For what it's worth, and I haven't really been following the discussion, I believe I cannot be considered a communist because I do not believe in the two major tenets at the base of communism: the inherent goodness of man, and the inherent equality of humankind.
...Equal rights? Yay, for everyone. Equality? Nay.
Well said. I'm more of an FDR capitalist (without the depression-era gimmicks) but to each their own.
there are several common justifications for pay discrepancies from doctor to ditch digger
<crosses fingers that the metaphors don't mix or seem too straw... long teaching day>
one:
return on financial investment. the doctor has probably invested $100,000 in education, including Medical school. the high wage reflects the value added to his/her eight-hour day by that training.
ditch digger brings no apparent value added, where geologist or Doctor of Mines gets more for shovelling soil as a reflection of their return on investment.
two:
return on specialization time investment. the full route to Med school reflects a barrier to entry as an M.D.. Can't get the white coat (and wage) without paying your dues with more than a 18 years of education, in many cases more than 5 years of Med School on top of University. brain surgeons are not easily substitutable with joe off the street, because of this long investment in specialized knowledge.
ditch digger may require some training past elementary school, but for the most part, the barrier to entry is nonexistant short of health and safety concerns. ditch digger is easily substitutable by joe off the street and therefore does not justify a wage which represents value for the scarce commodity of specialized training.
three:
societal valuation of service. brain surgeon's work might actually save lives, which is worth what?
ditch digger's work generally does not result in the power to defer death (highway crews, gas pipe avoidance, and slope engineering notwithstanding).
clearly some societies peg the relative wage of various jobs differently, and discussions of "what's x worth" will sound different in many places. valuation of service is one of the major challenges for the argument "equal pay for work of equal value" because society views certain jobs as deserving of more, often due to responsibilities/risks/rewards/replacement cost.
why do pilots make more than stewardesses?
an untrained/evil stewardess can ruin a NY wardrobe.
an untrained/evil pilot can ruin a NY skyline.
pilot training, drug testing, and certification are costs that we 'subsidize' to ensure planes land safely, and we might be 'valuing' the responibility for the lives of the passengers, whereas the stewardess is more responsible for their comfort.
should factory workers make more than teachers or nurses? should cops and firemen get the same wage as mcdonalds staff? i say no... risk more, reward more. responsibilities more, reward more. replacement cost more, reward more.
replacement cost is another analytical mode which is gaining new dimensions with the rise of robotics. factory worker may be interchangeable with technology. 10 man ditch digging crew may be interchangeable with one man+backhoe. brain surgeon isn't (yet).
i've shaken my head a few times after hearing some of the different societal valuations in other cultures (Filipino women making more as maids in HK than when they were doctors back in the Philippines), but the prospect of some "equivalency committee" rewriting the wage rates seems a larger nightmare
i could probably explain the above better, or with more formal terminology (scarcity, substitutability, etc), but just finished eight hours of specialized work for less than the brain surgeon and more than the ditch digger.
Marx, following on from Hegel's dialectic philosophy (the belief that all things were essentially the sum of two parts), attempted to provide an understanding of humanity by reducing human history to dialectical materialism (the ?philosophy of Marxism? - which boils down to the belief that societal an historical change comes from class struggle). I agree that this is an oversimplification in many ways, but I fail to see how it ?inherently leads to totalitarianism?. Also, are you sure you know what
If you have followed philosophy since Hegel, particularly in France (as your post would seem to want to indicate) then you would understand the critiques of dialectical thought . . . . particularly the strain of anti-dialectical thinking that is motivated by an ethics of anti-totalization and anti-totalitarianism
Much of these thinkers (Foucault, Delueze, Derrida, Rorty, Arrendt) started as 'leftists' and still maintain a strong socially consciouse agenda, and yet they see the reduction of the "Real' into the 'Rational ("the Real is the Rational"-Hegel) as being tantamont to putting shackles on Being
the same is true of Marx's 'turning Hegel upside-down' and grounding his dialectic not so much on 'Idea' as on Material . . . it leads to a totalitarianism because it grounds the essence of Being in a fixed and quantifiable Concept.
