I think exDemMom is not as exDem as she thinks.
It is an article of faith among marxists/leftists that Man is malleable and perfectible, the notion first being promoted by 18th Century precursors of Marx, like Rousseau, Saint-Simon, Hegel, and others. If people are malleable and perfectible, then the only reason why they are not currently perfect is because of an imperfect environment. If the environment is made "perfect", though the action of the State, then a society of perfect people will result.
The alternative viewpoint is that people cannot be made perfect by environment.
People may strive to improve, and thus improve themselves within limits. Environments can be improved to allow individuals to reach their potentials. HOWEVER, we reach a point of diminishing returns, where spending ever more money on improving the environment produces ever less increments of improvement in the people targeted.
The alternative viewpoint is that people cannot be made perfect by environment.
To me, the difference between these viewpoints define the essential difference between the Left and the Right. The Left believes that human beings and society can be engineered to "perfection" if only we had the right social programs. Conservatives recognize that people are unequal and flawed, and that no amount of social engineering can erase these innate flaws or inequalities, whether within or between groups.
I have one minor disagreement with your remarks about Marx's precursors, however. While Hegel's philosophy was an inspiration to Marx, his politics definitely were not. Hegel was a supporter of Imperial Prussia and believed that hierarchies of wealth and social class were not only necessary but desirable.
You have put the Jacobin/Marxist/Bolshevik/Nazi day dream in the most favorable light, even though you obviously recognize that it is a false premise for political or social direction. But, in doing so, you give it more respectability, than it actually deserves. The reason people persist in a notion that has been endlessly disproven in the terrible results from policy formulated on that premise, is emotional not rational.
No one who has ever sat in a classroom can really believe--at least in their sub-conscious--in the possibility of equal mental aptitudes. We need to understand the compulsive--that is, neurotic drive--behind the frenzy to pursue equality in a world where there is no equality of potential--why Leftists never learn from the common experiences of mankind. (See Compassion Or Compulsion?)
Why is this important? Because it helps us understand that we are not fighting altruists or idealists, for the most part; but something very different.
William Flax