THE GREAT REVERSAL The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 ...

magnified. One could hardly expect functionaries who had little trust in the outcome oropposed the whole concept to carry out such complex matters as coop and communebuilding in good faith. They were sensitive to various negative signals from the CentralCommittee. They knew how to drag their feet, how to carry out low-profile opposition, oreven how to jumppage 154in and carry official directives to absurd lengths, thus assuring that initiatives would fall oftheir own weight.Conventional wisdom now attributes to Mao and Maoists everything extreme, ultra left,Utopian, and voluntarist, while crediting Liu and his group with a consistent, sober, mixedeconomy line. While it seems clear that Mao did overestimate the socialist enthusiasm of themasses and opened the door to extremism with talk of a "transition to communism," hisposition was not nearly as "left" as is currently painted. For example, he projected twenty, nottwo, five-year plans (100 years, not 10) for the transition from collective to communistownership, and categorically opposed collective usurpation of private property and otherforms of "leveling" rampant in those days.Left in Form, Right in EssenceOn the other side of the coin, there is much evidence to show that Liu, over a long periodof time, repeatedly swung from right opportunism, even capitulation, to "left" adventurism onmajor policy issues. Confronted with the specter of a post-World War II civil war, he backedaway from land reform, but once land reform broke out and could no longer be denied, hejumped in and pushed it far to the "left" with a "poor and hired peasants line," an extremeegalitarian program that almost brought the revolution to disaster by alienating the middlepeasants and all other middle forces. This line targeted for attack the great mass of peasantactivists who actually carried through the land reform because they had failed to create"equality," a destructive ultraleft initiative that failed to distinguish clearly between friendsand enemies. In the Socialist Education Movement, and later during the Cultural Revolution,Liu came forward with "left in form, right in essence" lines that, under superrevolutionaryrhetoric, repeatedly targeted the mass of cadres down below rather than expose themisleaders up above. This helped derail Mao's campaign against "party people in authoritytaking the capitalist road."While it is hard to prove that Liu's cohorts consciously used ultraleft tactics during theGreat Leap period, many of the extreme actions that threw the countryside into chaos at thetime bear the by now familiar "left in form, right in essence" flavor so characteristic of Liu'scounpage155