Also, many of these thinkers asked the militant Marxists about the Gulags while they were still happening and the Maoists and CP members acted as if blind to their existence . . .
which is exactly the problem with this kind of essentialist social philosophy --what it can't account for it will round up and try to make dissappear.
which is exactly the problem with this kind of essentialist social philosophy -- what it can't account for it will round up and try to make disappear
I see the logic behind this, and am aware of some of the shortcomings that have been identified in Marx (and Hegel's) attempts to explain the world (although I can't pretend to be overly familiar with postmodernist / deconstructionist theory)...but I still don't see how totalitarianism is inherent to Marxism as described by Marx. Surely the failure of the "Marxist" states lay in the fact that synthesis did not actually occur? One ruling class was simply replaced with another (the dialectic was inverted again?)...
For what it's worth, and I haven't really been following the discussion, I believe I cannot be considered a communist because I do not believe in the two major tenets at the base of communism: the inherent goodness of man, and the inherent equality of humankind.
The first: I do not believe that people are inherently good. Many will say that society creates bad edges to something internally good. I say no, some people are and will always be rotten. I have no proof for this. It is something I believe. It is not something that provides for an ideal outlook on life. It is, as with all things I believe, subject to deletion if proven incorrect.
The second: I do not think man is equal (with the notable exception of pigs, who are obviously more equal). Man is just not equal. Some people were born to lead, many people were born to follow, and then there's that few who where born for no apparent reason. I do not believe in equality. Equal rights? Yay, for everyone. Equality? Nay. I chuckle when I see malinformed feminists strive for equality. Their struggle will not end until they no longer have healthy breasts, but have a penis dangling instead (and maybe some man-tits).
The question if all people should be rewarded equally for similar labour is a harder one. I for one think (though be it with great difficulty, myself being college educated, and therefore desiring to earn a little more than your basic conveyor belt flunkie) a doctor should not be making plenty more than a blue collar worker, at least, to the degree that they work the same hours. Free market disagrees with me. Offer and demand: many blue collar workers, few doctors, who do YOU think'll make more? This is one of the most ingrained concepts of free market thinking, so ingrained that many do not even realise this as a concept subject to change anymore. It has, for many, become a fixed law of the physical world. Ask your friends, your parents, why does a doctor make more dough than a factory worker, and look at the frowns, the myriad replies, the inconsistency among them. Then try to find why a doctor sits at a desk eight hours, a factory worker is about eight hours, and one takes home 50 bucks, the other takes home 800 bucks, or whatever.
I have the impression, albeit vague, that socialism is better suited to tackle these issues.
The job of doctors is harder that you imagine, it's not just sitting at a desk. Doctors have a lot more responsabilities of any blue collar : they are in charge of the healt of many people. Failure can lead to dangerous future and worse, to death.
Doctors studies are long and not so easy. I know only one people, who have suceed this studies and who was before only a agriculture worker at the prize of a tremendeous amount of work to be admit. This people his my friend and his an exception. After sixty years of work, he is now a plastic surgeon (as i am). It's a bright guy and i doubt that many blue collars could have done what he did.
I dont know what a doctor should be paid, but i can said that , if doctors where paid the same level as a blue collar, i would leave the job immedialty and most of my friends and colleagues too. I wonder what high qualities doctors should replace us for such salaries ?
Doctors hare so much paid that there is not enough of them in France, and we are obliged to import them from foreigns (read north africans) countries. Their qualitie of life is so high that nobody want to be general practicionners in rural aeras anymore.
there are several common justifications for pay discrepancies from doctor to ditch digger
<crosses fingers that the metaphors don't mix or seem too straw... long teaching day>
Well, that's all alright curiousuburb, but it is telling that you do not seem to be able to cut loose from the free-market thinking that is really at the bottom of this: because it is harder to become a doctor, they get more money. Again scarcity results in high prices.
