Socialism in it's many morphs and various different class  based conceptions
fleshes out rather compactly 
 iobviously quite conciously 
socialism is an  attempt by some class or other
 to use the state to complete or  to thwart 
the necessary remaining world historical tasks of The bourgeois stage of class cloven social evolution 
 tasks that lead one way or another toward class cloven society's  own sublation ... class-less society 
Ie
 it is a means  by implementaion of  legal force 
to progress socially ie by other means then pure volitional private property based capitalism
In fact despite this intention 
 it is capitalism   in other guises
capitalism pretending to be not itself
or not seeing itself  for what it is or will become
capitalism 
pretending  or tricking itself in some cases
into thinking its being anti capitalism 
   ...begging the big question...
this goes for  any form of socialism other then the prole dictatorship form of socialism 
which by exception as agent of the wage class might embody ...might ..
world historical measures that accelerate the trip time to communism 
sum up
in the last analysis most socialism is simply or complexly capitalism by other means
means that  in time come back around on themselves and become eventually
once again   really the same means
such is clio's rubber railed  road system 
elastic but only finitely so
