The horrors of Communism in action flow directly from the socialist ideal of the abolition of private property and free exchange. Which, of course, doesn't work. The whole point of private property is to protect you from your criminal neighbors and the local S.W.A.T. team. Under socialism, you can't even hide under your bed because "the people", not you, own the space under your bed. When you point out that socialism doesn't work, you are deemed an enemy of the people and are shot, stabbed, frozen, starved or worked to death. Along with little Ivan, Svetlana, Grandma and Grandpa and the family dog, cow and horse. Plus mom, dad and baby sister.

That's why leftists always protect their little commie brothers: Because the seed of the horror is right in front of their eyes in their insistence upon abolishing private property. Woody Guthrie was nothing if not a total whore for Stalin. He was still defending Stalin in 1946! Guthrie was for peace only when Stalin was slaughtering the Poles by the hundreds of thousands and supplying resources to his pal Hitler because Guthrie slavishly followed Stalin's line. After Hitler invaded the USSR, Guthrie and Pete Seeger burned their peace records and preached war against Germany. Even today, liberals will never call out Guthrie and/or Seeger on this treachery.

Why? See above.

Why does everyone keep talking about it like it doesn't exist anymore? China is still communist, Vietnam is still communist, half of Korea is still communist, Russia still leans in that direction, and parts of South America have all the ear marks of communist dictatorships. All these people hate us and yet we keep doing business with them, making them rich, while our own country has lost all its own manufactoring abilities.

Of course, we cannot really trace the beginning of an entire movement or revolution to one sound-bite, but if we could, the "end of Communism" did not start with Reagan's plea to "tear down this wall" (which I suspect he didn't completely believe would happen anyway).

If we must find the Eastern bloc's version of "Give me liberty or give me death," it came from Pope John Paul II, early in his papacy: "Be Not Afraid."

The quote was aimed specifically at the fledgling Polish Solidarity movement, but it was a "shot heard round the world," at least in the Communist world.

How appropriate that we are discussing this on Juy 4 weekend!

...that a system without a god lasted as long as Communism did. History has shown time and again that it takes something otherworldly to get people to endure hardships. Give them a god and they'll be far more stoic about going to bed hungry. Tell them they'll never be rewarded for their sacrifices - but their children's children's children might - and you've passed a death sentence on whatever system you're pushing. The more human failings you appeal to, the more successful your system will be. To date, the two only social/economic/political systems in history with a longer run than capitalism were feudalism and slavery. Kind of gives you a warm, fuzzy felling about humanity, doesn't it?

. . . much more politically astute than most Americans, still erroneously conflate communism (Marxist-Leninism or whatever label you want to give it) with totalitarianism. The Soviet Union was never a communist country. China came a bit closer but only in the sense that everyone seemed to dress "collectively." But none of the countries that professed to be following the writings of Marx were communist. They were merely repressive states with nonsensical economies.

I think capitalism will eventually peacefully die. Capitalism has done more to erase scarcity than any other economic system. I think it's the mode through which we'll eventually have no scarcity, possibly in a century or two, if energy and materials science gets developed enough (ala Star Trek future, where limitless energy can be transposed to material goods). Without scarcity, everyone will essentially be materially equal (even if that would mean material goods are nearly worthless). Then, there won't be any need for capitalism.

In other context, I recently came across this excerpt of a recent interview with Slavoj Zizek. Here the Slovenian is as provocative (and intriguing) as always:

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What we often fail to understand, [Zizek] argues, is how Stalinism was a counter-revolution, reacting against the extreme “post-human” utopian ambitions that were championed by Bolshevik leaders in the 1920s. Communist extremists predicted the day when workers would live in a perfect society with no need for emotions, or even names, and all sexuality and family life would be suppressed. But Stalin was far more conservative, reacting against experimental art and insisting on the sanctity of family life. “Stalinism reacted against these negative dystopias that were even more terrifying. Stalinism was, in that sense, a return to normal life. People forget that.”

One thing that one should always consider about the fall of the Soviet System, was that it was unnecessary.

Had the Soviets drill and pumped out the massive oil wealth in Siberia they likely could have kept the experiment running for another hundred years. In that time, the U.S. likely would have run out of money first (imagine if the Soviets had kept it together until 2009?) and Capitalism would be the failed ideology that lead to the downfall of a great empire.

However, this higlights the central differnce between a more controlled economy and a more free economy.

The government official who ran the soviet oil monopoly was aware, as most were that there was likely oil in Siberia, but that it was costly to get at, and there was always the chance there wasn't any oil, or not enough oil to make it worth the effort.

As such, the official opted not to move agressivly with regard to Siberian oil, because if there was oil he wouldn't hav ea change in his status (he was already the head of the monopoly, already had his governmnet issued Zub Limo and single family home) and if it proved a debacle he would lose all he had.

Without a personal profit motive, the oil simply wasn't worth the risk, and so it wasn't exploited, and so the Soviet System fell.

By contrast, in China, they have learned from this, and have found ways to maintain the profit motive without sacraficing the central economy.

The laws of greed, profit, and the market, are kind of like global warming, in the sense that your acceptance of their existence has no bearing on their reality. So even in a Communist system, persons still make their choices based upon personal profit, their compensation just takes differnt forms. As such, when someone sees their ability to profit peaks, they lose interest in further innovation. This is both the difficulty, and purpose of antitrust litigation. If a company gets too big it ceases to innovate, but if it knows the government will cut it off at a certain point it will cease to innovate as well.

Finding the proper balance between an ordered economy, and free innovative market is likely harder than balancing needles on end, but one thing we can be certain of, if there is no money in it, people won't go along with it.