Re: Re: Re: RE: RE: private property?

[Dennis Robert Redmond]

On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, Jim Devine wrote:

> as I've argued before, Mao didn't have complete control. He had to respond 
> to the power and influence of CCP cadres, while the fact that his power was 
> originally based on a peasant revolution limited his power.

Not what the historical record says. Mao destroyed or clipped the wings of
any cadre who became too threatening, from Lin Biao to Zhou Enlai. He was
extraordinarily good at the political version of guerilla warfare --
striking where you least expected, killing chickens to scare monkeys,
playing off factions, etc. The really interesting question, of course, is
why the agrarian-autarkic state proved to be such a good mesh with the
East Asian developmental state; this suggests that a tremendous amount of
modernization happened in China during the later, truly demented period of
Mao's rule, beneath the surface.

-- Dennis