Alas, the history of communism is littered with failed attempts by communists to be better at capitalism than the capitalists themselves. As Ms. Adamczak argues, this is because most communist criticisms of capitalism take one idealized aspect of capitalist society and pit it against the others, unwittingly perpetuating the framework communism sets out to abolish. This recipe for disaster recurs throughout history, and the only way to stop it is for everyone to learn about the unsuccessful attempts at revolution, so as not to repeat those mistakes in their current struggles. Hence, “Communism for Kids.”

In the vast sea of hogwash that flooded the conservative mediasphere after the book appeared in English, the same talking-point detritus floated to the surface over and over again: The book indoctrinates children with propaganda; it promotes an evil ideology that led to the death of millions; it is published by a prestigious university that should have known better; it is hypocritical, because it costs money; and it is fundamentally anti-American, anti-Christian and anti-family (and by implication, it’s foreign, Jewish and queer). One reviewer even called it the “most dangerous book on economics ever written for kids.”

One hundred percent of these criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of the title, a basic denial of the fact that all commodities cost money in capitalism and a misconceived view of how academic publishing functions. None of this concerns the book’s actual content.

That didn’t stop the internet swarm, the proper expression of digital communication today, as the philosopher Byung-Chul Han puts it. Ms. Adamczak’s original German edition was just called “Communism: A Little Story About How Everything Could Be Different.” In fact, it’s not a children’s book at all, but a book written for everyone in a language that, for the most part, children, too, could understand. The title we chose for the American edition was an elegant way to convey this aspect of the book. There is no propaganda, no brainwashing and no rose-tinted stories of happy-go-lucky communist do-gooders tricking kids into drinking the Marxist Kool-Aid.

When the book first appeared in Germany, which was over a decade ago, there was no such rage. So what is it about the word “communism” that frightens Americans so much from left to right? Did the Red Scare ever end? I think, rather, that in America the fear of the word “communism” is tied to a fear of the word “capitalism,” another no-go word in polite discourse. It’s easy to talk about markets, industry, the middle class, job creators, lean start-ups, globalization and the gig economy, but to identify our entire society as capitalist and to call our economic system capitalism is to hint at the possibility of an alternative organization of life. And that is dangerous, un-American, perhaps even communist.

Naming the problem may be the first step toward curing the illness, but it doesn’t yet tell us how to proceed. For that, we need ideas, experiments and dreams. Is it wise to dream about utopia while living in the dystopia of the present?