A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism. All the powers of old Europe

have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter. So begins the communist manifesto,

written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Welcome to the rest of this issue

with me, Dominic Sambrook, well known Marxist, and my sidekick, Wishi Washi Brickston,

centrist liberal Tom Holland. Hello, Conrad. Hello, Conrad. So today we're talking about communism,

the great political theory that dominated so much conversation in the late 19th and much

of the 20th centuries. And actually looking back, Tom, when we were kids, communism and capitalism

are locked in this genuine competition, so it seemed for the hearts and minds of millions

of people. I mean, when you survey the world, the map, I can remember those maps from my

kind of childhood, the Soviet Union and all the satellite states, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia,

Poland, Hungary, East Germany and so on. You had in Africa, you had plays like Angola,

Ethiopia, Mozambique, you had Afghanistan, Mongolia, of course, the peoples Republic of China,

which is still technically communist as our Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, but there's been a huge

falling off since then. So do you think communism is gone or is it still with us? I think it's

such a potent idea and it went surprise you didn't know why I think it's a potent idea. I can't

wait for this. I think it has very, very deep roots and maybe we'll come to that. And I think that

the guiding kind of ideal that it embodies, that all of humanity can be liberated and that

all of humanity can share in an equal justice is one that has an obvious appeal. And I guess that

when we talk about communism, we tend to mean the specific form that it has taken in the writings

of Marx and then the way that it's evolved with Lenin and with Mao and through the ideological

war of the 20th century, as you said. But I do absolutely think that China, potentially the

greatest power on the face of the planet, remains a communist state. So it's ridiculous to say that

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