The reason Socialism prevails is because it's based in psychology

[ding]

Socialism intentionally denies examination because it is irrational. There is no formal defined dogma of socialism. Instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something good, noble and just: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach. Socialism seeks equality through uniformity and communal ownership Socialism has an extraordinary ability to incite and inflame its adherents and inspire social movements. Socialists dismiss their defeats and ignore their incongruities. They desire big government and use big government to implement their morally relativistic social policies. Socialism is a religion. The religious nature of socialism explains their hostility towards traditional religions which is that of one rival religion over another. Their dogma is based on materialism, primitive instincts, atheism and the deification of man. They see no distinction between good and evil, no morality or any other kind of value, save pleasure. They practice moral relativity, indiscriminate indiscriminateness, multiculturalism, cultural Marxism and normalization of deviance. They worship science but are the first to reject it when it suits their purposes. They can be identified by an external locus of control. Their religious doctrine is abolition of private property, abolition of family, abolition of religion and equality via uniformity and communal ownership. They practice critical theory which is the Cultural Marxist theory to criticize what they do not believe to arrive at what they do believe without ever having to examine what they believe. They confuse critical theory for critical thinking. Critical thinking is the practice of challenging what one does believe to test its validity. Something they never do.

Scientific socialism is entirely rational which is why Americans are discouraged from examining it.

Espouse away, friend. I'd love to hear your calculus of scientific socialism. I'm all ears.

 

[sartre play]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what is possible now compared to what was possible early in our history. our political party's seem to have lost track of what kinds of laws or lack of laws, would best serve the majority of Americans. we would be better served if we examined & discussed what laws need to be enforced & what laws need to be dropped or turned over to local government. to big to fail becomes more of a problem as smaller company's are being gobbled up and choice becomes narrow.

 

[ding]

Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science and nature which effectively says there is nothing but the material world. Communism is based on materialism and that materialism must be based on atheism and the deification of man. It proceeds in almost all its manifestations from the assumption that the basic principles guiding the life of an individual and of mankind in general do not go beyond the satisfaction of material needs or primitive instincts.

Here is an example of what I am speaking of:

"The Communist Party of China (CPC) is letting its members know that the party’s official adherence to militant atheism has not changed; Party members are not allowed to be Christians, or to hold any other religious beliefs. That is the clear message sent by a top Party official in an editorial published on November 14 in the Global Times, the international version of People’s Daily, the official newspaper and mouthpiece of the CPC.

The editorial, written by Zhou Weiqun, chairman of the Committee on Ethnic and Religious Affairs of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, blasted Chinese academics who suggest that Communist Party members can also adhere to any religion. This prohibition against religion has been a “consistently upheld principle” since Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China, declared Zhou. “It’s impossible to have another choice besides the dialectical materialist worldview.”

China’s Communist Party Reaffirms Marxism, Maoism, Atheism

 

[ding]

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what is possible now compared to what was possible early in our history. our political party's seem to have lost track of what kinds of laws or lack of laws, would best serve the majority of Americans. we would be better served if we examined & discussed what laws need to be enforced & what laws need to be dropped or turned over to local government. to big to fail becomes more of a problem as smaller company's are being gobbled up and choice becomes narrow.

 

[Tommy Tainant]

[Q

No, its the law of the jungle. The guy being taxed and the guy receiving it are the same person. Its a safety net that benefits all of us. Under your vision children would starve and the weak would die. Its shite.

What you greedy Libtards call a "safety net" is the pathetic excuse for having the checks for the dipshit welfare queens in this country.

49% of the people aren't even paying into the trillion a year that is collected in income taxes and they are the getting the welfare so don't tell me that the people pay in magically get something out of it because they aren't.

It is your responsibility to take care of your children, not mine. If they don't have enough to eat then it is because their parents are too sorry to provide for their well being.

Besides, you Liberals don't give a shit about children. You advocate the murder of a million American children each year on demand.

You just went full blown there kid. Your life would be impossible to live if it were not for the benefits brought about by taxation.Suck on that for a little while.

 

[regent]

Watching conservatives trying to convince people that the conservative ideology is really liberalism and the liberal ideology is really conservatism, is the most interesting thing on these boards of late. They must have had some luck with their fascism is liberalism thing.

