the ambition to remake human nature turned its leaders into totalitarian despots and mass murderers. And the assumption that central planners were morally disinterested and cognitively competent enough to direct an entire economy led to comical inefficiencies with serious consequences. Even the more humane forms of European socialism have been watered down to the point where so-called Communist Parties have platforms that not long ago would have been called reactionary. Wilson, the world’s expert on ants, may have had the last laugh in his verdict on Marxism: “Wonderful theory. Wrong species.”
