#windows-mememaker

ive gotten into the (bad) habit of reading like four books at once so right now i’m reading seventeen contradictions, a history of the imperial japanese navy, settlers by j sakai, a history of british ww2 armament production (written by michael postan!), and dan simmons’ end of endymion (kinda corny space opera but still super good

well, given that deng ended up in power the CR failed, i guess, but ultimately it’s impossible to build a socialist society on a shaky ideological structure, and considering social formations solely in terms of gdp/whatever is pretty harmful and ignores the actual processes that occur. so the CR was a good thing, and did do good things regardless of the economic disruption (that was deliberately kept to a minimum). moreover, as has been shown time after time in soclalist societies, making pacts with an exploitative class in the name of development frequently ends up biting you in the ass

the cultural revolution was essentially mao and the radical elements of the CCP recognizing that large segments of the bureaucracy and state apparatus had been infiltrated by reactionaries in disguise, and sought to take china down a road leading to capitalist restoartion. consequently, radical elements of the populace (mostly students and workers) mobilized themselves in order to root out those reactionary elements and eliminate them. a good but dense overview is http://scholar.oxy.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=decalages, louis althusser’s on the cultural revolution. people also speak quite highly of The Battle For China’s Past, but I haven’t read it so I can’t comment. if you have any follow-up questions after reading those feel free to drop me a line. hth!