Anth230: Anthropology of East Asia

I would guess, and this is nothing more than an educated guess based on my knowledge of other Communist societies and the movies, that at the beginning a pretty good number believed in the revolutionary ideals because it appealed to the vast majority of the population (the working class). But, as time went on, I think even these people realized that Communism was not the solution to their problems.

Plus, people tend to support somewhat popular revolutions because they are just that: popular. It is always fun to join the bandwagon, especially when it involves breaking stuff and killing people for no reason at all. I think that for this reason, and the idealist lies that the people were so aptly listening to, they were pretty into the party message. Only after years of rampant violence and ambiguous party doctrine do people have some idea that they are being used on the whims of the leaders.

I would like to think that a large percentage of those who took on the ideals of socialism in China only did so because they had to conform so as to not look like a reactionary or an enemy to the cause. One thing is true about socialism, and it is that if everyone is not in support of the system its efficacy will never be reached or realized. In "Morning Sun" some members of the Red Guard who went on the long marches traversing the country said that even though socialism had been in place for a long time now, there were still large amounts of poor people who were not seeing any of the benefits that are supposed to accompany socialist life. The standard of living for the poor was supposed to improve significantly and this makes it easy to see why the large amounts of poor people would want to conform to the socialist maxim. What is a converted socialist society supposed to think when there are no returns to their investment in socialism? This is why, historically, socialism has never prospered.

--Bobby