Messing with socialism

I'm committed to talking this year about the history of
socialism and I've been reading everything I can lay my
hands on to try to add something new to a subject older
than most.   For instance, I just finished a New Yorker
article on Hugo Chavez and Venezuela that blew much of the
optimism I might have about socialism in the 21st Century
right out of the water....oh my God..According to this
writer, it's a disaster down there,
folks camping in Caracas in unfinished high rises like the homeless
poor, violence everywhere, a medieval prison system and
a crop of guys (no women) spouting unutterable nonsense that
bears no relation to the dreams of Michelet, Proudhom, Owen,
Marx, Luxemburg....or even the Brits  Morrison or
Bevan.

Ideas don't necessarily have their own momentum or sets of
rules.  Christianity sure ain't Christ-like, and Judaism bergan to
lose sight of Moses  a dozen or so centuries ago.   And,"oh my
God" again, modern Islam has unfetched the Qran.   So why
should I be surprised that Socialism is hard to find in anything
like its ideological model.

Having said that, let me hurry to say that the  squirmy conser-
vatives that ran around in the 2012 presidential campaign here
accusing Obama and his squad of being "socialists" had any
idea what socialism is, was and might be.   There are, in the endless
history of socialism, moments of success.....like the early days
in New Harmony, Indiana  or the Swedish cooperatives....and, on
the other hand of course, is the terrible deterioration of the idea
into the mindless tyranny in the Soviet Union....But, and this is a big
"but," socialism can be traced to the noblest, most altruistic
instincts of the human being...it is, in the raw, of course, an
effort to give us a decent life, a decent shot at a future.....coming
in its modern form out of the savagery to the workers in the industrial
revolution.

So its a big subject.....it daunts this old man, but I'll be damned if
I'll let it go even if Hugo Chavez' broke my heart.

Much more later.