Taking Weber’s definition of the state as ‘the exercise of a monopoly of legitimate violence over a given territory’

Historical materialism offered a way of making socio-economic sense of the country’s long past, and projecting it forward with purposefulness beyond any previous Chinese imagination.

At the same time, dialectical materialism and the Leninist theory of the revolutionary party appeared to provide the best theoretical tool-kit for revolutionary strategy and modern social mobilization.

China presents itself as a power that commendably eschews hegemonism, but the form its abstinence most frequently takes is either compliance with the existing hegemon—over the Iraq war, to take but one example—or pursuit of narrow self-interest—as with Sudan—and its relations with Third World countries remain strictly instrumental.

Likewise, it is probably far-fetched to fault Khrushchev for not reforming Gosplan on time, leaving it to fossilize over the next twenty years.

By that measure, the Soviet Union was still growing up to 1986, when Gorbachev launched his perestroika, and would not have been considered in economic crisis either

He declared, first, that democracy was imperative for the ongoing thought-liberation campaign to steer China’s course towards modernization, and second, that ecumenical unity should take priority over efforts to clarify past mistakes.

The report was primarily a product of internal realpolitik, blocking any real critical reflection on Mao’s record or that of the party under him.

Socialist democracy, or people’s democracy, means that all of the people, enjoying various forms of ownership and usufruct of the means of production, have the overriding right to administer the state.

The change also left rural land ownership in a morass.