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I hate to sound like a broken record on incompetence=evil, but the difference is that confessional Christian regimes tend not to kill millions of people on accident, and when they do it’s a result of empowering ruthless people with vague mandates rather than something inherent in the system. Doctrinaire Marxist regimes have a much worse record.
I mean there’s also that believing Christians tend to be much better citizens than committed marxists.
It’s not that faith is justified by results. It’s that if you play that game, you’re kinda pushing people towards Christianity or a small number of basically-Christian faiths.
If good system somehow keeps empowering "ruthless people" who kill millions of people, what exactly makes it good?
Well, this is hotly debated. Limiting ourselves to modern times, do you consider British Empire to be "confessional Christian regime"?
Anyway, there is no comparison.
Marxism does not claim to be religion based on faith, Marxism claims to be science, describing objective laws governing history, Marx wanted to be someone who explains evolution of human society just like Darwin explained evolution of life.
It is appropriate to judge Marxism by scientific standards (Prager university tier takes "Marx was sleeping with his maid, therefore Marxism is BS" are embarrassment).
It is appropriate to ask whether Marxist predictions - tendency of the rate of profit to fall, immiseration of the proletariat etc... came true. It is appropriate to ask whether Marxists got ever close to delivering what they promised.
Citizens of what? Citizens of bourgeois and feudal states certainly not, committed Marxists were undermining them as hard as committed Christians were undermining pagan states.
Citizens of Marxist state? All achievements of USSR - victory in civil war against overwhelming odds, breakneck speed industrialization and development and then victory in greatest war in history, were due to sacrifice of tens of millions of true believing Marxists.
Yes, when the true believers who really believed they were building better world died off, the later generations lost their faith and sold everything for blue jeans and chewing gum. And they lost their faith, because the great promises never came true, and they knew thay are not coming true, because they were supposed to happen here on Earth, not in heaven after death.
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