 

[ding]

Watching conservatives trying to convince people that the conservative ideology is really liberalism and the liberal ideology is really conservatism, is the most interesting thing on these boards of late. They must have had some luck with their fascism is liberalism thing.

You do realize the meaning of liberalism has changed, right?

 

[Tehon]

They must have had some luck with their fascism is liberalism thing.

They have been amazingly successful at thoroughly convincing themselves.

 

[Tehon]

Socialism intentionally denies examination because it is irrational. There is no formal defined dogma of socialism. Instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something good, noble and just: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach. Socialism seeks equality through uniformity and communal ownership Socialism has an extraordinary ability to incite and inflame its adherents and inspire social movements. Socialists dismiss their defeats and ignore their incongruities. They desire big government and use big government to implement their morally relativistic social policies. Socialism is a religion. The religious nature of socialism explains their hostility towards traditional religions which is that of one rival religion over another. Their dogma is based on materialism, primitive instincts, atheism and the deification of man. They see no distinction between good and evil, no morality or any other kind of value, save pleasure. They practice moral relativity, indiscriminate indiscriminateness, multiculturalism, cultural Marxism and normalization of deviance. They worship science but are the first to reject it when it suits their purposes. They can be identified by an external locus of control. Their religious doctrine is abolition of private property, abolition of family, abolition of religion and equality via uniformity and communal ownership. They practice critical theory which is the Cultural Marxist theory to criticize what they do not believe to arrive at what they do believe without ever having to examine what they believe. They confuse critical theory for critical thinking. Critical thinking is the practice of challenging what one does believe to test its validity. Something they never do.

Scientific socialism is entirely rational which is why Americans are discouraged from examining it.

Espouse away, friend. I'd love to hear your calculus of scientific socialism. I'm all ears.

The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Chpt. 3)

Scientific socialism isn't a vague rosy notion that can be subjectively applied to society on a whim. It doesn't rest on government dependency nor is it a religion. It is a historical development that arises out of socioeconomic conditions. It arises out of the desire for a more egalitarian society and is made possible by a reorganization of the methods of production and distribution. It is evolution.

 

[ding]

Could you be more vague?

 

[Tehon]

Could you be more vague?

If you are truly curious read Marx.

What you are signifying is that you haven't the foggiest notion of socialist thought, in spite of your proclamations of understanding. You've been indoctrinated son.

 

[regent]

How many types of socialism exist or have existed, Marx's Scientific Socialism is only one type and no nation has ever practiced it. The Soviet Union dropped scientific socialism soon after their revolution and then dropped Marx's communism. The US had forms of socialism as soon as the ink dried on the Constitution and has had socialism ever since. We are as most nations a mixture of economic systems.

 

[ding]

Could you be more vague?

If you are truly curious read Marx.

What you are signifying is that you haven't the foggiest notion of socialist thought, in spite of your proclamations of understanding. You've been indoctrinated son.

Indoctrinated? You mean like the Cultural Marxist who fled Germany for America? You know... the ones that married Freud to Marx to specifically indoctrinate them into socialism? Maybe you've heard the story? When WWI was getting ready to break out, socialists were pissing their pants with glee. They thought the great worker revolution was about to occur. But low and behold, loyalty to country took over and those pussies had to flee to America.

What exactly would you call it when they married behavior science with Marxism to replace love of God, Family and Country with loyalty to state? Sounds like a well planned indoctrination to me. What do you think?

 

[ding]

How many types of socialism exist or have existed, Marx's Scientific Socialism is only one type and no nation has ever practiced it. The Soviet Union dropped scientific socialism soon after their revolution and then dropped Marx's communism. The US had forms of socialism as soon as the ink dried on the Constitution and has had socialism ever since. We are as most nations a mixture of economic systems.

Their behaviors have been embedded in American education system for over four generations.

 

[Tehon]

Could you be more vague?

If you are truly curious read Marx.

What you are signifying is that you haven't the foggiest notion of socialist thought, in spite of your proclamations of understanding. You've been indoctrinated son.

Indoctrinated? You mean like the Cultural Marxist who fled Germany for America? You know... the ones that married Freud to Marx to specifically indoctrinate them into socialism? Maybe you've heard the story? When WWI was getting ready to break out, socialists were pissing their pants with glee. They thought the great worker revolution was about to occur. But low and behold, loyalty to country took over and those pussies had to flee to America.

