This is Oscar Wilde"s long -- and remarkable -- essay on socialism. It"s not what you"d think, if you know just a little of his biography. Wilde foresaw -- from his time, long before it"d been tried as a principle of governance -- that socialism was a mistaken approach; he saw the mistakes that"d come from it, the consequences that"d befall the world and people generally long before they"d been put in place as a system of governance. Most writers are best not listened to as wellsprings of political ideas -- but Wilde was onto something, and saw very clearly the fate that would befall us all.