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I guess that it never measured up to Marx's ideals.
Human nature took over and the boss boys became right-wing dictators - every one of them.
In Russia, the old aristocracies were replaced by a new group of people in power who entrenched their positions in exactly the same old ways, with brutality, corruption,wealth, education, inheritance and keeping the workers poor. None of the people were better off.
In China, there were improvements for most of the people for perhaps a couple of generations, but at incredible costs. Then the egalitarian ideas wore off, capitalism was re-introduced and within twenty years there was a huge increase in differences in standards of living, education, health. You can now see homeless people sleeping under whatever shelter they can find in all the big cities. They cluster around foreigners, begging. Electric power lines damaged in storms don't get repaired; they hang low enough to decapitate motorcyclists. Big city pollution is so bad that anyone with asthma or lung disease dies much younger than necessary. The rules for health and safety in industry are so bad that there's a massive death toll for manual and skilled labourers. Life is cheap in China. -So says a friend who was consul in Guangzhou for 3 years.
The stories are similar in each place that tried communism.
Even kibbutzim in Israel struggled; few survive.
Communism doesn't work. But neither does capitalism - it's destroying this planet.
No one has ever got it right.
Every human is flawed, which means every system is also inevitably flawed.
Human nature took over and the boss boys became right-wing dictators - every one of them.
In Russia, the old aristocracies were replaced by a new group of people in power who entrenched their positions in exactly the same old ways, with brutality, corruption,wealth, education, inheritance and keeping the workers poor. None of the people were better off.
In China, there were improvements for most of the people for perhaps a couple of generations, but at incredible costs. Then the egalitarian ideas wore off, capitalism was re-introduced and within twenty years there was a huge increase in differences in standards of living, education, health. You can now see homeless people sleeping under whatever shelter they can find in all the big cities. They cluster around foreigners, begging. Electric power lines damaged in storms don't get repaired; they hang low enough to decapitate motorcyclists. Big city pollution is so bad that anyone with asthma or lung disease dies much younger than necessary. The rules for health and safety in industry are so bad that there's a massive death toll for manual and skilled labourers. Life is cheap in China. -So says a friend who was consul in Guangzhou for 3 years.
The stories are similar in each place that tried communism.
Even kibbutzim in Israel struggled; few survive.
Communism doesn't work. But neither does capitalism - it's destroying this planet.
No one has ever got it right.
Every human is flawed, which means every system is also inevitably flawed.
