July 21, 2026 • 31 mins
Has communism ever worked? Conservatives say no. Democratic socialists point to countries like Sweden as proof that socialism has. To find the answer, we tell the story of one group that both sides of the argument fail to mention...a group that shows the answer is far more nuanced than either side often admits.
Episode powered by:
Ruff Greens - the premium supplement created to boost your dog's energy, digestion, and overall wellbeing. Use Discount Code “RPA” to claim your FREE JumpStart Trial Bag at https://www.RuffGreens.com.
The Licorice Guy ...the delicious gourmet licorice made in America. Usepromo code "RPA15" for 15% off at https://licoriceguy.com/
Join the FamBam by becoming a Red Pilled America backstage subscriber. Visit https://www.RedPilledAmerica.com and click join in the top menu!
Follow us at: https://www.RedPilledAmerica.com
https://www.instagram.com/redpilledamerica
https://www.instagram.com/adryana_jade
Support the show: https://redpilledamerica.com/support/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is red pilled America. As communism ever worked, it's
a question most things they can answer. Conservatives point to Cuba,
Venezuela and the Soviet Union to say it's a failed
system incompatible with the American way of life.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
The communist system is the opposite of the American system,
and the communist system has never worked.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
We are not communal social creatures as postulated by either
Rosseau or Marx. In fact, we're far more self interested
and sinful in our disposition, and that is why communism
has never worked.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Everywhere it's been tried, socialism has failed for more than
two thousand years.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Progressives counter that their brand of democratic socialism is not
communism and that it is working in parts of the world.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
And I think we should look the countries like Denmark,
like Sweden and Norway and learn from what they have
accomplished for their working and.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
That message has gained traction in America.
Speaker 5 (01:08):
I am a Democratic socialist.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Sir On Mam Donnie won the New York mayoral race
last week. All three congressional candidates endorsed by New York
City Mayor and Democratic Socialists, thoughra Mamdani won their primaries
part of a wave of democratic socialists winning and deep
blue pockets of the country.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The word socialist doesn't have the same thing as it
once said. So with this continuing debate, we aim to
answer the question, as communism ever worked. I'm Patrick Carrelci
and I'm Adriana Cortez, and we promise only one thing,
the truth. Welcome to red pilled America. Has communism ever worked?
(01:46):
The answer isn't as clear cut as you may think. First,
both sides of the aisle can't even agree on definitions communism, Marxism, socialism,
democratic socialism, social democracy. Conservatives say each of these systems
are effectively one and the same. Progressives claim that each
are totally different, and there's some truth in both of
(02:07):
their claims. When most people think of communism, they think
about governments. But before we can understand governments, we first
must understand communities. And what's perhaps been most surprising in
our research is that there is one fascinating community that
clearly illuminates the answer to this question, but prominent figures
on both sides of the debate almost completely ignores them.
(02:30):
And perhaps that's because this flourishing community doesn't fit comfortably
into either side's story. So has communism ever worked to
find the answer. We're going to tell the story of
this fascinating community, because whether you call it communism or
democratic socialism or social democracy, this community proves that it
may work, but only under very specific conditions.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
It was June twenty nineteen when a group of Montana
farmers gathered to discuss how to stop a giant in
their industry. They argued that for years, a farming giant
was unfairly exploiting a government loophole and taking their ill
gotten gains to purchase expensive equipment, slash their prices and
(03:17):
outbid the little guy when buying massive tracts of land.
All the advantages they get they can afford to pay
exorbative prices for an acre of land where the normal
farmer out here cannot compete. One estimate placed their land
grab at more than six million acres, approaching the size
of the entire state of New Jersey. The group was
(03:39):
one of the most successful farming operations in North America.
But the shocking thing is no one owns the operation.
No one owns the land or machinery. No one pockets
the profits. And that's because the farming group doesn't believe
in individual property ownership, yet they've been thriving for centuries.
The farming giant is known as the Hutterites, and the
(04:01):
Montana small farmers believe the government needed to step in
to stop them. We're here for today. Roughly fifty thousand
Hutterites live in Canada, North and South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota,
and Washington State. In Montana, they produce over ninety percent
of the hogs raised in the state and nearly one
(04:23):
hundred percent of the entire egg supply. In South Dakota,
they control an estimated sixty percent of the pork market.
They also have major market share in the dairy and
poultry industries, and they control land millions of acres of land.
Where did they come from, Well, you have to go
back nearly half a millennium to hear their origin story,
(04:45):
and some hutter Ights would argue that their communal way
of life has been around since the time of Christ.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
In the early fifteen hundreds, Europe was coming apart. Protestant
Reformation had shattered the religious unity of Western Europe. New
religious movements sprang up across the continent, each convinced it
had rediscovered the true teachings of Christianity. One of those
movements was the Anabaptists. Unlike Catholics and most Protestants, the
(05:19):
Anabaptists believed that baptism should be reserved for adults who
consciously choose to follow Christ. To Catholic rulers, they were heretics.
To Protestant rulers, they were dangerous radicals. Many were imprisoned
or executed. It was into this world that an Austrian
hatmaker named Jacob Hutter arrived. He thought Christians were never
(05:40):
meant to pursue wealth as individuals. Instead, he believed the
earliest Christians had practiced a radical, communal way of life.
This model came primarily from the Book of Acts.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No
one claimed that any of their possessions was their own,
but they shared everything they had.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Jacob Hutter and his followers, these weren't merely descriptions of
the early Church. They were instructions. The community should own
the land, the livestock, the tools, and the businesses. Individuals
should contribute according to their abilities, and the colony should
provide for everyone's needs. They formed organized communities to live
out their deeply held belief They came to be known
(06:25):
as the Hutterites Act.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
The second is really where our life comes in and
keeping all things common. That's how it started and that's
the way we want to keep it.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The goal wasn't equality through government, It was obedience to God,
and their communal life extended far beyond economics. They believed
Christians should live together as one extended family. They ate
meals together, worked together, and worshiped together. Living side by
side meant you couldn't simply walk away from your neighbor.
You had to make peace, as a Hutterite.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Explains, But on this earth you have to love thy neighbors.
