Hi JackG -

I wasn't going to respond to your post, but then realized that you are apparently misinterpreting my post in somewhat the same way as JackD, and that now is as good a time as any to ward off any similar misinterpretations in the future.

Can we agree on the following?

1) there's an abstract socio-economic-political system called "communism" with a small "c".

2) since 1917, all attempts to actually realize this "abstract" system in various countries have failed - and failed in ways that left a lot of people dead or otherwise harmed severely.

3) none of these attempts represent "communism" with a small "c", but rather awful approximations which have names like "Russian Communism" (with a big "c"), "Chinese Communism" (with a big "c"), Cuban Communism (with a big "c"), etc.

Do you kinda see what I'm driving at here?

Or more probably, not.