China and the Cultural Revolution

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Lately I've been devoting alot of time to studying the cultural revolution and I thought I would compose an internet archive devoted to the theoretical development of Chinese Marxism with a special focus on the Cultural Revolution and it's implications. Please post suggestions in the thread below!

Introductory Reading

Louis Althusser--"On the Cultural Revolution"
http://scholar.oxy.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=decalages

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution-World to Win (Theoretical Journal of the RIM)
http://www.aworldtowin.org/back_issues/1996-22/gpcr_22_eng.htm

The Battle for China's Past by Moba Gao
http://www.strongwindpress.com/pdfs/EBook/The_Battle_for_Chinas_Past.pdf




Archive of the Cultural Revolution

Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future By the MLM study group
http://www.mlmrsg.com/attachments/049_049_CRpaper-Final.pdf

The Last Revolution? By Alain Badiou
http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/alan-badiou_cultural-_revolution_.pdf


In friendship, to my Trotskyite and Left Communist Comrades

Twenty Manifestations Of Bureaucracy By Mao
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_85.htm

Concerning Economic Problems Of Socialism In The USSR By Mao
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_65.htm

Reading Notes On The Soviet Text Political Economy By Mao
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_64.htm

Critique of Stalin’s Economic Problems Of Socialism In The USSR By Mao
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_66.htm

Theoretical Developments of Marxist Philosophy

A collection of articles on Dialectical Materialism
http://marxistphilosophy.org/ChinTrans1221.htm

TALKS AT THE YENAN FORUM ON LITERATURE AND ART By Mao
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/mswv3_08.htm


The Great Leap Foward
Did Mao Really Kill people in the Great Leap Forward?
http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward

Books
The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution
"Mao's Last Revolution"
Hundred Day War; The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University


With Special Thanks to
*Dominicana_1965
*Gladiator
*Gramsci Guy
*Ostrinski

[Let's Get Free]

I found "Mao's Last Revolution" to have been an exhaustive and remarkably well-written narrative of the Cultural Revolution.

[GoddessCleoLover]

I highly recommend Hundred Day War; The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University by the late William H. Hinton. Hinton lived in China during the 1940s and when he returned to the USA in the 1950s he was totally blacklisted from any employment. At one point he became a farmer because although a trained mechanic he was unable to find employment. The State Department also invalidated his passport, depriving Hinton of his right to travel, which was only overturned after many years of challenges by Hinton. I find that one can learn much more by engaging a historical narrative of events rather than just by reading theory.

[Dominicana_1965]

Hey comrade don't know if you knew about this specific article written in 2006 but its a really good analysis concerning reactionary claims about the Great Leap Forward. The article is primarily about gross overestimates of deaths under the GLF but it also talks about deaths during the Cultural Revolution and how we should really be wary about these numbers.

Even according to figures released by the Deng Xiaoping regime, industrial production increased by 11.2% per year from 1952-1976 (by 10% a year during the alleged catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution).

http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Hey comrade don't know if you knew about this specific article written in 2006 but its a really good analysis concerning reactionary claims about the Great Leap Forward. The article is primarily about gross overestimates of deaths under the GLF but it also talks about deaths during the Cultural Revolution and how we should really be wary about these numbers.


http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward

Thanks!

And I appreciate the above contributions, but I'm going to focus on information that can be found online for free for now, but once I have a big enough archive of that then perhaps I'll add your contributions

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Hey comrade don't know if you knew about this specific article written in 2006 but its a really good analysis concerning reactionary claims about the Great Leap Forward. The article is primarily about gross overestimates of deaths under the GLF but it also talks about deaths during the Cultural Revolution and how we should really be wary about these numbers.


http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward

I certainly don't take those numbers seriously. I have no great sympathy for Mao, but any responsible reading of the GLF, shows that there was a fucking long drought -- it was mainly weather conditions that ruined successive harvests that led to the famines. Dang, Mao was such a creep for not doing a good enough rain dance. That being said, the idea of producing high quality industrial goods in backward rural circumstances, without developing the infrastructure for heavy industry was, at best, ill-conceived.