And how can you show love if you don't live together,
two things for one another. If one is sick, take
care of them. You can't work, let somebody else do it.
In the colony, you see all the members, and if
you have some misunderstanding amongst yourself, well you can't go
(07:20):
on living and hating them. You have to get things right.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
At the center of everything was a simple belief. Work
was worship. Every person contributed, served and depended on everyone else.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
We are based on.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
The Scripture where it says in all things that you do,
you eat your drink your.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Work, or anything of the parts. Praise God.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
But their way of life came at a cost. Because
they insisted on living separately from state control, governments repeatedly
drove them from their homes. In fifteen thirty six, Jacob
Hudder himself was arrested by Austrian authorities, tortured and burned alive,
but his followers survived.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
For the next three centuries, they migrated across Central Europe,
eventually settling in Russia. That promised exemption from military service,
and for nearly a century the Hutterites flourished. Then in
eighteen seventy one, the Russian government terminated the military exemptions.
Faced with the prospect of conscription, the Hutterites made a
(08:34):
decision that they made many times before they left. Beginning
in eighteen seventy four, approximately twelve hundred Hutterites immigrated to
the United States. Most settled in the Dakota Territory, but
only about four hundred continued the traditional communal way of life.
The rest took up individual farms and over time largely assimilated.
(08:57):
The communal Hutterites established colonies, the first being the Bottom Colony,
founded near the Missouri River in what is now South Dakota.
It became the foundation of nearly every hutter Right colony
in North America today. The system was simple but demanding.
A colony could not grow indefinitely. Once it reached roughly
(09:20):
thirty families or around one hundred and fifty people, it
began preparing to establish a daughter colony. The mother colony
would purchase new land, divide assets and skills, and eventually
send part of its population to begin again. They did
this because they realized that once a colony became too large,
people no longer knew everyone well, decision making became harder,
(09:43):
conflict became more difficult to resolve. The community began to
weaken once it got above one hundred and fifty people,
so they split. This was one of the secrets of
their survival. The hutter Rights did not build one giant commune.
They replicated small ones again and again, and by doing
so they accident stumbled upon a principle known as the
(10:05):
Dunbar number.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
In the early nineteen nineties, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied primates,
their brains and the average group size among them. From
his research, he predicted that humans have a cognitive limit
on the number of people with whom we can maintain
stable social relationships. His estimate, on average about one hundred
and fifty people. By stable relationship, Dunbar didn't mean simply
(10:29):
recognizing someone's face. He meant you knew who they were,
how you were related to them, their reputations, You understood
your social obligations to them, and they knew you. The
Dunbar number is the maximum number of meaningful social relationships
humans can comfortably maintain. Many successful human organizations throughout history
seemed to converge around this size. Long before Robin Dunbar
(10:57):
proposed his theory, the Hutterites had already settled on remarkably
similar colony sizes. Once a colony reached about one hundred
and fifty people, they didn't expand further. They divided. One
colony became two in the late eighteen hundreds. The United
States gave them the land and freedom to formalize and
perfect this practice, but America would not remain their refuge
(11:20):
for long.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
When World War One erupted, all but one hutter Ighte
colony left the US for Canada to avoid conscription, but
after World War Two colonies gradually returned to the United States,
especially to Montana, South and North Dakota, Minnesota, and Washington State.
Montana became one of the major centers of huw to
Wite life. They grew at a slow but steady pace.
(11:44):
Outsiders are almost never allowed membership into the colony. Hutterites
marry within their sect. Marriages must be approved by both
the church and parents, and divorces are forbidden. So the
Hutterite colony only grows through procreation and they can track
their lineage back to the original colonies. Over the decades
that followed their return to America, how to Wright colonies
(12:06):
began gobbling up land, and their system slowly started to
apply pressure on small farmers.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Our system, I think is a head of individual system
because we don't have to pay labor costs. I if
we're in a community life where you're sharing and you'd
have to pay a labor in this kind of thing,
you couldn't afford to bid level place ideas.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
By twenty nineteen, some Montana small farmers called for a
boycott of huw to wrighte goods, but it didn't stick.
The hutter Rights had built a reputation of being trustworthy
neighbors in.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Proportions of the general population. They are more honest and most.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
People we deal with.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
What exactly makes the Hutterites work well. It's a community
of trust. Lineages can be traced back for almost half
a millennium. It's also voluntary. Members can leave at any time.
Each hutterrighte has the same deeply held beliefs. Every colony
is small, no more than one hundred and fifty people.
If a colony population gets close to this threshold, it splits,
(13:10):
and their entire system is centered around families. This Christian
communal way of life has worked for the Hutterites for
almost five hundred years, and they aren't the only community
that's found success living under a socialist style system. Founded
in nineteen twenty, the Bruderhoff live in the UK, Germany, Australia, Paraguay,
(13:30):
and the United States. Like the Hutterites, they are an
Anabaptist community that live communally. Everything belongs to the community,
and their colonies include between one hundred and three hundred people.
When they reach the larger end of that range, they
form another colony. And there are other communal societies that
have had a stable, relatively long standing existence, but all
(13:53):
are much smaller. And shorter lived than Jacob Hutter's followers.
The Hutterites are an extraordinary case study. They've shown that
communal living has us been successful on a small scale.
One man should have found them fascinating, the godfather of communism,
Karl Marx, Yet despite writing thousands of pages on communism,
(14:15):
he never mentioned them, not once. Why is that well
A man named Robert Owen may help illuminate that answer.
The Hutterites proved that communal living could be successful in
very small communities. Robert wanted to see if this could
be scaled to the size of a town. But unlike
the Hutterites, Robert didn't inherit a communal society. He set
(14:37):
out to build one with strangers.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Traditional dog food is dead food, which is why it
could sit on a shelf for years because it's lifeless.
