Redstate

You are explaining what happens when communism fails, which it has a 100% track record of doing.  The theory (Marx's at least) is far different.  He certainly wasn't a fan of totalitarianism, and was in no way in favor of dispensable human beings.  In fact, that was what drove his criticism of capitalism.  He despised seeing lower class people treated as commodities.

Your are describing the reality of China, not the theory of communism.

Communism is, Marx explains, "the positive transcendence of private property, or human self-estrangement, and therefore the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man... the complete return of man to himself as a social being..." (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).

What does the return of man to himself as a social being mean? "None of the supposed rights of man, therefore, go beyond the egoistic man, man as he is, as a member of civil society; that is, an individual separated from the community, withdrawn into himself, wholly preoccupied with his private interest and acting in accordance with his private caprice... " What Marx means is that individual human liberties are worthless as they prevent man from realizing his true freedom - only possible in the context of society or collective.

like he is saying communism is less self-absorbed individuals and more concerned about others.  Doesn't seem evil to me.  The only personal liberty he wanted to limit is the ability to gain power and control.  Once again, I say it is far too optimistic to ever work (laughable even), but what Marx had in mind was certainly not the evil, nationalistic regime you potray it to be.  His goal was a state where government doesn't exist, not a state where you are controlled by it.

I agree that his goal did not necessarily involve the crazed product of the soviets quest for power. But I did not claim that he imagined an all powerful government. I was talking about the totalitarianism of the society.

In Marx's society any "selfish" or "egocentric" deviation from what is perceived the common good would be declared unsociable behavior and thus prohibited eventually. After all, every human must partake in this society without regard for their individual desires. That means that individual freedoms would cease to exist.

Unfortunately society at large is too chaotic to make sure that everyone is partaking in this great new order, so a committee would have to be set up to process and enforce the purity of new freedoms. Not everyone on this committee would be satisfied with the performance of other less intelligent or less dedicated to perfection committee members and thus hierarchy would be established. That might be just one of the many possible practical effects of a marxist utopia but your individual freedoms would cease to exist long before reality set in.

Marx tried to construct an understanding of man and the world that essentially began and ended with economics. Since he chose an unreasonable set of constraints to focus on, he wound up with a stunted philosophy that can at best be called incomplete. The only interesting thing I've ever read in Marx is his concern for the aesthetics of productive labor. He makes a big point of the dehumanization that happens when people don't enjoy their work. You might almost think he'd be in favor of the culture of entrepreneurship and vertical de-integration that is rapidly becoming commonplace in today's America.

Now Communism is and has never been other than a technology for controlling societies. It borrows vocabulary from Marx and tries to coalesce around  the absurd idea of "common ownership" of productive assets. But it never ends up doing anything except killing people that don't accept the dogma. Communism is plain evil, and I never fail to be stupefied by America's radicals who want to give it another go. When these blind fools talk about the evils of our society, which while far from perfect is still the best mankind has ever achieved, they defile the deaths of Communism's victims in their hundreds of millions. It's just as brainless, banal and mendacious as Mother Sheehan defiling the memory of her own son. And it also tells you that they won't be averse to breaking a few eggs themselves, which is one of the best reasons to prevent their ever acceding to power.

Lastly about Marx: it's true that two generations of academic intellectuals now have thoroughly internalized his view that life is controlled by forces instead of reason, to the point that they see oppressors and oppression literally everywhere. How sad it must be for these blind mice with PhDs, since simple morality prevents them from doing any oppressing of their own, and yet they can admit no other source of human happiness! But it's also true that they are casting around for an alternative vocabulary to Marx, whom they have long recognized as sterile and empty. When I'm having pipe dreams, I imagine a coming renaissance of academic thought, perhaps around mid-century, rooted in the recovery of an ancient way of seeing that goes beyond simple matters of fact.