There were plenty of communists and Lefties in my family. They always said that communism would work if it were given a good chance. This was a recognition that Russia, China, Cuba and a few other places were flawed versions of communism.
I personally came to a different conclusion after living on a pure communist kibbutz at the same time as Noam Chomsky. Chomsky decided that people were not good enough for communism. I concluded that communism was not good enough for real people. Chomsky has made a living and become world renown on his observation.
Paul Krugman has come up with a new variation on my old family line and Chomsky’s.
Krugman says that Russia and China failed because the workers fell out of love with communism. That at first they worked hard and built solid industries and agriculture. But over time they lost their passion and wouldn’t work hard to support their great nations.
I know my readers can see the absurdity of that. Russia and China and Cuba killed and drove out so many people who didn’t support communism, that everyone around them could see that communism was not driven by passion for hard work but pure evil fear.
The best way to understand the issue of modern commerce vs communism is to listen to all the Lefties around me in the morning for coffee. They hate ‘capitalism’, love equality of income, hate big business and love environmental regulations designed to tax everyone and restrain business growth. Yet, everyone of these people have jobs where they work hard for 60 hours a week. And they are proud of the good jobs they do.
Give me the system where people work hard do a go job and complain endlessly over the ills of modern commerce. We all benefit from their hard work and only a few of us hear their stupid complaints.