Ideological purity and the problem of political successors

A criticism of communism here treats its repeated historical experiments as failures ending in brutal dictatorship, while the ideal continues to attract advocates. In this interpretation, demands for ideological purity allow ambitious people to pass loyalty tests and acquire power without demonstrating good conduct. Political systems that depend on unusually virtuous leaders remain vulnerable to ordinary human weaknesses. Even granting a founder's good intentions leaves the question of whether successors would behave as well. This political analogy introduces the related difficulty of suppressing a technological idea once people know it is possible.