Chapter Ten - Fake Communism, Real Power

CHAPTER TEN

Fake Communism, Real Power

BY THE SECOND half of the 20th century, something strange had happened.

Communism had become a brand.
Not a belief system. Not a blueprint. A label. A uniform. A red-painted shell.

It still talked about “the people,” but the people had no say. It still waved Marx’s name around, but nothing it did resembled his vision. It still called itself a revolution, but nothing ever changed. The flag was red, but the motives were black.

This wasn’t communism anymore.
This was authoritarianism cosplaying as equality.

If communism is about abolishing class and concentrating power in the hands of the workers, then North Korea is the furthest thing from it.

Founded by Kim Il-sung, backed by the Soviets, and sealed off from the world after the Korean War, the DPRK became a hereditary dictatorship. Kim Il-sung passed power to his son Kim Jong-il, who passed it to Kim Jong-un.

They called it Juche, a mix of self-reliance, militarism, and personality cult. The economy collapsed. Famines killed over a million people. Propaganda replaced education. The border became a wall of landmines.

But the country still called itself a People’s Republic.
Still used socialist symbols. Still claimed to be the truest heir to Marxist-Leninist tradition.

It wasn’t communism. It was a bunker with a flag.

North Korea wasn’t the only one.

Across the world, governments slapped the word “people” on everything. People’s Republic of China, Democratic Kampuchea (under the Khmer Rouge), People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, People’s Republic of Bulgaria, and dozens more.

It became a signal: the more your country emphasized “the people” in its name, the less power they actually had.

The state controlled speech. Movement. Labor. Press. Religion. Protest.
And in many cases, life itself.

It was total control, dressed in revolutionary language.
And it worked, because the dream was still powerful.
People wanted to believe it was possible.

In theory, communism was supposed to abolish the cult of the individual.
No kings, no masters, no saviors.

In practice, it replaced kings with generals.
Presidents who ruled for life. Leaders with godlike portraits.
Mao’s Little Red Book. Kim statues in every city. Ceausescu’s face on everything in Romania. Stalin in steel.

What should’ve been collective became worshipful.
What should’ve been decentralized became unbreakable hierarchy.
The dream wasn’t just hijacked. It was inverted.

These fake versions of communism still mattered. Not because they worked, but because they gave the West a perfect enemy.

Every time someone in America asked, “Could we make things more equal?” the answer came back: “What, like North Korea?”
Every time someone mentioned universal healthcare, or workers owning the means of production, the reply was: “You want breadlines?”
The worst regimes were held up as proof that the dream itself was rotten.

But these regimes never lived the dream.
They just wore its skin.