“Once its biggest self-celebration, May Day now signals Mayday for global communism. Just a half century ago, it seemed irrepressible, now communism is just reprehensible, with the relevance of a renaissance festival. Ironically, it is the Left who most want to forget… before the lesson behind communism’s demise can be more broadly applied.
In the 1960s, the whole world seemed to be going communist. It held half of Europe, much of Africa, almost all of Asia, and seemingly the entire world’s intelligentsia. Only “benighted” pockets held out. Fifty years later, the situation has reversed – now communism is closeted away.
Save for a crackpot dictator in North Korea and a mid-twentieth century relic in Cuba, there are few places unabashedly embracing its doctrines. While it still holds nominal title to the world’s largest country, it does so only in blatant self-contradiction. China’s communist rulers have held onto the government, but only by letting go of the economy. And where communism and capitalism exist side-by-side, there is no longer a question which will win.
Where once world domination was its avowed goal, now isolation from the world is its only hope. Cuba is literally an island and North Korea a figurative one. Where once it grabbed headlines from illusory accomplishments, it now takes a petty tyrant’s saber-rattling tantrums to garner attention.” – J.T. Young