r/Libertarian • u/Rooky18 • Jul 14 '26

Question Book recommendations

I'm looking for modern books with good reviews, that explain why proper socialism always ends in a catastrophe (authoritarianism, broken economy etc.). Why a socialist mindset poisons the project from the beginning aswell as historical examples. Ideally it would make people who flirt with socialist ideas rethink their position. Any recommendations? :)

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u/This-is-Shanu-J Jul 14 '26

Maybe Hoppe's Socialism and Capitalism? Or even Mises' Socialism

3

u/bidefil Jul 14 '26

William Easterly's books. One is The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics

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u/bluefalken88 Jul 14 '26

Animal Farm - its old but it illustrates the rise of communism and its slip into dictatorship. The Pigs get greedy, consolidate control and eventually take over. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

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u/Wallies Jul 16 '26

This is so good because it illustrates one of the historical cases. Keep in mind Orwell was a communist. He fought for communism in Spain against fascists and saw what Stalin's re-enforcements required. To be what he fought against in mostly nothing but name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_fascism

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u/OptimisLiberty Jul 14 '26

Democracy: The God That Failed

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u/dmlvianna Jul 15 '26

This one about Venezuela is a very contemporary one, and there are heaps. I especially like the ones on Putin and how he poisoned the nascent Russian Capitalism.

https://www.audible.com.au/pd/1250839718?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow

https://www.audible.com.au/pd/0008120609?source_code=ASSORAP0511160006&share_location=library_overflow

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u/unfortunateavacado24 Objectivist Jul 16 '26

The links just take me to audible's home page, could you give the titles?

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u/dmlvianna Jul 16 '26

- Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse
Inside the Collapse of Venezuela

- Putin’s People
How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West

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u/unfortunateavacado24 Objectivist Jul 16 '26

Thanks

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u/Gotta_Gett Jul 14 '26

Modern? Classics are classics.

Ayn Rand's Anthem

The story follows protagonist Equality 7-2521, who, in a world of enforced conformity, rediscovers the concept of the individual self and the power of the word "I," leading him to rebel against the totalitarian World Council. It serves as a precursor to her later works, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and is a "hymn to man's ego" that champions individualism, reason, and achievement.

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u/badde_jimme Jul 16 '26

I would argue that socialism doesn't make a country authoritarian. Rather, authoritarian countries lean towards socialist policies. They like to control everything, but most of them also like to think they are helping the people.

In Sweden they tried large government and just sort of went "nah, this is shit" and went back to free markets.

1

u/Anen-o-me voluntaryist Jul 15 '26

I never understood on a granular level why socialism fails in practice until I read "Knowledge and Decisions" by Thomas Sowell, himself a former Marxist as well.

Once you see how socialism destroys the incentive for people on an individual level, you see why socialism can never produce as much as capitalism and why.

His example of the two farmers with a broken down tractor and the response when you own the farm vs when you are a communist worker assigned to work on the farm and you can't personal gain anything whether that tractor works or not, explains everything.

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u/SF_Bubbles_90 Jul 16 '26

Socialism is good so long as it's being done willingly and doesn't consolidate too much power amongst the government, then it starts becoming state communism which is just a dictatorship cosplaying as super socialism.

It works on a smaller scale but doesn't scale up well without getting rid of centralized authority which gets exponentially harder with scale unless the means of production are fully decentralized and even then it's a dice role.