"Throughout his career, from the Ching-kang-shan and Yenan to the 1960s, Mao Tse-tung treated democracy and centralism as two indissolubly linked aspects of the political process, one of which could not be promoted without reference to the other. The Cultural Revolution saw the emergence of two quite different concepts. Democracy was replaced by 'rebellion'; centralism was replaced by chung, or personal loyalty to the great leader and helmsman. No doubt Mao Tse-tung saw these tendencies as bound together in a dialectical unity, like democracy and centralism, which he had not in principle repudiated. Nevertheless, he allowed a situation to develop in which the 'heads', of which he himself acknowledged the necessity, at all levels of society and the economy, could not in fact function as heads because, although they were held accountable they had no power to take decisions. The alliance between the leader and the masses took the form, on thenational level, of anunstructured plebiscitary democracy, sadly reminiscent of earlier examples. At lower levels, it produced a mixture of arbitrary rule by adhoc committees, military control, apathy and confusion."