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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 Touré, the self-styled