Yup, humans, like apes, are creatures with a strong sense of community. That's where the idea of "communism" came from...community on a national scale. And that's where the idea of nations came from too...the forming of a larger community. The impulse toward communism was a positive one it its early stages. It was an attempt to create a greater equality among the rich and the poor...not to make everyone totally equal, but to ensure that no one was desperately poor, powerless, and basically enslaved alongside a few who were incredibly rich.

That was the intent to establish social justice, and it was a laudable intent. What happened, though, in the case of Russia and China, was that the people who rose to the top of the new Communist orders became authoritarian extremists who turned to institutionalized violence and oppression. They put together a police state. By doin' so, they actually betrayed the principles they was pretendin' to stand up for.

It was a failure...not of the theory, but of the application of the theory.

In the capitalist world we are comin' around now to face something similar these days: the failure not of the theory, but of the application of the theory.

The lesson to draw from this is that if you put corrupt and self-seeking men...or extreme fanatics...at the top of any system, that system will eventually become corrupted from the top right to the bottom, and it will fail.

- Chongo