Socialism: Trials and Errors

It began as an outcry against "the dark satanic mills" of early capitalism, a shuddering reaction against the profound upheavals caused by the Industrial Revolution, a reassertion of the Utopian dream of the heavenly kingdom on earth. It sprang from obscure clubs, from workers' associations, from garrets, libraries, bourgeois parlors and, occasionally, aristocratic salons. It was hounded, reviled, extolled. It became the most pervasive political ideology--or slogan--of the 20th century. Socialism.

Today it seems to have reached new heights of influence.

France nears the threshold of what Socialist Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand calls "l'experience socialiste"--and could cross it if the left wins this month's national elections. Italy faces the threat of the "historic compromise," which would bring Communists into government as partners of the long-ruling Christian Democrats. Socialist Mario Scares is Premier of Portugal, which until four years ago was a rightist dictatorship. Last year in Spain's first free national elections in more than four decades, the Socialist Workers Party of Felipe Gonzalez emerged as the second most powerful political organization of the country's post-Franco era.

These dramatic developments in Western Europe are only the most recent examples of the global advances socialism has made in the decades following World War II. Today, self-proclaimed socialists of one variety or another rule 53 of the world's sovereign states, controlling 39% of its territory and 42% of its population. Such numbers alone can be misleading, for societies calling themselves socialist include Western-style democracies and repressive Communist dictatorships, constitutional republics and hereditary monarchies. Socialism is a flag of convenience that accommodates technocrats and market-minded economists, that allows fascist-type dictators or small-time Bonapartes to perpetuate themselves in power. It is politically chic to use the socialist label. Observes French Political Philosopher Raymond Aron: "In most countries, socialism carries the connotation that whatever is good is socialist, whatever is bad originates in capitalism." Adds Nobel-Prizewinning Economist Milton Friedman: "[For many], socialism implies egalitarianism and that people are living for society, while capitalism has been given the connotation of materialism, 'greedy,' 'selfish,' 'self-serving,' and so on."

What gives socialist rhetoric much of its current appeal is the economic battering the world's economy has taken in the 1970s. Against the backdrop of seemingly incurable inflation, unemployment, industrial stagnation and volatile currencies, a clarion for an economic restructuring sounds attractive. Socialist states have not solved--only hidden or ameliorated--these problems. Ironically, at the very moment of its spectacular advances, socialism faces profound new crises of its own. At the same time socialism has become a word appropriated by so many different champions and causes that it threatens to become meaningless, and a new effort is needed to sort it out.

There is no universal model of socialism, just as there is none of free-market capitalism. As Rome University Historian Rosario Romeo puts it, "Everyone imagines socialism in his own way." To Senegal's President Leopold Senghor, socialism is "the rational organization of human society according to the most scientific, the most modern and the most efficient methods." To Britain's Labor Prime Minister James Callaghan, it is "a society based on cooperation instead of competition." France's Mitterrand calls it "an elan, a collective movement --the communion of men in search of justice." In a more colloquial vein, a current hit song in Jamaica, pulsating with reggae beat, teaches: "Socialism is love for your brother/ Socialism is linking hearts and hands/ Love and togetherness--that's what it means."

Despite its myriad and overlapping forms, socialism assumes three more or less familiar main varieties (case studies of the three follow this report), which can be summed up as:

Marxism-Leninism, frequently known as Communism, is the governing force in the Soviet Union and its East bloc satellites, as well as in China, Mongolia, North Korea, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Albania and Yugoslavia. The most repressive variant of socialism, Marxism-Leninism is a kind of secular religion, preaching the necessity of class warfare, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the concentration of near total power in a tightly structured party that is supposedly the vanguard of the revolutionary masses. Communism is dogmatic in its determination to abolish private property and nationalize the means of production as the first steps toward achieving its ultimate goal, the classless society.

