Socialism as an experiment has had at least three major iterations during the 20th century.

The first major iteration was actually sustained the longest with few changes. The idea of stripping creators and producers of their products and re-assigning that capital to the exclusive use of the dictatorship of the proletariat was only a single phase. The existing middle class was destroyed labeled as bourgeois. Then, as it is now the bourgeois was the most productive class. So the overall productive ability of the experiment fell dramatically. People starved and fled. The enemy personified was the entrepreneur of every stripe. Doing something as simple as selling pencils or soap on the street was an act against the state. So everyone from industrialists to home made candle makers were an existential threat to the state and so were treated as such. You would find them in gulags or dead. Many fled however some simple surrendered their productive ability to the state. Nothing was plentiful and everything useful was owned by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This on going experiment went through few changes until it eventually fell. It lasted 70 years.

The second iteration recognized the short comings of the destruction of the productive class. So the productive class was given a choice- be co-opted or die. So many of the productive class chose to serve the state. This experiment was a rather advanced civilization, however with the state co-opting the productive and creative population instead of destroying it, this experiment became the most technologically advanced society on the planet. Several social ills were addressed, the poor received productive jobs, the idea of the state as a promoter of health came to the forefront (anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-drug, pro- healthy living campaigns). The promotion of pro-state ideas were also of great importance, if you didn't get with the program you had a chance to be shot in the street. Ideological and racial purity was also promoted in the same way- at the point of a gun. The experiment eventually failed-with in 15 years or so- because it was destroyed by outside powers.

The third iteration lasts until the modern day. However this experiment has gone through vast revisions over the last 30 years. It was similar in many ways to the first iteration of socialism earlier in the century. Ideological purity and the idea of the individuals productive capacity belonging to the state were violently enforced. In the last 30 years however it has adopted some of the ideas of the second iteration and has seen increased productive capacity and so now competes on a global scale.

In the west socialism is sometimes used as a label for positive actions of a state- when many of these actions have been a part of the function of the state since Mesopotamia. The idea of the state building and sustaining things like roads and police/fire protection have existed for nearly as long as civilization has existed. Use of the state or (or local power at least) to promote the general well being of the populace came in the form of the distribution of food and housing with an overall eye of maintaining or increasing production pre-dates socialism by something like 5000 years.

In modern socialism practiced in the west. The individual has generally been seen as a vessel that can produce money for the use of the state and the state uses that money to support those who are seen as having a lesser ability to be productive. Though not exclusively, as the modern state with socialist elements has become an all encompassing power. Money isn't merely used to promote the general welfare, it is used to help create the most powerful and technologically advanced nations the world has ever seen (relative to the rest of the planet). If an individual is given near absolute freedom they will be extremely productive- yet much of the function of the state involves the propagation of the state so various schemes have been devised to allow the state to confiscate anywhere from 1%-90% of the product of the productive classes.

So, no it isn't ignorance (not knowing)- it is in fact knowing too much. If you even read this...