Also, to deal with the fact that students invest more to become a doctor, you could work out a system of paying students, as other workers for working/studying eight hours a day. Then their education would finally be regarded as what it really is: work. In any case, the education system in my country doesn't really allow for the statement you make (it being rather cheap and heavily funded).
The truble with people who constantly state how "marxism" can never work, is their blindness to how no ideology has ever worked in a pure form.
Many of the good things we have in society today come from marxist and socialist ideas. Some even come from facist, like how state sponsored kindergardens for everybody was first introduced in Norway during the Nazi-occupation.
We are all products of a mix of ideological thoughs. Some of our concepts of freedom come from anarchists like Bakunin, others from capitalist thinking.
The evil in the world has been done in all names. Including communism, democracy and free trade.
The more important question would be, rather than does marxism work or not;
The truble with people who constantly state how "marxism" can never work, is their blindness to how no ideology has ever worked in a pure form.
I don't remember having addressed the ?can never work? part, it so happens that no Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, or any other related regime, ever achieved anything else than dictatorial police-states with huge inequality between the small ruling Nomenklatura and the miserable masses under its yoke.
Quote:
Many of the good things we have in society today come from marxist and socialist ideas. Some even come from fascist, like how state sponsored kindergardens for everybody was first introduced in Norway during the Nazi-occupation.
That universal state-funded Kindergarten were introduced to Norway durinbg the Nazi occupation doesn't make universal state-funded Kindergarten inherently Nazi.
Motorways, superhighways, interstates, are no more inherently Fascist or Nazi because Germany and Italy were the first countries to build nationwide, state-funded networks of Autobahnen or austostrade.
Modern representative democracy, in itself, is not an ideology, although some ideologies (Marxism not among them) have integrated it.
Moderated capitalism, in itself, is not an ideology, although some ideologies have also integrated it.
The various strains of Marxism are ideologies, and the official ideologies of states (most of them now gone) dedicated to implement these ideologies, as such they excluded any form of either democracy or capitalism. The kind of of modern democratic moderate capitalist states (most of you are so fortunate to inhabit) do not have official ideologies, and as such afford Marxism room to participate in the political life.
A greatly appreciated difference.
?Rien de tel que d'être un Marxiste (ou communiste, ou Maoïste) dans un pays qui ne l'est pas?.
As for the oft made claim (not addressing any one of you specifically), that ?oh! the ideology in itself is soo good but it was the humans who failed and/or strayed from the True Path?? is a pathetically silly one, self-deluding oneself to blame the fallibilty of the puny humans while keeping believing in the supreme ideology's immune pristine pertinence.
Some devout religious people make similar claims about their respective religions.
no Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, or any other related regime, ever achieved anything else than dictatorial police-states with huge inequality between the small ruling Nomenklatura and the miserable masses under its yoke.
But a state where huge inequality exists between the ruling classes and the masses is by definition not a Marxist state, be it the USSR under Kruschev or the USA under Bush.
Quote:
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
As for the oft made claim (not addressing any one of you specifically), that "oh! the ideology in itself is soo good but it was the humans who failed and/or strayed from the True Path?" is a pathetically silly one, self-deluding oneself to blame the fallibilty of the puny humans while keeping believing in the supreme ideology's immune pristine pertinence.
I think that you are both right and wrong here...I agree that anyone who subscribes to a particular ideology to the exclusion of all else for ever is deluding themselves, but it can?t be denied that people often interpret basically good ideas pretty badly. How else did Christ's 'be excellent to each other' message lead to the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the bombing of abortion clinics or the picketing of gay people's funerals by the Landover Baptist Church?
But a state where huge inequality exists between the ruling classes and the masses is by definition not a Marxist state, be it the USSR under Kruschev or the USA under Bush.