Social democracy is the most liberal version of socialism. Marxist-Leninists complain that social democrats are "bourgeois revisionists" and they have traditionally been the first victims of Communist coups. Social democrats can justly answer back that the "true socialists" of Moscow are dictators who have betrayed Marxism's humanistic vision. Alone or in coalitions, social-democratic leaders control the governments of Britain, West Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Norway, The Netherlands, Portugal--to cite only European examples. (Sweden's Social Democrats, after 44 years in power, were defeated in 1976 by a narrow margin.) Social democracy accepts a multiparty political system and believes in gradual, peaceful means of reaching its socialist goals. In practical terms, this has meant that social democrats have concentrated more on alleviating what they regard as hardships created by capitalist economies (unemployment, salary and wage inequities) than on directly restructuring societies according to a collectivist blueprint.

States ruled by social democrats are generally mixed economies, combining elements of free-enterprise competition with state ownership or direction of key industries. Some, most notably West Germany, are basically capitalist. Firmly rooted in the West, such social democracies as Norway and West Germany have more in common with the capitalist U.S. than has the U.S. with, say, capitalist states like Ecuador or the Ivory Coast.

Third World socialism embraces such disparate systems as the Islamic socialism preached by Algeria and Libya, the Baathist (Renaissance) socialism of Syria and Iraq, the ujamaa (familyhood) socialism of Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere, the cooperative societies envisioned by Prime Ministers Michael Manley of Jamaica and Forbes Burnham of Guyana. Despite their great differences, these socialisms have several things in common. First, all these societies call themselves socialists, although their beliefs may be rooted less in Marxism than in nationalism or an indigenous phenomenon like the communalism of tribal Africa. Second, largely because of their experience with colonialism, they reject capitalism as identifiable with imperialism and exploitation. Third, they pursue policies aimed at decreasing the role of private property in the economy and sharply curbing investment by private foreign firms.

Despite all this diversity, socialists of whatever stripe have several ideals in common. One is the belief that if the means of production remain under the complete control of private owners, the worker will be exploited. Another is a firm commitment to egalitarianism, which the conservative historian Robert Strausz-Hupe calls "the strongest single element of modern society."

There are non-Marxian socialists, but all owe some debt to Karl Marx, who framed the classic socialist indictment of capitalism, accusing it of turning labor into a commodity and thus exploiting and dehumanizing workers while it enriches bourgeois owners. Most important, perhaps, was Marx's claim that he had discovered certain "scientific" laws of history. By creating an increasingly numerous and impoverished working class, goes his familiar argument, capitalism produced the very forces that one day would destroy it in an Apocalypse of violent revolution. This confident prediction, which for more than a century inspired nearly all socialists with a dual certainty--their cause is just, their triumph inevitable--has been transformed into a new, often hollow orthodoxy. It is now bitterly distrusted among disillusioned socialists themselves and by new, ideologically homeless radicals.

Socialism has spurred Western democracies to examine the inadequacies of the capitalist system. But today the record of socialism deserves even more careful scrutiny than that of capitalism. In whatever form, socialism makes far greater claims and far more sweeping promises than capitalism does, which is a major reason for its wide appeal. But socialism rarely lives up to its promises. Stalin's Gulag and Mao's violent Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution--which represents socialism in its extreme form--give the lie to the Marxist claim that it is necessarily capitalism and not socialism that enslaves the human spirit. Economically, socialism has logged impressive achievements, sometimes against tremendous odds. Yet in comparing neighboring countries where one is socialist and the other is not (North Korea v. South Korea, Tanzania v. Kenya), the statistical evidence almost always favors the nonsocialist nation.

Socialism's political momentum in Europe and its mounting popularity elsewhere prompt a careful and balanced examination of what socialists have achieved once in power. Following is such an analysis, focusing on socialism's promise compared with performance in four key areas:

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

All socialists reject what they consider the wasteful anarchy of the capitalist marketplace and seek in different ways to put order into the economy. Most argue that controls or central planning will lead to increased output, more equitable distribution of goods, and a concentration of resources in socially useful production. Explains Claude Estier, a national secretary of the French Socialist Party: "We consider it necessary to direct the economy toward the general interest rather than toward the interests of a small number of capitalists."

