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by sunstone 1636 days ago
Not surprisingly Wilson's comment of "Great idea, wrong species." was about communism for which it was very apt (communism doesn't scale for humans), not socialism. Socialism works well in more than a few very successful countries around the world.
1 comments
pdonis 1636 days ago
> Not surprisingly Wilson's comment of "Great idea, wrong species." was about communism for which it was very apt (communism doesn't scale for humans), not socialism.

Wilson specifically used the term "socialism". The full quote is given here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson#The_Ants,_1990

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ced 1636 days ago
"Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species"

It seems that what Marx called socialism is basically communism.

By 1888, Marxists employed socialism in place of communism as the latter had come to be considered an old-fashioned synonym for socialism. It was not until after the Bolshevik Revolution that socialism was appropriated by Vladimir Lenin to mean a stage between capitalism and communism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

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pdonis 1636 days ago
> It seems that what Marx called socialism is basically communism.

Many people (including me) would say that there isn't any meaningful difference between the two, whether we are talking about Marx's time or any time since. I don't know whether Wilson thought there was any meaningful difference between the two; as far as I know nobody asked him.

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sunstone 1636 days ago
The quote is,"Wilson said in reference to ants "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species". Which seems a bit odd as Karl Marx was a communist and not a socialist, as far as I know. It's unlikely that Wilson was confused about this two terms so I expect it's just and honest mistake that's been continually repeated with out any one going back to the origininal sources.
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pdonis 1636 days ago
> Which seems a bit odd as Karl Marx was a communist and not a socialist, as far as I know.

The two terms were more or less synonymous when Marx wrote. Later ideologues have attempted to differentiate them; whether or not they have succeeded is a matter of opinion.

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