If everyone had an IQ over 150 and functioned within a strong ethical framework, Sanders and Marx’s ideas might work for a generation before devolving into totalitarian rot. It’s still a big ‘might’...
Curiously, in a handful of American cities, notably Milwaukee, over a century ago the Socialist Party found success as an advocate for corruption-free “good government” (opposed to the political machines of the Democrats and Republicans that ran so many cities). Sort of based on the German model of efficiency and delivering of public services. It did work for a little while, but with time, it eventually got subsumed by the Democrat Party.
While they could get away with civic governance, it was when the Socialist Party got involved with national and international issues of the day was where they got into serious problems, especially during WW1 where they were anti-war/pro-German (the Socialist Congressman from Milwaukee at the time, Victor Berger, was sentenced to prison for the violation of the Espionage Act).
Where that differs from Sanders’ viewpoint today is that Sanders has a ludicrously unfeasible stance that you can merely tax the hell out of the rich (again, the irony that so many rich whites support him isn’t lost) as if it would pay for all of his multi-trillion dollar plans. There simply aren’t enough rich people, even if you took everything they had. This, of course, comes from someone who has never had practical experience in the private sector, so he can be as dogmatic as he wants to be. An excellent test, if Vermont was so inclined, would be to elect him Governor. It would be an epic fiasco, and a well-earned one for the state. The current radical Socialist Democrat Governor isn’t running for another term this year because his agenda was such a failure that he nearly lost to a complete Republican nobody in 2014.
I don’t think Bernie would want to run for Governor, because deep down he has to know he could never deliver on his promises in an executive capacity without utterly crippling Vermont and driving existing businesses out of state. It’s far easier to stay a Senator, railing in favor of whatever trendy leftist moonbat scheme du jour. He doesn’t have to deliver anything (and in his 26 years in Congress, he has almost zero accomplishments to his name, aside from naming a couple post offices). Of course, that’s on the people of Vermont stupid enough to put up with this fool for so long.