Assessing the Chinese cultural revolution is a complex undertaking. For one thing it is necessary to oppose the present-day rightist atmosphere that prevails in both the U.S. and China and that labels any movement of the masses as "insanity."(1) It's also necessary to give some credit to Mao Zedong for reforms carried out during this period. As a peasant populist Mao consistently stood for reforms such as improving health care and educational facilities in the countryside, and the cultural revolution did bring about some improvements in this area (at least temporarily).
. But it's also necessary to oppose the diehard enthusiasm of the Maoists and "Gang of Four" cheering squads like the RCP,USA, who negate serious analysis of this period. Mao led the cultural revolution, and the cultural revolution spawned a mass movement that was to some degree a genuine expression of revolutionary sentiments. But it doesn't follow that Mao led, or wanted to lead, a genuine revolutionary movement. Such a movement would have smashed up the state-capitalist bureaucracy he headed and established a revolutionary-democratic regime based on the working class and poor peasantry who made up the vast, vast majority of the population. Far from trying to lead such a movement, Mao worked to suppress those who were striving to build it.
. From the standpoint of the struggle against revisionism, the most interesting feature of the cultural revolution was the rise and demise of the "Ultra-left," the movement to the left of Mao and the other leading Maoists (Lin Biao, the Gang of Four, etc.). For even though Mao and the other leaders of the cultural revolution talked a good deal about the masses, and opposition to revisionism, the fact is that from its beginning the movement was never meant by its Maoist leaders to be part of a social revolutionary movement. The Maoists themselves were leading lights of the state-capitalist system that congealed after China's liberation in 1949. This is precisely the system that needed to be revolutionized. Mao, despite his calls against bourgeois elements in the party, essentially backed the system. Hence he ended up with a factional struggle against his enemies -- other leading lights whom Mao stigmatized as "Rightist" but whose policies in many cases weren't all that different from his own. As the cultural revolution went on, its sectarian character became more and more clear to everyone; which is why eventually the masses became disillusioned with the whole thing.
. But the interesting thing is that, beyond Mao's limited aims, the working masses did take up genuine struggles in the midst of the cultural revolution. They did fight for political and economic reforms. They did target revisionism and capitalism. They did strive to build their own build independent political organizations. And outside of China, the cultural revolution did inspire militant activists around the world to seek out new forms for fighting revisionism.
. The domination of Mao Zedong, Chinese revisionism and three-worldism was a heavy burden for the newly emerging movement of the late 1960s. It took the new generation of anti-revisionist activists years, sometimes decades, to cast off this burden. Even today groups calling themselves Marxist persist in praising China as "socialist."