failure of such disastrous proportions that they seriously depressed the
living standards of their citizens.
Karl Marx argued that free-market economies could not be relied on to
ensure an equitable distribution of income. He advocated a system of
central planning in which government owns most of the means of
production.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-135736]
During the last decade of the twentieth century, most of the world’s
centrally planned economies began the difficult transition back toward
freer markets. These transitions occurred at different paces in different