Or to put it another way... the best way to describe Marx's ideals is summed up in one TV Show. Star Trek the Next Generation.

The people in Star Trek the Next Generation basically act how Marx wants people to act. There whole society was kinda based around Marxist ideals, by choice, due to World War 3... because the horribleness of World War 3 convinced people to completely change how they thought and acted. Something basically made and maintained by the will of the people, the Federation and other such things existing only because it's needed.

Engles was more of a "Deep Space Nine" type. Such a perfect society can work, but there will some friction still, and you will need star fleet to keep people in line.


While Lenin thought like this but thought they needed to control people even more and that manipulation through propaganda though lies could help the original goal. (Like say... Section 13 or whatever it is in DS9 that acts as a quasi independent secret police)

While Stalin just outright thought he needed control over everything.  Which to "brainwash" an entire population and counter basically everything we know from both nature AND nurture... you probably would.

According to MrStickBall, I'm a communist...

badgenome said: Economic Left/Right: 1.00 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 1.44 Seems like I was further right and more libertarian last time I took it, but it's been a while.

We are brothers, fuck.

No wonder his vision can be described as "utopian".

It's not. Pure socialism (full government control of the economy) is the opposite of pure capitalism (the government doesn't touch the economy - hell, there probably IS no government).

The reason most economies are a mixture of both is that the leaders don't score -10 or +10 on the Political Compass. The moment you go down to even +9 or +8, you're beginning to bring socialist ideas into the equation. At 0, you have a full balance of socialist and capitalist ideas. In the modern world, most Western countries are more capitalist than Socialist, so they end up somewhere in the +3 to +6 range.

Soo uhm what did I win ?

Since you're one of the good people from the bottom left grid, you get this:

Force is the key word. In order to have socialism - where the economy is redistributed - you require force. Not force of one man's ideal, but an ideal that is propigated by the government. That is why you have a direct correlation between the size of government, its responsibilities, its goals, and the size of socialist redistribution. It requires such to redistribute - through laws, through regulations, ect. Its not quite the will of the people as Marx would like (which is a fine goal, really. I mean, that is what every Christian wants - a world where 100% of the population are giving, self-sacrificial people that help everyone out and are fully willing to sell what they have to help those with less which happened throughout the book of Acts). Of course, in praxis, we find the realities to be different when initiated at a larger scale level. Thus the atrocities of communist states.

You could have a 'pure socialistic state' without requiring government, but it would likely come from the lower-right quadrant - the capitalist/libertarian, whereby the people voluntarily redistribute income based on the needs of society, while the government plays no part in coercion. Of course, that may be as crazy an ideal as Marx :-p

Didn't Marx say that religion was the opiate of the masses?

And capitalism is against the "pure socialistic state", as capitalism doresn't imply redistributing income based on "the needs of society". In pure comminism people work together for the betterment of society/the communty etc., sort of like a bee hive, or an ant farm, while capitalists/libertarians from the bottom right would advocate for a 'every man for himself" or "dog eat dog" type of attitude, similar to the selfish philosophy of Ayn Rand (something that's quite far from what Marx wanted).