Communism and even democratic socialism failed in this country because leaders like Theodore Roosevelt did what was needed to bring the worst abuses of capitalism under control.
For most of a century, the unspoken challenge from the political leadership to business has been, “Deal with us or deal with the Bolsheviks. Your choice.”
This has been such a part of the social landscape that we have seldom paid attention to it, or to the balanced partnership of labor, management, and consumers that developed as a result. Now, though, the airwaves and the net are filled with demagogues and hucksters who assert that no such partnership ever existed, or that it is an immoral intrusion on their liberty if it did.
People will only tolerate so much abuse. Unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism is not a ticket to prosperity, it is a ticket to socialism or worse.