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But Mao Zedong rejected his account of exaggerated harvests and hungry peasants. Peng was stripped of his title and placed under house arrest. He was lucky. Some who questioned the size of the harvest were brutally beaten in what the Party called “struggle sessions.” Others were executed as traitors. Disregarding all reports to the contrary, Mao and the CCP leadership insisted that the commune system was working well. Grain targets for 1959 were kept high. Again, however, the harvests fell short. Again, commune managers and provincial officials lied. Again, the central gov- A bout two-dozen Communist states have existed, at one time or another. Communist states have several distinguishing characteristics: • They are single-party states. This means that rule is achieved through the Communist Party, and only the Communist Party has the right to rule. Generally all other political parties are banned. • The Communist Party and the state are very closely linked. Usually the state is little more than an extension of the Party. • The government claims to follow the ideas of Marxism- Leninism, usually with modifications for the country’s unique situation. • The state controls the national economy to a great extent. Typically, officials in the national government (who are also Communist States

Communist Party leaders) decide which goods will be pro- duced, and they allocate the required resources. Such an econ- omy is called a command economy.

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Communism: Control of the State