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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