Marx’s bicentenary: Great ideas we condemn to failure

It’s some years, maybe a generation, since the gently provocative goad — Why is America not socialist? — animated dinner parties of certain, well-choreographed, kaftan-wearing kind.

Beef tournedos rossini, baked alaska, and Matthews rosé enjoyed in a fog of cigarette smoke (Gitanes if anyone was a member of a dramsoc) were happy lubricants of the debate that inspired Michael Cimino’s great 1980 film Heaven’s Gate.