H/t to Vanderleun for Spengler's essay, A Commedia for our times. One quote:
The most onerous expression of idolatry in the modern era was the communist conceit that the scientific ordering of society can eliminate uncertainty. Scientific socialism was supposed to eliminate economic crises and war; instead, it brought about 100 million deaths and reduced once-prosperous countries to penury. Seventy years after its founding, the entire value of the industrial plant of the Soviet Union and its satellites was less than its scrap value, taking into account the costs of environmental cleanup. The life expectancy of Russian men has fallen to only 55 years, and the most frequent cause of death is alcoholism. Russia and its former satellites have such low fertility that their populations will fall by between one-third and one-half by mid-century. Europe's nanny-state version of social democracy is a low-grade version of the same infection.