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The running gag, the leftist lie: ‘Socialism has never been tried before’
By D. Parker
Nov. 18, 2025
Does this sound vaguely familiar? It’s the mid-’20s, at the beginning of a new century, and serious young communists are very excited about “new thoughts” and “the coming political age.” So they made their plans over “communistic cups of coffee” for a Utopia in the birthplace of none other than AOC herself.
This sounds like the story of Mamdani the Islamocommie. The violent left like to pretend they’ve always started with a clean sheet of parchment and that in the long mists of time, no one has ever conjured up the scheme of taking property and money from some and using that to buy the votes and loyalty of people.
But this was the 1920s, and this ultimate failure of a Utopia in the Bronx was just another in a long line of experiments in collectivism (communism, fascism, Fabianism, Maoism, socialism, etc.) that prove that it can never work, no matter the conditions.
Perhaps it’s ironic that collectivism and specifically socialism are rooted in North America. The concepts of collectivism can be traced to ancient times, with the example of Plato’s Republic, written 2,400 years ago. Essentially, the story starts here with the book Utopia, published 500 years ago and set in North America, and continues with experiments in collectivism in the first colonies 400 years ago.
But it was 200 years ago that socialism got its spectacular start at consistently failing, in the early part of the 19th century, with what were called the “villages of co-operation.” You can probably guess why the violent left doesn’t want to bring up the 200th anniversary of the first failures of socialism; most recent pieces on the town suspiciously avoid the word “socialism.” Note that most scholars agree that the word “socialist” or “socialism” was first used in 1827. This appeared in a letter in The Co-operative Magazine, London, November 1827, in connection with “villages of co-operation.”
The chief question on this. point, however, between the modern, (or Mill and Malthus) Political Economists, and the Communionists or Socialists, is, whether it is more beneficial that this capital should be individual or in common?
A century ago, before communism and socialism became a bloody, mass-murdering mess, there were numerous articles on what was then the centennial of Robert Owens’s ill-starred communistic colony in Indiana. In a speech in 1914, former president William Taft presented an account of Why Socialism Fails.
“The most notable socialistic experiment, that of Robert Owen, at New Harmony, failed as all socialism must fail,” said Mr. Taft, “because it found no substitute for the motive essential to arouse and make constant human effort that is furnished by the institution of private property and the shaping of reward by competition and natural economic adjustment. [snip]
There were other Owenite experiments, one at Yellow Springs, Ohio; another at Haverstraw, in New York; another at Coxsackie, in the same State, and a third at Canton, Ohio, the Kendal Community. [snip]
The famous Brook Farm at West Roxbury, Mass., was one of these. There were many others, but in ten years or less, they were no more. Another Frenchman, Etienne Cabot, described what he called a voyage in Icaria, which gave his ideal of a community on a communistic and socialistic basis. This led to the attempt to establish a settlement in Texas, another one in Illinois, and a third in Iowa, called Icarian Communities, but they too faded out.
The Red Utopia in the Bronx was an experiment in cooperative housing, with nine cooperative stores and a restaurant, in the 1920s that eventually failed, as always.
Cruel World Shuts Utopian Cafeteria; Creditors Force Meeting Place of Communists to Close ‘for Reorganization.’ bill for coffee and cake Say $1,900 Worth Has Not Been Paid For and Charge Funds Are Diverted to Red Newspapers.
So much for the running gag that is the leftist lie: Socialism has never been tried before. It’s been tried everywhere, including the birthplace of AOC, and it’s never worked in 200 years. That’s a consistent record of failure that the left needs to be ashamed of, once you consider the mass murder and misery that always accompany these socialistic schemes.
The incredible thing is that we’re now seeing those who are truly liberal turn against socialism:
Because socialism, to put it simply, just doesn’t work and has never worked, like Kevin Federline.
I know the kids think that stuff that happened before their appearance on the planet didn’t really happen, but it did. We’ve run this experiment many times, and the results are always obvious. Here’s capitalist South Korea at night from space. Here’s socialist North Korea. Yeah.
In 1990, Venezuela was wealthier than Poland. But then Poland, finally free of Soviet style economics, went all in on capitalism, and now their economy is as big as Japan, and people there have high wages, low inflation, cars, vacations, and homes. Meanwhile, Venezuela traded capitalism for Hugo Chavez’s socialism for the 21st century, which turned out to be like socialism in the last century or any century, a mess. It turned one of Latin America’s richest countries into one of its poorest.
These points have been made on these pages for years, but they haven’t been articulated by those on the other side. That doesn’t bode well for the left, because leftists are imbued with the collectivist ideologies. Where do they go if they reject that?
Where are liberals and former leftists going to go if they realize that one of their core ideologies doesn’t work, and they reject socialism because it has been tried too many times?
D Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, former director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites. Find him on Substack.
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Source: American Thinker
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