It's whether the model of organisation of a state is according to Marxist principles which makes a state Marxist, not the extent in said state, of the gulf of inequality between the ruling classes and the ruled masses. The USSR was ruled according to some such principles, notably that of the party representing the general will of the proletariat of which it was a dictatorship, as was each and every other state rightfully claiming the ?Marxist? moniker.
The extent of said inequality, as outcome of the Marxist state's policies, in relation with the outcome stated as desired by that state, may be one way of measuring whether it was actually successful or not.
Of course, one could indulge in some doctrinaires' bickering in which every Marxist is condemned as ?not truly Marxist? by every other Marxist.
Quote:
I think that you are both right and wrong here...I agree that anyone who subscribes to a particular ideology to the exclusion of all else for ever is deluding themselves, but it can?t be denied that people often interpret basically good ideas pretty badly. How else did Christ's 'be excellent to each other' message lead to the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the bombing of abortion clinics or the picketing of gay people's funerals by the Landover Baptist Church?
People, of course will often tend to misinterpret religious as well as ideological principles. But it is far too easy to dismiss every horrid effect of a set of such principles as solely the misinterpretation due to humans being fallible (a condition to which said hallowed priciples are deemed immune to or at least very very resilient).
The sum total of a religion with a rich, diverse, and intricate history (in the case you referred to, Christianity), is far more than a short paraphrasing of just one saying attributed to the figure revered by that religion.
Now back to Marxism.
Things like the edification of a repressive totalitarian state, violent coups as a valid and commendable way to attain power, violent repression of every counter-revolutionary group (otherwise known as political opposition) as valid and commendable way of keeping power, military expansionism, obviouly inefficacious economic planning, and complete disregard of the popular will (as opposed to the ?general will? claimed to be held by the party), might be seen by some reasonable minds (well, by me at least) as unlikely to result in a relatively prosperous, peaceful, and humane society. However these things were seen by all known variants of Marxist ideology as the unsavoury perhaps, but nonetheless necessary steps to get there, they were not some freak accidents.
The means Marxism proposed to get to its stated ultimate ends are as much part of the ideology as said ends themselves.
Comments
Originally posted by der Kopf
For what it's worth, and I haven't really been following the discussion, I believe I cannot be considered a communist because I do not believe in the two major tenets at the base of communism: the inherent goodness of man, and the inherent equality of humankind.
...Equal rights? Yay, for everyone. Equality? Nay.
Well said. I'm more of an FDR capitalist (without the depression-era gimmicks) but to each their own.
<crosses fingers that the metaphors don't mix or seem too straw... long teaching day>
one:
return on financial investment. the doctor has probably invested $100,000 in education, including Medical school. the high wage reflects the value added to his/her eight-hour day by that training.
ditch digger brings no apparent value added, where geologist or Doctor of Mines gets more for shovelling soil as a reflection of their return on investment.
two:
return on specialization time investment. the full route to Med school reflects a barrier to entry as an M.D.. Can't get the white coat (and wage) without paying your dues with more than a 18 years of education, in many cases more than 5 years of Med School on top of University. brain surgeons are not easily substitutable with joe off the street, because of this long investment in specialized knowledge.
ditch digger may require some training past elementary school, but for the most part, the barrier to entry is nonexistant short of health and safety concerns. ditch digger is easily substitutable by joe off the street and therefore does not justify a wage which represents value for the scarce commodity of specialized training.
three:
societal valuation of service. brain surgeon's work might actually save lives, which is worth what?
ditch digger's work generally does not result in the power to defer death (highway crews, gas pipe avoidance, and slope engineering notwithstanding).
clearly some societies peg the relative wage of various jobs differently, and discussions of "what's x worth" will sound different in many places. valuation of service is one of the major challenges for the argument "equal pay for work of equal value" because society views certain jobs as deserving of more, often due to responsibilities/risks/rewards/replacement cost.
why do pilots make more than stewardesses?
an untrained/evil stewardess can ruin a NY wardrobe.
an untrained/evil pilot can ruin a NY skyline.
