During his time in the remote north-east, Pol Pot had been influenced by the surrounding hill tribes, who were self-sufficient in their communal living, had no use for money and were "untainted" by Buddhism.
When he came to power, he and his henchmen quickly set about transforming Cambodia - now re-named Kampuchea - into what they hoped would be an agrarian utopia.
Declaring that the nation would start again at "Year Zero", Pol Pot isolated his people from the rest of the world and set about emptying the cities, abolishing money, private property and religion, and setting up rural collectives....
To see what happened to those who failed to embrace the agrarian utopia do a Google Images search for "Khmer Rouge genocide"
But Pol Pot's genocide at around 2 million souls was trivial in comparison to Mao ZeDong's toll of 45 million in "The Great Leap Forward".