#ill admit im not that clear on the specifics of marxism and i dont remember perfectly from school/uni

[beneaththebloodylake]

i agree that he isnt socialist, but i think the reason is because he doesnt really engage with marxist ideology at all. the series doesnt really focus on politics in that way though, its more about the characters and themes and plot, giving him a clear ideology isnt really relevent to that. although he thinks the wealth and power inequality are unfair and aims to change that, he doesnt engage with economic ideas that marxism is founded on. and the series focusses on the aristocracy or upper classes, whereas socialism mainly focusses on the bourgeoisie which are more uppermiddle class.

it isnt that william is unwilling to engage in violence, the whole point of the series is that he will resort to violence to the point of killing people to acheive as he believes thats the only way to acheive change. the reason he said he didnt approve of jack the ripper was because they were killing innocent people, and gave the lives of vulnerable people less value than those of the powerful, which is what he was fighting in the first place. but even though he feel guilty hes still willing to kill guilty people, and even some innocent people were killed in the process in the manga. although a difference he has is that he aims to avoid turmoil and his violence is aimed at creating social cohesion; he wants to unite everyone under a common enemy rather than have them turn agaist each other.

another difference though is that he doesnt really have a model for an improved society, again because the series uses politics as a plot device not something to develop. its never made clear in the series how exactly inequality would be fixed in the long run or what that society would look like (allthough the manga isnt finished). other issues like imperialism arent addressed at all, and hes never shown to have any position on the monarchy or religion or the role of the state.

the only similarities he has with socialism is that he believes the rich shouldnt exploit their power to take advantage of others; in fact im not sure its ever even addressed whether he thinks people should be allowed to be that rich at all, nothing about the system in that sense is really mentioned, although as he clearly believes in equality hed surely be in favour of at least some form of wealth distribution and regulation, but theres no indication whether that would be more or less than what we have in the modern day in mixed market economies, but he doesnt bring up any sort of socialist system anywhere in the series

Was William from Moriarty the Patriot socialist?

During the manga and the anime he very clearly believed that the class system is a curse upon the British empire, that change must happen and that it is extremely unfair for the 2%, the upper classes, the Bourgeois be spending all their life in luxury whole the lower class, the Proletariat work all day to feed their families.

Although it is true that that way of thinking can be found in socialism, there are some things that he seems to disagree with in that ideology. In the Jack the Ripper arc, William finds out that there is no Jack the Ripper, an organization is making a villain to try and stir up a revolution between the Proletariat and the Bourgeois.

That, coincidently is the whole idea of Socialism, Communism and Marxism, a Proletariat revolution. He is against that. If he wanted a Proletariat revolution, he would just let that happen, but he didn't.

He tried to stop that from happening. William doesn't completely agree with Socialism because Socialism, Communism, Marxism ect is really violent. Innocent lives will be lost. But wouldn't that backfire with his final plan? He started killing people and setting fires to become a common enemy.

There is a big difference between the revolution and what he did. His plan, was making him a common enemy, just like Maximilien Robespierre, so that the two classes could put aside those differences. While a revolution wants one class against eachother, he wanted all of the people together.

That I believe is the biggest difference. He doesn't want to eat the rich like socialist want, he doesn't believe if someone is rich he is inherently evil. After all, people are born into wealth, just like people are born into homelessness.

So in conclusion, no. He isn't a socialist or communist. He believes in some ideas of Socialism but he despises the violence of the revolution socialism wants. The red in his eyes isn't for the Soviet Flag (fortunately since that would be time inaccurate)

But that's just a theory,

An anime theory

Thanks for reading.

It feels so good to rant about communism in anime.