But rough greens brings the nutrition back. Adrianna and I
use rough greens to make sure our furry babies get
the live vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and omega oils
they need in their diets, and our dogs have never
been better. Our bullmast if Willow used to be tired
(15:06):
and had joint problems, and our English bulldog Pablo had
skin issues, but after adding rough Greens to their diets,
their problems disappeared. Ask yourself, how do you think your
health would be if you just ate dead food. Roughgreens
promotes longevity by addressing common nutritional deficiencies found and processed dogfood,
and there's no need to change your dog's food. Roughgreens
(15:28):
isn't a dogfood, it's a live nutritional supplement you add
to your dog's food. You don't have to change your
dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a
scoop of rough Greens. It's that easy. Don't change your
dog's food, just add rough Greens. Roughgreens is offering a
free Jumpstart trial bag. You just cover shipping. Use discount
(15:49):
code RPA to claim your free Jumpstart Trial bag at
roughgreens dot com. That's r u ffgreens dot com promo
code RPA. So don't change your dog's food, just add
rough Greens and watched the health benefits come alive. Welcome
back to red pilled America. By the early eighteen hundreds,
(16:11):
Robert Owen was one of England's most celebrated industrialists. At
his cotton mills in New Lanark, Scotland. He had done
something many believed impossible. His businesses remained profitable while spending
heavily on its workers. He shortened workers hours and improved
workers housing. He opened schools for children, cleaned up the
filthy milltown, and despite spending more on his workers than
(16:34):
his competitors, his business remains remarkably profitable. To Owen, this
proved something profound. People weren't born good or bad. Character
was formed by environment. In his view, changed the environment
and you changed the person. If that was true for
a factory, why not in entire town. So to test
(16:55):
his theory, in eighteen twenty five, Owen purchased a small
town on the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana.
He wasn't trying to seize power. He genuinely believed he
had discovered a better way for ordinary people to live.
The town he purchased was ready made. It already had homes, workshops, barns, mills,
farm land, and even schools. Owen renamed it New Harmony.
(17:17):
Then he issued an invitation to the world teachers, scientists, craftsmen, artists, farmers, laborers.
If you believed a better society could be built through
co operation rather than competition. You were welcome. His vision
was radical for its time. Instead of competing with one another,
strangers would work together, sharing both labor and prosperity. For
(17:40):
a moment it seemed possible, Hundreds of people arrived from
across America and Europe. Newspapers called it one of the
greatest social experiments ever attempted. Some believed they were witnessing
the birth of a new civilization, but very quickly cracks appeared.
The community had no shared faith, no common traditions, and
(18:01):
no common understanding of a authority. Many of the newcomers
were idealists, some were scholars, some were skilled craftsmen. Others
had simply heard that land, food, and opportunity awaited them
in Indiana. Not everyone came prepared to work. Arguments broke
out over leadership, committees multiplied, meetings stretched for hours. Governments
(18:23):
were created, dissolved, and created again. Some members labored from
sunrise to sunset. Others contributed little, yet expected the same
share of the community's resources. Resentment began to grow. Their
greatest challenge, however, wasn't agriculture, or money, or even leadership.
It was that nearly nine hundred strangers had arrived carrying
(18:46):
nine hundred different ideas about what the perfect society should
look like. Robert Owen believed that a new environment would
create a new kind of person. Instead, he discovered that
changing a person's surroundings was far easier than changing human nature.
By eighteen twenty seven, less than three years after Owen
(19:09):
purchased the town, the communal experiment had effectively collapsed. The
dream of new harmony was over. What did the Hutterites
figure out that new harmony couldn't? Ultimately, Owen showed just
how difficult it was to build a communal society the
size of the town overnight. But what if a nation
took a different path. What if it first became prosperous
(19:32):
and only then began sharing more of its wealth.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
If you ask Americans for an example of socialism that worked,
many point northeast to the social democracy Sweden. But Sweden
began with a very different system. For most of its history,
Sweden was an ordinary capitalist country. People owned private property,
businesses competed in open markets, Entrepreneurs built companies, workers earned wages.
(19:58):
By the early twentieth century, Sweden had become one of
Europe's fastest growing inf austrial economies. Then came the Great Depression.
Like much of the world, Sweden was hit hard. Unemployment rose,
businesses failed, families struggled. Many Swedes began asking where did
capitalism go wrong. One group said that they had the answer,
(20:21):
Sweden's Socialist Democratic Party. They argued that capitalism shouldn't be abolished,
but it needed guard rails. Their promise the markets would
create wealth, but they'd help spread its benefits. The message
resonated with the Swedish people, and in nineteen thirty two,
the Social Democratic Party came to power. Over the next
(20:42):
several decades, Sweden built what would become one of the
world's most generous welfare states. The taxes were high, but
the services were broad. By the end of the nineteen nineties,
on almost every measure, the results were impressive. Sweden remained wealthy,
poverty fell, life expectancy increased, educational attainment rose. The country
(21:04):
became known around the world as proof that markets and
an expanse of welfare state could coexist. So had Sweden
finally solved the problem? Robert Owen could not, well, not exactly,
because underneath their success was something easy.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
To overlook for much of the twentieth century, Sweden was
one of the most culturally cohesive societies on Earth. Its
people spoke the same language, shared the same traditions, belonged
overwhelmingly to the same Lutheran religious heritage, and were ethnically homogeneous.
They trusted one another For decades, their system worked remarkably well.
(21:40):
Sweden looked like it had solved the puzzle, but then
came its biggest test. Beginning in the late twentieth century
and accelerating over two decades, Sweden experienced levels of immigration
unlike anything in its modern history. The country became far
more culturally diverse than it had been for most of
its history. But Sweden's welfare state had been built during
(22:01):
a time of extraordinary cultural cohesion. Now the country had
people with different languages, different traditions, and far more varied beliefs.
Since Sweden has experienced rising fiscal costs, integration challenges, declining
social trust, and growing political polarization, pressures that have tested
public confidence in the model. But one thing is clear.
