I should have specified “private property rights”.
In all historical Communist states (barring Pol Pot’s Cambodia where I’m not sure) people were allowed to have some (often quite significant) private property. Most extensive property restriction I have heard about was in Albania where citizens were prohibited from owning cars. Perhaps some theorists of Communism have suggested that private property should be further curtailed, but even they would hardly oppose people’s right to own personal belongings such as clothes or a toothbrush. Ordinary Communists happily recognise your right to own a house, for example.
I’m trying to get answers to my question quoted above that someone taking the poll would agree on from their own perspective—that they feel is an accurate characterization of their views. And if possible, have people agree with the characterization of other people’s views as well.
Fair enough, if you don’t expect the question understood equally by everybody, it is probably a good question.
Still, I feel that your characterisations are too much based on the assumption that the proponents of all main political ideologies build their opinions around their preferences pertaining to government enforced rights. Granted, almost everybody wants some rights protected by the government, but it seems to me that a e.g. a typical European social democrat gives less attention to whether something is a right or whether it is the government who enforces it, than a typical American libertarian (not sure whether it’s the continent of origin or the political ideology which makes the difference). Perhaps it’s mainly a matter of vocabulary—the more to the left you stand the more you use “solidarity” and “justice” and the less you use “rights” and “enforce”; but saying “the government should enforce rights against encroachment by others, greater material equality, greater social good and greater individual good” sound somehow wrong as a self-described creed of a Communist. A Communist would talk about a harmonic society without exploitation and inequality as a natural state of affairs, not something the government should “enforce”.
In all historical Communist states (barring Pol Pot’s Cambodia where I’m not sure) people were allowed to have some (often quite significant) private property. Most extensive property restriction I have heard about was in Albania where citizens were prohibited from owning cars. Perhaps some theorists of Communism have suggested that private property should be further curtailed, but even they would hardly oppose people’s right to own personal belongings such as clothes or a toothbrush. Ordinary Communists happily recognise your right to own a house, for example.
Fair enough, if you don’t expect the question understood equally by everybody, it is probably a good question.
Still, I feel that your characterisations are too much based on the assumption that the proponents of all main political ideologies build their opinions around their preferences pertaining to government enforced rights. Granted, almost everybody wants some rights protected by the government, but it seems to me that a e.g. a typical European social democrat gives less attention to whether something is a right or whether it is the government who enforces it, than a typical American libertarian (not sure whether it’s the continent of origin or the political ideology which makes the difference). Perhaps it’s mainly a matter of vocabulary—the more to the left you stand the more you use “solidarity” and “justice” and the less you use “rights” and “enforce”; but saying “the government should enforce rights against encroachment by others, greater material equality, greater social good and greater individual good” sound somehow wrong as a self-described creed of a Communist. A Communist would talk about a harmonic society without exploitation and inequality as a natural state of affairs, not something the government should “enforce”.