In addition, the targets of major political campaigns received negative political labels that acquired the quality and hereditary nature of class statue Those targeted during the campaign to suppress counterrevolutionaries, which damned both them and their offspring from that point on.
Even though “class “ almost completely lost its Marxist meaning in CCP usage,the ideas of class and class struggle remained central to Mao Zedong. Thought and the politics of the PRC.In his unique fashion, Mao always viewed enemies and friends in class terms, and he saw society as the battleground for unceasing class struggle. At time when that underlying conflict was not terribly obvious to his colleagues, Mao admonished them, “Never forget class struggle”
Class analysis formed the basis of Mao’s theory of struggle, contradictions, the united front, and even mass political campaigns. One result of Mao’s ideas on class was the emergence in the PRC of a society based on castes-that is, social order with permanent, hereditary status that sharply contoured one’s life experiences and prospects. Few Chinese considered allowing their children to marry someone of bad class background, since that person was always vulnerable to political attack and personal destruction. The bad classes became permanent enemies in a society that defined progress as requiring unremitting struggle against adversaries. A large portion of the country’s creative intellectuals, capable business people, and efficient farmers, moreover, fell under this miasma of permanent class oppression. Eventually, class struggle even consumed the political elite, as Mao during the Cultural Revolution turned on many of his party colleagues and branded them “representatives of the capitalist class”