They typically appeal instead to the traditional Maoist notion of the masses constituted by ‘workers, the peasantry, the intelligentsia and the national bourgeoisie whose interests were harmonious with each other and also with the state’. In this way workers ‘can make moral claims for state protection, reinforcing the leadership and responsibility of the state to those it rules’.60 The aim of any mass movement, therefore, would be to make the central state live up to its revolutionary mandate against foreign capitalists, private interests, and local authorities.
