I can’t help but be bemused as well as amused at the willingness of so many people, even leftists, to conclude the Cold War is over and capitalism has prevailed.  Such a view exposes a decidedly restricted view of history and a failure to note the stages through which mankind has evolved throughout the centuries.  As originally constituted humanity lived in primitive communal societies in which the means of Production, Distribution, and Exchange were commonly owned and private ownership was virtually non-existent (Witness native Americans--Indians--and the absence of deeds, titles, bills of sale, consignments, fences, boundaries, property laws, etc.).  Private ownership in the form of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism did not even appear to challenge this arrangement, so public ownership--i.e, no ownership--won round one by default.
         As soon as the productive forces advanced to the point where they were able to generate a surplus, however, class warfare erupted resulting in victory by the artificial and experimental successive private property systems of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism.  Score round two for the exploiting property owners.
 The third major turning point occurred in the first half of the 20th century in which a 1917 Socialist Revolution led to the victory of public ownership in the Soviet Union and other nations throughout the world.  Score round three for those favoring the abolishment of exploitation and a return to the original relationships that existed between man and man.
         Seven decades of external assaults and internal subversion culminated in the 1991 overthrow of social ownership throughout most of the socialist world giving rise to the victorious reascendancy of private ownership--capitalism--in round 4.
         Because class struggle, which is only the Cold War in another guise, is an unavoidable concomitant of all systems in which private ownership dominates, mankind is now involved in round 5 which can only result in another return to the socioeconomic relationships with which man initiated his journey eons ago.  Innumerable and interminable struggles will ultimately give rise to we, us, and all again superceding  I, me, and mine.  The basic roots from which mankind sprung, roots that can never be destroyed but only suppressed, will again generate beautiful flowers and flagrant smells as the cold winter remorphs into another warm spring.  Those who doubt the validity of this scenario need only “stIck around.”  The best is yet to come, but unfortunately, so is its antecedent--the worst.