How Socialism Fails

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How Socialism Fails

The End of Socialism, James R. Otteson, Cambridge University Press, 240 pages

By BRADLEY J. BIRZER • July 3, 2015

James R. Otteson, the Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics at Wake Forest University, possesses one of the greatest minds in defense of classical liberalism in the modern era. I say that as a friend but even more as an admirer. He has authored two definitive works on Adam Smith, a clear rebuttal of the ethics of Peter Singer, and now a crucial attack on the “near-socialist” theories so pervasive throughout the world today.

 

Socialism not only fails to work in reality, notes Otteson, it is also malicious in its ethics and morality—even if most of its current adherents believe themselves humane and well-intentioned. At its core, “socialism is a difficult and costly system of political economy that the specific conceptions of its moral values do not justify.” This, he continues, “constitutes the end of socialism, then, in both senses of the word end: an attempt to implement it will inevitably end in heavy costs to its community, and the philosophical case for socialism ends in failure