Voz Popular: CONTENT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GPCR
CONTENT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GPCR
The present issue culminates a series of issues of “People’s Voice” devoted to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China. In issue 6 we included the fundamental orientations of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung which guided the Chinese proletariat and people in the GPCR and the basic documents of the CPCh., drawn up under Chairman Mao’s leadership, which opened up the struggle against the bourgeoisie. Issue 7 was devoted to highlighting the most important milestones of the GPCR process. This time it is our task to analyse the content and significance of the GPCR as well as the current events in China resulting from the recent right-wing coup d’état.
I. THE TWO LINES IN THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION
On October 1, 1949, the victory of the democratic revolution of the Chinese people, won through a protracted people’s war from the countryside to the city, was transformed into a socialist revolution. The Chinese proletariat, led by the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China and its great master Chairman Mao Tsetung, after having led the immense masses of the people in the destruction of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, turned its weapons against the bourgeoisie, established the dictatorship of the proletariat and began the construction of the new socialist society. But the bourgeoisie could not accept to withdraw quietly from the stage of history; having been violently dislodged from power by the proletariat in arms, it set out to reconquer its former positions by devising all sorts of machinations, infiltrating the nascent socialist state and the Communist Party itself, and choosing the superstructure – especially the various terrains of culture – as the guard from which to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat and prepare its usurpation of power.
The proletariat was thus presented with the serious problem of how to continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. In these circumstances, at the beginning of the 1960s, Chairman Mao, making a wise condensation of the class struggle in China and worldwide and drawing the lessons of the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, initiated and personally led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China unprecedented in history. He said: “The current Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is absolutely necessary and most timely for consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, preventing capitalist restoration and building socialism.” The revolutionary masses, with the proletariat at the head, answered the call, the sky turned red again over China; the bourgeois monsters were revealed and crushed one by one. Liu Shao-chi (“the Chinese Khrushchev”), Teng Siao-ping and other cultists of the capitalist road, unmasked as fierce enemies of Marxism and the proletariat, were ignominiously overthrown and subjected to the iron dictatorship of the working class. The world revolution was thus strengthened; Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought stood as the only weapon capable of emancipating the proletariat and all of humanity.
In the course of the GPCR, the red line of Chairman Mao and the black, revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi and his lieutenant Teng Siao-ping – today again “rehabilitated” by the right wing usurping power in China, despite having been convicted and dismissed on two previous occasions – clashed to the death on all sides. The section “The two-line struggle in the GPCR” in this issue helps us to understand the approaches of the two lines in the most important fields.
1) The problem of power is the main problem to be solved by the revolutionary classes; the whole history of the world class struggle proves this. This is also true after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the face of this problem there has been a bitter struggle between the two lines. In the period of the democratic revolution in China, Chairman Mao put forward that the road for China to follow was that of the new democratic revolution to sweep away imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism and to establish the joint dictatorship of the four revolutionary classes of the people under the leadership of the proletariat; Liu Shao-chi, on the other hand, advocated following the capitalist road, placing himself on the tail of the Kuomintang and at the service of imperialism. The founding of the People’s Republic of China marked the beginning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the correct path which Chairman Mao had long been advocating; Liu Shao-chi, however, desperately tried to establish the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under the pretext of “consolidating” the new-democratic revolution. After the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production had been fundamentally completed, Chairman Mao argued that the class struggle continued to exist, that the bourgeoisie was sheltering in the CPCh itself and that there was a need for a GPCR against it; Liu Shao-chi, on the contrary, maintained that the class struggle had been extinguished, with the deliberate aim of weakening the vigilance of the proletariat and favouring the seizure of power by the bourgeoisie. In short, Chairman Mao’s red line teaches TO “NEVER FORGET THE CLASS STRUGGLE”, aiming at the seizure of power when it is not held and its consolidation, and aiming at the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of socialism and communism. The revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi and his henchman Teng Siao-ping aims instead at establishing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and restoring capitalism.
2) “To make revolution you need a revolutionary party”. It was also around this orientation of Chairman Mao that the two-line struggle developed in the GPCR. Chairman Mao’s red line strives to build a party based on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, which is based on the dialectical materialist world outlook, which does not neglect the class struggle for a moment, which practises criticism and self-criticism, which is based closely with the masses and which leads its own construction according to its political line at every stage of the revolution. Only such a party is worthy of being called a Communist Party and capable of leading the masses towards communism. Liu Shao-chi and Co. conceived of a party outside the class struggle and the masses, as a “club” of friends, including the bourgeoisie, made up of docile elements with the aspirations of officials and with private interests at the helm, and which would develop in the slumber of the peace which, according to them, should reign in its midst; that is, the idea of an organism in the background, detached from the masses, led not by the proletariat but by the bourgeoisie, not to make the revolution but to practise counter-revolution.
