Fact check: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is the leader of the Socialist Party.
Under their idealized system, socialists claim, the government’s centralized redistribution of resources will be fair, equal, and democratic. Yet it certainly says something about such a system that it collapses into outright tyranny every time it is attempted. Socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.