The Cultural Revolution was an attempt to provoke fresh group-formation over reviving the party

Evidence

The relevancy of these analyses becomes evident when we think, for instance, of the Chinese cultural revolution. Whatever may have seemed confusing in that period of social upheaval now takes on the clarity of a textbook demonstration: a deliberate attempt, not to revive the party apparatus, but to provoke a new and fresh wave of group-formation and revolutionary cohesiveness to take the place of the older, ossified groups; an attempt to put the notion of the permanent revolution into practice. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 537

Categorization

• XREF: This is Jameson applying Sartre’s categories as an explanatory key to a historical event, the classic dialectical-critical move the reader is tracking. — connects to: Cultural revolution faces the paradox that readiness makes revolution unnecessary — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 189; Authentic revolution must be a cultural revolution because culture preserves oppressive structures — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 582; Mao engineered the Cultural Revolution to destabilize his own Communist Party. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 95
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does this Sartrean reading of the Cultural Revolution square with Jameson’s later, more critical treatments in Postmodernism?

Broader Connections

• Authentic revolution must be a cultural revolution because culture preserves oppressive structures #expands (0.78) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 582
• Cultural revolution faces the paradox that readiness makes revolution unnecessary #qualifies (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 189