Proletarian Power

"This book by Elizabeth Perry and Li Xun is very important. Elizabeth Perry has worked on Shanghai for many years and has had tremendous access to Shanghai archives – I’m sure not all the Party archives, but enormous access. What her book reveals is that Shanghai was very exceptional during the Cultural Revolution. We are used to the idea that the Red Guards wiped out whole administrations in cities and in provinces, and then, as they were sent away to the countryside because they were being too destructive, the army took over. Shanghai was the one exception. The Red Guards in Shanghai, aided and abetted by the Red Guards from Beijing who came down to help them, failed to overturn the Shanghai Party officials. So they had to turn to the workers, led by a factory security man, Wang Hongwen, who later become number three in the Party [the youngest of the Gang of Four], to help them out. Therefore Shanghai is the only city where the movement that toppled the Party was in fact a workers’ movement, not a Red Guard movement. Because the whole thing is called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – and so in this one city, this one great city of China, the proletariat actually did seize power."