I honestly hate reading Mao -- his stuff is so, well, not Marxist. It's vague, almost mystical. I know lots of smart people that feel differently.

My take on the Cultural Revolution is that it was mainly a faction fight by Mao and his supporters. Mao had really lost power in the party -- his only base was the PLA. So he very skillfully used that, plus the disenchantment of the youth, to fight back. Making things like education and technical know-how vices doesn't sync with any Marxist theories that I am aware of.

[Ostrinski]

Mobo Gao's The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/20W7IMPNNNU8L/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go_o_T1-2#page=1) is also good, I hear. The user Hiero recommended it a few months ago.

This should also be moved to history.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Looks like there are a couple good books here so I think i'll change my mind and add them.

[el_chavista]

May I ask you a question? Actually was there (during the Cultural Rev) a Shanghai commune akin and historically second to the Paris Commune of 1871?

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Might s well drop the PDF to one of the recommendations.
Here is the PDF to Battle for China's past: http://www.strongwindpress.com/pdfs/EBook/The_Battle_for_Chinas_Past.pdf

Q will probably be going mental when he sees that a PDF is in the eBook section of that site.

Thanks for making the list, really useful.

[l'Enfermé]

Althusser as the first link? This looks interesting, I'm gonna have to check it all out. Thanks, OP.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

In terms of books I believe "Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village" (http://www.amazon.com/Fanshen-Documentary-Revolution-Chinese-Village/dp/1583671757/ref=bit_f_abba_amznsearch_ff_us_title/176-5266391-9569230?_encoding=UTF8&tag=abba-amznsearch-us-ff-20&tagbase=abba) is a good look what benefits the Cultural Revolution had on rural society post-Mao.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Mobo Gao's The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/20W7IMPNNNU8L/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go_o_T1-2#page=1) is also good, I hear. The user Hiero recommended it a few months ago.

This should also be moved to history.

I was actually really disappointed in this book, I couldn't even finish it. His desire is to show that the normal people of China have a positive image of the Cultural Revolution while only ruling elite and the upper echelons of the middle class harbor negative opinions of it. The problem with this is his reliance on "e-media" (Internet discussions) to show this. I think his premise is correct, it's just that he took a really lazy research approach with writing this book.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I was actually really disappointed in this book, I couldn't even finish it. His desire is to show that the normal people of China have a positive image of the Cultural Revolution while only ruling elite and the upper echelons of the middle class harbor negative opinions of it. The problem with this is his reliance on "e-media" (Internet discussions) to show this. I think his premise is correct, it's just that he took a really lazy research approach with writing this book.

Yea I agree, that's why I was reluctant to put it up there at first. But it is definitly worth a PDF. There is alot of good content in some chapters, it's just that other chapters aren't worth the paper their written on. I will try to make a list of the good chapters later on so people can know the really good stuff when they read it and so they know what to skip

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I was actually really disappointed in this book, I couldn't even finish it. His desire is to show that the normal people of China have a positive image of the Cultural Revolution while only ruling elite and the upper echelons of the middle class harbor negative opinions of it. The problem with this is his reliance on "e-media" (Internet discussions) to show this. I think his premise is correct, it's just that he took a really lazy research approach with writing this book.

I do not mean to insult your post but if you didn't even finish it than how can you have an opinion on its conclusion? Enough to say you didn't like his style and couldn't finish it but a whole 'other to give a direct opinion on his premise; shouldn't you at least finish? It is not a terribly long book.

At any rate I am in the middle of reading this book. So far while I believe his reliance on emedia might be a little odd to Western users, I think concerning the climate of China, it is much more normal over there thus giving more legitimacy to his, admittedly, loaded claims about only the elite harboring hatred towards the revolution and such. I think it is a culture necessity and something which developed out of China's specific conditions (high urban population with lots of internet access tightly controlled). I could be wrong but it is just my hunch.

I would hardely call his research methods lazy. He read hundreds of books specifically about the Cultural Revolution, surely hundreds, if not thousands of Emedia sources, and newspapers and archival sources prior to condensing such an amount of information into a single, modestly short book. Again, I think this might have to do with Emedia in China being more relevant than in America.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Althusser as the first link? This looks interesting, I'm gonna have to check it all out. Thanks, OP.

