What did the average supporter of communist revolution hope to gain?

[Little_Nemo]

@even_sven

Of course. I’m trying to speak broadly for “why did people think this was a good idea for so long.”

If you’ve got an existing system where ten percent of the people have ninety percent of the wealth, then there’s the potential of the other ninety percent of the people to think, “If we just eliminate that ten percent and divide up their stuff, we’ll all come out ahead.” And if you have a situation where ninety percent of the people would benefit from a change like that, you’ve got the makings of a revolution.

[puddleglum]

Communism appeals to an atavistic sense of the community. Success in hunting was about teamwork and not individual prowess, so in traditional hunter-gatherer societies whenever there was a big kill, all families got to share in the food equally. So if you saw someone who had more than you it probably meant they were taking more than their fair share.
This sense of there being a fair share, which is defined as a little more than what I have and less than what my richest acquaintance has, seems to be built into people.
So when a Communist goes around and says the reason you are poor is that capitalists are taking more than their fair share, it has an intuitive appeal. In the case of Cambodia, the peasants in the country were dirt poor and the city dwellers were better off. To a peasant the work of being a rice farmer seemed much harder than the work being done in the city, yet the city dwellers had much more. Many of the city dwellers were ethnic Chinese and not Cambodian. Therefore the Cambodian peasants resented the city dwellers and the communists exploited that. So when the Khmer Rouge took power they took away all the city dwellers had and made them equal to the peasants. The theory was that since the city dwellers were no longer consuming as much, there would be much more to go around for the peasants.
This type of thinking always ends in disaster, but the extent of the disaster is determined by the circumstances of the country that adopts communism.

[Nava]

@Little_Nemo

You shouldn’t regard China’s Cultural Revolution or Cambodia’s Year Zero as “average” events in Communist revolutionary history. These were the most extreme examples.

In a more typical communist revolution, the average man in the street expects that the existing political system, which is usually controlled by a corrupt elite, will be overthrown. In the short tem, the average people will benefit when the wealth of this elite is confiscated and redistributed. In the long term, they’ll benefit from a new regime that won’t be corrupt and won’t have an elite it will favor at the expense of the average citizens. The Bolsheviks, as a prime example, rose to power by promising three things: “Peace, Bread, and Land”.

And the more cynical or ambitious ones expect that, once the old guard has been taken down, a new guard will rise and they’ll be able to be part of it. There’s many people who think they’d be much higher in the social scale if The Man wasn’t purposefully keeping them down.

[Quercus]

@Doggo

Pity that the adage “power corrupts” isn’t drilled into everyone from the time they can learn- it might stop some bad people attaining power.

Power Corrupts.
Except in the U.S.A. of course. Here, power only corrupts when it’s gained by union bosses, and left-leaning government officials. Power in the hands of CEOs, bankers, military and their political supporters is cleansing, purifying and brings us all to a brighter, better future. USA! USA! USA!