ABSTRACT
The first generation of Bolsheviks would never have dreamed that idle supernumerary workers and organizational inefficiency might become the justification of socialism. More generally, all direct evidence and first-hand observations reveal the enormous irrationality of socialism, Soviet-style. The over-staffing hailed by the Intourist guide as the "achievement" of socialism symbolizes the failure of a system and a regime. Socialism, as a concept, has lost all precise meaning, and some of its opponents replace it by the word collectivism, a term more likely to provoke feelings of fear and hostility. The distinction between social democracy and socialism has lost all precise significance, in that one of the two terms no longer has any significance at all. In all the socialisms of the European East the chapter finds the same minority of party dignitaries or the social elite. Politically, the socialisms of the Third World reject institutional pluralism, more by necessity than principle.