With their Five-Year Plans and all-embracing command of industry and agriculture, Communist states can point to many significant achievements. Especially dramatic have been the economic gains of the Soviet Union; in six decades a war-shattered society in the earliest stages of industrialization has been transformed into a military superpower that produces more steel, crude oil, manganese and honey than the U.S. Another Marxist-Leninist state, East Germany, now ranks as the world's 17th industrial power (measured by gross national product), while China's Communists seem to have banished the specter of recurring famine.

There are, however, serious flaws in the Marxist-Leninist economic system. Communist countries say they have abolished unemployment--but at the cost of heavily overstaffing every office and factory with workers who seldom can be fired for failing to produce. Bureaucratic controls further cripple efficiency, and managers have little leeway for innovation. Consumer goods are still shoddy and chronically scarce. Long lines form immediately in Warsaw, Prague, Havana, Moscow and other Communist cities at rumors that a shop is about to receive a shipment of such coveted goods as shoes, fresh fish or fruit. Communist leaders boast that their citizens are immune to inflation; but, in fact, continual price hikes are merely artfully concealed by an economy in which wages, prices and even the kinds of goods available are set by the state. For instance, the "official" cost of an item can remain stable for years, but the product may be available only on the black (or gray) market and at a substantial premium.

One problem that virtually every Marxist-Leninist state faces is lagging agricultural output. Almost invariably, collectivizing or communalizing farms deadens initiative. Food productivity thus remains low, despite enormous investments in farm machinery and irrigation systems. Although 85% of Poland's farm land remains in private hands, output is poor because low official prices provide no incentive for the farmer to work harder.

Yugoslavia seems to have the fewest economic problems among Marxist-Leninist states. It also has the least rigidly controlled economy in Eastern Europe, although Hungary is also testing innovative ways. Much Yugoslav economic planning and management has been decentralized. Initiative, hard work and quality output have been rewarded with generous bonuses and wage hikes. As a result, Yugoslav plants vastly outperform the state-owned enterprises in most other Communist-ruled countries. They also turn out an abundance of consumer products that make Belgrade, Zagreb and other large Yugoslav cities look more West European than Balkan.

Because social democrats have mostly come to power in industrially advanced and politically democratic nations, they have been cautious in their efforts to change existing systems by, for example, nationalizing economies. Says French Socialist Economist Jacques Attali: "Socialism is not measured by the size of the public sector." Notes a leading Swedish banker: "Our socialists don't care who owns the cow so long as the government gets most of the milk." Social democrats manage to do this by steep progressive taxes on income (up to 98% in Britain, 72% in The Netherlands and 85% in Sweden), capital gains, profits and inheritances. They also have been steadily eroding the prerogatives of ownership. Example: British and Dutch laws make it difficult for management to fire workers.

Proprietors will be facing even tighter restrictions if several social-democratic governments go ahead with plans to give workers a major voice in management. Although employee representatives already sit on boards of directors and management committees in Denmark, West Germany, Sweden and other Western European states, their powers could be expanded considerably under some pending proposals. One model for these schemes is Yugoslavia's Workers' Self-Management system, in which employees technically own their factories and, through workers' councils, have a voice in setting wage levels, dividing profits, planning investments and firing executives.

There are, however, increasing fears that social democracy's near confiscatory tax policies, by reducing rewards, already have begun to discourage incentive and innovation. They seem to be undermining the Calvinist work ethic in The Netherlands, spurring absenteeism and creating what sociologists have derisively labeled Afwezigheidsbehoefte--literally, the need to be absent (from the job).

Emerging from colonialism, many Third World states turned to socialism as much from necessity as ideology, because it seemed the only way to solve their economic problems. There was, for example, only a small Arab and Berber middle class to replace the French as an entrepreneur force after Algeria had gained independence. In any case, most Third World socialists have insisted on nationalization of manufacturing, mining and agriculture, and have placed economies under centralized controls. But the results have often been disappointing. TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs, who has reported from developing countries for most of the past two decades, writes: "The socialist regimes have made some contributions to economic growth. Somalia has built ports and Iraq's Baathists are installing an extensive irrigation network. But government management of production has been poor and in many cases corrupt; without material incentives, productivity has plummeted. While a population explosion has led to a net decline in the living standard for nearly all African states, it has been most pronounced in those espousing socialism."

