I got Eco-Marxism and I like, that the quiz prominently features questions on the environmental crisis. But I feel like, there is not much on reproductive labor or on how imperialism and racism should be addressed. These areas of struggle are every bit as central and contested as the environment. The quiz is leaning towards a white, western, cis-male perspective, but it should be possible to add a few questions and categories to address that. Maybe inspired by Marxist Feminism, Black Marxism, Afro-Marxist traditions, decolonial struggle and anti-imperialist praxis.

A lot of those are open ended questions being forced into a 1 dimensional spectrum of agree or disagree, and/or have weakly defined terms whose meaning are not consistent between individuals.

I wanted to provide just a few examples but got carried away, so here’s every question I personally found some problem with:

Society is chiefly driven by individuals and ideas.

Define “chiefly driven.” I could argue that it is by definition because society is made up of individuals so that’s the only driving force, like how ocean currents are the convergent result of molecular interactions because that’s what the ocean is made of. But I suspect they’re trying to get at the idea that convergent actions of groups of individuals can’t be accurately modeled by studying the behavior of an individual in isolation. Both are valid IMO.

Bureaucracy and inefficiency are always inherent in centrally planned economies.

What does it mean to be bureaucratic or inefficient?

Marriage is a patriarchal social construct that should be phased out.

It’s fine to have marriage if that’s what both consenting adults want, but it shouldn’t be the only option. On the other hand, things like common law partner legislation can get messy when it automatically applies to people living together that fulfill some arbitrary criteria, regardless of whether they actually intend to be partners. An alternative thought is that romance and reproduction between consenting adults should be a purely social phenomenon, not a legal one, and the government should not get involved whatsoever.

Industrialized farming practices must be abolished even if it leads to lower outputs.

Depends on what you’re farming and which industrial process you’re using. Something like a vertical hydroponics facility should be treated differently from spraying synthetic fertilizer and pesticides on fields should be treated differently from factory animal farming, etc. “Industrialized farming practices” is too general for a single agree/disagree answer.

Local planners, rather than national planners, are more efficient at running a planned economy.

I don’t know of any socialist or capitalist country that only has one and not both.

Prisons are oppressive and antiquated institutions that need to be abolished.

Define “prison.” You can assume it’s like a Soviet gulag, or a Western prison, or something else, and your assumption influences your answer because you likely have different opinions of them.

It is acceptable for humanity to suffer to some notable extent in order to preserve the natural ecosystem.

Define “suffer.” Are we culling overpopulated regions? Are we denying Indigenous groups their cultural practices such as whaling or seal hunting? Are we limiting recreation like camping and hiking for the sake of ecological protection? How you interpret suffering significantly influences your answer.

A highly centralized planned economy is not socialism but rather state capitalism.

Depends on how it’s implemented and what it’s inspired by, and it’s not a binary “socialism” or “state capitalism.” Just saying “centralized planned economy” with no further context is insufficient to make a decision.

A centrally planned economy based around computers is a concept worth investigating.

Again, computers or no computers is not the important part here. What are the actual policies and structure of the economy in question? I doubt there are any economies today, socialist or capitalist, that doesn’t use computers.

The negative consequences of a revolution generally outweigh the advantages.

There’s no way to generalize negative or positive societal consequences without clarifying what types you’re referring to. What specific ones are we talking about? A revolution impacts every single facet of society and vague questions like these are not helpful. It’s like asking if a mainframe is objectively “better” than a smartphone, you can’t reduce it to a single answer and it depends on your priorities.

Socialist organizations are generally better off when organized loosely and decentrally.

Define “better off.” There are advantages and disadvantages to both decentralization and centralization.

Any socialist country should be dedicated to exporting their ideology abroad.

Define “export abroad.” Are we printing pamphlets and mailing them over or are we going full America and doing regime changes on countries we disagree with? Your interpretation will determine your answer more than your actual opinions on any given form of ideological export.

Measures to address environmental issues are unacceptable if they result in significant decreases in production and quality of life.

What kinds of production? What aspects of quality of life? To what kinds of people? For how long? Are we reducing just the quality of life of people already with the highest quality of life down to some middle level while bring everyone lower than that level up to it? Or are we flat rate dropping everyone’s quality of life by some amount, meaning the people already most disadvantaged will be disproportionately affected? There’s a difference between preventing a developing country from obtaining advancements that the developed world has, and banning cars meaning you have to use public transit or banning plastic meaning you have to use less convenient/durable organic polymers.

Some small scale destruction of nature is acceptable if it notably benefits humanity.

Again, define “destruction of nature.” Nature isn’t the opposite to human built environment. We and everything we do are part of nature by definition so it as a label unhelpful for determining if some action is ecologically beneficial or detrimental or whether we “should” do it. Also, this question honestly gives me the vibe that the author thinks densifying a suburb of single family houses into a vertical city is “destruction of nature” simply because there’s less green per square meter.

Anyway, I tried my best to answer truthfully and apparently I’m an Eco-Marxist.

You know what, pretty accurate. I seriously “got into” socialism during my time in university studying ecology.

I’ve never even heard of “council communism” tbh, but then again I’m only just learning about all this. Looking up the meaning and stuff for “democratic centralism” made me realize how little I actually know, but in a positive way if that makes sense?

Fun quiz, thanks for sharing. I got Left-Wing Nationalism which is weird because I wouldn’t say I’m a nationalist at all 😅

For some of these questions, I felt I lacked a sufficient understanding to provide a confident answer. That led to more neutral/unsure answers than I would have preferred.

Another “Eco-Marxist” reporting for duty 🫡

I’m a Marxist-Leninist, here are my results.

This test isn’t to tell you what you are, but instead what the test maker thinks you are. What you are is ultimately up to you. If you or anyone else wants to get started on reading Marxist-Leninist theory, I made an introductory reading list.

Fair enough, some of the questions were kind of ambiguous tho

Some people were right, apparently I am indeed a council communist.

Idc thou I am a still communist at the end

I’m a vegan anarchist so this is pretty accurate.

Seems about right I think, there were a few questions that were phrased in a way that I couldn’t easily agree or disagree with, but I suppose that might have been the point.

The quiz nailed the fact that I’m an anarcho-communist. I think my numbers “suffered” a bit because there are questions where I personally hold beliefs about which choices are easiest to implement, but I also believe that a collective of reasonable people could make some other choice and implement it in a liberatory way. In particular, I’m not against planning certain segments of the economy (e.g. electrical power distribution) as long as we do it with the continuous consent of the people and we don’t kill people/collectives who go their own way. Similarly, I’m pretty staunchly anti-markets, but I’m not closed to the idea that reasonable people could live happy lives under genuinely anarchistic market socialism if for some reason a community chooses to continuously consent to that mode of living.

@[email protected] This is me: Eco-Anarchists unite.

Here are mine. I don’t think about (or know?) what ideology i’d adhere to, but i’m not sure it matters much. Imo it’s my views/opinions of the concepts themselves that are important, not a big-tent name of an ideology.

I am still not comfortable enough with my grasp of marxism/anarchism/etc (still reading theory to understand them all. I’ve been progressing well) to the point i could answer properly to these questions so it’s probably not reflective of my actual views,

Nonetheless i of course get this is just a fun little online test, nothing serious ¯\_(ツ)_/¯