The Cultural Revolution

The story of Lin Piao cannot be understood without coming to grips with the essential features of socialist society.

A socialist society is not monolithic, within it many struggles occur. In China these struggles achieved their most comprehensive form during the Cultural Revolution where virtually every Chinese was actively involved in either shoring up the old order or attacking it. Views from the far right to the far left found currency and the struggle ranged from wall posters to armed assaults and guerrilla warfare.

In fact China was going through a second revolution.

In 1949 the feudal and imperialist order had been overthrown. During the Great Leap Forward (1958-61) the economic basis of the socialism had been laid with the reorganisation of agriculture and industry and the accelerating of economic development. The Chinese people led the Great Leap familiarising themselves with new techniques and initiating many changes.

The Cultural Revolution was the next stage. It involved the revolutionising of the superstructure of society—education, culture, ways of thinking, the whole Party and state apparatus. During the Great Leap splits in the Chinese Communist Party had become apparent and it was clear that a large section of the Party, which followed the Soviet model of development, would oppose the revolutionisation of the superstructure.

Thus the most important aspect of the Cultural Revolution became the overthrow of these top bureaucrats who blocked the thoroughgoing transformation of Chinese society. It was the Chinese people who, responding to Mao's call, attacked and deposed the Party bureaucrats and made the victory of the Cultural Revolution possible.

The contradiction between the mass of the people and a few top bureaucrats in the Party was the key element of the Cultural Revolution and in one form or another characterises the whole period of socialist society.