section_path: Criticism
section_name: Criticism
paragraph_text: Criticism
  
  According to analytical Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright, "The Right condemned socialism as violating individual rights to private property and unleashing monstrous forms of state oppression", while "the Left saw it as opening up new vistas of social equality, genuine freedom and the development of human potentials."
  
  Because of socialism's many varieties, most critiques have focused on a specific approach. Proponents of one approach typically criticise others. Socialism has been criticised in terms of its models of economic organization as well as its political and social implications. Other critiques are directed at the socialist movement, parties, or existing states.
  
  Some forms of criticism occupy theoretical grounds, such as in the economic calculation problem presented by proponents of the Austrian School as part of the socialist calculation debate, while others support their criticism by examining historical attempts to establish socialist societies. The economic calculation problem concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a planned socialist system. Central planning is also criticized by elements of the radical left. Libertarian socialist economist Robin Hahnel notes that even if central planning overcame its inherent inhibitions of incentives and innovation, it would nevertheless be unable to maximize economic democracy and self-management, which he believes are concepts that are more intellectually coherent, consistent and just than mainstream notions of economic freedom.
  
  Economic liberals and right-libertarians argue that private ownership of the means of production and market exchange are natural entities or moral rights which are central to freedom and liberty and argue that the economic dynamics of capitalism are immutable and absolute. As such, they also argue that public ownership of the means of production and economic planning are infringements upon liberty.
  
  Critics of socialism have argued that in any society where everyone holds equal wealth, there can be no material incentive to work because one does not receive rewards for a work well done. They further argue that incentives increase productivity for all people and that the loss of those effects would lead to stagnation. Some critics of socialism argue that income sharing reduces individual incentives to work and therefore incomes should be individualized as much as possible.
  
  Some philosophers have also criticized the aims of socialism, arguing that equality erodes away at individual diversities and that the establishment of an equal society would have to entail strong coercion.
  
  Milton Friedman argued that the absence of private economic activity would enable political leaders to grant themselves coercive powers, powers that, under a capitalist system, would instead be granted by a capitalist class, which Friedman found preferable.
  
  Many commentators on the political right point to the mass killings under communist regimes, claiming them as an indictment of socialism. Opponents of this view, including supporters of socialism, state that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes, and not caused by socialism itself, and draw comparisons to killings, famines and excess deaths under capitalism, colonialism and anti-communist authoritarian governments.