This is one of my favorite stories ever. I have never seen it as particularly anti socialism per se. Through most of KVs parables, there is a satire of what happens when we use forced constraint and compulsion to achieve a desired behavior. History has examples of how things go pear shaped when religious/right movements force people to behave a certain way, from the crusades to the current arguments about women’s rights in both the US and Iran at the moment. I’ve always seen KV’s tales as a warning to lefter leaning ideologies, that if you use the same compulsory means to achieve your left leaning goals, you’ll end up with equally wonky results as using the same means to achieve right leaning goals. You can’t _make_ people good. The people of a society have to choose to be good (for whatever arbitrary measure of morality your society has created).