Maybe I should clarify my title. There are billions of cubic square light-years of universe out there. Perhaps on one of those distant planets, there is a form of communism, but not on this planet and not now. China is a dictatorship where some people own things and some don’t… not communism. The government that Castro set up in Cuba might have been communist in his mind, but it was not and is not communism. It is an island of haves and have-nots, not the utopia Marx preached of in his manifesto. Vietnam is drifting toward capitalism so fast that the leaders can hardly control it.

Actually, the closest thing to communism this world has ever known was in this country and long before Karl Marx. The first year the Pilgrims lived in the New World was under the idealistic thought that everyone could share and share alike. They almost died as a result of it. No one worked and everyone expected to live from the common supply of goods, which by the way were quickly depleted.

With the help of the Indians (Native Americans if you prefer) they manged to recover. The following year, they went to capitalism and reaped enormous proceeds, to the extent that they share with the Indians.

Every place communism has been tried, even before there was communism, it has either failed or was transformed into something else. Had the USSR not transformed into something else, the people would have died of starvation. They would have anyway had the US not come to their help. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Ruskies were starving. The government owned the farms and they had no idea how to run them. The US felt sorry for the people so they sent in tons of wheat. The problem was that it also helped the Bolsheviks. Something similar happened in China, hence Mao went south to the Indochinese Peninsula for food as well as expansion. That is how we ended up with the mess we called the Vietnam War. Mao needed rice and Indochina had a lot of it.

Nonetheless, Mao’s Communism morphed too. The Utopia that Mao promised never arrived. The world he did provide for the Chinese is one that no one wanted but a few elite. The rest will run at the first chance but the elite won’t let them. They would not like it if they had to work the farms themselves.

And so it is, many have promised it, but none have delivered. The Utopia promised by Marx has never come about. Those with a brain in their heads know it never will. Yet, the promise and temptation draw many into its clutches. Those who rush into the dream only find out it is a nightmare, one that is inescapably.

To be sure, it is nothing more than more than a tool for tyrants… tyrants who kill by the millions and tell all what to do and think.