It’s important to understand that pure communism is the utopia that Marx dreamed up.  Socialism is a way to get to that fictitious utopia.  Fascism is an alternative.  Socialism is the state owning everything.  Fascism is the state controlling everything.  Both are very similar, and products of leftism.  They are variations of collectivism.  I prefer the term statism because it’s rarely one or the other.  It’s more accurate.

Marx tried to distinguish his ideology from the previous ones.  Marx wasn’t the first one to come up with these absurd ideas.  He called the others “utopians,” but his version was “scientific.”  The utopia had the same basic ideas.  He didn’t claim the earth would be imported to the Sahara, earth would be a uniform warm temperature, and eliminate small talk—these were some claims by Fourier—but he made ridiculous claims too.

These utopians claim that communism is secular.  This is complete nonsense.  Whatever name they refer to it as, demands people worship the state.  Statism is a religion.  There is nothing secular about it.  The state seeks to replace God.  Nietzsche is often quoted out of context, but this is what he was talking about when he said “God is dead.”  He was pointing out this would lead to the rise of nihilism, and socialism would cost many human lives.

These ideas didn’t come from the masses.  They first originated with the intellectuals and were spread from there.  It was pushed by those who made their living from this nonsense.  Then, further pushed by people who were fooled by it.  The masses didn’t realize they were spreading a poisonous ideology.  Marx may not have come up with these ideas, but he was the first to call openly for a holocaust.  Hitler got that from Marx.

Marx is a person who pushed ideas.  Many of the terms used today aren’t very different.  Almost all of them mean: statism.  The state not only owns or controls much or everything, but seeks to become God.  They might say their plan is secular, but it’s very far from that.  Statism is a dangerous ideology that has had horrendous—to put it nicely—results.  The only way to human flourishing is to respect property rights, and statism doesn’t do that.

References

Ludwig von Mises; Socialism

Erick von Kuehnelt-Leddihn; Leftism