In many respects, the GPCR was a failure. It was not a revolution, but a failed revolution - it shook the state to its foundations but did not overturn it. It is of absolute importance to identify what value we can extract from this failure that holds positive value. Essentially- https://twitter.com/Kosmonaut_Hegel/status/1304628218331303937

The active phase of the Cultural Revolution (roughly fromJune of 1966 to late 1968) ended in widespread factional violence and institutional gridlock; in some areas in China the campaign threatened to spiral into outright civil war. This forced Mao to call the PLA to intervene.

Instead of a radically transformed party, Mao got a virtual military dictatorship - a contingency he undoubtedly considered a stalemate. The reconstitution of power was accompanied by widespread state-backed purges which decimated the left; this was the revenge of the Cadres.

After that, the GPCR largely ground on in the Cultural/Ideological Sphere, but for most purposes it died as a mass movement before the 70s. This was at an immense cost of damage, economic, political and in terms of human lives. So again, what is there to admire, you ask?

For me the answer can be provided in a twofold sense. First, despite the claims that the GPCR was an unmitigated economic and political disaster, there were indeed considerable achievements and social advances, though with hindsight they must be qualified with their shortcomings.

Second is the theoretical and political implications of the GPCR: despite its failure, it introduced, in a concrete political sequence, the possibility of a revolution within a revolution in its own communist terms. It was the most serious attempt at revolution of the DOTP.

For the 1st, egalitarian social reforms, experiments in agricultural and industrial collectivization, the increase in standard of living of the peasantry, and new, albeit uneven entrance of the proletariat as a political force in the post-1949 era are considerable achievements.

For the second, the revolution with the revolution would never have come voluntarily (in my analysis) and had to be a bitter struggle; the GPCR was inevitable and necessary given the persistent contradictions of socialist society: the GPCR threatened to break through those.

The 2nd category in the realm ideas and potentiality - it provides new ideas within which the ML and later MLM traditions could think of class struggle under socialism, the relation between the institutions of revolution and the masses, and finally the party of the new type.

I would argue that these theoretical advancements, coming from one of the major successful revolutions of the modern era, have tremendous value for the meaning of our history and the possibilities for our future. The failures are regrettable, but revolution is not a dinner party.

Much of the human cost was the result of the party & military defending its hegemony. Therefore, the institutions which the GPCR meant to reform were the major reasons for its defeat. The restoration of order killed five times more than the mass violence of the earlier period.

The mission of the GPCR is not responsible for the immense failure, and neither were the masses; yes, it was undertheorized but theory usually lags behind events. It is the concrete pointing to the possibility of something beyond the classical Party-state form that I admire.