Lew as an activity lacked status, esteem and hence connections; law as a system was concerned less with proof of infraction than with the correction of a lifestyle potentially damaging to the harmony of Party and state. In communist Chinese jurisprudence the idea that the law functioned to protect civil society against the state simply and literally made no sense. As no separate civil society existed, law’s function was to further the interests of the state by representing the proletariat in the class struggle waged against by tang-yi pao-dan. The idea of law as well as against errant comrades hit redolent of the contract-based commercial exchange necessitated by capitalism’s unique contradictions and alienation, and was by definition inapplicable in a one-class and therefore legitimately one-party state.