Here's my understanding.
The Chinese Communist Revolution as a whole was a failure, but not necessarily a mistake and not because proletarian revolution is inherently flawed. (The GPCR, specifically, is another issue.) It was a failure in the large simply in that it failed at its stated goal to move China into a thriving communist nation and prevent the restoration of capitalism.
But what was achieved by Mao-era China is unparalleled in human history.
China was still semi-feudal in 1949 with a life expectancy of ~35 years.
Under Mao, living conditions skyrocketed, illiteracy was massively reduced (perhaps the single greatest educational effort), and life expectancy rose to ~65 years, the most rapid increase in documented world history.
People's schools, hospitals, communes, theaters, etc. were swiftly built in solidarity while free healthcare services were widely expanded even into rural areas, widespread water and sanitation improvements, new progressive freedoms e.g., to choose your partner, unilateral divorce by will of female, etc. were introduced, some for the first time in Chinese history.
Much has been written unpacking the "millions died literally because communism". Millions die in the U.S. from poverty, racial segregation, lack of healthcare, etc., and yet we remain the angelic poster of capitalist "success" and the legitimacy of neoliberal capitalism is barely questioned as an obvious "overall force for good".
Here's a decent short piece on the Great Chinese Famine: https://mronline.org/2011/06/26/revisiting-alleged-30-million-famine-deaths-during-chinas-great-leap
More recent economic improvements in China can arguably be correlated as much to U.S. lifting embargoes and economic sanctions, freeing up international trade, than it can to China's adoption of neoliberal market reforms required for access to such. For example, I recall Vietnam's GDP growth began when the U.S. lifted their embargo, not when they privatized several years prior.
In other words, the U.S. is a fuck and actively undermines socialist countries economically and militarily. The outcomes of socialist revolutions can't be understood in a vacuum. Another one of many classic examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d'état
All this said, I'm not a "tankie" and I'm not oblivious to the problems and severe transgressions throughout the Chinese Communist Revolution (mostly neither was Mao, frankly).
But I think it's telling we hear volumes of vilification and almost nothing of its very unique triumphs. I think the reason for this may be quite simple. The West, and U.S. citizens in particular, are inundated with imperialist, capitalist propaganda in every direction from the moment we are born.
Capitalism is antidemocratic and authoritarian, just more insidiously than the weaponized caricatures of communist revolutionary excesses.
Capitalism bares its teeth anytime capitalists lose too much privilege or access to cheap/slave labor. It "masks off" and aligns with fascism whenever necessary to prop up its vampiric privatization of the entire natural world. It fetishizes GDP at the expense of our planet and actual people's health, happiness and freedom.
The socialist way has only barely been seen.
Class struggle is a process. It's taken us from chattel slavery, through feudalism and into capitalism. I believe socialism is the next step and that communism, while not a utopia, will at least mark the end of the monstrous class inequalities structurally inherent to capitalist societies.
BTW, I'm really fun at parties, obviously. 🙄
Sean
