ABSTRACT
Despite the dramatic collapse of Soviet Communism, predictions of the “death of socialism” may be premature. The system of Soviet Communism comprised at least five important characteristics: (1) socialism (public ownership of the preponderance of the capital stock); (2) central planning (extensive power over and tight control of the economy by a single bureaucratic agency); (3) political oligarchy (consolidation of power within an authoritarian Communist Party apparatus); (4) strict egalitarianism (implying limited wage and salary differentials, and very high job security among the workforce); (5) international activism (pursuit of worldwide socialist revolution by all means including force). The decline and fall of Soviet Communism might well have been the consequence of the latter four characteristics; socialism in and of itself, in the strict sense of public ownership of capital, might not have been a significant contributor to Soviet weakness.
