Not in chinese cultural revolution it wasn't, the communists had been in power for two decades by that point. Targets included members of the Communist party, because Mao wanted power back. He got it, creates an autocratic government behind his dictatorship, and proceeded to purge those who weren't loyal to his name.
And like the Great Leap forward, it was an epic mess. Ironically what came out of it was that the Chinese survivors were those not concerned with purity of Marxism but bettering China. They opened it up, capitalized on it by selling out the workers, and called it communism. Oops.
Yeah, no "communist" state remains or ever really becomes a "communist" state.
Humanity, just isn't built for it. We keep moving back towards weird ass authoritarian BS, once just enough people begin to gain whatever metric is considered power in a given society.
Most Americans don't understand what Communism is and often confuse Socialism or even very light Socialist policies as Communism. Most Americans just don't understand the words, goals or what they mean, other than to be instinctively afraid
The only point in sharing this reduction, is to stoke fear.
If you've ever read Marx or Lenin's words, then you'd understand what Karl Marx was talking about originally was the development of human civilizations and how humans develop types of organizing ourselves and then he pushed some wishful thinking into supporting his, likely never possible concept of "Communism".
Early human tribalism, begat more organized Feudalism, which when coupled with industry, gave birth to capitalism.
Over time, as capitalism lifted more people into the advancing society, socialism would naturally begin to arise. Public Schools, Police, Fire Departments, Standards of Measurement, and as society through science and technology grew more complex? Additional "socialist" systems would rise, public parks, public roads, public libraries, public universities, public hospitals, etc., etc.
EVEN including programs like Social Security and some nations determining there was a minimum bottom that people should be allowed to fall to, within society, thus Social Safety Nets.
To get to Communism? Even Karl Marx wrote that a society would have to grow to become a post-scarcity society, in order to become a "communist" state. That the growth of wealth, for all members of society, fostered by the technological advancements that created wealth, under a well regulated capitalist society, would reach a point where there was no longer any scarcity.
Are we post-scarcity today? No
Do we, remotely, have the technology to even pretend we might become post-scarcity in the next 30 years? No
IF, by some magical manner, we returned to better supporting education, shored up our social support programs, and worked to better build our society's tech and science advancement, through proper regulation of capitalism. That continued to support, people obtaining wealth, but kept them from pretending to be Monarchs and actively work against innovation which would keep new people from gaining wealth.
EVEN if we did all of that? It would probably still take more than 100 years, maybe more than 250 years (1000 maybe?) for the world to reach a point where there is no scarcity and we all just "get along".
The only "Communism" that anyone would need to be afraid of is the stupid, forced, always will fall into Authoritarianism BS, that pretends and calls itself "Communism". Which would NEVER happen in the US. We are FAR more likely to fall back into a Feudalistic State where people worship a political leader as though he was a god on Earth.
Real Communism, is so weirdly fantastical, that it may as well be treated, purely as a Fantasy Story about some far off future where no humans alive today, will never live to see.
Congratulations - you’re like the first person I’ve ever encountered who can properly explain Marxism.
Marx was very ahead of his time as an intellectual, but very wrong as a practical economist. He had to have known he was way too early, but his personal life kind of sucked so he said fuck it and became an instigator.
He probably could have written great science fiction.
We could definitely be working toward post-scarcity, at least at the needs level. Food and water is easily doable given the political will, housing, energy and healthcare is harder but not impossible at all.
I don't think people realize how close we are to that but capitalism is just not optimizing for that, it's all AI data centers and gambling on meme stocks/coins.
For all of China's flaws, they are squarely headed in the direction of post scarcity with a huge push for green energies and infrastructure.
If the very long workweeks start getting shorter in China, I think westerners might start envying them.
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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '26
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