Socialism
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You’re a student in a big beautiful city. After graduation, you became a doctor. Now you are sent to a village far away from home to live and work there. And you can’t say “no” because the state knows better where you should live.
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You’re a successful plant director, and you are sent to build a big collective farm. You are OK with moving far away because the state needs you there. After some time, you’re told NKVD is searching for you. You say: “It’s a nonsense, I did nothing wrong, it’s a mistake.” Later, you are executed because an anonymous letter against you is enough.
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You’re a little girl in a village. The state took away all food, so there’s nothing to eat. Parents send you to the field after harvesting to search for ears of wheat. Adults are executed if they are caught with three ears of wheat, but children are safe, so you regurly go to the field. But it’s not enough, and your parents dig rotten potato, grind it to make potato flour, and bake rotten potato bread. It tastes so awful that you refuse to eat it. Parents try to force you to eat that bread, but you tell them that if they keep trying to force you, you’re not going to the field anymore.
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You’re a communist. You know that people disappear at night. But you believe it’s ok because you are told they are bad people hurting the state and society. They are not just people. They are pests.
Come on, socialism is an economic system where society owns means of production. That’s what happened in USSR. The problem is, society cannot function without structure. There should be some representatives like secretaries. And those people have more power than others, even more, they can have near absolute power. And those people aren’t the best. As a result, bad people own all society, and there’s nothing to do with it. Under capitalism, if an employer is bad, workers can just quit and find another job. Under socialism, if the employer is bad, there is nothing to do because there is only one employer: the state. Capitalism is not bad, people who have lots of money are bad. But imagine exactly same people gain absolute power. That’s what was in the USSR. Greedy people, who wrote anonymous letters accusing others, benefited from it. They received confiscated flats and furniture. People of power lived better than others, they had better flats, better food, better goods. They were “elite”. All of them were actually higher class. And they stated they were caring for society. All their deeds were for good, they said.
I believe regulated capitalism and democracy are the best for imperfect humans. If people were ideal, any system would work flawlessly. But people are flawed, and any system giving absolute power leads to a state where bad people rule others.