Guineans, for instance, face constant shortages. Much of what is produced is smuggled into neighboring countries and sold for more than double the price permitted by Guinea's unrealistic controls. In Zambia, under what President Kenneth Kaunda calls "humanistic socialism," a severe housing shortage has developed. Reason: laws have made land-holding so uncertain that there is no incentive to invest in real estate.

No Third World country has fared worse under socialism than Burma. Its 16 years on the "Burmese Way to Socialism" have turned what was once the lush rice bowl of Asia into an international pauper. Government policies have led the peasant to produce only what his family needs. As a result, rice output fell from 1.9 million tons in 1962 to 530,000 tons in 1976. Even Buddhist monks have suffered: their robes are a dull, dusty maroon instead of the traditional bright orange, because controls prevent the Burmese from producing saffron dye.

The legitimate achievements of Third World socialist states in building economies often suffer by comparison with what has been done by nonsocialist countries once in similar circumstances. Kenya is a case in point. Although it lacks significant natural resources, it has one of black Africa's most successful economies. Its secret: limiting the government's role in the marketplace, encouraging the development of a black middle class and welcoming foreign investment. Poverty exists, to be sure, as does corruption, but Kenyans live better than their neighbors in Tanzania (see chart).

LIBERTY AND FREEDOMS

Wage slavery. Exploitation. Alienation. These are some of the indictments that socialists have routinely hurled at capitalism. Promising to end these and other forms of repression, socialists have long claimed that their ideology is synonymous with true freedom. Excepting social democracy, the historical record argues the opposite. Instead of greater liberty, Marxism-Leninism and Third World socialism invariably lead to authoritarian one-party and even one-man rule.

Explains California Political Scientist Chalmers Johnson: "Socialist regimes produce welfare, economic wealth, but are underdeveloped politically. Most of them eliminate any concept of citizenship. In America, we assume that every adult has a political life. Under socialism, there is a monopoly of politics." The authoritarian socialist might retort that politics means little to a hungry, unemployed worker. But even for members of the American underclass, seemingly mired in perpetual poverty, political rights offer a potential way for making their grievances heard and eventually, perhaps, redressed. While it is true that capitalism's corporations and other interest groups exercise great power over the individual, they are far less potent than the tiny cliques that monopolize power in the Marxist-Leninist and Third World socialist states.

To be sure, the social-democratic governments of Western Europe and elsewhere have consistently demonstrated their respect for gradualism, the parliamentary process and human rights. Says a leading Italian Socialist Senator, Aldo Ajello: "Oh sure, our future ideals are the usual ones: a classless society, worker control of the means of production, overcoming capitalism. But these ideals have to be realized with human liberty. This comes before anything else."

Even so, social democracy presents some potentially worrisome threats to liberties. Ambitious economic and social programs have created burgeoning bureaucracies that threaten to mushroom, becoming much larger than those in non-socialist states. Arbitrary bureaucratic decisions can and do restrict individual freedoms and initiatives. Most West German M.D.s on hospital staffs are not permitted private practices, while Norwegians wishing to build cabins in the mountains usually have to spend a year untangling red tape.

These infringements on freedom are minor compared with those imposed by Marxist-Leninist regimes. Freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Soviet constitution but is in fact unknown; any serious critic of the regime is harassed, imprisoned and sometimes even threatened with execution. Strikes do not occur because they would ruthlessly be suppressed. All organs of information and communication are subverted to the purposes of the state.

When accused of violating human rights, Marxist-Leninists have usually retorted that once true Communism is established, the dictatorship of the proletariat will disappear, leaving the individual genuinely free for the first time. Meanwhile, though, these facts raise hard questions about the true intentions of the so-called Eurocommunist parties of Italy, France and Spain: after decades of being apologists for totalitarianism, they now profess their commitments to democratic principles. Purged from their platforms is the once obligatory rhetoric calling for violent revolution and a dictatorship of the proletariat. Italian Communist Party Boss Enrico Berlinguer has said that under his party, "the system must remain that of liberty and individual rights, representative democracy that has its center in the parliament, pluralism of parties and alternating parties in the government."

