Do will and would both sound right in the given context as an English speaker to you?
Communism is an ideological and a socialpolitical movement. Its aim is to set up a communist society. This society would/will be based on the common ownership of the means of production and would lack social classes, money, and a state.
Communism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In this article on Wikipedia would is used.
Can anyone explain or answer this?
"Will" is used for future events that are expected or predicted to happen. "This society will..." implies that the society is expected to exist. "Will" is not appropriate here, because the sentence describes something possible, but not necessarily expected.
"Would" is used for hypothetical events."This society would..." means that such a society is a possibility, but only if the political movement achieves its goals. The article is correct to use "would", because the sentence describes something that might happen under the specific conditions.
When you throw a ball into the air, it will fall back down to Earth.
If we were floating in space, then the ball that you threw would continue to travel forever.
Rewrite: Communism is an ideological and a sociopolitical movement. Its aim is to set up a communist society. This society would be based on the common ownership of the means of production and would lack social classes, money, and a state.
Unhistorically, that is how I would say it. It expresses something that could be but is not.
However, there have been "communist" societies. So, ignoring history is sort of ahistorical.
More historically accurate: Communism has been an ideological and a sociopolitical movement. Its aim has been to set up a communist society. That society was intended to be based on the common ownership of the means of production and was to lack social classes, private property, and impoverished masses. Power was to be held by a dictatorship of the proletariat(non-capitalists). However, all the so-called communist countries have been authoritarian, one-party states or dictatorships that have failed miserably to bring about these goals.
I disagree about the money part; they forget the most important thing: private property
[some Wikipedia entries are truly dreadful; this is one of them.]
