I do think a bitterly funny thing about Mao & China's brand of communism is that he was correct on a very core fundamental, that absent perpetual revolution the party would drift right and become the same as the nationalist government it replaced. That very much did happen! Deng turned out to be a capitalist roader, like 100%! China is not left or socialist or anything like that, all the ways that it is not liberal & capitalist are about totalitarian state control or nationalist causes, things you absolutely could see Chiang Kai Shek doing. I don't think that is even a stopped clock moment or anything, I do in fact think Mao was a true believer and saw the way the wind was blowing (he was also a power-tripping maniac and a bunch of other stuff, you can be more than one thing)
Obviously it was way better for China that they did that, Mao was a true believer in nonsense. But a point is a point.
i mean not even after mao died right? several times when he's alive he takes a step away from fully running the country and deng and chen yun are out there decollectivizing agriculture and giving surplus to households! dude really was fully surrounded by capitalist roaders on every level
"How do I permanently lock in my uniquely bad governance style even in the face of all the easy policy improvements which could be made?" is thankfully a very hard problem for rulers to solve.
