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Comment by kelseyfrog | Hacker News Reader

Huh, I've read Marx and I dont see the utopianism you're referencing.

What I do see is "classism is the biggest humanitarian crisis of our age," and "solving the class problem will improve people's lives," but no where do I see that non-class problem will cease to exist. People will still fight, get upset, struggle, just not on class terms.

Maybe you read a different set of Marx's writing. Share your reading list if possible.

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This article gives a clear view on Marx’s vs. Engel’s view of Utopianism vs. other utopian socialists [1]. That Marx was not opposed to utopianism per se, but rather when the ideas of the utopia did not come from the proletariat. Yet you’re right in that he was opposed to the view of the other utopian socialist, and there is tension in the views of the different socialist thinkers in that time. (I do disagree on the idea that refusing to propose an ideal negates one from in practice having a utopic vision)

That said my comment was looking mainly at the result of Marxist ideology in practice. In practice millions of lives were lost in an attempt to create an idealized world. Here is a good paper on Stalin’s utopian ideal [2].

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/chro17958.7?searchText=...

[2] https://www.jstor.org/stable/3143688?seq=1

That makes sense. It would be like being able to attribute deaths due to christianity on the bible because there is a geneology of ideas?

I know we are a bit off topic. It seems it would be more like if several prominent followers of Jesus committed mass genocide in their respective countries within a century of his teachings. Stalin is considered Marxist-Leninist.

Oh ok. That makes sense. That's because if someone has an idea that causes a lot of immediate harm then the idea is wrong, but if there is a gap then it is not?

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