But many analysts wonder about the sincerity of the conversion. Warns French Pundit Aron: "As long as these parties resemble an army of militants under the authority of a few, as long as they are prepared to do an about-turn either to the right or left when so ordered, no one will take even their most solemn declarations literally." Even if the Berlinguers are sincere, it is far from certain that once they are in office their views would continue to prevail over those of their colleagues, many of whom are Stalinists.

The record on liberty of some Third World socialists is no better than that of the Marxist-Leninists. Tanzania's prisons contain about 1,500 opponents of Nyerere's regime. Mozambique's socialist rulers have herded up to 10,000 "undesirables," including political dissidents, into primitive "reeducation camps." Iraq's xenophobic Baathist socialists have not held national elections since they came to power in 1968, and any critic of the Ahmed Hassan Bakr regime is quickly arrested by the Soviet-trained secret police.

There are, of course, nonsocialist countries that grossly violate civil and political rights. Witness Iran, Chile or Haiti. Yet it is surely more than coincidence that the only functioning democracies are found in capitalist or mixed-economy states, while authoritarianism is firmly installed in every socialist country, with the exception of the social democracies. This has prompted deep self-searching by many socialists. Says Asoka Mehta, India's leading socialist thinker: "Socialism is an attractive goal, but concentration of power is as dangerous as concentration of capital." Oxford Research Fellow Leszek Kolakowski, a dedicated socialist who left Poland in 1968, says, "One cannot discuss the socialist idea today as if nothing has happened since the idea was born. [In Eastern Europe] we expropriated the owners, and we created one of the most monstrous and oppressive social systems in world history."

Despair over totalitarianism has inspired dissident movements within the Marxist-Leninist states. East German Party Apparatchik Rudolf Bahro has dared to argue that a variety of Marxist groups be allowed to challenge the Communist Party's power monopoly. A similar kind of Marxist pluralism has also been advocated by Jacek Kuron, a leading member of Poland's Committee for the Self-Defense of Society. This dissident organization has successfully pressured

Warsaw to release jailed protesters. Meantime, a loose group of dissident Czechoslovak intellectuals, Charter '77, has demanded--to no avail--that the regime in Prague begin to respect the human rights guaranteed by its laws.

All these "slanderers of socialism," as their regimes have dubbed them, accept socialism as an ideal, maintaining that it need not be repressive. A group of young French leftist intellectuals known as the "New Philosophers" is not so certain. Bernard-Henri Levy, 28, one of the movement's most prolific members, has concluded that Stalinism, rather than being an aberration, "is a mode of socialism. Gulag is not an accident." At fault, he argues, is socialism's obsession with homogeneity, "expelling from its borders the forces of heterogeneity and ... squelching its rebels." Compared with socialism's seemingly intrinsic dangers, capitalism seems a lesser evil to some of the New Philosophers. Admits Levy: "Between the barbarity of capitalism, which censures itself much of the time, and the barbarity of socialism, which does not, I guess I might choose capitalism."

QUALITY OF LIFE

Near the top of the agenda of every socialist regime are elaborate programs for improving health care and expanding educational facilities. These states can boast that infant mortality has dropped dramatically, life expectancy is on the rise, and illiteracy is gradually being conquered. In short, state-provided social services are one promise that socialism has kept.

When Fidel Castro's forces triumphed in Cuba in 1959, nearly one-quarter of the population could neither read nor write. Compulsory primary education and an ambitious classroom construction program have reduced illiteracy to 4%. Cuban infant mortality is 29 per 1,000 and average life expectancy is 70 years. By contrast, the nearby Dominican Republic has a 32% illiteracy rate, infant mortality of 98 per 1,000 and an average life expectancy of only 58 years.

In China, the crash training of legions of doctors, nurses and paramedics and the founding of rural health centers have nearly eradicated cholera, plague and other diseases that for centuries had periodically ravaged the population. Similar efforts are now under way in Mozambique. The Marxist Frelimo regime has set up free health clinics in many villages for combating such chronic problems as malnutrition, malaria and tuberculosis.

