The 20th century was full of examples of failed socialism: the USSR and the Warsaw Pact nations, N. Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and all of sub-Sahara Africa, just to name a few. Yet these "lessons" have not sunk in for many people.
I doubt that the upcoming tragedies in Venezuela (whatever they may be) will cause the left to re-think their ideology. It's a faith-based religion with them, so it's immune from lessons of reason and logic.
Don’t forget right wing socialism. NAZI Germany and Peron’s Argentina.
Socialism certainly does succeed. It always succeeds. You just don’t understand what the goal of socialism is.
The goal is NOT to create a society where everyone is happy and productive. The goal is to seize absolute power, loot a country of everything not nailed down, grow fat in luxury while the peasants starve, and kill anyone you don’t like.
It always works, because people are stupid, greedy, envious of the wealthy and want to get something for nothing. Socialism is a perfect system for creating a looting-dictatorship, and it always, ALWAYS works!
It has worked in Cuba, Zimbabwe, North Korea, the USSR. It’s progressing in South Africa, Mexico, and Venezuela as we speak.
The groundwork is being laid in the US right under our noses, and it’s really too late to do anything about it because the poor are going to vote for socialism. They always do. And then there is no more voting.