I think what this analysis misses is that Gorbachev’s desire for reform came from within the party. There was a growing recognition that the old way was no longer working.

While I understand that Gorbachev obviously failed and it’s easy to hate him for it, it’s not like another Brezhnev would have actually fixed anything. Some sort of reform was necessary. The USSR wasn’t keeping up with the West.

It’s interesting to compare Perestroika and Opening Up and Reform. Dèng Xiǎopíng actually learned from past market reforms in order to progress China into a socialist country. His plan set up Party and government control over the market. He learned from Lenin that socialist markets can out-compete capitalist markets. What he adds is the necessity to open markets to those capitalist elements, but keep the Communist Party in control of the affairs. He also says the CPC cannot allow the emergence of a new bourgeoisie. China’s private enterprise owners must not become a class. (Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping Vol 2)

At the time of the Opening Up and Reform, China did not yet have a socialist market economy nor the wealth to build one. Dèng Xiǎopíng tasked his successors with building a theory of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, which should complete the actualization of the socialist market economy in its totality. What is stressed again and again in speeches by Dèng Xiǎopíng is that the “public sector, which includes enterprises owned by the people and enterprises owned by collectives, is to remain predominant. With the private sector, which includes individually owned and foreign-owned enterprises, as a supplement.” (Deng Xiaoping 14th National Congress of CPC speech 1992)

Moreso, Dèng Xiǎopíng rigorously applied dialectical materialism to the foundation of that day’s China in order to arrive at Opening Up and Reform. Even in the 13th National Congress of the CPC report, Dèng Xiǎopíng said China’s socialization of production was still at a low level, and required for expansion of socialist public ownership. And this is after the program was already instituted. At the very beginning, China’s productive forces were backward.

In the Selected Works Vol 2, Dèng Xiǎopíng also says they “should not adopt Leftist policies [meaning non-compromising or dogmatic, non-dialectical] by divorcing ourselves from reality or skipping over necessary stages [Marx: the stages of production]. Otherwise, the task of building socialism will not be accomplished. We have suffered losses from Leftist policies. Second, whatever we do must contribute to developing productive forces.”

My brackets. Note: here, “Left” and “Right” use the Lenin coneception, in which the Right’s dialectic seeks reconciliation of classes (even though they are antagonistic and dialectical materialism is about resolution not reconciliation of differences), and the Left’s is a lack of compromise, staking material gain/loss on principles without carefully analyzing the situation. I personally believe one should have a fiery, Leftist (Lenin-like, Trotsky-like, Bolshevik) heart but temper it with a rigorous examination of the facts and build only to that absolute goal what is possible by what exists. And at the time, China did not have advanced productive forces. They did the equivalent of a proletarian revolution before capitalist forces were fully developed. But China did not want to succumb to the Right and simply allow Capitalism itself to take over and form the bourgeoisie class. It would annul the victories of the revolution! So Dèng Xiǎopíng created a program based on what existed, while adhering firmly to Marxism by building the capitalist-like productive forces under Communist rule and pushing public ownership (and therefore the people’s power) further along with it. This is similar to what Stalin did. Stalin sought to increase the power of the State, which answered to the people, so that as the people became more democratized, their demands could be enacted with that same centralized state power. By intensifying the productive forces and using that to publicize property, Dèng Xiǎopíng ensured China would advance its socialist stages and granted ever-more power to its people.