Dems and GOP are fun to bash, but so are Libertarians...

[eppie]

One of that particular Marx's habits was that he always smoked a large cigar. I'm pretty sure that large cigars like that are only made in Cuba, which is of course Ground Zero for communism in the western hemisphere.

No it isn't. In the US there used to be a pretty big communist movement in the times that there were practically no labour laws and when unions were coming up. Of course these movements have been succesfully eradicated by capitalist hawks. This was all long before times of Che guevara and castro.

These are parts of western history that (obviously) don't get a lot of attention in history books.
Another good example is Italy in WW2, where the resistance (partizans) were largely comprised of communists. After the the US (+allies) liberated italy they have been waging a short (few day) war in the trieste area i believe, where the partigiani were in charge out of fear of too much communist influence.
In Italy, as in the biggest part of western europe, communists who were the largest part of the resistance movement in many countries, have subsequently effectively been kept out of power by capitalist forces. Which led to the strange, sad situation that people who were in the restistance against the fascist germans and collaborators were discriminated againts, and many people who had leading roles in the nazi movement were after WW2 still in leading roles in society.

A similar thing could also be seen in Russia after the collapse of the wall. Many billionaire oil barons used to be pretty important in the communist party during the cold war period as well.