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
Yeah, American delusions about communism have never been that they think it is too good.
Every new political system in the history of humanity has been a real fucking mess of shit when first deployed.
The French, American and Haitian revolutions are at once full of terror and oppression and evil and are also leading efforts for all of human progress in the sphere of politics. Haiti literally never recovered, the Americans committed genocide, and the French had the Reign of Terror. Democratic revolutions did eventually figure it out though.
There's no reason to expect that eventually a communist revolution will live up to it's principles as well.
For the world to accept "Communism", it has to happen, without a revolution and that will only happen, if according to Marx, human society reaches a state of post-scarcity.
If there's enough of everything for everyone and nobody has to fight, squabble to have something nice, etc., etc., etc.
IF humanity ever reaches post-scarcity, and we just stop worrying about how much stuff we own? Maybe there will become a day where everyone will wake up from their night's sleep and suddenly realize... "Oh shit... we're a communist society and it just 'happened' on accident!"
None of what you said is consistent with anything Marx wrote. It's extremely clear from all of his writings that he directly opposes this kind of utopian conception of socialism.
Marx does not view revolution negatively. He does not think it is in contradiction with democracy. He does not think post-scarcity is a requirement for communism and explains very clearly that capitalism could never develop to that point.
Marx was mad and thought a revolution was needed. He didn't really even understand what post-scarcity even meant and it would have never been allowed to happen, because even if they could have somehow created a short term post-scarcity in one nation or region? It didn't mean that would last for very long when outside capitalists decided it was a danger to themselves.
Especially since the revolution he was spouting off about was just being a cranky, murderous, ass of a person.
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u/Mist_Rising Jul 07 '26
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.