ABSTRACT
The leadership changes that accompanied the December Third Plenum resuhed in Hu Yaohang's appointment as the general secretary of rhe Central Comminee, and Director of the Propaganda Department. His most important responsibility in this capacity was to use his intellectual network to fashion a new ideological consensus that would provide the theoretical basis for the era of reform that the Parry was poised to embark upon. The intellectual agenda had two components, (a) to provide a social critique and philosophical refutation of Mao's leftist radicalism, and (b) to furnish an acceptable Marxist rationale fo r the change of course.
