The content is too big for 300 words. Google Gemini was used to research this piece. This essay was posted on 9/12/2026.
I grew up in a world where Communism was evil. It was autocratic, undemocratic, and against religion. That was my view. I was glad that I lived in a country that was democratic with a free market economy. The US fought a hot war in Vietnam and a long cold war against the Soviet Union all over the threat of world-wide Communism. I was smug after the Soviet Union collapsed, but I was wrong.
Russian Communism collapsed, and many Communist countries are moving away from Communism and replacing it with a Capitalistic economy. Meanwhile, Capitalism is having an unprecedented concentration of wealth where 3 people have more money than the combined wealth of 150 million people. Capitalism is in an economic death spiral as its consumer market becomes too impoverished to support the rich monopolists.
Karl Marx looked at Communism as a solution to the problem of Capitalist business owners making a bigger profit by paying workers less than the value of their work, but 20th Century Communism under autocratic governments do the same thing. Today, if an average budget iPhone that is made in China costing about $800 were made in the US, the phone would cost $30,000. Clearly Communist China is not paying its workers a fair wage.
It is hard to tell the difference between 20th Century Communism and Capitalism. Capitalism has 2 classes, the Capitalist business owner class and the worker class, and the richer business owners don’t live in the same suburbs that house their workers. 20th Century Communism also has 2 classes, the government official class and the worker class, and government officials don’t live in the factory dormitories that house the workers.
In both cases, the business management classes manipulate the economy to squeeze more money from workers. Changing the system from Capitalism to 20th Century Communism doesn’t work, because the problem is about misusing the system and not the system itself.
A better approach would involve diminishing the power of the business managers in both systems. Start by busting up the business monopolies in Capitalism or removing the government from managing business in Communism. Also remove the Capitalist business influence over government by limiting its financial involvement in politics. Finally, give government the power to regulate businesses so that the relationship between business manager and worker is more equitable.
Clara Mattei has an interesting response to Capitalism’s exploitation of workers in her book, Escape from Capitalism. Mattei describes an implementation of what I would call 21st Century Communism. A group of Brazilian families had lost their jobs. They grabbed land abandoned by a failed business and started a cooperative farm in which each family shared ownership and also shared in the work. The commune supplies organically-grown food to its local market. This farm commune model has been copied by over 100,000 families in over 1,000 communes, each competing in the free market with other businesses.
One final note: The agricultural commune model has been implemented successfully in non-agricultural areas like Isthmus Engineering, Ace Hardware, and Credit Unions.
Who said that Communism is dead?
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