The actual ‘Nuts and Bolts’ of the CR – the Schema

Mao had written many years before the official CR words to the effect that “a revolution is not a dinner party” and here he was about to prove this yet again. “Continuous Revolution” also required continuous chaos, rebellion and violence. I’m now considering the specific objectives as they were outlined and met in the fulfilment of Mao’s new CR strategy.

The first and really a proto-CR objective was the object of the PLA. It was to create the class (called “revolutionary successors”) that would meet the further objectives and it was met in the period 1963 to 1966. This involved the training of youth in the Mao cult. Maoists saw only the youth as completely trustworthy as they were considered untainted by pre-1949 society and ideas. The principal campaigns that were to inspire the ‘revolutionary successors’ were Mao’s socialist education campaign and the ‘learn from the PLA’ campaign.

Further, Maoists believed revolution must be “done” in order to be understood and so the youth would be encouraged to “do” it (as understanding revolution was deemed a good thing). They would “do” the CR and the principal first objects to have things “done” to them were revisionist backsliders within the CCP and their lackeys. Mao had no faith left in either most of the leadership of the party or the intelligentsia. Metaphorical calls were made to “bombard the headquarters” and who knew if they would ultimately have to be taken literally. With the successors now revved up, the “party” could now begin with the Red Guards as the hosts. The two clear objectives of the CR were to eliminate all revisionism and ‘smash’ the four olds and they were both to be accomplished in short order (in the period from August to December 1966). So the ‘capitalist roaders’ were to be identified, attacked and overthrown so that the real CR (the final elimination of all feudal and bourgeois cultural hangovers through ‘smashing the four olds’) could then happen unimpeded. The four olds included anything religious, traditional or Western. This was only phase one.

Next, people then had to put in to replace the deposed bureaucrats and this was essentially the next phase accomplished in 1967 and 1968. First in 1967 Red Guards and worker ‘rebels’ forcibly assumed control of all organisational and social units (mostly the factories and communes) and workers replaced the party structure with 1848 Paris Commune-style ‘workers’ and people’s committees’ that Commune having been so admired by Marx himself as a potential model. The overthrow of Shanghai city government was especially closely modelled on the history of that 'model' Commune. So admired was the Shanghai ‘coup’ that three of the people involved were later to form the Gang of Four with Mao’s wife. Workers assumed more of a role than the Red Guards here as it was their units being taken over. This was the period when Red Guards frequently began to fight each other. The final part of this phase occurred in July and August of 1968 and was carried out by the PLA. It was a reversal of the first two parts of the phase, as I’ve noted – the Red Guards and worker ‘rebels’ were finally suppressed themselves and sent down to the countryside for more education by work. This was actually the deadliest period as the PLA killed Red Guards on quite a large scale essentially because while they were much better armed and organised than the chaotic Guards forces the Guards still often refused to peacefully and meekly submit to PLA suppression.

The final phase was a kind of reversal of the first two which created power vacuums. It was about filling the vacuum and was accomplished by the PLA in August and September of 1968 and by the PLA and the CCP in 1969. The Paris Commune-like ‘mass organisations’ were replaced by PLA-dominated ‘revolutionary committees’ in 1968 that supported the rebuilding of the party and in 1969 the re-building of the party structure was then finally undertaken with the support of the PLA and the Shanghai radicals. The CR had reduced the ranks of those able to rebuild the party but the final outcomes of this phase were the decisions of the 9^th party Congress in 1969 designed to present a show of unity to the outside world or to signal an end to further disputation.