(22:24):
The Swedish experiment wasn't simply about capitalism or socialism. It
was also about something we'd seen before, community trust, shared expectations,
a shared culture and a shared heritage. The same questions
that confronted a hutteright colony of one hundred and fifty
people were now confronting a nation of millions. And Sweden
(22:47):
wasn't the only Nordic country feeling these types of pressures. Denmark, Norway,
Finland had all followed a similar path and later encountered
the same strains on their social welfare state. These Nordic countries,
the Democratic Socialists typically highlight, began with markets, then added
more government. China would attempt the opposite.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
In nineteen forty nine, after decades of civil war, foreign invasion,
rural poverty, and political collapse, Malseedong proclaimed the People's Republic
of China. Private industry was nationalized, agriculture was collectivised. Markets
gave way to central planning. The state would decide what
was produced, where it was produced, and how it would
(23:32):
be distributed. But the experiment came at a terrible cost.
The Chinese Communist Party attempted to force hundreds of millions
of farmers into vast people's communes and rapidly transformed China
into an industrial power. Instead, agriculture production collapsed, Famine followed
tens of millions died. Then came China's Cultural Revolution, a
(23:55):
decade of political chaos that disrupted education, government, and economic life.
By the time Mao died in Ni eighteen seventy six,
the communist parties still controlled China, but the Red Dragon
remained desperately poor. Two years later, the country's new leader,
Dang Chaoping, made a surprising decision. He would not surrender
(24:17):
political control, but he would begin surrendering economic control. Farm
families were allowed to keep and sell more of what
they were producing. Private businesses began to appear, Foreign companies
were invited in special economic zones were created, Prices increasingly
reflected supply and demand. China remained a one party communist state,
(24:38):
but its economy began operating less like communism. The results
transformed the world. Hundreds of millions escaped extreme poverty, Factories multiplied,
cities expanded. China became one of the largest economies on Earth. Ironically,
China's greatest economic success began only after it loosened central planning.
(25:03):
So is China proof that communism has worked?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Licorice? Licorice? Where art thou licorice? If you listen to
red pilled America, you know that I love licorice, and
there is no licorice in America better than the delicious,
gourmet licorice made by the Licorice Guy. The Licorice Guy
is simply the best. What sets their licorice apart is
its flavor and freshness. They have a great selection of
(25:29):
flavors to choose from, like red blue, raspberry, black, and
green apple, just to name a few. The freshness of
the Licorice Guy is unlike anything you've ever tasted in
licorice before. Seriously, if you haven't tried licorice from the
Licorice Guy yet, then you ain't living life right. Trust me,
you will not regret it. It's time to dump that
store bought liquorice but so hard it'll break your teeth,
(25:50):
and get yourself the soft, fresh stuff from the Licorice Guy.
What I also love about the Liquorice Guy is that
it's an American family owned business. It's made right here
in the beautiful US of A. We are big proponents
of buying American and supporting American workers. Right now, Red
Pilled America listeners get fifteen percent off when they enter
(26:10):
RPA fifteen at checkout. Visit licoriceguide dot com and enter
RPA fifteen at checkout. That's licoriceguide dot com. They ship daily,
treat yourself and those you love, and taste the difference.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Do you want to hear Red Pilled America stories ad free?
Then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
dot com and click join in the topmenu. Join today
and help us save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
So is China proof that communism has worked?
Speaker 5 (26:45):
The answer is no.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Karl Marx would likely have looked at modern China or
Sweden and proclaimed, this is not communism. In Marx's communist system,
there is no room for a stock market, billionaires, privately
owned corporations, private accumulation of capital, wage labor, inheritance, entrepreneurs,
or large wealth inequity. The goal of Marx's communism is
(27:09):
to eliminate all of those, yet every single one is
found in modern China, Sweden, and the other Nordic countries.
Marx once described communism with the famous phrase from each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Sound familiar, That's exactly how the Hutterites have described their
(27:30):
lives for nearly five centuries.
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Do things through one another. If one is sick, take
care of them. You can't work, let somebody else do it.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Hutter Ights live in a classless communal culture. Individuals don't
own property, There is no wage labor. They literally live
by Karl Marx's highest tenant. One of the longest lasting
communal societies in history had already existed for hundreds of
years before Karl Marx published a communist manifesto, Yet Marx
never mentioned them. Why is that. Perhaps it's because the
(28:04):
Hutterights directly undermined his communist project. Marxists or socialists or
communists aren't concerned with transitioning one hundred and fifty people
into their ideal system. It's concerned with coercing one hundred
and fifty million people. The hutter Rights and every other
successful communal living community contradicts that goal. They show that
(28:25):
communal living may work at a scale of a few hundred,
but at any larger scale it tends to collapse. Perhaps
that helps explain why the Hutterights rarely appear in Marxist arguments.
Their success proves communal ownership is possible, but the scale
is severely limited. However, it's not only the left ignoring
(28:45):
the Hutterites. The anti communist right does it too, and
perhaps that's because they complicate their narrative as well.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
We're now at a fork in.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
The road where if we continue where the Democratic Party
wants to take us, and that is into socialism, socialism
is godless.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
So is communists ever worked. After looking at five centuries
of experiments, one thing becomes clear. The communal living of
communism has worked, but only under very specific conditions. Communal
living has been tried many times throughout history, and over
those many experiments, the same qualities keep emerging. Communal living
(29:22):
works when participation is voluntary, the community is kept small,
members share deep religious or ideological beliefs, and perhaps most importantly,
trust must be high. If all of these qualities aren't present,
history has shown that communal living fails, and the moment
you try to scale it to the size of a town, city,
(29:42):
or nation, it eventually collapses. And this underscores the issue
with those pushing socialism in America. Karl Marx saw socialism
as the bridge to communism. Eventually, workers would become conscious
of their exploitation, overthrow the capitalist class and seize control.
That period is what Marx envisioned as socialism. He believed
(30:05):
that socialism would succeed so completely that economic classes would
disappear and coercive government would gradually wither away, leaving his
final tenet from each according to his ability, to each
according to his need. Ironically, the people who came closest
to living Karl Marx's most famous principle weren't Marxist at all.
