The Road To Serfdom by F.A. Hayek

The Road To Serfdom

IN ORDER to achieve their ends, the planners must create power—power over men wielded by other men—of a magnitude never before known. Their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve such power. Democracy is an obstacle to this suppression of freedom which the centralized direction of economic activity requires. Hence arises the clash between planning- and democracy.

Many socialists have the tragic illusion that by depriving private individuals of the power they possess in an individualist system, and transferring this power to society, they thereby extinguish power. What they overlook is that, by concentrating power so that it can be used in the service of a single plan, it is not merely transformed but infinitely heightened. By uniting in the hands of some single body power formerly exercised independently by many, an amount of power is created infinitely greater than any that existed before, so much more far-reaching as almost to be different in kind.

Similar pattern in all socialist/communists forms of government(including post-1947 India) - government control over means of production (will lead to totalitarianism, Hayek warned) perpetuating poverty and tyranny, instead of improvement in individual economic well-being. Need to quote Hayek.