2 By the early 1970's, a prominent American Marxist-Leninist, Paul Sweezy, was predicting that this would happen in the Soviet Union. Sweezy was right -- that is exactly what happened -- and I know of no other economist who got that right. (I didn't!) But libertarian and democratic socialists had warned about that danger from the beginnings of the Soviet Union.
3 Thus it was communism, not socialism, that held that people ought not to act on their own behalf but on behalf of "society." It seems a natural guess that "socialists" would believe that people should act "on behalf of society," but, as we have seen, the "social" in "socialist" was a reference to social classes, worker and capitalist, which the socialists were against, not for. History gives many words meanings that are hard to guess from their Latin roots.
4 This account of the relationship between socialism and communism is largely based on G. D. H. Cole's multi-volume History of Socialism.
5 Strictly speaking, Yugoslavia did not have a planned economy, and thus its problems could hardly be blamed on planning in any case. But I will argue that the real failure of this group of countries was political, and Yugoslavia's government was closely based on that of the Soviet Union. The fact that both countries failed quite similarly supports the argument that they failed for the same reason -- which could not have been economic planning, since Yugoslavia didn't practice it.
6 In the long run, the gangsters cannot win, since the rule of law and some stability of property rights are essentials for any capitalist economy. But the unfortunate Russian people could experience a generation of economic decay before this outcome asserts itself.