I disagree. Socialism has emerged several times, and has been enormously successful, but each time capitalist powers have moved in to suppress and destroy it. Chile, Burkina Faso, Nicaragua, Bolivia... Social and economic success stories -- for a short time; but sharing the wealth or spending it on social programs that don't benefit corporate interests invites intervention and overthrow. It's happened over and over. The US, in particular, has been suppressing nascent democracies ever since WWII.
For one thing what defines the american experiment is freedom. Socialism, the hive mind values equality more than liberty. As one example Norwegian government recently passed a law that the boards of its largest corporations must be half female. The California left, the Democratic Party, passed a law that no employer may fire a male employee who wears women’s clothing at work. Because the Left holds liberty (except sexual liberty) in lower esteem, Europe has raised a generation that does not value liberty nearly as much Americans do (though we’re getting there).
Socialism teaches you to avoid taking care of other people. The state will – why should you? If people in socialist countries take less care of their aging parents, it is because they are taught from childhood to allow others, i.e. the state, to take care of everybody. Just as we saw in America when the state stepped in to take care of women who had children without a husband, these women increasingly refused to marry and felt little compunction about having more babies out of wedlock. The BIGGER the government, the worse the people. The larger the state, the more callous it becomes. 20th century evil was made possible in large measure by the bureaucratic mentality – the type of person who is merely a cog in huge governmental machine, collectively all-powerful but individually powerless to do anything except take and execute orders. The bigger the state, the smaller the citizens. Corporations are a-moral, but they are competitive, thus are forced by consumers to act in certain ways. socialist governments are monolithic, and all that leads to. I see SOME Marxist admit that MOST “socialist” countries around the world were failing. However, according to then the reason for failure is not that socialism is deficient, but that the socialist economies are not practicing “pure” socialism. The perfect version of socialism would work; it is just the imperfect socialism that doesn’t work. Marxists like to compare a theoretically perfect version of socialism with practical, imperfect capitalism which allows them to claim that socialism is superior to capitalism.
If perfection really were an available option, the choice of economic and political systems would be irrelevant. In a world with perfect beings and infinite abundance, any economic or political system–socialism, capitalism, fascism, or communism–would work perfectly.