Not a problem! I tried my best to make a list that could be appreciated better by the wider left, so I avoided dogmatically Maoist works for the intro and I included an Anti-"Stalinist" section for those who want to read it from a Trotskyist/Left Communist perspective, since I do believe that it is possible for other tendencies to engage in the cultural revolution as a positive phenomena within the framework of their own tendency, since even Kim Sung Il and Kruschev accused Mao of being a Troskyist when he launched the cultural revolution. So I decided the best way to approach this list was to include a wide variety of sources and to try a non-sectarian approach. After all, you don't have to be a Trot to like trotsky, and you don't have to be a Maoist to like Mao. Nor do you have to like Stalin to oppose Kruschev's revisionism

Also I added a paper by Alain Badiou in the "Archive of the Cultural Revolution" section. I'm not sure if I should move it to the introductory section since I am still only half way done with Louis's paper. But I want you all to know that it is in that section since I know alot of you like him.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I do not mean to insult your post but if you didn't even finish it than how can you have an opinion on its conclusion? Enough to say you didn't like his style and couldn't finish it but a whole 'other to give a direct opinion on his premise; shouldn't you at least finish? It is not a terribly long book.

At any rate I am in the middle of reading this book. So far while I believe his reliance on emedia might be a little odd to Western users, I think concerning the climate of China, it is much more normal over there thus giving more legitimacy to his, admittedly, loaded claims about only the elite harboring hatred towards the revolution and such. I think it is a culture necessity and something which developed out of China's specific conditions (high urban population with lots of internet access tightly controlled). I could be wrong but it is just my hunch.

I would hardely call his research methods lazy. He read hundreds of books specifically about the Cultural Revolution, surely hundreds, if not thousands of Emedia sources, and newspapers and archival sources prior to condensing such an amount of information into a single, modestly short book. Again, I think this might have to do with Emedia in China being more relevant than in America.

I don't have any problem with the book's conclusion, like I said, I believe his premise is probably correct. Perhaps you are right and using internet discussions as a basis for a book makes perfect sense for non-westerners, but it felt really lazy to me. I have a reading list that I won't finish in this lifetime so if an author strikes me as not taking their own book seriously I'm not very inclined to read it.

Boring Marxist's comment about it being worth it in PDF form is right, I'd like to hit the chapters she/he thinks were strong, as the cultural revolution is really interesting to me.

[Let's Get Free]

Here's a good read if you're looking for something for free on the internet

http://libcom.org/library/%E2%80%9Cnew-trends-thought%E2%80%9D-cultural-revolution

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Here's a good read if you're looking for something for free on the internet

http://libcom.org/library/%E2%80%9Cnew-trends-thought%E2%80%9D-cultural-revolution

This is the interesting aspect of the cultural revolution. For the first two years of it, what Mao had sought to use as a tool to regain lost power within the party threatened to destroy the whole apparatus the party's own power was based on. The red guards would eventually just become tools of the party but the title was initially taken on by multiple factions that were engaged in active struggle against one another, and in many cases against the party and the state.

[Let's Get Free]

This is the interesting aspect of the cultural revolution. For the first two years of it, what Mao had sought to use as a tool to regain lost power within the party threatened to destroy the whole apparatus the party's own power was based on. The red guards would eventually just become tools of the party but the title was initially taken on by multiple factions that were engaged in active struggle against one another, and in many cases against the party and the state.

The 'Cultural Revolution' was a faction fight within the ruling elite that got a bit out of hand. Mao was being pushed out of power, and attempted to mobilize 'the masses' behind a his faction within the state. So it was basically a brutal witch-hunt, assisted and supervised by the secret police, against anyone suspected of disloyalty to the “Emperor.”

[TheGodlessUtopian]

This is the interesting aspect of the cultural revolution. For the first two years of it, what Mao had sought to use as a tool to regain lost power within the party threatened to destroy the whole apparatus the party's own power was based on. The red guards would eventually just become tools of the party but the title was initially taken on by multiple factions that were engaged in active struggle against one another, and in many cases against the party and the state.

