I came to think that it's actually pretty simple. Hierarchies are generally bad for human societies. Capitalism has no stellar track record, but it somewhat wor

I came to think that it's actually pretty simple. Hierarchies are generally bad for human societies. Capitalism has no stellar track record, but it somewhat works because it lets people to have multiple social hierarchies, e.g. I can work for capitalist2 instead of capitalist1, and it's quite easy to switch (doesn't require to move my family to another culture). That's why capitalism works quite well in democracy (where multiple hierarchies are allowed) and becomes really oppressive in other political systems. The socialism/communism failed where it made one social hierarchy dominant (so-called "communist" countries), just like all other systems like that. In situations, where one social hierarchy is not dominant, like Scandinavia, socialism actually works really well. (Marx is partly to blame, in my opinion, because he focused to much on "state" without stressing "democracy" enough. But then, having single hierarchy in society was more or less a norm, so it does make sense what he did it.) Of course, this has nothing to do with anarcho-communist ideals which almost always, in some form, reject hierarchy. The standard explanation (that WSJ espouses) is quite selective how it assigns blame to communism and praise to capitalism - it completely ignores the hierarchy problem. Interestingly, the free market ideal of capitalism (which is kinda unreachable utopia similar to what communism is to socialism) actually eschews any social hierarchy as well - everybody is his own master, and they are all competing at the same level. So to sum up - I think human societies are "free" (and so "successful") to extent in which they can avoid having a (single) hierarchy. Of course, it's tough because we have natural tendency to have social hierarchies, and we also probably need them for cooperation. Both socialism's and capitalism's original goal was to sidestep existing social hierarchy, and the extent to which they succeeded in that task determined their practical success (but this is true for other systems as well).