pilot training, drug testing, and certification are costs that we 'subsidize' to ensure planes land safely, and we might be 'valuing' the responibility for the lives of the passengers, whereas the stewardess is more responsible for their comfort.
should factory workers make more than teachers or nurses? should cops and firemen get the same wage as mcdonalds staff? i say no... risk more, reward more. responsibilities more, reward more. replacement cost more, reward more.
replacement cost is another analytical mode which is gaining new dimensions with the rise of robotics. factory worker may be interchangeable with technology. 10 man ditch digging crew may be interchangeable with one man+backhoe. brain surgeon isn't (yet).
i've shaken my head a few times after hearing some of the different societal valuations in other cultures (Filipino women making more as maids in HK than when they were doctors back in the Philippines), but the prospect of some "equivalency committee" rewriting the wage rates seems a larger nightmare
i could probably explain the above better, or with more formal terminology (scarcity, substitutability, etc), but just finished eight hours of specialized work for less than the brain surgeon and more than the ditch digger.
Originally posted by kneelbeforezod
Marx, following on from Hegel's dialectic philosophy (the belief that all things were essentially the sum of two parts), attempted to provide an understanding of humanity by reducing human history to dialectical materialism (the ?philosophy of Marxism? - which boils down to the belief that societal an historical change comes from class struggle). I agree that this is an oversimplification in many ways, but I fail to see how it ?inherently leads to totalitarianism?. Also, are you sure you know what
If you have followed philosophy since Hegel, particularly in France (as your post would seem to want to indicate) then you would understand the critiques of dialectical thought . . . . particularly the strain of anti-dialectical thinking that is motivated by an ethics of anti-totalization and anti-totalitarianism
Much of these thinkers (Foucault, Delueze, Derrida, Rorty, Arrendt) started as 'leftists' and still maintain a strong socially consciouse agenda, and yet they see the reduction of the "Real' into the 'Rational ("the Real is the Rational"-Hegel) as being tantamont to putting shackles on Being
the same is true of Marx's 'turning Hegel upside-down' and grounding his dialectic not so much on 'Idea' as on Material . . . it leads to a totalitarianism because it grounds the essence of Being in a fixed and quantifiable Concept.
Also, many of these thinkers asked the militant Marxists about the Gulags while they were still happening and the Maoists and CP members acted as if blind to their existence . . .
which is exactly the problem with this kind of essentialist social philosophy --what it can't account for it will round up and try to make dissappear.
Originally posted by pfflam
which is exactly the problem with this kind of essentialist social philosophy -- what it can't account for it will round up and try to make disappear
I see the logic behind this, and am aware of some of the shortcomings that have been identified in Marx (and Hegel's) attempts to explain the world (although I can't pretend to be overly familiar with postmodernist / deconstructionist theory)...but I still don't see how totalitarianism is inherent to Marxism as described by Marx. Surely the failure of the "Marxist" states lay in the fact that synthesis did not actually occur? One ruling class was simply replaced with another (the dialectic was inverted again?)...
Originally posted by der Kopf
For what it's worth, and I haven't really been following the discussion, I believe I cannot be considered a communist because I do not believe in the two major tenets at the base of communism: the inherent goodness of man, and the inherent equality of humankind.
The first: I do not believe that people are inherently good. Many will say that society creates bad edges to something internally good. I say no, some people are and will always be rotten. I have no proof for this. It is something I believe. It is not something that provides for an ideal outlook on life. It is, as with all things I believe, subject to deletion if proven incorrect.
The second: I do not think man is equal (with the notable exception of pigs, who are obviously more equal). Man is just not equal. Some people were born to lead, many people were born to follow, and then there's that few who where born for no apparent reason. I do not believe in equality. Equal rights? Yay, for everyone. Equality? Nay. I chuckle when I see malinformed feminists strive for equality. Their struggle will not end until they no longer have healthy breasts, but have a penis dangling instead (and maybe some man-tits).