That wasn't the purpose of the Cultural Revolution at all. Rather it was the result which was the natural outgrowth of needing to propel socialist development and eradicate the capitalist and general reactionaries which were infesting the political landscape (especially those in the CCP). There was a line differentiation between Mao and Liu Shaoqi: the former believed in protecting the broad masses and promoting that they were the only way to regenerate the party, while the former thought that the struggle against counterrevolutionaries was still between the old deposed class instead of the newly organized forces of reaction (such as the bourgeois headquarters within the Party). In the process of the cultural revolution Mao's line won out yet this doesn't negate the fact that the CR was an outgrowth of the earlier Socialist Education Movement.

Likewise, the Red Guards were not friendly to the Mao line.Many took various names but those who were known as the Red Guards were generally thought of as reactionaries (though this term would later be muddled as people were arrested and sent to various camps in the country side). Those who were were known as the Red Rebels and they constantly were arrested and harassed by the military. The Guards and Rebels fought each other, and the Rebels the bourgeois headquarters, because the ideological dispute and the need to push China on the correct course, was so great.

As noted in many sources it was not that Mao had lost power which he needed to regain; at this point in time he was already so mighty in the CCP that removing him was nearly impossible. The CR happened in part because of his theoretical contributions but not because of them.

Mao had little influence on the day-to-day activities of even his sympathizers and simply couldn't launch any revolution he wanted, at any time he wanted to. He was a man, not a demi-god. He was still constrained by organizational, political, and working class forces.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

No I agree with Gladiator, the cultural revolution was just a spat within the party that eventually lead to a brutal witch hunt which seemed to change targets on a monthly basis. I believe the students, workers and soldiers all had legitimate grievances (obviously), which were exploited by Mao as an attempt to regain control over the party. What I was talking about was the unintentional explosion of revolutionary fervor that marked the first two years of it. Mao's rhetoric about dislodging bureaucrats was taken at face value and multiple red guard groups began trying to do just that. They were then targeted by the state and it's security forces or other red guard groups, and the revolution was turned into what Mao had intended it to be in the first place, the brutal witch hunt aimed at his political enemies.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

No I agree with Gladiator, the cultural revolution was just a spat within the party that eventually lead to a brutal witch hunt which seemed to change targets on a monthly basis. I believe the students, workers and soldiers all had legitimate grievances (obviously), which were exploited by Mao as an attempt to regain control over the party.

How could he had "regained control of the party" when he was alreadyin firm control of it? You do not explain this. No one is saying that people didn't have real grievances but how would these even be able to be "exploited" by Mao? What means would he have used? Especially when he hadn't lost any power.



What I was talking about was the unintentional explosion of revolutionary fervor that marked the first two years of it. Mao's rhetoric about dislodging bureaucrats was taken at face value and multiple red guard groups began trying to do just that.

A mass-movement was needed to remove the obstacles to revolutionary organizing so I believe the revolutionary fervor was intended.

You mean Red Rebel groups attacked these bureaucrats... or do you mean the Red Guards which attacked the revolutionary bureaucrats? Again, you do not provide a detailed explanation.

You provide no substance as to the various factions and instead lump everyone together.


They were then targeted by the state and it's security forces or other red guard groups, and the revolution was turned into what Mao had intended it to be in the first place, the brutal witch hunt aimed at his political enemies.

Which groups when were attacked by the security forces? We already know that the Red Rebels were hated by the police and military... do you mean that a revolutionary faction within the security apparatus attacked the reactionary Red Guards? You need to be more specific.

Again, how was it a brutal witch hunt? Many people were incarcerated, yes, and others had their homes broken into, but such actions were quickly brought under control as the revolutionary faction began to formulate a coherent plan.

Once more, can you provide evidence that Mao had a specific target in mind other than the bourgeois headquarters and moving beyond incorrect ideological lines? Through it all you have yet to provide a single instance or shred of proof which advocates that Mao "luanched" this revolution so as to "regain power" or "eliminate enemies."

