I am old enough and lucky(?) enough to have spent time (three times actually) behind the Iron Curtain of Soviet Eastern Europe. Ten years before it fell.
It was imposed by pro-State actors and sold on the basis of fairness and compassion. Sound familiar? Marxism would rid society of selfishness, greed, inequality. In practice, in terms of leadership providing these, there was none of it. Everyone had to wait for the State to move to get something done – often years in arrears. You couldn’t fix your own car – on the basis you’d put the local government mechanic out of business, even if you could do it far cheaper and far quicker yourself. And the car ‘choice’ was a Moskvitch (terrible and anti-environmental). The individual’s ability to act and improve things was denuded. Such a waste of human energy, creativity, ingenuity and charity. Complain – and end up in jail (Gulag – no fun) for challenging the ideology. And by restricting individual creativity or access to build resources, people were so, so poor. No-one died of starvation, they said proudly. But no-one in England was either. This was all the opposite of what was promised.
The idea that elite brains in government departments can do for the people what they wouldn’t let them do for themselves (command economy), was the most arrogant, counter-productive, anti-environmental, class/race ridden idea I’ve just about ever seen.
So let’s not do this in the West now. It was a lose for everyone except the psychopaths who presented themselves very well but then oppressed each other and then everyone else to get to the top of the political tree. Watch for these in current times. You got what you were given, not what you deserved, wanted, needed, or could provide for yourself and for others.
It was a valuable and sobering experience, and made me a political centrist.