What is communism? An unattainable utopia? A pure fantasy world? Is communism the abolition of private ownership of the means of production? Is it the dictatorship of the proletariat? The one-party system? Were the real socialist states communist states, as the bourgeois world has always claimed, and as the self-definition of their political representatives - We are communists - might suggest? Each of these questions, along with many others, can be answered with lengthy treatises. However, one can also approach it as Gérard Thomas has: by recounting the ongoing dreams, desires, and concrete attempts of humanity to make the world more livable, better. The reasons for the failure to realize this dream over millennia are also revealed: often due to external power influences, and just as often due to the mistakes of those who sought to change the world.