The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, as it is known in China and by Maoists worldwide, was initiated by Mao as a way of both empowering the Chinese working class and a way to rebuild his support base to combat factions within the CPC he did not like.
Yet Mao “is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells” and the Cultural Revolution escaped Mao’s control. Multiple factions, though still speaking in Mao’s name, sharply developed an analysis of rot in China’s bureaucratic mode of development. Mao was both the initiator and ultimate gravedigger of the Cultural Revolution as he directed the People’s Libreration Army to crush the ultraleft factions that precisely could have revolutionized China.
As Yiching Wu noted in The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, the defeat of the Cultural Revolution directly led to the defeat of the working class at Tiananmen Square and its resulting capitalist restoration in China.
Below is an excerpt from the manifesto of the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Committee that called for a “People’s Commune of China.” They were crushed and the author of the manifesto jailed for a decade.
The storm of the January revolution was a great attempt by the revolutionary people, led by Chairman Mao, to topple the old world and build a new world. A program for the first Great Proletarian Political Revolution was formulated at that great moment. Chairman Mao pointed out: “This is one class overthrowing another. It is a great revolution.” That shows that the Cultural Revolution is not a revolution to dismiss officials from their office or a “dragging out” movement, nor is it a purely cultural revolution, but a revolution in which one class overthrows another.” Seen from the facts of the storm of the January revolution, the overthrown class is none other than the class of bureaucrats formed in China in the past 17 years. (Chairman Mao’s “Comment and Instructions on Li Cheng-jen’s On-the-Spot-Squatting Report,” January 25, 1965.)
In the struggle to seize power in these units, the Marxist principle of smashing the old state machinery must be observed. Here there is no place for reformism, combining two into one, or peaceful transition. The old state machinery must be smashed utterly. “The old system of exploitation, revisionist system, and bureaucratic organs must be utterly smashed.” The program of the first Great Proletarian Political Revolution was put forward in editorials in an embryonic, not very concrete state in the final stages of the storm of the January revolution. The decaying class that should be overthrown, the old state machinery that should be smashed, and even social problems, in which people formerly had not dared to express a dissident view, were put forward. This great development was an inevitable result of the courage and pioneering spirit demonstrated by the proletariat in the storm of the January revolution.
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There are two essential points in the writings about the army:
It is now seen that the army now is different from the people’s army before the liberation. Before the liberation, the army and the people fought together to overthrow imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism, and feudalism. The relation between the army and the people was like that between fish and water. After the liberation, as the target of revolution has changed from imperialism, bureaucratic capitalism, and feudalism to capitalist-roaders, and these capitalist-roaders are power holders in the army, some of the armed forces in the revolution have not only changed their blood-and-flesh relations with the people that obtained before the liberation, but have even become tools for suppressing revolution. Therefore, if the first Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is to succeed, a radical change in the army will be necessary. The “ultra Left faction” has found the basis for its thinking in a quotation from Chairman Mao. In the same year after Chairman Mao issued the order for the armed forces to live in their barracks, (they are separated from the masses.
It is now seen that a revolutionary war in the country is necessary if the revolutionary people today want to overcome the armed Red capitalist class. The large-scale armed struggle between the proletariat and the Red capitalist class in August and the local revolutionary war in the country bore out the rebel factions’ prediction in August (sic). The experience created by the local revolutionary wars in August is moreover unparalleled in history and rich and great. Contrary to the expectations of the mediocrities in general, history advanced in the direction predicted by the “heretics and evil advocates.” Hitherto unimaginable, large-scale gun-seizing incidents occurred regularly in accordance with the pace of historical development. Local wars in the country of varying magnitude, in which the army took a direct part (in Kiangsi and Hangchow the armed forces were directly involved in the fighting), erupted. The creative spirit and revolutionary fervor displayed by the people in August was very moving. Gun-seizing became a “movement.” Its magnitude and the violence of the revolutionary wars gave the people a deep impression at the time. “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force of the creation of world history.” [Emphasis added.]
[…]
As a result of the practice of struggle having gained rich experience and entered a higher stage, the maturity of the political thinking of the revolutionary people in China has also entered a higher stage. A new trend of thought (called “ultra-Left trend of thought” by the enemy), including “overthrow of the new bureaucratic bourgeoisie,” “abolition of bureaucratic organs,” “thorough smashing of the state machine,” etc. wanders among the revolutionary people like a “spectre” in the eyes of the enemy. The weapon of political thinking with which the revolutionary masses are to win utter victory in the proletarian socialist great revolution has begun to appear in a new form in the “ultra-Left faction.” The thought of Mao Tse tung, which is carrying out a new social revolution in China, will gradually wake up the masses from all contradictions of the past. The revolutionary people are beginning to understand gradually in practice why revolution is necessary, who are to be liquidated in the revolution, and how revolution is to be carried out. Revolutionary struggle begins to change from the stage of spontaneity to that of consciousness, from necessity to freedom.
[…]
The commune of the “ultra-Left faction” will not conceal its viewpoints and intentions. We publicly declare that our object of establishing the “People’s Commune of China” can be attained only by overthrowing the bourgeois dictatorship and revisionist system of the revolutionary committee with brute force. Let the new bureaucratic bourgeoisie tremble before the true socialist revolution that shakes the world! What the proletariat can lose in this revolution is only their chains, what they gain will be the whole world!