Last century, in China, Cambodia and Viet Nam, among other countries, guerrilla and civil wars were started that caused millions of deaths, with the goal of leftist groups being to take over.
Currently almost all of the countries, where the left came to govern through violence in order to establish socialism, have abandoned it due to inefficiency and the creation of misery worse than that which prevailed before the leftists took over the governments.
Most of those guerrillas, who were brainwashed since youth and convinced they must sacrifice their lives to establish socialism and do away with capitalism, have since renounced violence and some have become Presidents by democratic means, such as what happened in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Brazil.
In the last century no country, where true socialism was established or state capitalism by democratic or violent means, improved the standard of living of workers and the poor. They ended up, like in China, North Korea, Cuba, Yugoslavia, the USSR, and Cambodia, in party or personal dictatorships that concentrated capital in the hands of the rulers at the expense of reducing to a minimum the expression of economic and political freedoms.
The fruits of the left are also negative in Mexico, as with the case of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas [President of Mexico: 1934 to 1940] whose socialist policies of rural land expropriation impoverished it, and caused millions of Mexicans to migrate to cities and the United States. The railway and oil expropriations only created state monopolies, riddled with corruption and inefficiency, reflected today in Mexicans paying higher prices for gasoline than that sold by private petroleum companies, like in the United States.
The Governments of the 1970s and 1980s are also an example of the results of leftist policies in Mexico: macro inflation and devaluations that impoverished a great many Mexicans. In most of the states, where the left came to power, such as Michoacán, Oaxaca and Guerrero, there is now more violence and poverty.
These are the fruits of real socialism in Mexico and the world.
**Luis Pazos (e-mail: lpazos@prodigy.net.mx), who heads the Free Enterprise Research Center (CISLE) in Mexico City, holds a master's degree in Public Finance and a doctorate in Law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). A prolific writer and forethoughtful analyst, Dr. Pazos' commentaries on Mexican economics, finance and politics have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the Americas. As well, he is the author of numerous books.
*Edited translation by MexiData.info.
