Out-Sourcing the Inquisition: "Mass Dictatorship" in China's Cultural Revolution
This paper looks at an important yet little known component of what Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong designated the “dictatorship of the masses”—the outsourcing by the supreme state leadership of selected surveillance, inquisitorial, and other violent tasks to what in a different political system would have been regarded as simply members of the public and/or non-governmental organizati
