If you want to know what the future looks like, read this book. After the communist-led revolution came to victory in 1949, China embarked on the socialist transition to communism. Socialism in China ended centuries of feudal oppression and a century of imperialist domination in a few years, through land reform, self-reliance, suppression and punishment of exploiters, and establishing the beginnings of equality between men and women. Beyond those monumental achievements, the Chinese people further revolutionized their society by creating communes in the countryside; radically transforming education, healthcare, and art to serve the people; whittling away at the division between mental and manual labor; involving the masses of peasants and proletarians in running society; and moving beyond commodity exchange. In doing so, the Chinese people confronted the challenges of the socialist transition period, relying on mass initiative and no shortage of class struggle to prevent a new bourgeoisie, rising from within the leadership of socialist society, from taking China back down the capitalist road. Ultimately, capitalist roaders succeeded in seizing power through a counterrevolutionary coup in 1976. But from 1949 to 1976, socialist China stood as a beacon of hope to exploited and oppressed people around the world hungry for revolution. This book explains why.
Written collectively by the Socialist Transition Period Study Group, Continuing the Revolution After the Revolution: Socialist China, 1949–1976 is slated for publication December 26, 2025.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: The Past Is Still Alive
Part 1: Establishing Socialist China
- Overthrowing the old order
- Consolidating the revolutionary victory and building socialism
Part 2: Blazing a New Path for the Socialist Transition to Communism
- Following the Soviet model into the contradictions of socialism
- Socialist upsurge in the countryside
- Reconceptualizing socialism
- The Great Leap Forward
- The great leap backward
Part 3: The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
- Preparation
- Opening salvo and false start
- Rebel students storm the stage, along with their careerist and counterrevolutionary classmates
- Putting the proletariat in Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
- If it is to be a communist revolution, there must be a communist party leading it
- Socialist new things, new relations, and new people
- The two-line struggle continues, in the Party and in society
Part 4: Counterrevolution and Capitalist Restoration
- Capitalist roaders seize the commanding heights of state power
- Dismantling socialism and establishing capitalism
Conclusion: Stories about not being afraid of ghosts
Half the Sky: Women’s Liberation in Red China
A pamphlet to popularize socialist China’s achievements