The Political Process During the Cultural Revolution II: Political Behavior

Abstract

We have already discussed how factions formed and what issues emerged during the Cultural Revolution. But in order to understand why certain issues emerged and others did not, and why factions took the positions that they did, it may help to examine precisely who joined the various factions and why. To what extent, for example, was class the basic issue of concern to unit members or just a surrogate for other latent issues involving the interests of isolated individuals, friendship cliques, or occupational or other kinds of social and political groups and groupings? Answers to these kinds of questions can be approached by analyzing and comparing the correspondence of factional alignments with the various class cleavages, friendship groups, and social, political, and technical occupational cleavages that cut through the unit. In this section, then, we turn to some quantitative analyses of the social and political correlates of factional affiliation.