If taken at face value, it suffers from the same problem as "The Godfather", i.e. the picture of a perfectly consistent, always working system. That fit nicely into notions of the totalitarian state popularized about that time, and lasting into the 1980s and beyond. The alteration of the leading Communist regimes into whatever they have become--how do you characterize the PRC?--has not entirely destroyed the appeal of these notions.