PS. I hope your Son is coping well.

To highlight what I mean I'll refute a few of your points: You point out that The West would have collapsed after it's imperial age(Is not Iraq an imperial war?) but that instead it flourished. You then gone on to argue that capitalism boomed not because of the slaughter of Native Americans or the Slave culture but because of technological advances and the development of investment communities that enabled those advances. Where did the capital come from to invest in those technologies? Did it not come from the resources stolen from Native Americans, did it not materialise from the extraction of slave labour? Just because it stopped killing and enslaving people out of economic necessity(your point not mine) it still extracted vast sums of capital which enabled it to flourish.

I'm no Marxist but then the left has been around since the end of communal communism, long before Marxism. Without the left there would be no universal voting rights, no minimum wage, no worker rights and all the other hard fought rights of people. That didn't begin as a result of Marx or Marxism and it will continue in spite of Marxist dogma. These rights were never won by the kindness of Capitalism but because of direct action by people unwilling to submit to an elitist idea of Meritocracy.

To claim that America is not an empire shows, in my opinion, that you suffer from the same illness of blinded ideological dogma you disparage in Marxists.

From my own perspective, I'm always a little upset with myself as I enter for mass. For me, the church and the time it was built represents the hypocracy of the Catholic church but then Irish Catholicism is as much cultural as it is religious.

To the issue at hand, one can always see history from two opposing positions and the attempted implementation of "Marxist" theory is no different. Many on the Left would argue that Stalinism was a counter-revolution and thus a distorted version of Marxist theory, if Marxist at all . It can also be argued that Mao came to power because of Stalin's betrayal of the Chinese workers party and the massacre that ensued and thus is also a distortion of Marxist theory.

Personally, the very notion of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" opens up Marxism to the very creation of a Stalin or a Mao but that is another issue which leads to much chest beating down the pub.

On the question of "disasters visited upon the last century" I would argue that Liberal Democratic capitalism has as much if not more blood on it's hands than "Communism". WW1, Vietnam,Korea, the starvation of an entire continent, Chile, El Salvador, Iraq etc. etc. etc.

History also shows that capitalism only became a viable system due to imperialism. American capitalism grew out of the slaughter of native Americans and African slavery, not to mention the brutalisation of it's own workers. It also prevailed because it had defeated its only foe, Feudalism. "Communism" had to deal with the very real threat of Capitalist agitation and sabre rattling which is why the former USSR spent over 40% of it's GDP on arms rather than spending it on it's peoples.

From an economic standpoint, the industrialisation of the Soviet Union was unparalleled. If one was to use comparative analysis between Brasil(Capitalist)and the USSR then the State system was far more beneficial in economic terms than capitalism. I use this comparison due to similar starting points as it would be unfair to compare the former USSR with the US or Europe. I think the present and the future may show centralised control of an economy may actually win the day in economic terms but we will have to wait and see.

I will add that I think it's great that American workers are beginning to organise and assert pressure on the state.

On the issue of judging the successes of capitalism one has to look at the "who benefits, who loses" question don't you think? One could argue that American capitalism has benefited American society but it has done so on the exploitation of other nations. Based on your consumption of raw materials to your production of those materials I think it's clear. The same can be argued for European capitalism as well.

To your final point, one could argue that "pure" capitalism failed as miserably as the attempts at "pure" communism. What you are describing as capitalism is really Socialism for the wealthy.

I don't think I claimed Stalin to be the sole agent of Soviet oppression I merely stated Lenin could not and should not be associated with the terrors of Stalin's autocratic grab for power. Neither do I justify Lenin's use of excessive force to suppress both socialist opponents to Bolshevism and that of the white revolutionary force who used as much terror as the reds.

One could argue however that if body count and terror are a measurement of why a system or proponents of a system should not be "hip" as the original article claims then all symbols of liberal democracy and its proponents should be cast aside. The deaths, murders, and starvation of untold millions(far outweighing the death toll of both Stalinism and Fascism)needs to be considered when writing such an ideological piece.

In reply to San Fernando Curt, how many Bolsheviks remained after Lenin's death? Who did Stalin purge from Soviet society in order to create his dictatorship. I think history shows he purged the Bolsheviks before all others.

I enjoyed your post and agree with many of your points. However,I'm always left remembering the laments of Robert Tressel "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist". Socialism shouldn't be seen as the buffer for capitalism but rather the start of the communal ideal. What I fear is that, like Britain, collective ownership is eventually privitised for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Socialism should not be confused with State Capitalism.