Alexander Solzhenitsyn

The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct, [these contradictions] do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, of communal ownership, and justice . . .
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[In its reality, socialism] seeks to reduce human personality to its most primitive levels and to extinguish the highest, most complex, and “God Like” aspects of human individuality. And even equality itself, that powerful appeal and great promise of socialists throughout the ages, turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality qua identity, equality seen as the movement of variety toward uniformity.
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foreword to The Socialist Phenomenon – Igor Shafarevich
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer.