While history proves socialism’s failure, a debate last week pitting Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward against Vivek Chibber of New York University and Bhaskar Sunkara of the Jacobin magazine deserves your attention. That’s because the two socialists, Chibber and Sunkara, encapsulated the crumbling foundation on which socialist adherents reside.

Chibber and Sunkara focused their argument around three key themes: first, that capitalism has not helped the poor; second, that socialism provides for a better quality of life than capitalism; and third, that socialism, not capitalism, serves human opportunity and fulfillment. I’m going to write a post on each claim.