Still not the same as living in excess, though. You are justifying Engel's being exploitative to his own workers, while he himself knew it was essentially thef

Still not the same as living in excess, though. You are justifying Engel's being exploitative to his own workers, while he himself knew it was essentially theft, according to their own theories. What could justify such theft? Well, "entertainment". He didn't choose to send that money to the International to promote systemic change. Nonono, he willingly chose to spend it on his own pleasures to the detriment of the people working for him. At least according to his own theories. So either Engels himself was immoral, or communism doesn't have any moral superiority over capitalism. See, you can choose whether that argument is ad hominem or generally applicable. :D This is the whole reason they needed a revolution. If communism was truly a superior form of economic organization, then it wouldn't matter if it was applied to whole societies or smaller groups. In other words, a company organized by communist principles would be more competitive than a company organized purely by naked capitalism. You can't get people on board in evolutionary manner, if you yourself can't get organized by these principles. If your own company can't be communist and survive, why would it work on a scale of a whole country or the whole world? This is why they needed it to be violent and irreversible. It's a massive swindle to get power and it was thought out. It boggles my mind, that people devalue legitimate left thought by staning charlatans. But people also voted for Trump because he is "a man of the people", so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.