Mao Zedong on contradictions under socialism revisited

This paper explores the political background to, the reasons behind, and the stages through which Mao Zedong reversed the position of the Resolution of the 8th Party Congress of 1956 on the issue of the major domestic contradiction in China. Relying on recently published Chinese sources, both primary and secondary, the paper argues that Mao arrived at his position, in which the primacy of class struggle was once again asserted, principally as a result of his negative assessment of the criticism leveled against the CCP in the Party rectification of May 1957, but in an ambivalent and diffident frame of mind, and one highly sensitive to the question of theoretical orthodoxy. Mao's reversal on this crucial issue both confused his colleagues in the CCP CC and aroused strong arguments within that body.