There's a certain subgenre, based on the near future of the now past, where all governments are based on thought exercises from a philosophy class, and, despite everything reverting to some form of dystopian totalitarianism long before the book got started, everyone has masked their cognitive dissonance so thoroughly that they still believe they're applying the principles of their belief system correctly. In this type of story, things are grungy and depressing, no one seems to remember how a 101 level college course got put in charge of everything, and despite barely mentioning communism, no one is over it.