@The Pentacle Queen,
The problems with Socialism, Pentacle Queen, are many.
I will touch on just a few now.
Socialism, of necessity, flourishes in a secular society. A society in which reliegion is a private affair.
Without religion, the demands placed on Socialist societies,in the name of temporal happiness, have become ever more urgent and unreasonable.
I think that a great deal of evidence can be marshalled to show that Socialism inevitably leads to redistribution of resources. This redistribution is not based on merit but rather on political factors.
The utter failure of Socialist societies like the Soviet Union to prosper is based on the inability of people to submerge their instinct to work hard to amass the goods that lead to better chances of survival.
No one but a charlathan would suggest that a radical redistribution of resources would lead to a better society.
In his book, "Money", ProfessorAndrew Hacker suggest that no one needs more than $100,000 a year in income. He also suggests that any income, of any kind, above that figure be taxed by the state so that the proceeds can be redistributed to the people who are at the bottom of the income scale.
This is, of course, ridiculous and would never work in practice. Many people, even those at the bottom of the income ladder, are still hopeful that they,or at least, their children, would end up among the fortunate at the top.
The best novel ever written about the evils of absolute Socialism is, in my estimation, "1984" Some, on the left, dreading the stain that the book might leave on their idiologies,try to portray "1984" as a prophecy about a "right wing" conservative take over.
The proof that this is an absurd position is found at the end of the novel.
where Orwell wrote:
"Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of INGSOC, OR ENGLISH SOCIALISM>"
************************
Those are just a few of the many problems with Socialism.PentacleQueen.
Of course, it was stylish for Karl Marx and Engels to decry "capitalism' in the nineteenth century, but a great deal has changed since then. Why, even the Chinese are lurching towards Capitalism.