An event as contentious as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution naturally lends itself to dramatically differing interpretations. Since our interests are limited primarily to the impact on educational development, we need not tarry over these controversies except to reiterate the interpretation and chronology followed here. The line of argument has been introduced in chapter 11, namely, that Mao drew upon the concept of cultural or superstructural revolution to consolidate what had already been achieved in the economic base. Evidently, neither the idea nor the specific forms it took were original with him. But the Chinese version was at least unprecedented in degree and scope by comparison with the Soviet Union's earlier experience.

Mao and his allies had first raised the idea of cultural revolution in 1958, as part of the great leap into communism with emulation campaign economics as the centerpiece of that movement. The mistake of campaign-style economics was not repeated, but Mao's commitment to cultural revolution emerged from the early-io,6os famine years as if strengthened by the experience. Thereafter, cultural revolution was recast in the leading role of his quest for a Chinese route to socialism, with class struggle defined as the motive force. Targets were all-inclusive and the class enemy was everywhere.

To launch such an undertaking, which entailed not just changing wrong ideas but seizing power from those who espoused them, Mao turned to the mass movement, and the interpretation used here was also introduced in chapter 11. He manipulated the movement to unleash its mass energy against the targets, much as he had used it to seize power in the villages of China during the land revolution of the 1940s.