Eastern European states offer free education (although the Communist parties have a great deal to say about who is admitted to the universities) and comprehensive health care. Sickness seldom imposes horrendous financial burdens on patients. The Physical Quality of Life Index (see map) shows that the essential human services provided by Marxist-Leninist states often match and sometimes top those in Western democracies.

The extensive network of social services known as the welfare state or the social net is the most distinctive achievement of social-democratic rule. Thanks to it, Swedes, for example, get cradle-to-grave coddling. They receive an annual allowance of $437 for each child, tuition-free education through college, free hospital care, sick pay amounting to 90% of normal wages, and a retirement pension equal to 60% of the average income of a worker's 15 highest paid years.

In Britain, the Labor Party has enacted laws that provide, among other things, free family planning, maternity allowances, income supplements, retirement pensions, and health care that includes treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction. There are, however, often very long waits for admission to hospitals, and treatment is increasingly impersonal.

Socialist regimes have done no better than capitalist ones in solving some of civilization's most persistent problems. Crimes of violence, like muggings, are less common in Marxist-Leninist countries than in the West. This is because the omnipresent police, constantly watching for any signs of opposition to the regime, also maintain strict law-and-order. But even they cannot halt all lawlessness. Juvenile delinquency (usually referred to as "hooliganism") has been on the upswing in recent years in the Marxist-Leninist nations, including China, where there are frequent gang fights.

Corruption, black marketeering, bribery and theft are endemic in Communist states, in part because inefficient economies cannot satisfy the popular demand for goods and services. In the Soviet Union, workers steal material and tools from factories after bribing the guards, while managers of retail outlets find that they do not receive merchandise they have ordered unless they pay off warehouse supervisors and deliverymen.

Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the situation is not much better. Reports TIME Correspondent David Aikman: "In buying a car, bribery is nearly a recognized means of avoiding an interminable wait --up to eight years in East Germany for some models. Obtaining an official document like a driver's license in Rumania routinely requires an endless series of small payoffs--perhaps a package of American-

made cigarettes deposited on the desk of each of the many bureaucrats whose approvals are needed. Medical care is supposed to be free. But demand so exceeds supply that in Rumania it is often necessary to pay doctors or hospital administrators just to get a bed, sometimes even for an urgent operation."

There is little drug addiction in the East bloc--vigilant police and stiff sentences for dealers take care of that--but alcoholism is rampant. The Soviet Union is dotted with sobering-up stations, while in Polish cities drunks can be seen staggering through the streets at just about any hour. Cramped living quarters in the Soviet Union seem to affect the stability of family life; divorce rates are soaring and nearly 50% of all marriages fail in big cities like Moscow and Kiev.

EQUALITY AND THE NEW ELITE

The moral imperative of socialism is egalitarianism. Philosophically, socialism's challenge to capitalism rests on the premise that there is something inherently unjust about the gulf between rich and poor, between privilege and deprivation. Perhaps Marx's most Utopian promise was that at the end of the revolutionary process, when the true Communist society emerged, the relationship between work and reward would be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Some ruling socialists take this rhetoric seriously. In radically socialist South Yemen, civil servants' salaries have been cut and luxury goods banned. Under Julius Nyerere's firm socialist hand, Tanzania has been turned into one of the world's most egalitarian societies. The steeply progressive personal taxes of most social democracies, meanwhile, are a way of redistributing wealth.

But in the Marxist-Leninist states, egalitarianism is an empty slogan and socialist rule has become more a dictatorship of praetorians than of the proletariat. In a famous 1957 diatribe, Yugoslav Dissident Milovan Djilas railed against the privileges accorded a "new class" of Communists--party hierarchs, ranking bureaucrats, managers of state enterprises, and superstars in the arts and sports.

The rewards of the new class are not necessarily monetary. The manager of a Soviet chemical plant or the director of a scientific research institute earns about 508 rubles ($726) a month-while President Leonid Brezhnev makes an estimated 2,900 rubles ($4,150). These are mere pittances compared with the $250,000 annual salaries of Jimmy Carter and the chief executive officer of the average large U.S. corporation. But because Marxist-Leninist societies are short of goods, a comfortable life-style depends less on money than on privileged access to scarce materials and services. In capitalist or mixed economies, by contrast, money usually provides access to luxury.

