It's a tricky quiz because my answers to a lot of these questions aren't simple enough. This quiz makes sparks when you bump it against nuance. I'll just highlight a few of these, a lot of them didn't sit well with me. A lot of these questions feel like they're "baiting" you for a specific view you don't actually hold. Several questions on the quiz strike me as abstract and half-baked. Honestly screw this test tbh... Too much "Only", too much "Must", this quiz deals in ludicrous absolutes.

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

This question, it is a nothingburger, it's too vague to have any value to the test whatsoever. It could mean literally anything depending on how its framed. Cutting down a hedge that spoils my view is a "small scale destruction of nature". The same argument could be used to justify building a Walmart over a protected wetland. This question compresses trivial gardening and corporate ecological devastation into the same moral bucket. My REAL answer, in real ethics language, is:

“Sometimes limited ecological modification may be necessary but the framing ‘acceptable if it benefits humanity’ is dangerous, underspecified, and historically abused.”

"Foreign officials have no right to dictate policy in another country."?

I reject foreign control over domestic policy, but support external pressure when human rights are violated. Where does that put me? Neutral would understate my conviction, strongly agree implies that foreign officials should NEVER influence another country. Disagree would imply support for dominance, coercive intervention, or global governance overriding nations

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

Loose & decentralized organizations protect values better, but tight & centralized organizations win fights better. There are tradeoffs.

"Revolutionary violence is acceptable as long as the final outcome is positive."

This is a toughie, the problem is this part: “...as long as the final outcome is positive”. The problem is that this assumes three things that do not exist in reality:

1. Completely reliable foresight

2. Objective agreement on “positive”

3. Controlled causality between violence and outcome

History shows that everyone who commits political violence believes the outcome will be positive. Many of the most catastrophic regimes in history have justified their violence with “The final outcome will be good.”. I feel this question is a trick, my key issue is that I believe the question is not asking:

“Is violence ever justified under extreme circumstances?”

It is asking something much more dangerous and much broader:

“Is revolutionary violence acceptable as long as someone believes the final outcome will be positive?” This is blank-check consequentialism which could be used to justify Mass violence, Terror campaigns, Political purges, Civilian casualties and Authoritarian crackdowns to name a few. I hit disagree on this because I will explicitly state that sometimes violence may be tragically necessary, but it is never automatically justified by promised futures or ideological certainty. This rules out "Strongly Disagree" but I also don't necessarily agree either.

"Mass spontaneous actions are more effective than carefully planned actions."

I reject the forced comparison. Treating this as an either/or is bad systems thinking. Spontaneous mass action and careful planning are complementary, not competitors.

"Nationalism and patriotism are impulses that are unacceptable in a socialist society."

This lumps things that are NOT THE SAME together. I reject the idea that all nationalism and patriotism is inherently unacceptable in a socialist society. Blind flag-worship and authoritarian nationalism are toxic, but a critical, value-based patriotism rooted in equality, equity, liberty, and holding a nation accountable to its own best ideals is not only acceptable, it’s often necessary for meaningful change. Loving a country enough to challenge its failures is not the same as excusing its power.

Revolution is the best way of achieving a socialist society.

Three huge problems:

“Revolution” is undefined. Do you mean:

Violent uprising? Mass general strike? Electoral rupture? Legal-constitutional overthrow? Elite collapse under pressure?

These are not the same thing at all.

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

This question is built on fear-framing and absolutism.!

Here are my test results:

Reformist (60.3%) vs Revolutionary (39.7%)

This is Accurate, but for the wrong reasons. I believe this test badly compresses reality.

This one is numerically close, but it misunderstands why. I’m not anti-revolution because I think the system will gently fix itself if we ask nicely. I don’t believe that for a second. I’m skeptical of revolution as a romantic default because history shows over and over that violent rupture is just as likely to midwife a new tyranny as a just society. What I actually believe in is coercive reform via strikes, mass disruption, taxation, seizure through statute, regulatory clamps, and public force that is structural rather than chaotic. This axis treats “revolution” as passion and “reform” as politeness, which is just inaccurate. I don’t want polite. I want effective without becoming monstrous.

Scientific (57.8%) vs Utopian (42.2%)

Accurate

I don’t believe in destiny narratives or historical inevitability. I believe in thermodynamics, logistics, climate models, infrastructure bottlenecks, and failure modes. I don’t think history has a moral arc that saves us by default. If anything, systems rot quietly when they aren’t constrained. My politics are grounded in constraint, not prophecy. I care about what works under pressure, not what sounds righteous on a poster. So many of these damn questions are "ALWAYS" this and "MUST" that.

Decentralist (65%) vs Centralist (35%)

Basically correct. I deeply distrust monoculture power; single spines of authority, single ideologies, single parties, single command centers. They’re fragile, corruptible, and catastrophic when they fail. At the same time, I’m not an anarchist who thinks we can coordinate climate engineering and continental power grids with vibes and community meetings alone. I believe in layered systems: local where possible, centralized where necessary, never unified where it becomes unaccountable.

International (57.1%) vs National (42.9%)

This one is technically right and emotionally wrong. I reject ethno-nationalism and imperial supremacy completely. I also believe planetary ecological coordination is non-negotiable. But I don’t believe belonging, culture, and civic identity should be erased in the name of abstract globalism. I believe in international responsibility and local moral inheritance at the same time. The test treats those as opposites. They’re not.

Party (53.8%) vs Union (46.2%)

This one reads me as “torn,” which is true only if you assume purity is the goal. I don’t trust any single institution to carry the entire weight of social transformation. Parties drift. Unions fracture. Movements exhaust themselves. Dipshits who are part of a union voted for Trump even though he makes actively destructive choices for their way of life at every turn. This test can’t distinguish strategic pluralism from indecision.

Ecological (72.2%) vs Productivist (27.8%)

If anything, this undershoots me. I don’t treat the biosphere as one interest among many. It’s the substrate everything else runs on. Production that destroys the future is a high crime. We need to safeguard our habitable biosphere at any and all costs. I accept that output may fall. I accept that comfort may shrink. Infinite growth is not sustainable in any natural system.

Progressive (85.3%) vs Conservative (14.7%)

This one is obvious and almost too easy to include. Equity, minority protections, gender freedom, movement across borders, disability access, and dismantling inherited hierarchy aren’t “trendy politics” to me—they’re baseline justice in a world that can absolutely afford it even if it pretends it doesn't.

Overall, the label “Democratic Socialism” is not wrong, but it is far too small for what I actually believe. Structurally, this test has a deep problem: it constantly confuses values with mechanisms and mechanisms with outcomes. It uses a constant barrage of absolutist language "must", "only", "always", "inevitable" as if the whole of human history were a simple logic puzzle. It treats ideology like a form of astrology instead of something that has to survive contact with physics, ecology, corruption, human fear, greed, and institutional decay. It cannot represent someone who believes in equality of dignity, equity of outcome, coercion through law rather than violence, decentralization without fragmentation, and global coordination without global absolutism.

And don't get me wrong, I fucking LOVE a good violent fantasy game/movie/etc, it's just rare that such a thing actually goes super well in reality.

But yeah here's my god damn "Here's my facebook personality quiz results :o!" Sorry, this made me weirdly super mad for some reason I'm off my meds today.

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 bringing 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 is 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another "Eco-Marxist" reporting for duty 🫡

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.

No surprises here, just about where I was last time iirc

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

@DylanMc6@lemmy.ml This is me: Eco-Anarchists unite.