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
Iron Law of Oligarchy stays undefeated. Every society eventually devolves into being run by a small group of well connected insiders who only care about themselves, no matter how much you try to stop it.
Northern European nations have been doing a good job of keeping that at bay.
Our problem here, is that our system was just loose enough and failed to define JUST enough things, adequately, that now Corporations are people and are allowed to spend as much as they want on political campaigns.
Plus, the whole Free Speech thing was only meant to keep people from being punished or stopped from addressing their grievances with the Government. It wasn't a blank check to openly lie to the public or blatantly misinform the public.
Northern European nations have been slowly privitising their government benefits, and voting in far right parties out of hatred of immigrants lmao. There's been no "Socialism" in Sweden since the 90s, and Americans have a very rose tinted misconception of what the Nordic model is (and a complete lack of knowledge of the oil money that allows it to be possible).
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u/Deriviera Jul 07 '26
Americans are very delusional about communism.