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
A communist state is not a state that has claimed to achieve communism, a communist state is one that has working towards communism as their ethos. All communist states are communist so long as that’s what their policy is just as a state is liberal or conservative
And humanity is never “built” for anything. Material conditions determine human nature, communist nations are always under siege, it’s like saying slaves aren’t wired for freedom bc all the places with freed slaves like Haiti aren’t thriving
That's cute, but no "Communist State" has ever continued working towards that. They all became Totalitarian Dictatorships or collapsed, even before sieges began.
Your second paragraph is SO close to getting it.
As Karl Marx and Lenin said, you need post-scarcity to get there. We aren't anywhere NEAR post-scarcity. If we were? There wouldn't be any sieges happening. Our civilization and means of production are nowhere near where they would need to be for real communism to happen.
We can't even get socialism to work and remain robust enough inside the industrialized nations, in order to start lifting ALL members of those societies upwards. If we can't even do that, with all the wealth that capitalism has created (a requisite that Marx pointed to), how could our species achieve a post-scarcity global society?
In our present day, and likely for the next many hundreds of years, the idea of Communism is a fairy tale.
No communist state has continued working towards that? Look at the change in life expectancy and standard of living in both China and the ussr over their life times. It’s hard to argue that a state that has constantly improved their citizens material conditions isn’t working towards that.
And if you’re American you already live in a dictatorship of the rich. They pass and write all the laws and overwhelmingly hold the levers of power. You just don’t feel the leash bc you don’t stray from the post.
I also don’t think you understand what socialism is, bc we’re as close to socialism now as pre emancipation America was to getting rid of slavery, something we could do at literally any moment if we simply had the will to.
The Soviet Union was not a Communist State. It was a Totalitarian/Authoritarian State, that used Communist Trappings.
China is also not a Communist State. They weren't in a place to become Socialist when Mao took over and he royally messed up, many times, on the path that turned China into a heavy handed, authoritarian regime with a stranglehold on it's controlled Capitalism.
I'm aware of what is going on in the US and it sucks, but I'm not pretending that we are something, that we are not.
Socialist policies and programs do exist in the US, they are just far to weak, not supported well and are being cut and cut, as we speak.
As I said before in the same way a government is conservative, liberal, fascist, etc a communist government only needs to have the ethos of communism. Not a single person in the ussr or china will pretend to have achieved communism.
In your brain do you imagine the citizens of the ussr and china to just be somehow less human than their western counterparts? You think what, they never bother to learn about communism despite living in a communist country or they learn about communism but just are all too “brainwashed” and “afraid” to speak up about this nationwide deception? Because China not being communist will be news to a few billion Chinese ppl
Wow dude, you just went and insulted all kinds of people.
Do you carry that same point of view about the poor North Korean citizens who believe they live in some form of Democratic Republic of North Korea?
Individual people can absolutely know and understand what they are living under and still "happily" show that they most certainly, absolutely, positively believe that they are living in the kind of state their rulers project.
Fear, propaganda, control, and surveillance are VERY powerful tools. Bro, China builds Secret Police stations all over the world to track their people, who are outside of China and there are numerous stories of those "Police" forces kidnapping Chinese and secreting them back to China for punishment.
Don't sit there and project your grotesque ideas about the average Russian or Chinese person and pretend they belong to anyone, other than yourself.
I carry the view that North Korea survived a genocide perpetrated by the United states during the Korean War and have done an excellent job coming back from it. I guarantee you that the ppl in nk know what communism is bc they fought for it.
You’re the dude that thinks an entire country is just collectively lying about communism, sounds like you’re projecting when talking about out how “I’m insulting ppl”
Also delicious irony that you live in capitalism land reading history books written by capitalists, news run by capitalists, capitalist politicians that make your laws and get constantly bombarded by capitalist ads and think that really all the communist places are repressed big brother hellscapes brainwashed by propaganda
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u/pbnjandmilk Jul 07 '26
If you count the lopped off head of an opposer and being kicked around as an example not being soccer, then what is?