Quote from Mao on how 1975 China was ripe for capitalism

It shouldn't come as a complete shock to anyone, that Chairman Mao considered capitalist restoration a distinct possibility. After all his entire anti-revisionist and GPCR campaign was premised on the theory of capitalist restoration in the USSR and its possible repetition in China.

What is interesting is the specific economic structure of Socialist China, that he claimed would allow a rapid change in system, with a mere change of leadership at the top.

Quote:

Also, we must see that what we are practising today is a commodity system. Chairman Mao says, "Our country at present practises a commodity system, the wage system is unequal, too, as in the eight-grade wage scale, and so forth. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat such things can only be restricted. Therefore, if people like Lin Piao come to power, it will be quite easy for them to rig up the capitalist system."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... 01/x01.htm

Regardless of the historical views of Lin Biao, at the time of this writing he was used as a stand-in for the rightwing of the CPC as represented by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

It is remarkable that to some extent Mao is saying that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat carries within itself the seeds of its own demise, at least potentially. The Socialist State cannot eliminate economic inequality and must to a certain extent recognize bourgeois right. But this gradation makes it possible as Mao says for a mere change in leadership to totally change the class-character of a state.

This is perhaps a rebuttal to those who argue against the capitalist restoration thesis, that it is too leader-centric. Stalin dies, Khrushchev takes over and suddenly you have capitalism. But if USSR in 1953 and China in 1975 still had substantial economic inequalities due to the inability of the Socialist State to eliminate the commodity mode of production, then said commodity production becomes the very made entry way for any restoration of capitalism.

And if you read further on in the article, Zhang argues that even with full knowledge of these dangers it is impossible to eliminate commodity production and unequal wages under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.