262 { China’s Quest
the Great Leap Forward, many leaders of the party favored more pragmatic
policies focused on economic development, policies such as had been imple-
mented in 1953–1957 and again in 1962–1965. Mao believed that these policies
would take Chinese socialism away from the utopian vision to which he was
committed, and toward the corrupt, hierarchical, and unequal social system
(socialist in name only, Mao believed) that existed in the USSR. The Cultural
Revolution upheaval was, from one perspective, Mao’s purge of those who
differed from him on policy, and therefore challenged his power, within the
CCP. Mao framed this purge in terms of class struggle between the bour-
geoisie and the proletariat and preventing the restoration of capitalism in
China. Mao and his policy preferences represented, of course, the proletariat,
while his opponents and their policies stood for the bourgeoisie. As stated by
a pivotal declaration “Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”
issued in August 1966 after extensive revision by Mao:
Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to
use the old ideas, culture, customs and habits of the exploiting classes
to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavor to stage
a come-back. The proletariat must do just the opposite: it must meet
head-on every challenge of the bourgeoisie in the ideological field and
use the new ideas, culture, customs, and habits of the proletariat to
change the mental outlook of the whole of society. At present, our ob-
jective is to struggle against those persons in authority who are taking
the capitalist road, to criticize and repudiate the reactionary bourgeois
academic “authorities” and the ideology of the bourgeoisie and all other
exploiting classes and to transform education, literature and art and all
other parts of the superstructure that do not correspond to the socialist
economic base, so as to facilitate the consolidation and development of
the socialist system.^4
When Stalin had carried out a similar purge of Soviet institutions in the
1930s, his chosen instrument was the internal security police. China’s internal
security forces played a critical role in the Cultural Revolution by not protect-
ing from radical attack individuals targeted by top Maoist leaders. But the
instrument of attack and removal of his opponents, real and putative, chosen
by Mao was organizations of radical youth—secondary and tertiary school
students, and younger workers in offices and factories. The Red Guard orga-
nizations formed by these youth attacked via criticism and then “dragged
out” via “struggle” the “hidden revisionists” that had “wormed their way”
into positions of power within the communist bureaucratic apparatuses that
ran China. That is, they attacked CCP leaders who had had doubts (or who
were suspected of having doubts) about Mao’s radical policies. Mao called
forth these Red Guard organizations using his immense personal authority,
the cult of personality that had developed around him, backed up a by the