It's easy to say it failed, but if you look at the communist manifesto's actual demands: > the abolition of private property in land and inheritance; introduct

It's easy to say it failed, but if you look at the communist manifesto's actual demands: > the abolition of private property in land and inheritance; introduction of a progressive income tax; confiscation of rebels' property; nationalisation of credit, communication, and transport; expansion and integration of industry and agriculture; enforcement of universal obligation of labour; and provision of universal education and abolition of child labour. Most, if not all of these are now uncontroversial standards in modern states. It's not considered Marxist that we have ended child labor, and we have universal education, or that we have progressive incomes taxes, or that the state regulates credit/communications/transport. In fact these are just common sense practices that we all know would be a disaster if we abandoned them. So we've basically adopted the majority of what the manifesto recommended, and now we're high-fiving and saying Marxism is dead. Capitalism arguably survived because it adopted these.