(30:25):
They were sixteenth century Christians. But history is unambiguous. Every
communal living system collapses at any scale larger than a
few hundred people. So an activists openly call for the
socialist reconstruction of America, you should take them seriously and
ask whether they truly understand the historical limits of the
(30:46):
system they want to build.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
The new socialist government will take possession of all the
existing capitalists banks and create one people's development Bank. The
electoral college would be abolished.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Redfield America's an iHeartRadio original podcast its owner, produced by
Patrick Carrecci and me Adriana Portez for inform ventures. To
listen to our entire archive of episodes, ad free, visit
Redpilldamerica dot com and click join in the topmenu. Thanks
for listening,
This is red pilled America. As communism ever worked, it's
a question most things they can answer. Conservatives point to Cuba,
Venezuela and the Soviet Union to say it's a failed
system incompatible with the American way of life.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
The communist system is the opposite of the American system,
and the communist system has never worked.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
We are not communal social creatures as postulated by either
Rosseau or Marx. In fact, we're far more self interested
and sinful in our disposition, and that is why communism
has never worked.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Everywhere it's been tried, socialism has failed for more than
two thousand years.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Progressives counter that their brand of democratic socialism is not
communism and that it is working in parts of the world.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
And I think we should look the countries like Denmark,
like Sweden and Norway and learn from what they have
accomplished for their working and.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
That message has gained traction in America.
Speaker 5 (01:08):
I am a Democratic socialist.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Sir On Mam Donnie won the New York mayoral race
last week. All three congressional candidates endorsed by New York
City Mayor and Democratic Socialists, thoughra Mamdani won their primaries
part of a wave of democratic socialists winning and deep
blue pockets of the country.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
The word socialist doesn't have the same thing as it
once said. So with this continuing debate, we aim to
answer the question, as communism ever worked. I'm Patrick Carrelci
and I'm Adriana Cortez, and we promise only one thing,
the truth. Welcome to red pilled America. Has communism ever worked?
(01:46):
The answer isn't as clear cut as you may think. First,
both sides of the aisle can't even agree on definitions communism, Marxism, socialism,
democratic socialism, social democracy. Conservatives say each of these systems
are effectively one and the same. Progressives claim that each
are totally different, and there's some truth in both of
(02:07):
their claims. When most people think of communism, they think
about governments. But before we can understand governments, we first
must understand communities. And what's perhaps been most surprising in
our research is that there is one fascinating community that
clearly illuminates the answer to this question, but prominent figures
on both sides of the debate almost completely ignores them.
(02:30):
And perhaps that's because this flourishing community doesn't fit comfortably
into either side's story. So has communism ever worked to
find the answer. We're going to tell the story of
this fascinating community, because whether you call it communism or
democratic socialism or social democracy, this community proves that it
may work, but only under very specific conditions.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
It was June twenty nineteen when a group of Montana
farmers gathered to discuss how to stop a giant in
their industry. They argued that for years, a farming giant
was unfairly exploiting a government loophole and taking their ill
gotten gains to purchase expensive equipment, slash their prices and
(03:17):
outbid the little guy when buying massive tracts of land.
All the advantages they get they can afford to pay
exorbative prices for an acre of land where the normal
farmer out here cannot compete. One estimate placed their land
grab at more than six million acres, approaching the size
of the entire state of New Jersey. The group was
(03:39):
one of the most successful farming operations in North America.
But the shocking thing is no one owns the operation.
No one owns the land or machinery. No one pockets
the profits. And that's because the farming group doesn't believe
in individual property ownership, yet they've been thriving for centuries.
The farming giant is known as the Hutterites, and the
(04:01):
Montana small farmers believe the government needed to step in
to stop them. We're here for today. Roughly fifty thousand
Hutterites live in Canada, North and South Dakota, Montana, Minnesota,
and Washington State. In Montana, they produce over ninety percent
of the hogs raised in the state and nearly one
(04:23):
hundred percent of the entire egg supply. In South Dakota,
they control an estimated sixty percent of the pork market.
They also have major market share in the dairy and
poultry industries, and they control land millions of acres of land.
Where did they come from, Well, you have to go
back nearly half a millennium to hear their origin story,
(04:45):
and some hutter Ights would argue that their communal way
of life has been around since the time of Christ.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
In the early fifteen hundreds, Europe was coming apart. Protestant
Reformation had shattered the religious unity of Western Europe. New
religious movements sprang up across the continent, each convinced it
had rediscovered the true teachings of Christianity. One of those
movements was the Anabaptists. Unlike Catholics and most Protestants, the
(05:19):
Anabaptists believed that baptism should be reserved for adults who
consciously choose to follow Christ. To Catholic rulers, they were heretics.
To Protestant rulers, they were dangerous radicals. Many were imprisoned
or executed. It was into this world that an Austrian
hatmaker named Jacob Hutter arrived. He thought Christians were never
(05:40):
meant to pursue wealth as individuals. Instead, he believed the
earliest Christians had practiced a radical, communal way of life.
This model came primarily from the Book of Acts.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No
one claimed that any of their possessions was their own,
but they shared everything they had.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Jacob Hutter and his followers, these weren't merely descriptions of
the early Church. They were instructions. The community should own
the land, the livestock, the tools, and the businesses. Individuals
should contribute according to their abilities, and the colony should
provide for everyone's needs. They formed organized communities to live
out their deeply held belief They came to be known
(06:25):
as the Hutterites Act.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
The second is really where our life comes in and
keeping all things common. That's how it started and that's
the way we want to keep it.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The goal wasn't equality through government, It was obedience to God,
and their communal life extended far beyond economics. They believed
Christians should live together as one extended family. They ate
meals together, worked together, and worshiped together. Living side by
side meant you couldn't simply walk away from your neighbor.
You had to make peace, as a Hutterite.
Speaker 6 (06:58):
Explains, But on this earth you have to love thy neighbors.
And how can you show love if you don't live together,
two things for one another. If one is sick, take
care of them. You can't work, let somebody else do it.
In the colony, you see all the members, and if
you have some misunderstanding amongst yourself, well you can't go
(07:20):
on living and hating them. You have to get things right.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
At the center of everything was a simple belief. Work
was worship. Every person contributed, served and depended on everyone else.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
We are based on.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
The Scripture where it says in all things that you do,
you eat your drink your.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Work, or anything of the parts. Praise God.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
But their way of life came at a cost. Because
they insisted on living separately from state control, governments repeatedly
drove them from their homes. In fifteen thirty six, Jacob
Hudder himself was arrested by Austrian authorities, tortured and burned alive,
but his followers survived.
