Of course the socialist project for human liberation has failed.

The idea that "liberation" could be achieved by the state taking on the role of parent and keeping the masses in a permanent state of adolescence - which is what making our economic choices entails - is incoherent.

Socialism could theoretically (if not in practice) provide us security, but it could never liberate us to be independently minded adults free to make our own choices, build our own communities, and develop our own beliefs, because all of that is a threat to the existing social order.

However much markets/capitalism and democracy may, one might argue, give us only the illusion of choice, within that illusion remains at least a faint possibility of real choice, whereas socialism destroys even that faint potential.