Communism is, as we know, an absolute evil. The current dreadful developments (in economy, politics), is nothing but Communism, even if it is presented as Conservatism.

I do not think that the message of the article is particularly useful. It closes understandings that are often cheaply dismissed as communism/socialism.

Generally speaking, I would not say the political spectrum is easy to manipulate. But the current elites became very good in manipulating political labels, and having all politicians in their pockets. They just dominate and own all politics. Their power is that overwhelming though not blatantly, I guess.

Communism, as demonstrated in the 20th century, deserves most of the stereotypical contempt. But increasingly, my suspicion is... the whole project (starting with Lenin, Stalin, Mao) was to demonstrate how terrible the communist ideas are. Yes, the intellectual implication of conspiracy is very unattractive. But when even Chomsky says that Lenin was an anti-labour reactionary even within Russia, those theories that the Russian 1917 revolution (and then the rise of Hitler, World War II - the basic history of the 20th century) was a well financed sham loose quite a bit of ridiculity. So you had those terrible revolutions in Russia (that was not capitalist yet) then China (still backward and stagnating) and some other insignificant countries - but the West Europe and the North America were effectively scared of that. After the WWII, there were a few decades of rather egalitarian social settings, and the Scandinavian models looked exemplary. But then possibly synthetic consequential events started again: stagflation of the 70s, "successes" of the Chicago economic model in Latin America, break down of the Soviet Union. My working look of the last USSR decades became this: the Party was actually working for material hunger and nihilism of the population, demonstration of central planning inefficiencies, all for the benefit of Western (and then later global) intellectual scorn. Excuse me for this shameless paranoia - I just have most fun with it.

My recommendation would be: We know little how key socialist ideas may work. The scientific method (based on Popper's falsifiability) is problematic to apply - especially if large scale efforts were made to counterfeit and obscure empirical evidence, particularly in economics. I wish Important People were more relaxed about allowing variation in social-economic policies - but they know their own drill.