What exactly would you call it when they married behavior science with Marxism to replace love of God, Family and Country with loyalty to state? Sounds like a well planned indoctrination to me. What do you think?

Yes, indoctrinated. Cultural hegemony.

I'm not familiar with the story you present though I'm not going to question it. Whether it is true or not has no bearing on cultural hegemony here in America.

Americans are culturally indoctrinated with the capitalism. I don't know how this can be denied. It's only common sense.

If you have studied Marx then you certainly understand his critique of the capitalist mode of production and would understand his view of socialism was one that was structured around the reorganization of production, not one that relied on government redistribution of surplus value.

If you didn't know that, it is because you grew up in America and were taught about the wonders of the capitalist system and weren't encouraged to question it. You were Indoctrinated.

 

[ding]

Americans are culturally indoctrinated with the capitalism.

America has taken materialism to the same level of socialism. So much so her long term survival as we know her is in question. You are talking financial models. I am talking behaviors.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

 

[Tehon]

Americans are culturally indoctrinated with the capitalism.

America has taken materialism to the same level of socialism. So much so her long term survival as we know her is in question. You are talking financial models. I am talking behaviors.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

I think you misconstrue Marx's materialist way of understanding historical relationships for materialism, which is clearly a symptom of Western capitalism. It's not the same.

Marx understood that behaviors were determined by the economic model employed by society. That from its base economic model sprung the laws and customs that instruct societal values.

Considering historical shifts in relations of production, most importantly, the shift from feudalist to capitalist production, Marx was not content with Hegel’s theory. He believed that the shift to a capitalist mode of production had sweeping implications for the social structure, culture, institutions, and ideology of society—that it reconfigured the superstructure in drastic ways. He posed instead a “materialist” way of understanding history (“historical materialism”), which is the idea that the material conditions of our existence, what we produce in order to live and how we go about doing so, determines all else in society. Building on this idea, Marx posed a new way of thinking about the relationship between thought and lived reality with his theory of the relationship between base and superstructure.

Understanding Marx's Base and Superstructure

What type of society do you think should have arisen out of an economic system that promotes individual economic self interest as its primary engine?

 

[ding]

Americans are culturally indoctrinated with the capitalism.

America has taken materialism to the same level of socialism. So much so her long term survival as we know her is in question. You are talking financial models. I am talking behaviors.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

I think you misconstrue Marx's materialist way of understanding historical relationships for materialism, which is clearly a symptom of Western capitalism. It's not the same.

Marx understood that behaviors were determined by the economic model employed by society. That from its base economic model sprung the laws and customs that instruct societal values.

Considering historical shifts in relations of production, most importantly, the shift from feudalist to capitalist production, Marx was not content with Hegel’s theory. He believed that the shift to a capitalist mode of production had sweeping implications for the social structure, culture, institutions, and ideology of society—that it reconfigured the superstructure in drastic ways. He posed instead a “materialist” way of understanding history (“historical materialism”), which is the idea that the material conditions of our existence, what we produce in order to live and how we go about doing so, determines all else in society. Building on this idea, Marx posed a new way of thinking about the relationship between thought and lived reality with his theory of the relationship between base and superstructure.

Understanding Marx's Base and Superstructure

What type of society do you think should have arisen out of an economic system that promotes individual economic self interest as its primary engine?

Ummmm... that was an excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I'm pretty sure he understood Marx pretty well.

 

[Tehon]

Americans are culturally indoctrinated with the capitalism.

America has taken materialism to the same level of socialism. So much so her long term survival as we know her is in question. You are talking financial models. I am talking behaviors.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

I think you misconstrue Marx's materialist way of understanding historical relationships for materialism, which is clearly a symptom of Western capitalism. It's not the same.

Marx understood that behaviors were determined by the economic model employed by society. That from its base economic model sprung the laws and customs that instruct societal values.

Considering historical shifts in relations of production, most importantly, the shift from feudalist to capitalist production, Marx was not content with Hegel’s theory. He believed that the shift to a capitalist mode of production had sweeping implications for the social structure, culture, institutions, and ideology of society—that it reconfigured the superstructure in drastic ways. He posed instead a “materialist” way of understanding history (“historical materialism”), which is the idea that the material conditions of our existence, what we produce in order to live and how we go about doing so, determines all else in society. Building on this idea, Marx posed a new way of thinking about the relationship between thought and lived reality with his theory of the relationship between base and superstructure.

