The new things in socialism are good!

Artist: Kunming City Propaganda Station Pictorial Group

Year: ca.1976

Publisher: unknown

Size (mm): 535x770

Condition: very good, folded as issued, pin holes

The 'May 7 Directive' referred to a letter Mao Zedong wrote to Lin Biao in May 1966, where he proposed a comprehensive plan for turning China into 'a great school of Mao Zedong Thought'. His idealised model imagined a self-sufficient society with class struggle as a core tenet, weakening the power of the bourgeoisie and strengthening the proletariat. The 'new things in socialism' would, according to Mao, be born from these class struggles and contradictions.

The 'New things in socialism' were supposedly newly emerging phenomena that could be attributed to the Cultural Revolution. They included:

• The mass movement to study Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought
• The birth of the Revolutionary Committees
• Strengthening central Party leadership
  
• The creation of the revolutionary cultural works such as the eight model plays
• The educational revolution
• The sending down of educated youth to the countryside
• Barefoot doctors and medical cooperatives in rural China
• Study of class struggle and the Confucianism vs Legalism struggle
• The Three-in-One Combination - a leading body composed of the old, middle-aged and young in various institutions.

There was also a revolutionary song of the same title:

http://ip.lidicity.com/hj/cn/shhzhyxshshwh.html