Why Communism Failed

This presentation gives the reasons why the communist societies established by utopian socialists fail based on the real life experiences of the New Harmony community that was established in Indiana in 1825 by Robert Owen.

No experiment is perfect, least of all a social experiment. The New Harmony community seemed to have sincerely attempted to create a community based on grass roots socialist principles of the day. They implement to a greater or lesser extent each of the criteria of a communist society. The community used "labour notes", rather than entirely free exchange, regular currency being prohibited.

Unlike the anarchist societies that emerged during conflicts in Europe and the Ukraine, the New Harmony experiment was not destroyed by reactionary forces. It imploded due to irreconcilable differences of opinion because the foundational principles of.their society were not objective.

The New Harmony Community was one of a number of socialist projects aimed at creating a communist utopia, according to Wikipedia:
"Between 1825 and 1830 more than a dozen such colonies were established in the United States, inspired by the ideas of Robert Owen. All of these met with economic failure and rapid disestablishment within one or a comparatively few years."