Oh but "true Marxism has never been tried", they will retort.

Well, it hasn't. Because humans aren't capable of true Marxism.

(This is not a suggestion to try anyway, nor a suggestion to eliminate humans in order to further any kind of Marxist "ideal")

Maybe, but so they aren't capable of living in a 100% transactional capitalist dystopia. As evidenced by everyone popping neurol (or another coping mechanism) with ever increasing frequency.

There is a huge difference still.

At 3/4 Capitalist, your nation can prosper dramatically. At 3/4 Communist, you will know nothing but suffering and deprivation.

Countries that have gotten closer to a free market orientation have prospered. Singapore, Hong Kong, the United States; all of the success stories of post USSR Europe are stories of market economics winning (including the dramatic example of the Baltics). All of Scandinavia operates via market based economic systems. Germany is a market based economy, not a Socialist economy, and they're the economic dynamo of Europe; the same goes for Britain, and even France (which certainly has a large welfare state, and is a mixed economy but not Socialist). There isn't a single prosperous Socialist nation in the world today. There are dozens of prosperous market based economic systems by contrast (the top several dozen most prosperous economies are dominated by market systems).

Going the other direction, the closer you get to Socialism, the worse things get. And there are obviously limits to the market direction, anarchy does not work (although I'd argue that's not the market direction; market based economies in particular require the rule of law and a government to enforce it).

The only country that can be argued to stand apart from this, even if temporarily, is China. However they're still drifting on the liberalizations of Deng and the benefits it spurred, that is grinding down under Xi. Their situation has worsened as they have headed back toward Socialism (and its inevitable increased authoritarianism) and away from market liberalization.

I completely agree, and I'm sorry if anything in my post suggested otherwise.

My preference is for a social democracy, of the variety sometimes found in Europe.

It would be interesting what Marx would say with the hindsight of observing Soviet capitalism, and how it fundamentally failed to solve the class struggle.

He'd write a bunch of books making excuses for the failings of his approach.

Soviet Capitalism never existed. The Russians barely made any effort at enshrining a just rule of law, protecting individual rights, including protecting property rights.

One of the first things Putin did when he took power is to begin destroying individual rights (so as to bolster the power of the state), which market based economic systems rest upon.

One can point out someone's observations without subscribing to their ideology.

Not sure why some commenters here saw the name Marx and immediately jumped to the conclusion it was an endorsement of Marxism.