Repeating Epic Failure

Rita Hanson: Did you ever have deja vu?
Phil Conners: Didn't you just ask me that?
--Groundhog Day

Nice WSJ essay reviewing the failed path of socialism.

Robert Owen coined the term and founded the New Harmony, Indiana commune in 1825. 40-50  similar communes were founded and failed with a median lifespan of 2 years.

Marx's 'scientific socialism' revitalized the failing concept and inspired a wave of socialist political parties across Europe. Subsequently, Marx's predictions of poorer workers and a disappearing middle class in industrialized countries did not come true, and once again socialist enthusiasm began to wane.

Lenin picked up the dimming torch to pioneer modern communism. The subsequent repression snuffed out as many as 100 million lives.

'Democratic socialists' in various countries rejected Lenin's methods but still strove toward socialist goals thru labor party movements, moving large industrial verticals under state control, and lavish government spending programs. Austerity movements followed to reverse the debt pile up.

Scandinavian social democrats learned to settle for dense social safety nets necessarily funded by free markets (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden rank highly on pro-market scales).

Socialism in Third World countries has yet to produce a winning model while some  countries (e.g., North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela) collapsed to economic lows under socialist regimes.

The author suggests that only Israel produced a socialist model that seemed to 'work' for a while. However, once the Jewish state stabilized, politicians steered the economy toward private enterprise in order to increase prosperity.

Socialism has been an epic failure--one that was imminently predictable. Socialist failure constantly repeats itself in Groundhog Day fashion under the auspices of eternal socialist hope that the next time will surely be different.