Political ideas do not appear out of thin air. Marx himself thought the communal ideas he discussed would emerge naturally out of the industrialised countries as the population grew tired of boom and bust and the greed factor ruling the lives of the countries’ economies. There are those today who think Western countries will become more socialist as environmental degradation becomes more and more a reality and the obvious factor of not being able to continuously grow on a planet that has finite resources, takes hold.
I am not here to say what will be. It is quite possible by the time we have genetically modified our way out of even being able to live on Earth we will be able to live on another planet and we will wave the earth goodbye (well those of us who can afford a ticket).
But I think the death of Communism is one of those self delusions. What died when Russia fell was Russian totalitarianism as begun by Lenin, nothing else. Even Russia’s natural dictatorial politics is coming back as I write. But economic injustice has gone nowhere and the philosophy of not caring how one makes one’s money as long as one gets rich is still a corrupting philosophy that has and will give birth to many objections.
Not only have the ideals of communal living not gone anywhere, they will resurge in countries in the future. Let us hope they will not come hand-in-hand with tyrants.