Maoist factions In the People's Republic of China since 1967, the terms "ultra-left" and "left communist" (simplified Chinese: 共产主义左翼; traditional Chinese: 共產主義左翼; pinyin: Gòngchǎn zhǔyì zuǒyì) refers to political theory and practice self-defined as further "left" than that of the central Maoist leaders at the height of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR).
As the Central Committee put it in August: Although the bourgeoisie has been overthrown, it is still trying to use the old ideas, culture, customs, habits, practices, traditions, philosophies, and thinking of the exploiting classes to corrupt the masses, capture their minds and endeavour to stage a comeback.
After the conservative Lin Biao made a failed coup, Mao recognized: "Even now China practices an eight-grade wage system, distribution according to work and exchange through money, and in all this differs very little from the old society.
With some police assistance, these representatives managed to silence the more radical rank-and-file demands (called "far-rightist under a leftist form") and absorb their energy into the nominal January Storm, which replaced the city government and party committee with a Shanghai People's Commune ruled by Wang and Zhang Chunqiao.
The earliest record GPCR scholar Wang Shaoguang has found of something resembling an ultra-left position is an open letter from two high school students to Lin Biao, published under the pseudonym Yilin-Dixi in November 1966.
[7] It sought to emulate the Paris Commune as the historical example of popular power and argued that China's "new bureaucratic bourgeoisie" would have to be destroyed to establish a genuinely egalitarian society.
argued that the central conflict in China during the Cultural Revolution was not between Mao Zedong's proponents and opponents, or between the proletariat and the former wealthy, but instead between the masses and a "Red capitalist class" that was "decadent" and impeding historical progress.