On god? On god.

Reading Maurice Meisner’s Mao’s China and After kind of broke my brain. Prior to that I had “upheld” Mao as one of the greatest communist thinkers of all time, but his conflicts with Deng and other “traditional” Marxist-Leninists really paint a picture of an over-excited and dare I say… ultraleftist leader, more interested and educated in the metaphysical and cultural spheres than the economic or material ones. Still have great respect for Mao as a brilliant revolutionary leader and unifier, but Deng and his “capitalist roaders” were really just pragmatic Marxist-Leninists, not enemies of the revolution, and often wound up being scapegoated by the idealist, “Maoist” faction for ultraleftist failures.