[AstralStorm]

Trade unions is the specific kind of socialism, others were also invented but have never really taken off. One was direct partial ownership of means of productions, such as giving out diffuse controlling stock or equivalent, paying out dividends. The other was using bottom up small societies with representatives, essentially democratic, defined by bottom up hierarchical organization, which are not across trades (sounding like rebranded corporatism) but spatial - per city or area.

Both are vulnerable to being hijacked. Financial variant can be driven into the ground by others cutting corners or essentially exploiting workers - plain corporatism. The democratic bottom up variant shares the vulnerabilities vs demagoguery but makes it harder to counter, though also more expensive to pull off. Also does nothing against special interests or basic greed.

(USSR was actually etatist conservative bureaucracy rather than socialism.)