You're right, I am afraid not to equate the two. No matter how honest and honorable the original leaders might seem, or how beautiful the ideas look on paper, there will always come a Stalin or a Mao. In the case of golden-era capitalism there came Carnegies and Mellons and Morgans, but out system allowed us, even though it was very difficult, to stop their worst offenses. It would be a beautiful thing if we all worked for the good of all, but unfortunately nature has not made the human species that way. I hope that we can help the starving nations, but as a scientist I have to recognize that the earth is now home to at least ten times as many people as it could naturally support. Populations rose artificially for a variety of reasons (colonial power-installed industry, plantations, high-tech agriculture,etc). How they (the populations) will be corrected by nature is yet to be seen. Communism is clearly not the answer, except when small groups of like-minded, reliable people decide to set up their own little closed-off-as-possible communities, but even these cannot be expected to last more than a generation, and I have never personally seen one that did not consist of mostly highly-educated people with good incomes.

Chet W.