Democrat Conspiracy

[Ivan Denisovich]

We'll never run out of ways to compare our political and religious beliefs.  Fundamentally, they're the same type of belief.  A belief about how the world ought to be which only makes sense in face of the fact that it is not.  I doubt that a communist society would be a heavenly one in reality - and certainly not in the ideological world of american christianity.  Would it be an improvement for the lives of many?  Certainly - but that's more a comment on how debased some lives are than how effective the ideology is at governance in practice.

I have no doubt at all that communist society wouldn't be heavenly (assuming heavenly equals good). What's more I doubt that it would be improvement over current system. Remember, there is no state under communism so closest really existing equivalent would be failed state and life in such isn't all that good.

As for russia.  I think we can draw a line between communism, and the effort to sell some other thing -as- communism.  The utilitarian value of peoples desire for what they rightly or wrongly see as a "society of heaven".  Thus... russias failures are it's own, and not communism's..properly.  Same with any random hate preacher that tries to moderate their product in order to appeal to a larger market share by peppering their antimajoritarian views with populist appeals.

Russia or Soviet Union failed on it's own. As for communism it really can't be talked about in this way - I mean saying that something was fault or failure of communism is like saying that something was fault or failure of heaven. Communism is the end goal of followers of Marx thought, or rather of subset of them. If we want to talk about faults and failures then we should talk about both Marxism and Marxism-Leninism, not communism. Communism never was (and can't really be as Trotsky ramblings in my previous post should show) and thus is blameless, though obviously one can argue that belief in possibility of building it was a crime or idiocy.