mrswdk wrote:My point was that the CCP's overthrow of the KMT does not fit Tilly's model of 'inside group vs inside group'. Zhou Enlai knowing Chiang Kai-Shek at military academy does not make the CCP an 'inside group'. By that logic Bear Grylls is on the 'inside' of the UK's power system, having attended the same high school as the current prime minister.
Bear Grylls didn't lead any armies... None of what you said shows how the revolution was a mass uprising. The CCP and the GMD fought as a united front early on. This is inside v. inside. As the GMD gained more ground, the CCP were pushed into minor control of some workers in some cities. Then, the GMD fights the CCP more heavily. This is still inside v. inside. It's two elite groups battling it out.
After the Japanese sweep through and the GMD has been fairly pummeled, the CCP forcibly conscripts more people, butchers innocents arbitrarily deemed as 'bourgeois', and rolls through the GMD and warlord-controlled regions. There was no mass uprising. It's obviously two elites, each using a minority of the population to attain their organization's goals. After the CCP won, of course they claimed to have represented "the People" and that "the People" led the revolution, but that's nonsense.