Socialism Revisited

Different economic systems distribute the wealth in different manners, but both laymen and economists have long recognized that it is the economic system that produces the most that can truly be said to perform the best. What use is it that everyone have railroad tickets if there be no railroads?

It is here that the socialist state seems most likely to fall down. Critics of Labor Britain and Stalinist Russia point out that no matter how equally these types of governments distribute shoes, no one will be better off if there are just not enough shoes to go around.

Picture for a moment a great city like Moscow or London without fuel to heat its houses, with a communications system carrying on only from day to day awaiting a total breakdown, with the transportation workers so incensed over their misery that they are about to strike in protest, and without even an adequate water supply. This would indeed be a condemning picture for a socialist capital. The picture is, of course, of our own New York City, capital of the capitalist world.