The question if all people should be rewarded equally for similar labour is a harder one. I for one think (though be it with great difficulty, myself being college educated, and therefore desiring to earn a little more than your basic conveyor belt flunkie) a doctor should not be making plenty more than a blue collar worker, at least, to the degree that they work the same hours. Free market disagrees with me. Offer and demand: many blue collar workers, few doctors, who do YOU think'll make more? This is one of the most ingrained concepts of free market thinking, so ingrained that many do not even realise this as a concept subject to change anymore. It has, for many, become a fixed law of the physical world. Ask your friends, your parents, why does a doctor make more dough than a factory worker, and look at the frowns, the myriad replies, the inconsistency among them. Then try to find why a doctor sits at a desk eight hours, a factory worker is about eight hours, and one takes home 50 bucks, the other takes home 800 bucks, or whatever.
I have the impression, albeit vague, that socialism is better suited to tackle these issues.
The job of doctors is harder that you imagine, it's not just sitting at a desk. Doctors have a lot more responsabilities of any blue collar : they are in charge of the healt of many people. Failure can lead to dangerous future and worse, to death.
Doctors studies are long and not so easy. I know only one people, who have suceed this studies and who was before only a agriculture worker at the prize of a tremendeous amount of work to be admit. This people his my friend and his an exception. After sixty years of work, he is now a plastic surgeon (as i am). It's a bright guy and i doubt that many blue collars could have done what he did.
I dont know what a doctor should be paid, but i can said that , if doctors where paid the same level as a blue collar, i would leave the job immedialty and most of my friends and colleagues too. I wonder what high qualities doctors should replace us for such salaries ?
Doctors hare so much paid that there is not enough of them in France, and we are obliged to import them from foreigns (read north africans) countries. Their qualitie of life is so high that nobody want to be general practicionners in rural aeras anymore.
Originally posted by curiousuburb
there are several common justifications for pay discrepancies from doctor to ditch digger
<crosses fingers that the metaphors don't mix or seem too straw... long teaching day>
Well, that's all alright curiousuburb, but it is telling that you do not seem to be able to cut loose from the free-market thinking that is really at the bottom of this: because it is harder to become a doctor, they get more money. Again scarcity results in high prices.
Also, to deal with the fact that students invest more to become a doctor, you could work out a system of paying students, as other workers for working/studying eight hours a day. Then their education would finally be regarded as what it really is: work. In any case, the education system in my country doesn't really allow for the statement you make (it being rather cheap and heavily funded).
Many of the good things we have in society today come from marxist and socialist ideas. Some even come from facist, like how state sponsored kindergardens for everybody was first introduced in Norway during the Nazi-occupation.
We are all products of a mix of ideological thoughs. Some of our concepts of freedom come from anarchists like Bakunin, others from capitalist thinking.
The evil in the world has been done in all names. Including communism, democracy and free trade.
The more important question would be, rather than does marxism work or not;
Do we want a different world? And is it possible?
The truble with people who constantly state how "marxism" can never work, is their blindness to how no ideology has ever worked in a pure form.
I don't remember having addressed the ?can never work? part, it so happens that no Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, or any other related regime, ever achieved anything else than dictatorial police-states with huge inequality between the small ruling Nomenklatura and the miserable masses under its yoke.
That universal state-funded Kindergarten were introduced to Norway durinbg the Nazi occupation doesn't make universal state-funded Kindergarten inherently Nazi.
Motorways, superhighways, interstates, are no more inherently Fascist or Nazi because Germany and Italy were the first countries to build nationwide, state-funded networks of Autobahnen or austostrade.
Modern representative democracy, in itself, is not an ideology, although some ideologies (Marxism not among them) have integrated it.
Moderated capitalism, in itself, is not an ideology, although some ideologies have also integrated it.
