Maybe there is something to Whedon wanting the Alliance to be the good guys....

Welp, Zombie did warn about the Wrap's reporting being bad. And upon getting an actual transcript of what Whedon said, things become a bit clearer

To be fair, Whedon does say this: "We are turning into Czarist Russia. We are creating a nation of serfs. That leads to — oddly enough — revolution and socialism, which then leads to totalitarianism. Nobody wins."

But that makes him sound more resigned about Socialism being "too beautiful for this world" than against it as a political ideology. Zombie notes how this dancing around Socialism is all part of Whedon's train of thought.

So let’s wipe that all away and start with the raw transcript: What did Whedon say, exactly?

Well, first of all, it’s quite obvious that he’s very critical of and opposed to the current conservative fiscal philosophy, treating modern conservatives like lunatics who are outside rational debate. And he’s very praiseful of the left-leaning side of the Democratic Party currently in power, as he praises them as trying to preserve the “personal dignity” of the “working class.”

Because he purposely talks a bit obtusely in an attempt to partly disguise what he’s actually saying, it’s not necessarily easy at first to decipher his position; but the giveaway is that the bad guys are the ones accusing the good guys of being “socialists” — in other words the bad guys he’s speaking of are 2012's conservatives.

But in the middle of the speech he also does the typical Democrat do-si-do: first praise socialism in theory, then say it doesn’t work in practice, and then act like the very notion of socialism is only a Republican conspiracy theory. Hopping to and fro like this, he avoids being pinned down on any particular position.

What he apparently wants is some mysterious unnamed utopian magic solution that somehow manages to preserve private ownership but at the same time forcibly levels the playing field for the “working class” (and why is he using Marxist terminology like this?). This is pretty much the same rhetoric that Obama uses: Poo-pooing socialism by name, but then not-so-subtly proposing socialist-tinged solutions."

So he wants a utopian, "third way" between Socialism and Capitalism? A way but the State forces “personal dignity” of the “working class,” but where people can still be rich (maybe Lords and Ladies). And said well-heeled folk can take comfort in knowing they support a system that cares for the downtrodden masses and does its best to -well- make people better.

A'yup. It sounds like Whedon woulda been a big supporter of Unification.

I do recall him admitting that he and Mal would not get along at all, politics wise. Gotta give the man credit for that.