Word: deng
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...first, the leader of the Great Counterrevolution was Deng Xiaoping. He dismantled the vastly inefficient system of communes. Farms were turned over to families. The results were almost immediate -- and impressive. Grain output increased 44% over eight years. Soviet economists looked to China with envy and emulation. Kulaks -- rich peasants -- came back into fashion...
...Deng clinched his reputation as a reformer with a witty aphorism dismissing the value of ideology: "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." Catching mice meant putting food on the table -- meeting the material needs of the people. The color of the cat meant the degree to which the economy relies on private incentive and market forces rather than subsidies and quotas -- Adam Smith's recommended mechanisms rather than Karl Marx...
Revolutionary true believers used to call Deng a "capitalist roader." They were right in their accusation, but he was right in his perception that the Communist road was a dead...
...while Deng subordinated ideology to the goal of "modernization," he did not downgrade the role or diffuse the power of the Communist Party. Quite the contrary; he has remained an absolutist in defense of the institution that Marx and Engels aptly called the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Farmers could work their own plots and profit from the sale of their produce at market, but under Deng, the People's Daily remained very much an organ of instruction rather than information, to say nothing of debate. The doors of the Great Hall of the People were shut, figuratively and often literally...
...principal purpose of the party -- and the only thing it does well -- has always been the preservation and enforcement of its own power. But that naked truth has traditionally been disguised with Marxist economics and ideology. To the extent that he de- Communized the economy and discredited ideology, Deng diminished the party's claim to legitimacy. He left the party all the more vulnerable to the flood of discontent that has so stunned the world in recent days. An improvement in living standards is not enough to meet the needs of the people. As a student banner in Tiananmen Square...