[Let's Get Free]

How could he had "regained control of the party" when he was alreadyin firm control of it? You do not explain this.

Mao had lost most of his credibility after the disastrous "Great Leap Forward




A mass-movement was needed to remove the obstacles to revolutionary organizing so I believe the revolutionary fervor was intended.

The purpose of the 'Cultural Revolution" wasn't to "remove obstacles to revolutionary organizing." It was Mao's attempt at a comeback It was a factional struggle at the top level of the CCP in which millions of university and high school students were mobilized everywhere to attack “revisionism” and return Mao to real power.


You mean Red Rebel groups attacked these bureaucrats... or do you mean the Red Guards which attacked the revolutionary bureaucrats? Again, you do not provide a detailed explanation.

The Red Guards started deciding for themselves whom to attack.




Again, how was it a brutal witch hunt? Many people were incarcerated, yes, and others had their homes broken into, but such actions were quickly brought under control as the revolutionary faction began to formulate a coherent plan.

It was indeed a brutal witch hunt. Mao claimed that the Party and the Red army had become a capitalized aristocracy (which it basically had) and needed to be purged by the youth of the nation. It was a cynical populist coup that not only wiped out all opposing politicians, but also all opposing ideologies. Countless books and religious scrolls were burned as heretical to Mao Tse Tung-Thought. This was a repetition of the Chinese tradition of the Emperors of the Qin and Han dynasties who destroyed the works of Confucius and Lao tzu upon their rise to power, as a way of censoring heresy. The 'Cultural Revolution' was nothing more than an exploded reactionary cult far more resembling of fascism than communism.


Once more, can you provide evidence that Mao had a specific target in mind other than the bourgeois headquarters and moving beyond incorrect ideological lines? Through it all you have yet to provide a single instance or shred of proof which advocates that Mao "luanched" this revolution so as to "regain power" or "eliminate enemies."

How was it an attack on "bourgeois headquarter?" At least since 1949, all top party leaders lived and worked under extremely privileged conditions and in virtually total isolation from ordinary people. In Beijing they cloistered themselves (and their servants) inside the Zhongnanhai complex, while in summer they vacation together at the seaside resort of Beidaihe. If the wanted to target bourgeois headquarters they should have started by attacking themselves.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Mao had lost most of his credibility after the disastrous "Great Leap Forward

Credibility is not the same as power, in any case he still had plenty of credibility. For if he didn't than how would he have been able to launch the cultural revolution as you so claim?


The purpose of the 'Cultural Revolution" wasn't to "remove obstacles to revolutionary organizing." It was Mao's attempt at a comeback It was a factional struggle at the top level of the CCP in which millions of university and high school students were mobilized everywhere to attack “revisionism” and return Mao to real power.In what manner, other than "credibility" did he need to make a comeback? Once more you have yet to provide any evidence whatsoever to back up any of your claims. Also, you are literally repeating the lies of capitalist by promoting this line.

As explained in an earlier post it wasn't about power-struggles, or anything so Juvenal, but rather about pushing the country into a more developed state of socialism which could only be done if the correct revolutionary line won out.

This is exemplified by the difference in how the masses were treated:


The real issue was that Mao and Liu had a completely different attitude towards the so-called masses. Mao's view was that the socialist education movement should not be carried out by outsiders but by the masses themselves locally and that the party should rely on the local masses... In Mao's opinion Liu's method would strike against the broad sector at grassroots level in order to protect the small group of leading officals...Source: The Battle for China's Past by Mobo Gao, Pg144

This was fought over during the aforementioned Socialist Education Movement. The disagreement over how this movement should be carried out then led to the eventual materialization of the Cultural Revolution. Via his own works Mao helped bring this later movement to life but it is ridiculous to believe he could have willed it to life simply because he wanted it so.



The Red Guards started deciding for themselves whom to attack.I do not doubt this: the reactionary Red Guards did indeed decide which revolutionary faction to attack, yes.


It was indeed a brutal witch hunt. Mao claimed that the Party and the Red army had become a capitalized aristocracy (which it basically had) and needed to be purged by the youth of the nation.Certain segments of the party, the bourgeois headquarters, had indeed become what you say, but segments, not the whole.


