That Day by Day cartoon reminds me of a private meeting I had in 1986 with top KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky about a year after he was exfiltrated from Moscow by MI6.

We talked about what Gorbachev was trying to do at that time to reform Communism, not least his campaign to cut Russians’ massive vodka consumption to make the Soviet economy more effective.

Gordievsky said that Gorbachev utterly misunderstood the problems. He really believed that the Soviet economy was like a car whose only problem was a badly running engine: if it stopped running on vodka and tried running on petrol, the Engine of Socialism would whir into action and propel it off into a bright future.

"In other words," I said, "Gorbachev believes in witchcraft?"

"Exactly – he believes in witchcraft!"

Which takes us back to John Galt.

The point about Collectivism is that it assumes that the fuel of disciplined creativity which runs society is like milk from a cow which can be milked greedily without limit.

It assumes witchcraft.

And as the cow finally keels over, exhausted and dying, the ensuing starvation is never the fault of the people who have flogged it to death.