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Major L
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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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Me and my sociologist fiancé are both communists... but we are not tankies. I wonder if there is any correlation in that.
Marxism did begin as a purely scientific study, before Soviets mutated it into an ideology
Where did you get that idea? Marx actively built the first international, how is that purely scientific study?
You are incorrect. Marx felt strongly that his ideas should be used politically to change the state of the world. Aspects of Marxism can be applied in a scientific/apolitical way, but this is not what it was initially developed for.
Marx still wouldn't agree with turning his work into an ideology to be followed. Besides, scientific doesn't mean apolitical.
I'm not sure what you understand by the word "ideology"
The part where Marxism was basically treated as a religion in the USSR. You weren't required to read or understand anything, as long as you follow The Party.
Every society has ideology, you just don't notice the dominant one for the same reason a fish doesn't notice water. Ideology is just a framework for understanding the world, everyone has some such framework and if you think you don't it's only because you haven't examined it or considered other perspectives.
Western countries have had anti-communist purges, and as for treating ideology as religion, well...
As for this idea that "you don't have to read or understand anything" that's patently untrue. Literacy is consistently one of the top priorities of communists, and if you look at actual data as opposed to just saying whatever thought happens to enter your head, it backs that up.
Or as one anti-communist put it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_socialism
Why is theory so dense??? I cant even comprehend the Wikipedia summary of this lmao (im not asking for a rephrase).
Sometimes we use technical jargon to say something that we later realize is fairly simple. It might be obvious in retrospect, but still require thousands of years to understand, during which time the technical language is essential.
Anyway, other times we just need new words for new concepts. You can’t contemplate what you cannot name. Even the smartest humans are stupid by default and ordinary language is outstripped by our intellectual ambitions.
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/why-socialism/
Don't worry about labels yet, start here.
If you're from the US, much of the vocabulary is unfamiliar because education on these concepts is intentionally avoided in public schools. I can't imagine why...
Which words are those?
"Communism"
"Socialism"
"Anarchism"
To name a few
I learned all of those from my small town USA education.
Then I learned about them in social studies classes in middle school.
Then I learned about the American form of democracy in a civics class. Which is where my understanding of its failures were formed, even before it had the ability to show my adult self
Then I was allowed to choose a number of elective courses in high school where I studied European history and post enlightenment political theory.
We even covered Marx and Engels.
Weird.
Those aren't what I'm referring to. The comment I was replying to was about the theory density of this wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_socialism
I'm referring to the vocabulary contained there.
Yeah but, which part exactly should I not understand because of my American education?
So you’re not talking about Marx and Engels, but you are somehow talking about socialism AND scientific socialism no less?
You wanna take some time to gather your thoughts first?
Either you're quite condescending or there is some confusion here. I'm going to assume it's the latter; if it's the former, well... life is an adventure.
I'm not referring to you in my original comment^1^, but to the person to whose comment I'm responding.
The vocabulary I said I wasn't referring to is the list of terms provided by Prole^2^ in response to your question^3^. My original comment was offhand, not intended to be a detailed analysis, so their response was assumptive. I'm familiar with the user and they're good people, so I'm sure it was in good faith.
To answer your original question, here are specific terms in the Wikipedia article^4^ I would suggest are not covered in US public education with sufficient depth or frequency to give the average citizen the functional vocabulary necessary to fully understand the article without significant further reading. I.e., most Americans would be unable to provide even a basic (correct) definition if asked.
Materialism
Historical materialism
Dialectical materialism
Utopian socialism
Scientific government/Technocracy(though briefly described in line)
Classical liberalism
Marxism
And by extension...
Scientific socialism
The United States ranks 36th in the world for population literacy, with 54% of Americans reading below a 6th-grade proficiency level and 21% being functionally illiterate^5^, so I'm pretty comfortable with my suggestion but am willing to be convinced otherwise.
Same reason any philosophy gets up its own ass when it goes on for long enough.
New concepts require new words. They also relate to each other in interesting ways, which have names, too.
Alternatively, if I ever wanted to assert something more complicated than the weather I’d need to re-build the entire conceptual framework from scratch using small words and pictures.