As a long time self-employed capitalist I saw how destructive socialism was in early post-Soviet Riga when buying a 140m2 communal apt that housed three families dying to get out and buy their own space, which they did with our $40k paid in Ben Franklins.

The mystery is how an historian as brilliant as EJ "tree branch" Hobsbawm remained blind to it.

Of course, the market-driven cure for socialism can be as bad as the disease. Capitalism behaved much better before 1991 when it had to worry about its socialist competitor (from John Lanchester's How to Speak Money).

Many thanks for reading and commenting.