"Riding a wave of criticism unprecedented in intensity or scope. China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution represented an epoch-making "struggle between the lines" to determine the direction of national development at a critical transition point. Leader of the triumphant "proletarian revolutionary line" was Mao Tse-Tung; leader of the vanguished "bourgeois reactionary line" was erstwhile Chief of State Liu Shao-ch'i, a prominent Communist theorist and organizer who had served as Mao's "close comrade-in-arms: for more than twenty years and was his designed successor. ... Mr. Ditmer illuminates the policy-making process of a revolutionary state facing diverging exigencies of economic modernization and political development."

INCLUDES INDEX.

PART I: LIU'S FALL: Introduction -- The life and times of Liu Shao-ch"i -- Prologue : the gathering storm -- The fall of Liu Shao-ch'i -- Liu Shao-ch'i in the Cultural Revolution -- PART II: TWO ROADS: Liu Shao-ch'i and Mao Tse-Tung : a comparison of character, political style, and policy -- The "capitalist road" : critique and megacritique -- PART III: CRITICISM AND SELF-CRITICISM: Toward a theory of mass criticism -- Mass criticism and mass line -- The structural evolution of criticism and self-criticism.