Socialism is not in the least what it pretends to be. It is not the pioneer of a better and finer world, but the spoiler of what thousands of years of civilization have created. It does not build; it destroys. For destruction is the essence of it. It produces nothing, it only consumes what the social order based on private ownership in the means of production has created.
Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922), Part V.
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Ludwig von Mises
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Most people simply don’t understand the nature of value, the origin of wealth, or the problem of economic calculation.
Sharing in that more general ignorance, socialists think that value inheres to goods and services, that wealth is created by society as a whole, and that enormous efficiencies can be realized by replacing the coördination of the market largely or entirely by expert administration.
Thus, the pretense of the socialists is usually sincere. They do not recognize themselves as locusts.