Stephen Kotkin

Let's not have the bad things that happened under Mao, but let's keep all the good things, supposedly good things that happened, including the Communist Party monopoly, because that to us looks like the problem and it wreaked havoc in their lives, in their family's life.

But to them, that's the solution.

And so this is paradoxical element of communism.

where its failures don't become discrediting for so many of the people.

They instead become a kind of second wind once you acknowledge and denounce them.

So it's never the system at fault.

It's Stalin at fault.

It's never the system at fault.

It's Mao's mistakes or excesses, as they're called, that are at fault.

That's not exactly the way you described.

You have a point.

You're onto something, DK.

But it needs to be qualified.

So what happens in Deng Xiaoping's case is the communists have accidentally

that has unwittingly, not accidentally, unwittingly destroyed the planning system.

They have sent down to the village people who do economic planning.

They've sent them to manual labor.

They have smashed them in the face because they wear glasses in many cases, and therefore they're putatively intellectuals.

And so they've undermined their ability to continue the economic system as they had it.

Not the political system.