A socialist advocates socialism because he is fully convinced that the supreme dictator of the socialist commonwealth will be reasonable from his -- the individual socialist's -- point of view, that he will aim at those ends of which he -- the individual socialist -- fully approves, and that he will try to attain those ends by choosing means which he -- the individual socialist -- would also choose. Every socialist calls only that system a genuinely socialist system in which these conditions are completely fulfilled; all other brands claiming the name of socialism are counterfeit systems entirely different from true socialism. - Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics(Found at Billy Beck's.)
Thus, in one paragraph Von Mises explains why "true socialism" has apparently never been tried.
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