A true socialist or communist society has never existed. Human history has never seen a society in which all people live comfortably–ie with all their needs met–because those with wealth willingly share with those who don’t have wealth.

I have to resist the temptation to describe humanity in overly simplistic terms. Humanity has been around for something like a quarter million years. For most of that time, the conditions under which people lived were vastly different than they’ve been for the last 150 years or so. People didn’t expect so much because so much of what we now expect didn’t exist.

From an even broader perspective, I’ve read that the earth’s climate has changed routinely and dramatically for most of its history, but unusually stable climate conditions over the past 15,000 years have allowed humanity to flourish.

That’s just the last 15,000 years. For about 235,000 years before that, climate upheavals prevented humanity from developing. People fought with the elements to merely survive for a decade or two. That was all they could expect.

Now people expect to live for 100 years, and if they can’t, they blame somebody.

As recently as a few thousand years ago, a rock hut, a fire and a little coarse food were enough. Now, people want a home with electricity, two or more cars, a television in every room, cell phones, computers, gainful employment and enough spare cash for vacations and a plethora of generally unnecessary material goods. We’ve created and are still creating a growing number of needs and wants. People expect to have all their needs and wants fulfilled, and if they’re not fulfilled, the people want somebody to blame.

I wonder how realistic that is in the face of the vastness of human history during which most of those needs and wants didn’t even exist: weren’t even dreams.

Communism and socialism speak to a utopia in which all needs and wants are met, but thus far in history, the utopia has been more of a selling point: an unfulfillable promise made by despotic usurpers and believed by masses of ignorant people who’ve quickly forgotten–or who perhaps never knew–how dramatically the human condition has changed in just the last 5,000 years. They all want this wonderful life; they don’t consider how hard it has always been for humans to survive, let alone thrive: let alone have leisure time, excess cash and their choice of goods and services.

Their ignorance makes them susceptible to the utopian promise: “you can have it all, and we’ll all live together in peace.” They believe, and they support the despotic promisers who, once they gain power, set about denying the promised utopia and accusing those who believed in it of being selfish. When their supporters, feeling betrayed, revolted, that’s when the tanks and soldiers came, and the elections stopped, and the mass murders began.

People seem to forget that despots who used the socialist/communist utopia promise to gain power are responsible for 100 million murders in the 20th century alone. The despots made the promise. They knew they couldn’t keep it, but they knew people would believe it; it sounds so nice. They knew they could ride that promise to power and, once in power, they could use brutal military force to suppress those who’d supported them. They could suspend or rig elections. They could stay in power for all of their lives, and they could take as much of the wealth–which they’d previously promised to share–for themselves.

That’s the history of “socialism” and “communism”: an empty, unfulfillable promise made by despots to ignorant masses. Neither socialism nor communism in their true forms have ever existed except in the minds of unrealistic dreamers and the mouths of immoral control freaks who’d say and do anything to serve themselves: living, breathing antitheses of the promises they’ve made.

The socialist/communist promise has always been nothing more than a con-man’s method for serving himself. It is, literally, too good to be true; humanity is not that good.

We decry liars, but we love their lies. “Yeah, baby, the Rolex is real, the Benz and the beach-front condo are paid for, and I believe a man’s role is to serve the woman he loves, and I love you, and would you like another rum and coke? It’s all yours. All you have to do is say ‘yes’.”

So, you’re absolutely right: communism and socialism can’t work. But all you have to do is point to those who, in the last 100 years, in Russia, Germany, Cuba, China and North Korea, have used the socialist/communist promise to gain power.

Point to Obama’s pal Bill Ayers: the former Weatherman who spoke of a “proletariat dictatorship” in the United States, and the elimination of an estimated 25 million Americans who wouldn’t succumb to his rule. (It’s all in his book, “Prairie Fire.”) Ayers came from a very wealthy family and was no doubt–if I might venture into armchair psychology–absorbed by hateful rebellion against his parents. (His dad was president and CEO of Commonwealth-Edison.) He might’ve thought he was rebelling against his parents, but as it turns out, his dreams and aspirations of controlling the entire country at all costs would’ve made them proud. He was the “ruthless businessman” his father likely hoped he’d be.

These are the people behind the socialist/communist promise in the United States today. They use the sweet promise to con and persuade ignorant people. But beneath that sweet persuasion are people who merely want control.

To me, it becomes more a matter of psychology, and human morality, than economics. Who are the people who must have control and wealth? Where did they come from, and what are they willing to do to feed those empty, vacuous regions inside of themselves where should reside a soul? Give them the regimes they want, and they will always have control. But in a free market, where anybody can rise up through economic classes, they feel threatened. They fear freedom, and their idea of “peaceful coexistence” is a militaristic dictatorship in which they can protect themselves against a million imagined enemies.

They will always be with us. We will never be free of them, and technology has granted them the power to wreak their destruction.