Speaker 4 (08:10):
For the next three centuries, they migrated across Central Europe,
eventually settling in Russia. That promised exemption from military service,
and for nearly a century the Hutterites flourished. Then in
eighteen seventy one, the Russian government terminated the military exemptions.
Faced with the prospect of conscription, the Hutterites made a
(08:34):
decision that they made many times before they left. Beginning
in eighteen seventy four, approximately twelve hundred Hutterites immigrated to
the United States. Most settled in the Dakota Territory, but
only about four hundred continued the traditional communal way of life.
The rest took up individual farms and over time largely assimilated.
(08:57):
The communal Hutterites established colonies, the first being the Bottom Colony,
founded near the Missouri River in what is now South Dakota.
It became the foundation of nearly every hutter Right colony
in North America today. The system was simple but demanding.
A colony could not grow indefinitely. Once it reached roughly
(09:20):
thirty families or around one hundred and fifty people, it
began preparing to establish a daughter colony. The mother colony
would purchase new land, divide assets and skills, and eventually
send part of its population to begin again. They did
this because they realized that once a colony became too large,
people no longer knew everyone well, decision making became harder,
(09:43):
conflict became more difficult to resolve. The community began to
weaken once it got above one hundred and fifty people,
so they split. This was one of the secrets of
their survival. The hutter Rights did not build one giant commune.
They replicated small ones again and again, and by doing
so they accident stumbled upon a principle known as the
(10:05):
Dunbar number.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
In the early nineteen nineties, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar studied primates,
their brains and the average group size among them. From
his research, he predicted that humans have a cognitive limit
on the number of people with whom we can maintain
stable social relationships. His estimate, on average about one hundred
and fifty people. By stable relationship, Dunbar didn't mean simply
(10:29):
recognizing someone's face. He meant you knew who they were,
how you were related to them, their reputations, You understood
your social obligations to them, and they knew you. The
Dunbar number is the maximum number of meaningful social relationships
humans can comfortably maintain. Many successful human organizations throughout history
seemed to converge around this size. Long before Robin Dunbar
(10:57):
proposed his theory, the Hutterites had already settled on remarkably
similar colony sizes. Once a colony reached about one hundred
and fifty people, they didn't expand further. They divided. One
colony became two in the late eighteen hundreds. The United
States gave them the land and freedom to formalize and
perfect this practice, but America would not remain their refuge
(11:20):
for long.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
When World War One erupted, all but one hutter Ighte
colony left the US for Canada to avoid conscription, but
after World War Two colonies gradually returned to the United States,
especially to Montana, South and North Dakota, Minnesota, and Washington State.
Montana became one of the major centers of huw to
Wite life. They grew at a slow but steady pace.
(11:44):
Outsiders are almost never allowed membership into the colony. Hutterites
marry within their sect. Marriages must be approved by both
the church and parents, and divorces are forbidden. So the
Hutterite colony only grows through procreation and they can track
their lineage back to the original colonies. Over the decades
that followed their return to America, how to Wright colonies
(12:06):
began gobbling up land, and their system slowly started to
apply pressure on small farmers.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Our system, I think is a head of individual system
because we don't have to pay labor costs. I if
we're in a community life where you're sharing and you'd
have to pay a labor in this kind of thing,
you couldn't afford to bid level place ideas.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
By twenty nineteen, some Montana small farmers called for a
boycott of huw to wrighte goods, but it didn't stick.
The hutter Rights had built a reputation of being trustworthy
neighbors in.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Proportions of the general population. They are more honest and most.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
People we deal with.
Speaker 4 (12:47):
What exactly makes the Hutterites work well. It's a community
of trust. Lineages can be traced back for almost half
a millennium. It's also voluntary. Members can leave at any time.
Each hutterrighte has the same deeply held beliefs. Every colony
is small, no more than one hundred and fifty people.
If a colony population gets close to this threshold, it splits,
(13:10):
and their entire system is centered around families. This Christian
communal way of life has worked for the Hutterites for
almost five hundred years, and they aren't the only community
that's found success living under a socialist style system. Founded
in nineteen twenty, the Bruderhoff live in the UK, Germany, Australia, Paraguay,
(13:30):
and the United States. Like the Hutterites, they are an
Anabaptist community that live communally. Everything belongs to the community,
and their colonies include between one hundred and three hundred people.
When they reach the larger end of that range, they
form another colony. And there are other communal societies that
have had a stable, relatively long standing existence, but all
(13:53):
are much smaller. And shorter lived than Jacob Hutter's followers.
The Hutterites are an extraordinary case study. They've shown that
communal living has us been successful on a small scale.
One man should have found them fascinating, the godfather of communism,
Karl Marx, Yet despite writing thousands of pages on communism,
(14:15):
he never mentioned them, not once. Why is that well
A man named Robert Owen may help illuminate that answer.
The Hutterites proved that communal living could be successful in
very small communities. Robert wanted to see if this could
be scaled to the size of a town. But unlike
the Hutterites, Robert didn't inherit a communal society. He set
(14:37):
out to build one with strangers.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Traditional dog food is dead food, which is why it
could sit on a shelf for years because it's lifeless.
