Thanks for posting this article from Salon. It never ceases to amaze me how people intentionally remain so ignorant of reality. The Holodomor in the Ukraine, has for years been touted as a mere accident of collectivization. In fact, it was the intentional genocide of 25% of the Ukrainian population (over 8 million men, women, and children) ordered by Stalin and personally supervised by the “great reformer” Nikita Khrushchev. I challenge anyone to read THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM, written by former believers in communism...It details the deaths of the over 100 million people exterminated by communist systems beginning with Lenin and extending through the regimes of Mao, Pol-pot, Chiochescu, Ho Chi Min, Castro, and many throughout Eastern Europe, Africa, and Central America. When Reagan called it the Evil Empire, he got it so right.
I also recommend Gulag by Anne Applebaum. Not worthy for a Pulitzer, and the author did little to amplify the evil of the Gulag system. It does show the utter destruction of the prisoners' souls and humanity.
Add to the reading list MAO, The Unknown Story by Jung Chang. It goes into great detail, not only about Mao's moral depravity, but also his willingness to sacrifice as many Chinese as it took for him to maintain power.
The problem with this Salon author is that in his opinion he excuses all examples of communism as being untrue to Marx, and condemns every problem with capitalism in the next breath. The systems under which we live will never be pure and are subject to the forces of human nature. It takes an exceeding poor understanding of human nature to think that communism will every work, because collectivism doesn't reward hard work. Collectivism rewards just enough work to not get noticed.