It was a cynical populist coup that not only wiped out all opposing politicians, but also all opposing ideologies.Sources please. While you get those I will leave you with this...


Myriad forms of journalism, official and unofficial alike, sprouted during the Cultural Revolution. There were 542 official magazines and journals and 182 newspapers in circulation throughout China. More than 10,000 unofficial newspapers and pamphlets were published by the “laobaixing,” with 900 publications in Beijing alone.[10] The dazibaos that were plastered on the walls of streets, factories and schools were the antithesis of a tightly state-controlled media. They allowed millions to debate and express themselves on an unprecedented scale.Source: http://kasamaproject.org/2008/12/03/maos-cultural-revolution-pt-4-radical-changes-in-culture/

If it is as you say and all opposing ideology was wiped out than it is only one of the greatest examples of how reactionary thought was routed by open debate.

Politicians lost power and were imprisoned but they were later "rehabilitated" and reinstated into the party (See: Deng Xiopeng). Mao was firmly against permanently purging members with conflicting views and in fact welcomed such criticisms.



Countless books and religious scrolls were burned as heretical to Mao Tse Tung-Thought. This was a repetition of the Chinese tradition of the Emperors of the Qin and Han dynasties who destroyed the works of Confucius and Lao tzu upon their rise to power, as a way of censoring heresy.
Nope, not that either...


Common Western characterizations of the struggle against the “Four Olds” during the Cultural Revolution rely on photographs of Red Guards burning old books and destroying religious temples and historical relics. While incidents such as these took place in some cities, the government stepped in to try to protect cultural relics from destruction. According to a woman who lived in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, her neighborhood library had a variety of literature from the West. Recent editions of books had brief introductions which provided a political context and discussion of the author’s viewpoint. Feudal literature was on the shelves in order to help readers learn about the old society.


There are also widespread misconceptions about the destruction of monasteries in Tibet during the Cultural Revolution. These monasteries were run by lamas who, with feudal landlords, exploited millions of serfs chained to the land. It was ex-serfs themselves who destroyed idols, prayer wheels, drums made of human skin and other symbols of their oppression that were housed in the monasteries. Later in the Cultural Revolution, some monasteries were restored so they could serve as religious shrines and museums that exhibited relics from the bitter past.


During the Cultural Revolution, archaeological excavations produced new discoveries of Lantian Man and Peking Man (c. 600,000-400, 000 years ago) and bronzes, ceramics and other artifacts from ancient dynasties. When foreign visitors saw such discoveries or the Ming Tombs outside Beijing, they were told that these great artistic achievements were built with the sweat of the common people, and now the common people finally had the right to enjoy them.
Source: http://kasamaproject.org/2008/12/03/maos-cultural-revolution-pt-4-radical-changes-in-culture/



The 'Cultural Revolution' was nothing more than an exploded reactionary cult far more resembling of fascism than communism.Provide better arguments than this, otherwise I will not continue this discussion with you.


How was it an attack on "bourgeois headquarter?" At least since 1949, all top party leaders lived and worked under extremely privileged conditions and in virtually total isolation from ordinary people. In Beijing they cloister themselves (and their servants) inside the Zhongnanhai complex, while in summer they vacation together at the seaside resort of Beidaihe. If the wanted to target bourgeois headquarters they should have tarted by attacking themselves.Really-all officials? No, more likely you are talking about the bourgeois headquarters who lived such indulgent lives. I do not deny that luxury was a problem but Mao helped purge such indulgences by ordering people to the countryside and hoping they would get closer with the rural folk thus eliminating their elitist tendencies. It is important to point out that such officials were often part of the bourgeois headquarters.

You make no distinction and this is your weak suit.

