Communism

What were the roots of communism? How did it come to dominate half the world for most of the twentieth century? What caused the sudden collapse in the 1990s? Did the reality ever match the ideal or was it ever and always hollow?
This book that covers both the concept and the practice of communism. The unthinking equation of the practice of the Soviet bloc regimes with "communism" has completely discredited the idea itself and has contributed to the sterility and narrowness of contemporary political debate in the West. Enough time has elapsed from the extraordinary collapse of the USSR in 1991 to allow for a reappraisal of the historical roots of communism as a concept, and to appraise critically the experience of communism in the twentieth century.