Fine – I have no more interest to try and make you see other facts than what you have assumed.
But I am glad that in Hungary, in the past 20+ years after the communist regime, our upcoming elections will be most probably won by the non-socialist parties, with Orbán being the Prime Minister for the 4th time – this shows how much Hungarians “would prefer a return to some form of socialism”…

Personal prejudices are dime a dozen. Public opinion research, much of it conducted by Western companies, gives us actual sociological data, and those are absolutely unambiguous: your Eastern Bloc fellow men and women are gravely disillusioned with capitalism and a substantial majority would prefer a return to some form of socialism. As a result, in 2016 the Bulgarians, to take one example, elected as president a candidate supported by the Socialist Party of Bulgaria.
For those interested in following up on this exchange, here are some useful links:
https://books.google.ca/books?id=Cx6LBQAAQBAJ&dq=survey+Bulgaria+socialism&source=gbs_navlinks_s
I’ll include more in subsequent comments.

Thank you for the idea – are you in your comfortable home in Canada, really telling me who grew up and still lives in former Eastern Block countries, what is life like over here…?
I like and respect lots of great articles on this site, but these kind of comments rather turn me off.
“We are right and you are wrong/stupid, truth is what WE say” type of attitude is very familiar, from the communist times…

You may wish to discuss this with the majority of the people in former Eastern Bloc countries who think otherwise, having seen their standard of living plummet over the last 20+ years.

Right my thoughts. Those journalists at New York Times and such, I bet don’t have a clue of how is it for a child when you can only have oranges or bananas once a year, before Christmas, and your father has to stand in the line already the night before, in the other end of town, in the only shop where they are allowed to sell them.
Or when you go to Romania to visit friends and they are the happiest when you bring them any basics like soap, rice…
Or twelve-year old kids must sing The Internationale and anthems about Lenin and the Reds…
So great, isn’t it?

Oh dear, I only hope you do not represent the Left as a whole. A propos to your reply to ‘rehmat1’ I do have a first hand experience of living in the land under the wise leadership of Communist party. To be precise, in, than, Czechoslovakia and I can reassure you that I know very well what life was like before and what life is like now, and please do not use statistics – it’s mugs game. One can ‘prove’ anything which supports ones agenda – as you know. Why do you think those nice socialist countries of Warsaw Pact under the leadership of morally superior Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia? For trying to introduce a bit of democracy? And why do you think there was more or less air proof border (electric barb wire, machine-gun posts etc. between the ‘West’ and the ‘East’? Was it to keep the bad imperialists out or to keep the population in? Have you ever head about the political trials in fifties? (ok, there was McCarthy in USA, but I do not know of anybody being actually hanged!)
I do not know anything about you but you remind me of one of the most unpleasant experiences I have had since leaving Czechoslovakia. I was invited to a party to a friend’s boat by the Kew bridge.There were quite few peoples but largest group was around rather loud speaking bloke in his, I guess, sixties. The sad person was elaborating on many conspiracies organized by CIA. He did get the desired attention partly claiming to be a leader of Welsh Communist Party. When he started to claim that the invasion of Czechoslovakia did not happen – it was all CIA conspiracy, I began to pay attention and suggested to him that perhaps, in this instant, his ‘information’ is not quite right, that I was there and yes, I did not only see the soldiers but since we all had to learn Russian we tried to reason with them – with not much success. Frank, the dear Welsh Communist Party leader dismissed me as some poor idiot indoctrinated by the imperialist press. So, dear Vaska, whoever you are, Frank have had his ‘statistics’ which made me to have very bad thoughts – yes, I admit it, I imagined Frank slowly sinking into the mud around the boat and me not trying very hard to get him up…………….
In conclusion I have say that I am disappointed with the offGuardian. I too do not like the Guardian and I was hoping for something a bit more reasonable – and not so ideologically bogged down.

GM: you have a point, but the eco-Soviets and their green 5 Year Plan? Please??? 🙂
Again, if you read my comment, I propose a revised Marxist plan – allied with the humanist and environmental concerns of some of those that have developed the green revolutionary exegesis of Marx. But this has never been developed beyond a fringe intellectual perspective; and is certainly not a political ideology, and barely exists beyond a disparate group of academics. As such, it follows that it has never been implemented before.
Marx was writing in the 1870s, when global population was 1.3 billion, resources were relatively abundant, global debt was relatively low, and the amount of global currency was limited by the gold standard. How the hell could he have foreseen the population explosion and the FUBAR mess we could create in the ensuing 150 years? Or have proposed a solution to problems he could not be expected to foresee???
The very fundaments of civilisation are now being challenged by a perfect storm of resource depletion, debt, over-finacialisation, social unrest, collapsing biomes, artificial scarcity and famine, drug addiction, mass extinction of species, pollution, etc. The Marxist solution of the workers owning their means of production is fine: but making what, and for whom? Free education is great: but education in what? Organic farming? Getting the trains to run on time is great too: but quite literally – where are we going???
Humanity needs to take stock, take a real hard look at the very core essence of our collective choices (that the environment is an external and destructible phenomena, that human life and happiness have no intrinsic ‘value’, that growth can occur beyond the biophysical constraints of planetary boundaries, that prosperity (for the few) can be maintained as we lackadaisically transition away from the fundament of artificial wealth (cheap hydrocarbons)…)… then tailor 21st century solutions to 21st century problems. I think the result of that will look like 21st century Marxism?
But there is no going back to the Soviet Shangri-la: if that is what it was. Time to evolve and move on???