Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic

dimensions of our lives. I'm your host, Richard Wolfe. Today's program is going to be partly

something I've wanted to do for a long time, partly something that is coming back into the

public awareness, and finally, something that many of you have asked me to do. I'm going to try to give you an overview of what the

word, the concept, and the social movement called communism is all about. And it may be different,

probably will be, from what you might have thought that word means.

So let's begin at the very beginning.

What is communism?

Mostly, for most of human history that this word and this idea have circulated, I think

it's fair to say it has been a utopian dream, an ideal, a notion that the human

community, and notice please the same root, commun, community, communism, that the human

community could function in a mutually respectful, mutually honest, mutually nurturant way as an idealized

community, in which what everybody contributed was what they knew best, loved to do, felt passionate

about, and where everyone received from the

community, both physical and material, but also spiritual, benefits, consumables, means of both a

physical and mental life.

Communism was a generic idea that this sort of community would be valuable in terms of

where you live, valuable in terms of where you work, and valuable as a way to link up with other people,

no matter what the particular activities you engaged in.

Which is why communistic communities, in this sense, have long existed for thousands of years. I'm going to give you just a few examples.

I remember once traveling through France and noticing as I entered a village

that it used to be called, and many of them still are called, communes.

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