Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

Attributed to George Carlin, the line reduces a complex political-economic debate to a blunt observation about human attachment to personal property. Its force comes from Carlin’s characteristic skepticism toward utopian systems: it implies that any ideology requiring people to relinquish ownership runs against everyday desires for control, security, and status. Read as comedy, it’s less a rigorous critique of Marxist theory than a jab at the mismatch between abstract ideals and lived human behavior. The joke also hints that consumer culture and the instinct to possess are powerful social facts—strong enough, in Carlin’s view, to derail schemes premised on shared ownership.