Class must be prioritised in any analysis.
But over centuries and millennia, the collective “recipes for living” (Clifford Geertz’ famous definition of culture) that emerges from particular conditions and trajectories does become a force which also shapes history.
Chinese Characteristics of Socialism: Civilisational Factors in CPC Governance
Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung Vol. VII (PDF)
Note from Foreign Languages Press
It’s with great joy that we release this new printing of Volume VII of the “Unofficial” Selected Works of Mao Zedong. This volume was initially released by our Indian comrades from Kranti Publications in 1991, but was out of stock by the end of the 90s and has since been unavailable in hard copy or online.
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Mao’s Legacy and Accomplishments
“Mao Tse‐tung, who began as an obscure peasant, died one of history’s great revolutionary figures. In Chinese terms, he ranked with the first Emperor who unified China in 200 B.C.
A Chinese patriot, a combative revolutionary, a fervent evangelist, a Marxist theorist, a soldier, a statesman and poet, above all Mao was a moralist who deeply believed, as have Chinese since Confucius, that man’s goodness must come ahead of his mere economic progress.
China achieved enormous economic progress under Mao. He transformed China into a modern, industrialized socialist state.”
Unlike many great leaders, Mao never exercised, or sought, absolute control over day‐to‐day affairs.”
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung
(Abstracted Compilation)
1959
[SOURCE: Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, a Red Guard Publication.]
“THERE IS NO WAY he is a victim of communism,” my partner quips, pointing to a photo of the late Pope John Paul II. We are near the end of our visit to the new Victims of Communism Museum, standing in an elevator-size lobby with photographs of “victims” screen-printed all over the walls. Among the many victims and honorees: Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Dalai Lama, Romanian writer Herta Müller, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, and Hungarian neofascist Viktor Orbán.
Red Scared: Revising history at the Victims of Communism Museum (archived)
It’s wrong to say China is heading for socialism, because it never really abandoned it
Ultimately, what is behind the coverage you see in the West is a sense of dismay that China did not take the path they wanted. China was a socialist state, and still is, but refines its policies in pursuit of its national goals where necessary. It understands the difference between dogmatism and pragmatism, and that is why it so frequently succeeds.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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