[Zostrianos]

The preservation of relics was the exception, not the rule. The destruction was immense, and was very much akin to what Christian monks did in the late Roman empire (or even the Taliban in Afghanistan), demolishing temples, attacking Pagans and Jews, and burning their texts, while preserving a very small fragment of non-Christian literature for educational purposes (or simply to mock it). And the old "feudalism" excuse doesn't justify the destruction of most monasteries and temples - in fact, it doesn't justify any attack on any place of worship. They could have simply arrested any feudal lords guilty of crimes, and leave the people free to think and worship freely as they desired.
The Cultural Revolution was an abomination, an orgy of savagery that had no limits, even cannibalism (http://books.google.ca/books?id=ppYRb4mHEEYC&pg=PA423&dq=cultural+revolution+cannibalism&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CC3WUJ7gItGs0AGvoIHoAQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%20cannibalism&f=false)took place during that time. It's getting really annoying to see so many Marxists trying to soften, minimize or explain away these events (as well as Stalin's crimes, etc...).

[Let's Get Free]

The preservation of relics was the exception, not the rule. The destruction was immense, and was very much akin to what Christian monks did in the late Roman empire (or even the Taliban in Afghanistan), demolishing temples, attacking Pagans and Jews, and burning their texts, while preserving a very small fragment of non-Christian literature for educational purposes (or simply to mock it). And the old "feudalism" excuse doesn't justify the destruction of most monasteries and temples - in fact, it doesn't justify any attack on any place of worship. They could have simply arrested any feudal lords guilty of crimes, and leave the people free to think and worship freely as they desired.
The Cultural Revolution was an abomination, an orgy of savagery that had no limits, even cannibalism (http://books.google.ca/books?id=ppYRb4mHEEYC&pg=PA423&dq=cultural+revolution+cannibalism&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CC3WUJ7gItGs0AGvoIHoAQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%20cannibalism&f=false)took place during that time. It's getting really annoying to see so many Marxists trying to soften, minimize or explain away these events (as well as Stalin's crimes, etc...).

In conclusion, the 'Cultural Revolution' was one hell of a mess, a 10 year orgy of violence that put China on the brink of civil war. Sure, the Maoists say that it was an attempt to further the state of socialism, But this factional struggle, and the previous marginalization of Mao that lay behind it was not advertised as the real reason for this process in which tens of thousands of people were killed and millions of lives were wrecked. China was thrown into ideology run amok on a scale arguably even greater than under Stalin at the peak of his power. Millions of educated people suspected of “revisionism” (or merely the victims of some personal feud), including technicians and scientists, were sent off to the countryside to “learn from the peasants,” which in reality involved them in crushing forced labor in which many were worked to death.

[islandmilitia]

In conclusion, the 'Cultural Revolution' was one hell of a mess, a 10 year orgy of violence that put China on the brink of civil war.

Whatever else we might think about the Cultural Revolution, this characterization is taken straight from the pages of the ideology of the contemporary Chinese state. At the most basic level, by saying that the Cultural Revolution lasted for an entire decade, what you ignore is that, according to contemporary understandings, specially amongst members of grassroots organizations, the Cultural Revolution actually came to an end in 1969 with the Ninth Party Congress, at which Lin Biao himself declared that Mao's line had been able to defeat political opponents. The understanding amongst ordinary people that the Cultural Revolution came to an end at this point in time had a definite basis in their own experience because the Ninth Party Congress took place in a context where the military was beginning to crack down on expressions of factional dissent and where the party establishment was also beginning to reassert itself in workplaces and other institutions. This three-year periodization of the Cultural Revolution continued to exist amongst both ordinary people and in terms of the state's own narrative until 1974, when Mao referred to the Cultural Revolution as ongoing, and even after that point the vernacular understanding (as opposed to official state discourse) still located the Ninth Party Congress as a critical turning point. The notion that we can see the Cultural Revolution as a decade-long experience has been taken up under the conditions of reform by state as well as semi-state actors (e.g. the contributors to "scar literature" in the 1980s) and it is important because of the way it reduces the Cultural Revolution to a simplistic narrative of continuous generalized violence rather than looking at the changing balance between popular forces on the one hand and the forces of state repression on the other. It is certainly not the case that China was in a constant state of civil war for a whole decade, because the period from 1969-76 was one of order - but order, of course, on the terms of the state establishment. In order to gain a meaningful understanding of the Cultural Revolution, we need to be sensitive to the changing dynamics and changing balance of forces over time.

