If your idea has been tried in over 100 countries, perhaps there's something wrong with the idea after all?
And you say "just an authoritarian mess". Sorry to bear this to you, but socialism is always an authoritarian mess -- of the worst kind, with no democracy and with concentration camps. Could you please point to a single country that was socialist (ie, marxist, nazi, maoist, etc) but had 1. functional electoral democracy, and 2. no democide? Even in tiny countries like Grenada (1979-83, population 90k), while no "proper" concentration camps, you still had disorganized killing, all while the average citizen couldn't say a word against members of the Party.
Socialism is an antithesis of democracy -- even at its very start, democratic worker councils ("soviets") were bloodily deposed by Lenin before the revolution gained steam.
I'm not claiming that other systems of government have no flaws -- to the contrary, most are flawed -- but it's socialism that bears the distinction of being murderous in every single of its implementations. History knows benevolent dictatorships, enlightened monarchies, even livable theocracies (none of them christian or islamic), etc -- but not a single non-oppressive case of communism or nazism.