The Red Guards no doubt believed they were advancing socialism. But their actions set back the struggle for socialism.
Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution as a strategy to restore himself to a position of unchallenged leadership. He had been sidelined after the failure of the Great Leap Forward. Probably he deluded himself that what he was doing was good for socialism. But only a few years after the launch of the Cultural Revolution with ultra-revolutionary rhetoric, Nixon visited China at Mao's invitation. A few years later Mao died. Deng Xiaoping took over and began the market reforms that led eventually to capitalist restoration. For more details, see: http://links.org.au/capitalism-workers-struggle-China Chris Slee ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Michael Meeropol <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, 1 February 2021 2:35 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [marxmail] Maoism and Trumpism I am curious whether the "purpose" the RED GUARDS served had anything to do at all with building socialism in China? I read William Hinton's long treatment in MR "The Cultural Revolution at Tsunghua (sp?) University and do not really remember whether the power struggle he described did ANYTHING for the future of socialism (forget "communism") in China. It seems to me with hindsight that all the Cultural Revolution did was (by its excesses) create the situation for what seems to me to be another example of "revolution from above" (with a nod to Kotz and Weir's book by the same title about the former Soviet Union) --- the excesses made it easy for the new leaders to purge the "Gang of Four" and for Deng to take his revenge --- and for the infinitely corruptible bureaucracy to "follow the leaders" to introduce more and more elements of capitalism. If we want to get really depressed we can say that Fukayama in his "end of history" analysis may have been right but for the wrong location --- the authoritarian capitalism of China makes the version that grew up in Japan after WW II seem almost anarchistic --- Given the impetus for more centralized control as the horrible effects of global warming create lots of death, destruction and chaos over the next decades --- China may be the model of survival while the rest of the world descends into Rosa Luxembourg's warning --- barbarism. OF COURSE, it doesn't have to be like this and it's worth fighting as hard as possible on every front to protect the planet from what might already be inevitable --- because we don't know for sure it remains essential never to give up. (of course it's easier for this 77 year old to say that than for the 30 - 50 somethings who will unfortunately have to do the heavy lifting!) On Sun, Jan 31, 2021 at 9:03 AM <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: In a way, the Red Guards had served their purpose: the middle management of the country was properly chastened and afraid of their elite masters. The bureaucracies that mediated between elites and ordinary people were either in tatters or so cowed as to make direct control frictionless. In sum, an alliance between a disempowered elite and a mostly-young and educated lower-middle class (using the still lower-class youth as enforcers) upended the middle section of society’s bureaucracy, to long-lasting effect. II rewS readIiiII -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#5991): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/5991 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80250914/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
