In a letter to Joseph Bloch, dated 21–22 September 1890, Friedrich Engels wrote: “[W]e make our history ourselves, but in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed, even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one.” The phrase, “the political ones, etc.,” refers to the superstructure and the forms of social consciousness of a society as distinguished from its economic base or the mode of production.

“[Policy] is like a play in many acts which unfolds inevitably once the curtain is raised. To declare then that the performance will not take place is an absurdity. The play will go on, either by means of the actors... or by means of the spectators who mount the stage.... Intelligent people never consider this the essence of the problem, however. For them it lies in the decision whether the curtain is to be raised at all, whether the spectators are to be assembled, and in the intrinsic quality of the play….” With these words of Metternich, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger begins the chapter on the definition of the political equilibrium in his book on problems of peace in Europe between 1812–1822.

The massive effort in the United States to develop the study of the Chinese Communist regime and movement began in the wake of the postwar upsurge in the development of the social sciences, particularly in the field of comparative politics. Inevitably, it has come under the controlling influence of the exciting intellectual ferment in these disciplines. With the publication of Chalmers Johnson's Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (1962) and Franz Schurmann's Ideology and Organization in Communist China (1966), the study of contemporary China can be said to have begun its drive to maturity.

One of the most extraordinary and puzzling events of the twentieth century is surely the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. This most profound crisis in the history of the Peking regime provides us with the best available opportunity to study the Chinese political system. For it is during a crisis that the nature, the strength, and the vulnerabilities of a political system fully reveal themselves. Further-more, we can attempt not only to note the unique features of this extraordinary event, and of Chinese politics itself, but also to see whether the seemingly unique Chinese experience does not reveal some universal dilemma of the human condition and fundamental problems of the socio-political order in a magnified and easily recognizable form. It is my belief that the Chinese political system prior to the Cultural Revolution is one of the purest forms found in human experience of a type of association in which there is a clear-cut separation between the elite and the masses. If one follows Ralf Dahrendorf in asserting that in every social organization there is a differential distribution of power and authority, a division involving domination and subjection, the Chinese political system can be taken as one of the polar examples of all social organizations, showing clearly their possibilities and limitations, their problems and dilemmas. From this perspective, the Maoist vision as it has revealed itself in its extreme form during the early phases of the Cultural Revolution can be considered a critique of this type of political organization.

Despite its political implications, the recent explosion of an atomic device has not greatly altered China's present military position vis-à-vis the West. By all standards except population and size, Communist China is still not a first-rate power. But she has nevertheless proceeded to engage the two superpowers simultaneously in a contest from her position of military and economic weakness. What is equally undeniable is that the success of Peking's foreign policy in the struggle with both superpowers, though limited and perhaps only temporary, has considerably exceeded anticipations based on her military and economic strengths. It is the contention of this paper that an explanation of these two striking facts must be sought in the nature of Mao's revolutionary strategy in the Chinese internal political-military struggle and his belief in the applicability of this strategy to the international arena and to other countries, particularly those in the underdeveloped areas. Mao dared to challenge the militarily and economically strong United States because his revolutionary experience proved to his own satisfaction that his integrated and comprehensive strategy would enable him presently to score political gains from a position of military inferiority, and ultimately enable him to achieve highly ambitious objectives with initially meager means in a protracted struggle.