Understanding Marx's Base and Superstructure

What type of society do you think should have arisen out of an economic system that promotes individual economic self interest as its primary engine?

Ummmm... that was an excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I'm pretty sure he understood Marx pretty well.

Yes, it seems that he might have reached the same understanding as Marx. What Solzhenitsyn calls "free spiritual development" is akin to what Marx seeks in a more general sense. "The free development of all abilities of the whole person."

Every citizen has been granted the desired freedom and material goods in such quantity and in such quality as to guarantee in theory the achievement of happiness, in the debased sense of the word which has come into being during those same decades. (In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life and the struggle to this end imprint many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to carefully conceal such feelings. This active and tense competition comes to dominate all human thought and does not in the least open a way to free spiritual development.)
Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978


He certainly lays out a case that supports Marxist theory.

Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution.

If one is risen from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: this would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames. (An oil company is legally blameless when it buys up an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to purchase it.)

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take full advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man's noblest impulses.

And it will be simply impossible to bear up to the trials of this threatening century with nothing but the supports of a legalistic structure.

Today's Western society has revealed the inequality between the freedom for good deeds and the freedom for evil deeds. A statesman who wants to achieve something highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; thousands of hasty (and irresponsible) critics cling to him at all times; he is constantly rebuffed by parliament and the press. He has to prove that his every step is well founded and absolutely flawless. Indeed, an outstanding, truly great person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind does not get any chance to assert himself; dozens of traps will be set for him from the beginning. Thus mediocrity triumphs under the guise of democratic restraints.

It is feasible and easy everywhere to undermine administrative power and it has in fact been drastically weakened in all Western countries. The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

 

[Tehon]

Americans are culturally indoctrinated with the capitalism.

America has taken materialism to the same level of socialism. So much so her long term survival as we know her is in question. You are talking financial models. I am talking behaviors.

Subsequently, however, all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even excess, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistic selfishness of the Western approach to the world has reached its peak and the world has found itself in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the celebrated technological achievements of progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the twentieth century's moral poverty, which no one could have imagined even as late as the nineteenth century.

As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism, so that Karl Marx was able to say, in 1844, that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement has proved to be not entirely unreasonable. One does not see the same stones in the foundations of an eroded humanism and of any type of socialism: boundless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility (which under Communist regimes attains the stage of antireligious dictatorship); concentration on social structures with an allegedly scientific approach. (This last is typical of both the Age of Enlightenment and of Marxism.) It is no accident that all of communism's rhetorical vows revolve around Man (with a capital M) and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, moreover, that the current of materialism which is farthest to the left, and is hence the most consistent, always proves to be stronger, more attractive, and victorious. Humanism which has lost its Christian heritage cannot prevail in this competition. Thus during the past centuries and especially in recent decades, as the process became more acute, the alignment of forces was as follows: Liberalism was inevitably pushed aside by radicalism, radicalism had to surrender to socialism, and socialism could not stand up to communism.

Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn -- A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

I think you misconstrue Marx's materialist way of understanding historical relationships for materialism, which is clearly a symptom of Western capitalism. It's not the same.

Marx understood that behaviors were determined by the economic model employed by society. That from its base economic model sprung the laws and customs that instruct societal values.

Considering historical shifts in relations of production, most importantly, the shift from feudalist to capitalist production, Marx was not content with Hegel’s theory. He believed that the shift to a capitalist mode of production had sweeping implications for the social structure, culture, institutions, and ideology of society—that it reconfigured the superstructure in drastic ways. He posed instead a “materialist” way of understanding history (“historical materialism”), which is the idea that the material conditions of our existence, what we produce in order to live and how we go about doing so, determines all else in society. Building on this idea, Marx posed a new way of thinking about the relationship between thought and lived reality with his theory of the relationship between base and superstructure.

Understanding Marx's Base and Superstructure

What type of society do you think should have arisen out of an economic system that promotes individual economic self interest as its primary engine?

Ummmm... that was an excerpt from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I'm pretty sure he understood Marx pretty well.

I wasn't challenging his understanding, I was challenging yours.