The various strains of Marxism are ideologies, and the official ideologies of states (most of them now gone) dedicated to implement these ideologies, as such they excluded any form of either democracy or capitalism. The kind of of modern democratic moderate capitalist states (most of you are so fortunate to inhabit) do not have official ideologies, and as such afford Marxism room to participate in the political life.
A greatly appreciated difference.
?Rien de tel que d'être un Marxiste (ou communiste, ou Maoïste) dans un pays qui ne l'est pas?.
As for the oft made claim (not addressing any one of you specifically), that ?oh! the ideology in itself is soo good but it was the humans who failed and/or strayed from the True Path?? is a pathetically silly one, self-deluding oneself to blame the fallibilty of the puny humans while keeping believing in the supreme ideology's immune pristine pertinence.
Some devout religious people make similar claims about their respective religions.
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
no Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, or any other related regime, ever achieved anything else than dictatorial police-states with huge inequality between the small ruling Nomenklatura and the miserable masses under its yoke.
But a state where huge inequality exists between the ruling classes and the masses is by definition not a Marxist state, be it the USSR under Kruschev or the USA under Bush.
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
As for the oft made claim (not addressing any one of you specifically), that "oh! the ideology in itself is soo good but it was the humans who failed and/or strayed from the True Path?" is a pathetically silly one, self-deluding oneself to blame the fallibilty of the puny humans while keeping believing in the supreme ideology's immune pristine pertinence.
I think that you are both right and wrong here...I agree that anyone who subscribes to a particular ideology to the exclusion of all else for ever is deluding themselves, but it can?t be denied that people often interpret basically good ideas pretty badly. How else did Christ's 'be excellent to each other' message lead to the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the bombing of abortion clinics or the picketing of gay people's funerals by the Landover Baptist Church?
Originally posted by kneelbeforezod
But a state where huge inequality exists between the ruling classes and the masses is by definition not a Marxist state, be it the USSR under Kruschev or the USA under Bush.
It's whether the model of organisation of a state is according to Marxist principles which makes a state Marxist, not the extent in said state, of the gulf of inequality between the ruling classes and the ruled masses. The USSR was ruled according to some such principles, notably that of the party representing the general will of the proletariat of which it was a dictatorship, as was each and every other state rightfully claiming the ?Marxist? moniker.
The extent of said inequality, as outcome of the Marxist state's policies, in relation with the outcome stated as desired by that state, may be one way of measuring whether it was actually successful or not.
Of course, one could indulge in some doctrinaires' bickering in which every Marxist is condemned as ?not truly Marxist? by every other Marxist.
I think that you are both right and wrong here...I agree that anyone who subscribes to a particular ideology to the exclusion of all else for ever is deluding themselves, but it can?t be denied that people often interpret basically good ideas pretty badly. How else did Christ's 'be excellent to each other' message lead to the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the bombing of abortion clinics or the picketing of gay people's funerals by the Landover Baptist Church?
People, of course will often tend to misinterpret religious as well as ideological principles. But it is far too easy to dismiss every horrid effect of a set of such principles as solely the misinterpretation due to humans being fallible (a condition to which said hallowed priciples are deemed immune to or at least very very resilient).
The sum total of a religion with a rich, diverse, and intricate history (in the case you referred to, Christianity), is far more than a short paraphrasing of just one saying attributed to the figure revered by that religion.
Now back to Marxism.
Things like the edification of a repressive totalitarian state, violent coups as a valid and commendable way to attain power, violent repression of every counter-revolutionary group (otherwise known as political opposition) as valid and commendable way of keeping power, military expansionism, obviouly inefficacious economic planning, and complete disregard of the popular will (as opposed to the ?general will? claimed to be held by the party), might be seen by some reasonable minds (well, by me at least) as unlikely to result in a relatively prosperous, peaceful, and humane society. However these things were seen by all known variants of Marxist ideology as the unsavoury perhaps, but nonetheless necessary steps to get there, they were not some freak accidents.
The means Marxism proposed to get to its stated ultimate ends are as much part of the ideology as said ends themselves.