The vision presented by socialism and communism was indeed enticing. As William Duiker writes, it can seem "fair" to wish for the goals which Marx, Mao, Lenin, Castro, and Stalin presented:
According to Marxist doctrine, government control of industry and the elimination of private property were supposed to lead to a classless society.
Historians have noted that trains in the Soviet Union still had tickets for "first class" and "second class" - so much for a classless society! In more significant ways, there was a privileged class in not only the Soviet Union, but also in Marxist dictatorships from Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua to Pol Pot's Cambodia. Duiker notes that "the classless society was never achieved" in any socialist or communist state.
Instead, a new class system appeared. An aristocracy composed of party members and scientists, technocrats, and athletes who would bring fame to Marxist dictatorships:
Another aspect of the social structure in the Communist world: the emergence of a new privileged class, made up of members of the Communist Party, state officials, high-ranking officers in the military and secret police, and a few special professional groups. The new elite not only possessed political power but also received special privileges, including the right to purchase high-quality goods in special stores (in Czechoslovakia, the elite could obtain organically grown produce not available to anyone else), paid vacations at special resorts, access to good housing and superior medical services, and advantages in education and jobs for their children.
Not only was there a strict class structure in these societies, but gender roles were also imposed (instead of voluntarily chosen). Women in Marxist states were not living in a feminist paradise:
Ideals of equality did not include women. Men dominated the leadership positions of the Communist parties in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
By contrast, in Western Europe, we see Margaret Thatcher elected as the most powerful woman in the world in the 1980's. In the Soviet Union, women were consigned to drudgery and exploited:
In the Soviet Union, women comprised 51 percent of the labor force in 1980; by the mid-1980's, they constituted 50 percent of the engineers, 80 percent of the doctors, and 75 percent of the teachers and teachers' aides.
Not only were women relegated to working, but at lower pay:
Many of these were low-paying jobs; most female doctors, for example, worked in primary care and were paid less than skilled machinists. The chief administrators in hospitals and schools were still men.
Women in the Soviet Union got the worst of both worlds: they faced the daily grind as workers, and at a lower wage than those men who were consigned to the same daily grind:
Nearly three-quarters of a century after the Bolshevik Revolution, then, the Marxist dream of an advanced, egalitarian society was as far away as ever.
Ordinary citizens in the Soviet Union, and in Eastern Europe, were resigned to being "lower class" in a "classless society" - and the women were not only forced to enter the labor pool, but at a lower wage than those men who were also dismissed to a life of work.