But rough greens brings the nutrition back. Adrianna and I
use rough greens to make sure our furry babies get
the live vitamins, minerals, probiotics, digestive enzymes, and omega oils
they need in their diets, and our dogs have never
been better. Our bullmast if Willow used to be tired
(15:06):
and had joint problems, and our English bulldog Pablo had
skin issues, but after adding rough Greens to their diets,
their problems disappeared. Ask yourself, how do you think your
health would be if you just ate dead food. Roughgreens
promotes longevity by addressing common nutritional deficiencies found and processed dogfood,
and there's no need to change your dog's food. Roughgreens
(15:28):
isn't a dogfood, it's a live nutritional supplement you add
to your dog's food. You don't have to change your
dog's food to improve your dog's health. Just add a
scoop of rough Greens. It's that easy. Don't change your
dog's food, just add rough Greens. Roughgreens is offering a
free Jumpstart trial bag. You just cover shipping. Use discount
(15:49):
code RPA to claim your free Jumpstart Trial bag at
roughgreens dot com. That's r u ffgreens dot com promo
code RPA. So don't change your dog's food, just add
rough Greens and watched the health benefits come alive. Welcome
back to red pilled America. By the early eighteen hundreds,
(16:11):
Robert Owen was one of England's most celebrated industrialists. At
his cotton mills in New Lanark, Scotland. He had done
something many believed impossible. His businesses remained profitable while spending
heavily on its workers. He shortened workers hours and improved
workers housing. He opened schools for children, cleaned up the
filthy milltown, and despite spending more on his workers than
(16:34):
his competitors, his business remains remarkably profitable. To Owen, this
proved something profound. People weren't born good or bad. Character
was formed by environment. In his view, changed the environment
and you changed the person. If that was true for
a factory, why not in entire town. So to test
(16:55):
his theory, in eighteen twenty five, Owen purchased a small
town on the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana.
He wasn't trying to seize power. He genuinely believed he
had discovered a better way for ordinary people to live.
The town he purchased was ready made. It already had homes, workshops, barns, mills,
farm land, and even schools. Owen renamed it New Harmony.
(17:17):
Then he issued an invitation to the world teachers, scientists, craftsmen, artists, farmers, laborers.
If you believed a better society could be built through
co operation rather than competition. You were welcome. His vision
was radical for its time. Instead of competing with one another,
strangers would work together, sharing both labor and prosperity. For
(17:40):
a moment it seemed possible, Hundreds of people arrived from
across America and Europe. Newspapers called it one of the
greatest social experiments ever attempted. Some believed they were witnessing
the birth of a new civilization, but very quickly cracks appeared.
The community had no shared faith, no common traditions, and
(18:01):
no common understanding of a authority. Many of the newcomers
were idealists, some were scholars, some were skilled craftsmen. Others
had simply heard that land, food, and opportunity awaited them
in Indiana. Not everyone came prepared to work. Arguments broke
out over leadership, committees multiplied, meetings stretched for hours. Governments
(18:23):
were created, dissolved, and created again. Some members labored from
sunrise to sunset. Others contributed little, yet expected the same
share of the community's resources. Resentment began to grow. Their
greatest challenge, however, wasn't agriculture, or money, or even leadership.
It was that nearly nine hundred strangers had arrived carrying
(18:46):
nine hundred different ideas about what the perfect society should
look like. Robert Owen believed that a new environment would
create a new kind of person. Instead, he discovered that
changing a person's surroundings was far easier than changing human nature.
By eighteen twenty seven, less than three years after Owen
(19:09):
purchased the town, the communal experiment had effectively collapsed. The
dream of new harmony was over. What did the Hutterites
figure out that new harmony couldn't? Ultimately, Owen showed just
how difficult it was to build a communal society the
size of the town overnight. But what if a nation
took a different path. What if it first became prosperous
(19:32):
and only then began sharing more of its wealth.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
If you ask Americans for an example of socialism that worked,
many point northeast to the social democracy Sweden. But Sweden
began with a very different system. For most of its history,
Sweden was an ordinary capitalist country. People owned private property,
businesses competed in open markets, Entrepreneurs built companies, workers earned wages.
(19:58):
By the early twentieth century, Sweden had become one of
Europe's fastest growing inf austrial economies. Then came the Great Depression.
Like much of the world, Sweden was hit hard. Unemployment rose,
businesses failed, families struggled. Many Swedes began asking where did
capitalism go wrong. One group said that they had the answer,
(20:21):
Sweden's Socialist Democratic Party. They argued that capitalism shouldn't be abolished,
but it needed guard rails. Their promise the markets would
create wealth, but they'd help spread its benefits. The message
resonated with the Swedish people, and in nineteen thirty two,
the Social Democratic Party came to power. Over the next
(20:42):
several decades, Sweden built what would become one of the
world's most generous welfare states. The taxes were high, but
the services were broad. By the end of the nineteen nineties,
on almost every measure, the results were impressive. Sweden remained wealthy,
poverty fell, life expectancy increased, educational attainment rose. The country
(21:04):
became known around the world as proof that markets and
an expanse of welfare state could coexist. So had Sweden
finally solved the problem? Robert Owen could not, well, not exactly,
because underneath their success was something easy.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
To overlook for much of the twentieth century, Sweden was
one of the most culturally cohesive societies on Earth. Its
people spoke the same language, shared the same traditions, belonged
overwhelmingly to the same Lutheran religious heritage, and were ethnically homogeneous.
They trusted one another For decades, their system worked remarkably well.
(21:40):
Sweden looked like it had solved the puzzle, but then
came its biggest test. Beginning in the late twentieth century
and accelerating over two decades, Sweden experienced levels of immigration
unlike anything in its modern history. The country became far
more culturally diverse than it had been for most of
its history. But Sweden's welfare state had been built during
(22:01):
a time of extraordinary cultural cohesion. Now the country had
people with different languages, different traditions, and far more varied beliefs.
Since Sweden has experienced rising fiscal costs, integration challenges, declining
social trust, and growing political polarization, pressures that have tested
public confidence in the model. But one thing is clear.
(22:24):
The Swedish experiment wasn't simply about capitalism or socialism. It
was also about something we'd seen before, community trust, shared expectations,
a shared culture and a shared heritage. The same questions
that confronted a hutteright colony of one hundred and fifty
people were now confronting a nation of millions. And Sweden
(22:47):
wasn't the only Nordic country feeling these types of pressures. Denmark, Norway,
Finland had all followed a similar path and later encountered
the same strains on their social welfare state. These Nordic countries,
the Democratic Socialists typically highlight, began with markets, then added
more government. China would attempt the opposite.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
In nineteen forty nine, after decades of civil war, foreign invasion,
rural poverty, and political collapse, Malseedong proclaimed the People's Republic
of China. Private industry was nationalized, agriculture was collectivised. Markets
gave way to central planning. The state would decide what
was produced, where it was produced, and how it would
(23:32):
be distributed. But the experiment came at a terrible cost.
