.

Cuba

Cuba is the most important communist case in Latin America. Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 after overthrowing Fulgencio Batista. The regime soon aligned with the Soviet Union, nationalized industry, collectivized or heavily controlled agriculture, and established one-party communist rule.

Economy

Cuba achieved gains in literacy, basic education, and health indicators, heavily supported for decades by Soviet subsidies. But the economy became dependent on sugar exports, Soviet oil, and preferential trade. Private enterprise was heavily restricted. Shortages, rationing, low wages, poor housing, and lack of consumer goods became persistent.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba entered the Special Period in the 1990s, with severe shortages of food, fuel, transport, and electricity. Limited market reforms and tourism later helped stabilize the economy, but productivity and incomes remained low. Many Cubans emigrated.

Human Rights

Cuba has not allowed free multiparty elections. The government has restricted speech, press, association, independent unions, and opposition parties. Political prisoners, dissident harassment, censorship, and exit restrictions have been documented across decades.

Leaders’ Privilege

Castro and the ruling elite had access to secure residences, better medical care, special food, transport, and state resources. Although Cuba officially emphasized equality, ordinary citizens lived under rationing and low incomes while party and military elites had privileged access.

Nicaragua

The Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979. The Sandinistas pursued socialist policies, literacy campaigns, land reform, and state control of parts of the economy. Nicaragua then faced a U.S.-backed Contra insurgency, civil war, economic embargo pressure, and internal mismanagement.

The economy suffered severe contraction, inflation, shortages, and war damage in the 1980s. The Sandinistas lost elections in 1990. Later, Daniel Ortega returned to power and built an increasingly authoritarian regime, suppressing opposition, media, churches, NGOs, and protesters. Ortega and his family have accumulated extensive political and economic influence.

Venezuela

Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and later Nicolás Maduro called its model “Bolivarian socialism.” It did not initially abolish all private property, but the government nationalized major industries, expanded state control, imposed price and currency controls, and politicized institutions.

Economy

During the oil boom, Chávez funded social programs through petroleum revenue. Poverty initially declined. But dependence on oil, expropriations, price controls, corruption, debt, declining oil production, and monetary expansion contributed to economic collapse under Maduro. Venezuela experienced hyperinflation, shortages of food and medicine, mass emigration, and a dramatic fall in living standards.

Human Rights

The government weakened checks and balances, restricted media, jailed opponents, used security forces against protesters, and oversaw elections widely criticized as unfair. Human rights groups have documented arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, and repression.

Leaders’ Wealth

Senior officials, military leaders, and politically connected elites gained access to state contracts, currency privileges, oil revenue, and illicit networks. This contrasted sharply with ordinary Venezuelans facing food insecurity, collapsing wages, and migration.

Chile

Chile elected socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970. His government nationalized copper, expanded state control, raised wages, and pursued redistribution. The economy initially grew but then suffered inflation, shortages, strikes, capital flight, polarization, and political conflict. U.S. hostility and domestic opposition also played roles.

Allende was overthrown in a military coup in 1973 led by Augusto Pinochet, whose dictatorship committed severe human rights abuses. Chile did not become a long-term communist state, but it remains an important example of an attempted democratic road to socialism that ended amid economic crisis, polarization, foreign pressure, and military intervention.

Other Latin American Cases

Grenada had a Marxist-Leninist government from 1979 to 1983 under the New Jewel Movement. Internal conflict and a coup led to crisis, followed by U.S. invasion.

Peru had Marxist guerrilla movements, especially Shining Path, which caused enormous civilian suffering through terrorism, massacres, and war against the state. Shining Path never ruled Peru nationally.

El Salvador, Guatemala & Colombia had leftist guerrilla movements, but not communist national governments. Conflicts involved atrocities by both insurgents and state or paramilitary forces.

Africa

Many African socialist regimes emerged after decolonization. Some adopted Marxism-Leninism; others pursued “African socialism,” mixing state-led development, one-party rule, nationalism, and collectivist policies.

Ethiopia

In 1974, Ethiopia’s monarchy was overthrown by the Derg, a Marxist military junta led eventually by Mengistu Haile Mariam.

