[ChicasCams]

(Let me preface this by saying that I've been impressed by some -far from all- of Marx's observations, but not by any state that has tried to put them into practice. I don't have anything for or against Marxist ideology; it just doesn't interest me as its concept of liberation is different from mine.)


There are age and gender heirarchies built into the Sangha system described in the Pali Canon, and though a limited number and type of personal possessions are allowed for monks/nuns, other property is held in common.

Even so, I can't see off the top of my head how the similarities would go much further than that. It sounds like a false analogy, in that Buddhism and Marxism are vastly more different than similar.

Marxism is a mixture of theories about history and economics, not personal liberation. The individual is irrelevant in Marxism, the subjective perspective is absolute in Buddhism. One pledges unwavering loyalty to the State or the Party in Marxism for the welfare of the State/Party, one takes refuge in the Triple Gem as an aid to one's own development and the general welfare.

It seems to me that if I kept going, I could easily come up with a longer list of dissimilarities, but am hard-pressed to come up with more similarities.

That's a problem with letting one's bias color one's rationality. One is tempted to rely on logical fallacies and nice-sounding rhetoric, rather than meticulous analysis of data or phenomena. That is, a biased person starts with the favored conclusion and then works backwards to come up with supporting arguments, often cobbling together unrelated facts.

A careful thinker would start with a question, much like Siddhartha did, and accept whatever best answered the question or best solved the problem, building supporting arguments step-by-step along the way to the conclusion. The conclusion is then well defended by a coherent argument instead of merely convincing, feel-good rhetoric.

Of course, I could be wrong. ^^