Reports TIME Moscow Bureau Chief Marsh Clark: "The elite here have more of the good things of life vis-a-vis their average countrymen than do the West's richest businessmen in relation to a man on welfare. In the Soviet Union, various grades of apparatchiks have access to special stores that sell imported and otherwise scarce goods at very low prices. Behind a door marked 'Office of Passes' on Granovsky Street not far from the Kremlin, a windowless emporium offers a cornucopia of meats, fruits, vegetables and imported delicacies to the shishki (big shots). The average Ivan and Natasha, however, never see such a selection of goods in the stores at which they must shop. When the shishki become ill, they go to the Kremlin Polyclinic for medical care vastly superior to that available to their fellow countrymen."

Adds TIME'S Aikman: "In Rumania, senior officials have their own villas and even relatively low party functionaries drive automobiles and receive a generous gasoline allowance. The son of Communist Party Boss Nicolae Ceausescu races around Bucharest in a sleek Mercedes sports coupe. The perks for the Polish elite include special schools for their children and access to luxurious vacation camps and ski resorts. Traffic literally stops for East Germany's new class; at the approach of the imported Volvo limousines carrying the party's top brass, police halt all other movement on the streets."

Not even classless China is exempt from the new elitism. After Mao's 1949 triumph, Chinese Communist leaders immediately moved into villas expropriated from capitalist tycoons and, among other things, designated Peitaiho, one of the country's best seaside resorts, as their exclusive playground. Chauffeured cars ferry the wives of high-ranking Chinese cadres to exclusive shops and their children to special schools. Recent denunciations of Chiang Ching, Mao's now disgraced widow, have emphasized her sybaritic tastes: she had two villas in Peking's Summer Palace, feasted on exotic birds' nests for days at a time, and dressed her Pekingese puppies in vests made of costly imported fabrics.

Citizens of Communist states are well aware that their rulers give only lip service to Marxism's egalitarian ideals. But all they can do is complain and joke. One popular story in the Soviet Union tells of Party Boss Brezhnev inviting his mother to his elegant villa in the Crimea. He shows her the lavish furnishings, his yachts, art treasures and the fleet of foreign cars he has received as gifts from visiting heads of state. After a table-groaning banquet, he asks: "Well, Mama, what do you think? Not bad for your little boy?" To which the old woman replies: "My son. it's very impressive. But what if the Communists come to power?"

Despite socialism's achievements, some thinkers who accept the ideology have reservations about how well it is working. Most troubling is the apparent lesson of history that the more the state, in whatever form, attempts to control society, for whatever desirable end, the more the individual is smothered.

Noted the late George Lichtheim, an internationally respected historian of socialism: "The kind of central planning that vests all control in a political bureaucracy is unlikely to be efficient, and it is certain to be destructive of freedom ... If socialism were to become permanently identified with the kind of life imposed after 1945 on Eastern Europe, few sane people would want it." Quite apart from Eastern Europe, any attempt to achieve egalitarianism poses a threat to freedom. Since people are not equal in ability, the naturally gifted minority cannot be expected to voluntarily forfeit the extra rewards earned by its efforts.

Pragmatically recognizing the key role that capitalist initiative plays in dynamic economies, some ruling socialists have taken steps toward encouraging freer enterprise. Britain's Labor government, for instance, is planning to announce efforts to stimulate individual initiative and investment. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has angered the radical wing of his Social Democratic Party by braking the rate of pension increases and halting the planning of new ambitious welfare schemes, like a costly increase in health benefits. To stop a headlong plunge into bankruptcy, Portugal's Socialist Premier Mario Scares has been uncomfortably forced to restore to private ownership farms confiscated after the 1974 revolution.

Some Third World regimes are also having second thoughts about socialism. Peru was pushed to the edge of bankruptcy by seven years of Peruvian socialism concocted by General Juan Velasco Alvarado, who was ousted in 1975. The country's new military rulers have substantially modified Velasco laws under which workers would have been able to wrest control of firms from their owners.

