Although I’m scheduled to be back in Minnesota fairly early today I really didn’t think I’d want to start writing posts immediately upon my return, thus you get one final entry in Liberty Literature. For the final entry in this series (until I decide to start continuing the series later) I have selected Pictures of a Socialistic Future by Eugen Richter. Fortunately for you it’s a short read and can be found for free here.
This book is interesting because it accurately predicted the condition people living in socialist countries would face. Although I’m unsure of the original data this title was published I do know it was translated to English in 1893, before socialism started taking hold in countries like Russia. Pictures of a Socialistic Future is a fictional story about a man who lives in a country who’s government had just been overthrown by socialists. It reads like a diary with our main character expressing the changes he sees. Although he originally strongly supports socialism his attitude towards it changes as conditions become worse and worse.
As I said this book is interesting because it was published before any major socialist governments were founded but accurately predicted what would happen in such countries. Everything is in here including the need to prevent citizens from leaving the country, to reduced output in production, to the absurd things needed to be done in order to make everybody in society “equal.” If you read this book and a book on the history of the Soviet Union you will almost get confused about which book is the fictional title and which is the non-fiction title.
It’s sad that the horrors of socialism were predicted so early and nobody was willing to listen. Had people taken this book to heart hundreds of millions of needless deaths may have been avoided.