chairman mao, page-3

The instinct that drives man, and animals, to dominate is one that has an ultimate goal of building something rather than destroying everything.
Mao certainly changed things and built a foundation for further change. I would agree more with Deng.
I think the need to change was recognised and intended with the excesses an unintentional consequence. He put in motion a movement with no means of knowing what obstacles would be encountered and no means of knowing if success was around the next corner or not, the story of every conflict. The most recent examples he had to draw on was WW2 and that showed victory can only be had through persistence irrespective of the human losses along the way.