Socialism, what is it really? Can it work for us?

Hey we had a couple of good essays.  Pretty surprising I think that these very famous people who are reputed to be highly intelligent were socialists.  That says something to me.  It also says something that countries that qualify as Democratic Socialist; i.e., Sweden, Norway, Holland, even Canada et al.  all have higher standards of living than the United States.  Why would you think that is?  Are their freedoms curtailed that much?  I know they aren't in Canada having been there many times myself.  I assume the same is true for the other countries as well.  Socialism as a concept and even for the little it has been put into practice has gotten a bad rap. 

As I was taught it, in Classic Marxism communism was the end goal.  An utopian era in which government would essentially not exist and each would 'give according to his ability and take according to his need'.  In getting there the proletariat would overthrow the bourgousie  and establish a Socialist government on the way to communism.  Okay so it worked like this.  Evil Capitalism ==> Middlin Socialism ==> Communist Utopia.  Got it?  Of course NOTHING ever works the way it is planned.  Even though Capitalism was pretty horrific for the average joe in Marx's time it managed to get better for more as time passed.  No revolution occurred except those instigated by Lenin, and Mao et al. and then those guys turned around and created 'communist' countries that were really nothing more than dictatorial police states.  Though they called themselves some variant of socialist they really weren't.   Any more than the German Democratic Republic was democratic.  You know what I mean?

So it seems to me that what we need to do is try to implement a blend.  It has become obvious that for everything the free market, at least the way we implemented it, does not work to everyone's benefit.  Of course no system ever will.  But it is possible to ensure that a safety net exists for people so that the basic human necessities can be provided.  Other things can be handled through a basic free market.  So let's summarize what that might look like?  I like to think of it like this.  The basic premise of a capitalist system is the goal of making a profit.  However some things are not delivered best through profit driven motives.  I would guess that this is why, even in the US, that Police, Fire Protection and even military are not for profit organizations but government run bureacracies.  By the way they are unionized too, but that is an aside. 
So if an organization is meant to delivered human well being and safety of some kind; i.e., Health Care or Police protection.  Then that organization is best driven by a socialized government organization.  Will it be perfect?  Will people take advantage of it?  Well, No and Yes but that is beside the point.  The Police and Fire depts are abused all the time but we don't consider privatizing them do we?  Think what might have happened had we privatized Social Security as George Bush had wanted.  Holy smoke!  What a disaster that would have been.  Socializing something doesn't mean the end of the world or freedom or liberty.  The people who are crying wolf like that are the ones who already live in opulence and extreme wealth, the limbaughs and becks and hannity, et al.  And the ones who have been duped by Fox News type liars.  They cannot help themselves.  We can do better if we are not afraid to try.