ABSTRACT
Mao’s fi nal effort to regain control over the progress of revolution came in the form of a power struggle against Liu Shaoqi and his supporters. Ever since Liu assumed power as head of state, Mao had continued to challenge his policies. Mao was not only angered by Liu’s economic policies but the Chairman and many of his supporters also believed that revolutionary development of all aspects of Chinese society had stagnated. For them, China was still mired in enervating traditional cultural conventions-customs and habits that were millennia old. If Chinese society was to evolve from socialism to communism in accordance with Marxist theory, then drastic change
was necessary. What was needed, according to Mao, was nothing less than a thorough revamping of Chinese culture. By culture Mao was referring not only to how people were educated, what they read, how they created their art and music-although these were important-but also to how people interrelated, what they thought, even how they amused themselves. All aspects of culture had to be changed so that working class values replaced traditional bourgeois customs because, according to Marxists, cultural consciousness reflects the economic values of the prevailing class. Mao Zedong explained to fellow revolutionaries in Yan’an:
In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics.1
