The most revealing, succinct exposition of socialist pathologies I've ever seen is Oscar Wilde's 1891 essay "The Soul of a Man Under Socialism"
Lurking just below the surface of every socialist virtue is a vice: hatred, selfishness, envy, resentment.
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1/
Care for a vague, impersonal "humanity" as an excuse to shirk one's own duty to his fellow man.
Dostoevsky: "The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. [...] As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom."
2/
"Disbobedience" as a virtue.
Not sure what history he's referring to here. Genesis 3, perhaps?
3/
Sneering contempt for the poor due to their complacency and insufficient radicalism.
"The virtuous poor [...] must also be extraordinarily stupid."
4/
Instinctive hatred of civilization and tradition, desire to disrupt them and tear them down.
You can just hear 2023 Oscar now, insufferably waxing on in some freshman creative writing seminar on the importance of "deconstruction".
5/
More contempt for the pious poor.
The idea that a peasant may actually love his king is utterly foreign to the small-souled.
CS Lewis: "The man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience [...]. the man who has never even wanted to kneel or bow, is a prosaic barbarian."
6/
Sloth, laziness, passivity.
A useful exercise is that whenever a socialist identifies something to which "people" or "every man" is entitled, replace the designation with "me" or "I" and you'll have a far more accurate understanding of his true meaning and motivation.
7/
Upside down Christianity. Moralistic theraputic deism, moral relativism, rejection of man's fallenness (not surprising given 3/), Christianity = being nice and "judge not"
8/
Anti-marriage and family, along with another shameful bastardization of Christianity to justify deracinated hedonism.
9/
To Wilde's credit, the portion on democracy is spot on: "democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."
Aesthetes have a nose for this kind of thing.
10/
Completely braindead conception of crime and deviance. Just beyond parody.
11/
Final note on Wilde, a prodigal son of the Church:
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