Economy

The Derg nationalized land, banks, and major industries. It imposed collectivization and villagization. Agriculture remained weak, and war consumed resources.

Human Rights & Toll

The Derg carried out the Red Terror, killing and imprisoning suspected opponents. Ethiopia also suffered devastating famine in the 1980s. Drought was a major factor, but government policies, forced resettlement, war, restrictions on movement, and priorities of the regime worsened the disaster. Hundreds of thousands died.

Mengistu and the elite enjoyed state privileges while much of the population faced poverty, war, famine, and repression. The regime fell in 1991.

Angola

The MPLA, a Marxist-Leninist movement, took power after Portuguese decolonization in 1975. Angola then entered a long civil war involving MPLA, UNITA, South African intervention, Cuban troops, Soviet support, and U.S. involvement.

Economy

Angola had oil wealth, but war, corruption, central planning, and elite control prevented broad development. The MPLA later abandoned formal Marxism and adopted market reforms, but oil wealth remained concentrated among elites.

Human Rights & Toll

The civil war killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. Both government and rebel forces committed abuses. Political repression and elite enrichment were severe. The ruling elite gained access to oil wealth while average citizens remained poor.

Mozambique

The FRELIMO movement took power in 1975 and adopted Marxism-Leninism. The state nationalized property, expanded education, and attempted socialist planning.

Mozambique then faced civil war against RENAMO, backed at times by Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. War, state policy failures, drought, and economic disruption devastated the country.

Human rights abuses occurred on all sides. The economy performed poorly under war and central planning. FRELIMO later adopted market reforms and multiparty politics, though it remained dominant.

Tanzania

Under Julius Nyerere, Tanzania adopted Ujamaa, a form of African socialism. The state emphasized rural collectivization, self-reliance, nationalization, and one-party rule.

Economy

Forced villagization moved millions into collective villages. The policy disrupted agriculture and did not produce the hoped-for economic transformation. Tanzania remained poor and dependent on foreign aid. However, the regime was less murderous than many Marxist-Leninist states and invested in education and national unity.

Human Rights

Tanzania was a one-party state for decades. Political competition was restricted, though repression was generally less extreme than in Ethiopia, Angola, or Mozambique.

Zimbabwe

After independence in 1980, Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe with Marxist rhetoric and one-party ambitions, though the economy initially retained significant private sectors. In the 1980s, the Gukurahundi campaign killed thousands of Ndebele civilians in Matabeleland.

From 2000 onward, violent land seizures, corruption, patronage, and authoritarian rule contributed to agricultural collapse, hyperinflation, food shortages, and mass emigration. Mugabe and ruling elites enjoyed wealth and privileges while ordinary citizens suffered economic ruin.

Other African Cases

Benin adopted Marxism-Leninism under Mathieu Kérékou in the 1970s; it later abandoned it and democratized.

Congo-Brazzaville had Marxist-Leninist one-party rule and state control with limited development.

Somalia under Siad Barre adopted “scientific socialism,” nationalized sectors, and relied on Soviet aid before shifting alliances. Repression, war, and clan politics led eventually to state collapse.

Madagascar pursued socialist policies under Didier Ratsiraka, with nationalization and economic decline.

Guinea under Ahmed Sékou Touré pursued socialist one-party rule, nationalization, repression, prison camps, and economic hardship.

Conclusion

Not one of the described countries had success under socialism. Some countries on the list improved once they implemented free market reforms, but all suffered economically when central planning was implemented.

Every country devolved to dictatorship, regardless of whether socialism took hold through some democratic process, a coup, or civil war.

All citizens of socialist countries were worse off than their free market counterparts or worse off than they were during periods of capitalism - except for the government elites, which enjoyed lavish lifestyles while proclaiming equality.

The citizens who fared the worst were the poor. In my experience, the poor "exploited" workers in Western Europe, including those on public benefits, lived better than the middle class in my native Czechoslovakia.

The citizens were denied basic human rights, were surveilled, and the families of those who were found to be uncomfortable for the ruling class were persecuted to various degrees.

Read a summary of life under socialism in the earlier blog, part one of this series.