Frank Dikötter's Mao's Great Famine firmly supports a simple but shocking theory of Communism: It was the largest cargo cult the world has ever seen. Communist revolutionaries were great at seizing power, but if power were their sole aim, the horror would have ended once they were firmly in charge. Alas, the Communists saw absolute power as a mere stepping stone to their true goal: Mimicking a few random characteristics of advanced economies, no matter how many lives it cost.