The Chinese Communist Party attempted to force hundreds of millions
of farmers into vast people's communes and rapidly transformed China
into an industrial power. Instead, agriculture production collapsed, Famine followed
tens of millions died. Then came China's Cultural Revolution, a
(23:55):
decade of political chaos that disrupted education, government, and economic life.
By the time Mao died in Ni eighteen seventy six,
the communist parties still controlled China, but the Red Dragon
remained desperately poor. Two years later, the country's new leader,
Dang Chaoping, made a surprising decision. He would not surrender
(24:17):
political control, but he would begin surrendering economic control. Farm
families were allowed to keep and sell more of what
they were producing. Private businesses began to appear, Foreign companies
were invited in special economic zones were created, Prices increasingly
reflected supply and demand. China remained a one party communist state,
(24:38):
but its economy began operating less like communism. The results
transformed the world. Hundreds of millions escaped extreme poverty, Factories multiplied,
cities expanded. China became one of the largest economies on Earth. Ironically,
China's greatest economic success began only after it loosened central planning.
(25:03):
So is China proof that communism has worked?
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Licorice? Licorice? Where art thou licorice? If you listen to
red pilled America, you know that I love licorice, and
there is no licorice in America better than the delicious,
gourmet licorice made by the Licorice Guy. The Licorice Guy
is simply the best. What sets their licorice apart is
its flavor and freshness. They have a great selection of
(25:29):
flavors to choose from, like red blue, raspberry, black, and
green apple, just to name a few. The freshness of
the Licorice Guy is unlike anything you've ever tasted in
licorice before. Seriously, if you haven't tried licorice from the
Licorice Guy yet, then you ain't living life right. Trust me,
you will not regret it. It's time to dump that
store bought liquorice but so hard it'll break your teeth,
(25:50):
and get yourself the soft, fresh stuff from the Licorice Guy.
What I also love about the Liquorice Guy is that
it's an American family owned business. It's made right here
in the beautiful US of A. We are big proponents
of buying American and supporting American workers. Right now, Red
Pilled America listeners get fifteen percent off when they enter
(26:10):
RPA fifteen at checkout. Visit licoriceguide dot com and enter
RPA fifteen at checkout. That's licoriceguide dot com. They ship daily,
treat yourself and those you love, and taste the difference.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Do you want to hear Red Pilled America stories ad free?
Then become a backstage subscriber. Just log onto Redpilled America
dot com and click join in the topmenu. Join today
and help us save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Welcome back to Red Pilled America.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
So is China proof that communism has worked?
Speaker 5 (26:45):
The answer is no.
Speaker 4 (26:47):
Karl Marx would likely have looked at modern China or
Sweden and proclaimed, this is not communism. In Marx's communist system,
there is no room for a stock market, billionaires, privately
owned corporations, private accumulation of capital, wage labor, inheritance, entrepreneurs,
or large wealth inequity. The goal of Marx's communism is
(27:09):
to eliminate all of those, yet every single one is
found in modern China, Sweden, and the other Nordic countries.
Marx once described communism with the famous phrase from each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Sound familiar, That's exactly how the Hutterites have described their
(27:30):
lives for nearly five centuries.
Speaker 6 (27:33):
Do things through one another. If one is sick, take
care of them. You can't work, let somebody else do it.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Hutter Ights live in a classless communal culture. Individuals don't
own property, There is no wage labor. They literally live
by Karl Marx's highest tenant. One of the longest lasting
communal societies in history had already existed for hundreds of
years before Karl Marx published a communist manifesto, Yet Marx
never mentioned them. Why is that. Perhaps it's because the
(28:04):
Hutterights directly undermined his communist project. Marxists or socialists or
communists aren't concerned with transitioning one hundred and fifty people
into their ideal system. It's concerned with coercing one hundred
and fifty million people. The hutter Rights and every other
successful communal living community contradicts that goal. They show that
(28:25):
communal living may work at a scale of a few hundred,
but at any larger scale it tends to collapse. Perhaps
that helps explain why the Hutterights rarely appear in Marxist arguments.
Their success proves communal ownership is possible, but the scale
is severely limited. However, it's not only the left ignoring
(28:45):
the Hutterites. The anti communist right does it too, and
perhaps that's because they complicate their narrative as well.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
We're now at a fork in.
Speaker 5 (28:53):
The road where if we continue where the Democratic Party
wants to take us, and that is into socialism, socialism
is godless.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
So is communists ever worked. After looking at five centuries
of experiments, one thing becomes clear. The communal living of
communism has worked, but only under very specific conditions. Communal
living has been tried many times throughout history, and over
those many experiments, the same qualities keep emerging. Communal living
(29:22):
works when participation is voluntary, the community is kept small,
members share deep religious or ideological beliefs, and perhaps most importantly,
trust must be high. If all of these qualities aren't present,
history has shown that communal living fails, and the moment
you try to scale it to the size of a town, city,
(29:42):
or nation, it eventually collapses. And this underscores the issue
with those pushing socialism in America. Karl Marx saw socialism
as the bridge to communism. Eventually, workers would become conscious
of their exploitation, overthrow the capitalist class and seize control.
That period is what Marx envisioned as socialism. He believed
(30:05):
that socialism would succeed so completely that economic classes would
disappear and coercive government would gradually wither away, leaving his
final tenet from each according to his ability, to each
according to his need. Ironically, the people who came closest
to living Karl Marx's most famous principle weren't Marxist at all.
(30:25):
They were sixteenth century Christians. But history is unambiguous. Every
communal living system collapses at any scale larger than a
few hundred people. So an activists openly call for the
socialist reconstruction of America, you should take them seriously and
ask whether they truly understand the historical limits of the
(30:46):
system they want to build.
Speaker 5 (30:48):
The new socialist government will take possession of all the
existing capitalists banks and create one people's development Bank. The
electoral college would be abolished.
Speaker 4 (30:59):
Redfield America's an iHeartRadio original podcast its owner, produced by
Patrick Carrecci and me Adriana Portez for inform ventures. To
listen to our entire archive of episodes, ad free, visit
Redpilldamerica dot com and click join in the topmenu. Thanks
for listening,
Hosts And Creators
Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com