You are certainly correct that socialism has not failed but some basic assumptions are, I think, no longer relevant. Capitalism is failing. That has been obvious for a long time. The great change that is required of people now depends on handling greater complexity starting with understanding that systems fail, not because they are inherently wrong, although they may be, but if successful in a specific setting they will lead to failure in another setting. In that sense we can see that the failure of capitalism now is exactly what made it successful for 300 years or so. It rewarded economic investment by facilitating the growth of capital in the hands of artificial entities made up of small groups of people. That was needed. Beyond a point the resource distribution in capitalist economies fails because it seeks to consolidate wealth and resources in the hands of a very small elite. It cannot spread wealth for the common good. As wealth and resources grow the problem worsens because there is too much wealth to “use” and hoarding becomes the standard of wealth.
This is a structural failure that cannot be corrected. In the 19th and 20th century wars were the solution with massive destruction and mobilization forcing hoarded wealth back into circulation giving the larger population a boost. But wars kill millions and now can easily destroy the planet hence the accelerating collapse of capitalism over the last forty years. Small resource wars are now too efficient to break open hoarded capital. The previous solution begins to worsen the problem. And we are faced with planetary collapse from the destruction caused by mindless “growth”.
And that mindless growth is equally the objective of capitalism and socialism. The argument was strictly over public versus private (oligarchic)ownership of the process. This, I think, most clearly shows the strength of modern socialism and why the most successful states are hybrid socialist states. But several centuries of the promotion of greed as a virtue is corrosive to any sustainable state. We happily gorge ourselves to death, hoard mindlessly, and see ‘more’ as good even though we know those thoughts are evolutionary vestiges of our hunter-gatherer past.
The phase shift we are experiencing in all post industrial societies is forcing us to public responsibility for living sustainably on our planet. We must make greed again an evil and redefine ownership. This requires a new sustainable, social model drawn primarily from socialist principles but with material wealth and the goal of endless material increase removed. Hence it is, to me, better to define this as post socialist. Best to leave the old political wars to the past and move to a post political, AI/ML supported, administrative future. But that is another topic.