Stepping back from the specific issue of periodization, a problem with accounts which look at the Cultural Revolution through the prism of Mao's intentions (whether that be defending revolutionary politics or trying to assert his position over rival leaders) is that this approach fails to acknowledge the ways in which the Cultural Revolution produced opportunities whereby social forces could move beyond the desires of Mao and his supporters. That is, whatever Mao's intentions, the Cultural Revolution was a dynamic process that did not remain within his effective control, and there were definite points where Mao and his supporters took the side of political order because they were faced with social forces that threatened their own position, even whilst, at the same time, they might have been genuinely concerned about the problem of bureaucracy. If we look at the Wind of Economism in Shanghai, which took place over late 1966 and early 1967, we find a movement that was able to transcend the factional divisions within workplaces and which gave direct expression to the desire of workers to improve their living conditions. The fact that Mao and his local supporters like Zhang Chunqiao as well as the leaders of Shanghai's emergent rebel organizations like Wang Hongwen did not support this movement and tried to keep worker activism within the confines mandated by the state shows how the Cultural Revolution opened up spaces for political and social mobilization in ways that were not anticipated and not necessarily supported by the leading individuals who tend so figure to prominently in orthodox historical accounts.


China was thrown into ideology run amok on a scale arguably even greater than under Stalin at the peak of his power

This idea - that the Cultural Revolution, understood as horrific violence, shows what happens when radical ideological commitment becomes part of daily life - is also straight from contemporary state ideology. As scholars and activists have often pointed out, the ideological changes that taken place in China since the end of the Cultural Revolution have involved the Chinese state articulating its ideology as one of pragmatism, whilst rejecting the desirability of radical change. In particular, the state has sought to reformulate the meaning of Mao Zedong Thought, by arguing that Mao Zedong Thought represents the product of the collective party leadership, and is subject to modification in light of experience, rather than being equivalent to Mao's own policies and actions. Through documents such as the 1981 resolution on party history, and subsequent declarations at party congresses, Mao Zedong Thought has been articulated in terms of the three principles of “seeking truth from facts, the mass line, and national independence”. These principles have been posed in terms that deprive them of their revolutionary content and make them compatible with the priorities of the reform period, so that, whereas for Mao, the relationship between facts and truth was always a political problem, rooted in specific historical conditions, in the reform-era conception facts have come to be regarded regarded as empirical problems of measurement which can be analyzed without political struggle. Within the framework of this pragmatist ideology, the state has used the Cultural Revolution as a counter-point, to warn of the dangers of radical ideological commitment, and in doing so has deployed the Cultural Revolution (or rather, a particular narrative of the Cultural Revolution) to defuse movements for radical change in China today. In other words, this rejection of ideological commitment as a political value in favor of pragmatism in the service of neo-liberalism is intimately bound up with issues of historical memory and narrative, because it relies on the Chinese state being able to represent the Cultural Revolution as a period of horror and violence.

What this means is that to the extent that leftists accept or propagate the narrative of the Cultural Revolution that is pursued by the Chinese state, we are also making it easer for that state to legitimize its broader discursive articulations, which have been important for the stability of the Chinese state during the reform period. We need to reassert radical, total, emotional ideological commitment (zealotry, if you will) as a positive political value but doing that also entails critiquing state narratives of the Cultural Revolution and being very sensitive to the danger of us actually replicating state narrative in our own accounts and arguments - which is what I think you are doing in your arguments.

[subcp]

The anti-Stalin information leads to untenable conclusions; the break between the Russian and Chinese bureaucracies was expressed through a vicious polemic fight (which didn't get at the real roots of the disagreements), such as the USSR calling the PRC Netchayevschina ('barracks communism'- an insult used by Marx in a letter concerning the Russian nihilist-terrorist Netchayev). The language of Marx, Engels and Lenin was used for the purpose of disguising the actual (foreign policy, bloc domination, etc.) differences between the two nations.

The Situationist International wrote a very good critique of both the GPCR and the reaction to it among Western intellectuals:

The Explosion Point of Ideology in China:

libcom.org/history/explosion-point-ideology-china-situationist-international