The problem is just how far to actually go. In the Maoist era, class became transferable by blood ie if your dad was a parasitic landlord, then you are too regardless of your material conditions. The logic was if you didn’t do this, those children would grow resentful and use their social capital that they inherited to foment dissent. The problem was those children grew resentful and instead aimed their ire at the children of Party elites in the Cultural Revolution, who were in many ways actually less enthused with the revolutionary ideals of their parents than the children from bad class backgrounds. This ultimately fueled a massive Thermidorean reaction in the form of Deng etc.

So the answer then is, what, make sure to kill the landlords and kill their children? But then the forces of Reaction and Capital are also many. Do we kill the children of priests and imams? When certain minority groups grow uncomfortable with the pace of certain heavyhanded reforms (like say Central Asia in the 1930s), do you just kill them all too? Yes re education is obviously a decent option, but how effective will it be against people that will likely always harbor some resentment against any new regime?

I ask all these earnestly, too, as I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Obviously counter revolutionaries have to be purged and dealt with. But despite best intentions you do get into quandaries. Good trained cadres in Maoist China now and then did let their personal grudges against people get ahead of them and so innocent people (like gay men, for example) got tarred with ‘bad class backgrounds’, which then affected their children etc. So how do we make sure to limit the logic of violence so that we aren’t just killing a bunch of people who can probably be reasoned with eventually, and also limit the abuse that will inevitably come with certain hierarchies and state structures?