We’re told that freedom comes with the market, efficiency with competition, and ownership with capitalism. But what do we do with reality? With cities built by the state? With hospitals, schools, apartments, and roads that still stand decades later—while modern buildings crack in five years? What about the “inefficiency” that provided housing for everyone?

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People often speak of the “inefficiency of communism,” but always in the past tense. As if it’s a closed chapter. They point to long lines, shortages, and bureaucracy in the USSR—but never to the present, where some of the most successful and efficient countries still apply centralized planning principles.

Why? Because the present is dangerous. It might challenge today’s dominant ideology. And nobody wants that.

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China isn’t perfect. But it is efficient. It can build a hospital in ten days or an entire neighborhood in three weeks. Not because it’s chasing private profit, but because it plans collectively, not for shareholders.

This isn’t pure communism. But it proves that a state can be extremely efficient when it doesn’t bow to the market, but takes responsibility as a builder, a planner, and a long-term strategist.

China shows what’s possible when economic activity isn’t sabotaged by private interests.

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Few people know that Sweden once built over a million homes through its state-led Million Program between 1965–1974.
Affordable. Durable. Fast. Public.

Back then, Sweden controlled rents, built housing, and ensured functioning public services.

Today, under neoliberalism, Sweden builds almost nothing. Housing is too expensive, infrastructure is stagnating, and everything is a slow, costly bureaucratic process. Nobody dares build a new district—because it’s no longer profitable.

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Romania is often praised for having the highest homeownership rate in the EU. But over 80% of those homes were built during communism.

And back then, if you received a state-assigned apartment, it was essentially yours for life. Not a commodity. Not a loan. A right.

After 1989, those homes were sold for symbolic prices. So ironically, Romanians became homeowners thanks to a system that didn’t even believe in private ownership.

Capitalism didn’t build those homes. It just sold them. That’s all.

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Capitalist efficiency means speed. Fast sales. Planned obsolescence. If something lasts 50 years, it’s considered a failure.

But in communism—flawed as it was—things were built to last. There was no market pressure. Just a different logic: for people, not for profit.

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Say “communism,” and the discussion ends. Say “central planning,” “public infrastructure,” or “non-profit housing,” and suddenly it sounds reasonable.

The problem isn’t the idea. It’s the label.

And while we fear words, reality shows us that efficiency doesn’t always come from markets. It can come from long-term thinking. From coordination. From the absence of pressure to sell something every second.

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Maybe communism—in all its imperfect forms—was simply an attempt to build things slowly, durably, humanely. Without the destructive rush of consumerism. Without the tyranny of profit. Without the illusion of freedom through consumption.

Maybe real inefficiency is what we live in now:
A world that’s fast, fragile, and always for sale.

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