Egypt's President Anwar Sadat still pays lip service to the economically crippling Arab socialism of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat, however, has been edging toward a mixed economy by offering generous tax breaks to encourage investment by individual Egyptians and foreigners. Even Guinea's Sekou Toure, the self-styled "terror of imperialism," recently promised to relax a ban on private enterprise in order to lure foreign capital.

Do such developments mean that socialism is on the wane? Probably not. Socialism certainly will live on as what some of its European advocates have called a "permanent experiment." The Social Democratic defeat in Sweden did not involve any shrinking of the social services. In the

Western social democracies, burgeoning bureaucracies will probably be viewed by voters as acceptable trade-offs for the security provided by a welfare state. As for the U.S.S.R.'s East bloc satellites, Aron concludes: "I find that there are no grounds for thinking that the leaderships of the Hungarian, Polish or Czechoslovak parties, once freed from the grasp of Soviet Russia, would convert to freedom of their own accord and renounce all, or important parts, of their power. As long as the Red Army tanks assure the permanence of their reign, they improve their brand image in the eyes of the governed, acquiring a partial legitimacy through concessions to popular aspirations and tinkerings with ideological conformism."

For Third World countries, socialism, as one U.S. State Department analyst explains, is almost certain to remain "a blueprint." Another American diplomat, William B. Young, points out that "in many less developed countries, only the government can effectively mobilize capital. In some countries, insecure leaders fear the existence of any private activity which would conceivably have the financial resources to challenge their authority."

What ultimately sustains all forms of socialism is the inherent appeal of an ideology promising to remake society in a manner that will foster a "new man" --assured of his material needs, emotionally and psychologically unfettered and bursting with creativity. To this the socialists like to contrast "heartless capitalism," with its alleged willingness to tolerate permanent working-class poverty. The reality that the socialist promise is largely unfulfilled is not viewed as conclusive by its ideologues. In answer they would probably paraphrase G.K. Chesterton to the effect that socialism, like Christianity, has not failed, because it has never been tried. Surveying Tanzania's mounting problems, for example, President Nyerere urges patience. "We are like a man who does not get smallpox because he got himself vaccinated," he explains. "His arm is sore, and he feels sick for a while. If he has never seen what smallpox does to people, he may feel very unhappy during that period and wish he had never agreed to the vaccination."

Nonsocialist societies, in fact, have done their own share of vaccinating and know the ache of a sore arm. Americans for decades have enjoyed Social Security and disability programs and unemployment benefits, to say nothing of the world's most extensive system of government-supported colleges and universities. Partly as a result, the U.S., like other industrial democracies, has begun to suffer the pains of a mushrooming bureaucracy.

Even the most libertarian governments, moreover, meddle with the marketplace, if only by regulating the money supply, setting import duties and granting tax advantages to selected economic sectors. But unlike the socialist, who sees the state as the main engine of social change, the capitalist views such interference as an unfortunate but necessary compromise with an ideal. Recognition of necessity and stirrings of conscience will continue to spur the capitalist to embrace some of those demands for social justice advanced by socialism.

In his ongoing debate with the socialist, the capitalist is at a disadvantage, unable to compete rhetorically with socialist idealism.

In place of state control, the capitalist argues for the unpredictable mechanism of the marketplace. It may be a flawed instrument, but there is ample evidence that

it provides the most efficient

allocation of the globe's scarce resources, as well as material incentive for individual hard work and creativity. Instead of a noble "new man," capitalism offers only the "old man," whose self-interest in profit --even though it may be condemned as greed--will ultimately benefit the commonweal. When assessed this way, it is no surprise that the capitalist reality can be made to sound less appealing than the socialist dream.

A strong argument can be made that capitalism, by acknowledging the primal power of self-interest and recognizing the disparities among human beings, accurately reflects life's realities, and that socialism is fundamentally Utopian. The socialist vision, which in its Marxist version is cloaked as a "scientific" law of history, suggests that under a right and just system all men can become the secular equivalent of saints, choosing to work in harmony for a common goal. The quintessential capitalist, whether or not he is religious, rejects the idea of man's perfectibility on earth and asks the socialist this question: If and when men become saints, socialism might indeed be able to fulfill its promise; but if sanctity were universal, would there be any need for socialism?

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