ABSTRACT
As was true of China as a whole, in Shanghai the mass organizations spawned by the Cultural Revolution quickly divided into two opposing camps: rebel and conservative. Shanghai's first citywide conservative mass organizations—like its initial rebel groups—were composed not of workers but of students. In contrast to the countless rebel organizations, representing competing leadership amitions, that would later spring up across the city, Shanghai's conservative movement exhibited a striking feature. If the rebels represented countercultural undercurrents in Maoist China, then the conservatives embodied the mainstream reaction. The industrial sectors where the deleterious effects of the Cultural Revolution were particularly visible generated an especially large number of conservatives. The conservative organizations of the Cultural Revolution era appear relatively autonomous if judged against worker associations during the preceding seventeen years of Communist rule, when labor activism was largely monopolized by the official trade unions.