3) The two-line struggle had as one of its fundamental focuses the military problem. In essence the problem lay in how to understand military affairs: as a political problem or as a purely military problem. Chairman Mao’s red line puts politics in command at all times, which means putting Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought in command, and conceives that the Red Army, besides fighting against the class enemy, should devote itself to political work, propagandisation, mobilisation, politicisation and organisation among the masses, and also participate in the productive process; The People’s Militia is an important fruit of Chairman Mao’s red line, which is the general arming of the people through the people’s militia. Luo Ruiching, overthrown in the early days of the GPCR and today, like Teng Siao-ping, again “rehabilitated” by the present Chinese leadership, acted as Liu Shao-chi’s representative and protégé on the military front. His counter-revolutionary revisionist line placed military techniques and the power of arms at the centre, disdaining politics and the role of men; he stubbornly opposed the concept of people’s war and the building of the militia and, worshipping the Kuomintang, he advocated “passive defence” by prostrating himself before the enemy.
4) To rely on masses or to rely on individuals? To do mass work to serve the revolution, the seizure of power by arms and its subsequent consolation, or to do it to serve reaction, to oppose the seizure of power and then to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat? Chairman Mao’s red line, starting from the Marxist conception that the masses make history, conceives mass work in terms of power. On the contrary, the revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi and Teng Siao-ping, starting from their bourgeois conception of contempt for the masses, advocates counter-revolutionary economism. Before the seizure of power, it focused on the economic struggle, merely trade union, without going outside the legal frameworks imposed by reaction; in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it focused on the “movement for production” in order to oppose the continuation of the revolution. Liu and Teng flatly denied the Party’s leadership of the trade unions, conceived of the trade unions as “trade unions of the whole people” and advocated spontaneism in the workers’ movement in order to oppose Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought being fused with the masses. In the countryside, the black line of Li and Teng fanatically proclaimed the rich peasant economy and artfully boycotted socialist collectivisation in agriculture, furiously opposing it with its fallacious theory of “mechanisation before co-operativisation”. It then raised the sinister banner of “zan zi yi bao” (increase of private land, free markets and enterprises responsible for its use by the family) in an attempt to open wide the way for the development of capitalism. It also stubbornly rejected the socialist education movement in rural areas promoted by Chairman Mao’s red line.
5) Theory, too, was an arena of sharp contention between the two lines during the GPCR. They fought in the field of the theory of knowledge, on contradiction, the inter-relationship between the productive forces and the relations of production, research, study, the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. One of the most backward and poisonous theories put forward by Liu Shao-chi, Teng Siao-ping and Co. was the old revisionist “theory of the productive forces” according to which it is not possible for the people to struggle to overthrow the domination of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, nor for the proletariat to transform the new democratic revolution into a socialist revolution as long as the productive forces of society have not reached an advanced degree of capitalist development. Liu and Teng also used this reactionary theory to combat the advance of socialism by fallaciously arguing the “extinction” of the class struggle and the “necessity” of focusing on production, on the development of the productive forces. Chairman Mao’s red line posits that the possibility of the seizure of power lies in the existence of a revolutionary situation and that the working class has a Communist Party capable of raising the broad masses with weapons in hand to overthrow the power of reaction and that, once in power, it is a matter of “engaging in revolution and promoting production”, making political work direct economic work.
6) The bourgeoisie having chosen culture as a base of operations to provide itself with favourable public opinion in its feverish attempts to overthrow the proletariat, the struggle between the two lines became particularly acute in this field. In the educational field, Lu Ting-yi and Chiang Nan-sisug, loyal lackeys of Liu Shao-chi, denied the class character of education, tried to separate education from politics (proletarian politics), introduced revisionist theories on education, and went out of their way to turn the educational establishments and universities into factories producing revisionists trained to docilely serve the bourgeoisie and fight the proletariat. Instead of means of propagandising the proletariat they became mouthpieces of the bourgeoisie, refusing to spread Mao Tsetung Thought and Party policy. In the field of art and literature, Liu Shao-chi set up a gang of bourgeois parasites, including Deng Tuo, Liao Mo-sha, Wu Jan, Chou Yang, Lin Mo-jan, Chi Ye-ming, Sia Yen, Tien Jan and Shao Chüan-lin – some of whom, through works of all genres, tried to orient literature and art to give praise to the bourgeoisie and promote the spirit of capitulation by preparing conditions for the usurpation of power by the bourgeoisie and capitalist restoration, thus denying Chairman Mao’s indication that the fundamental orientation of proletarian literature and art is to serve the workers, peasants and soldiers. Echoing their revisionist masters in the USSR, they shouted for a “literature and art of the whole people”, blocked, adulterated and fought Chairman Mao’s instructions on the criticism and repudiation of reactionary literature and art, attacked Chiang Ching who was strenuously carrying out Chairman Mao’s proletarian line on art and literature, praised to ecstasy the literary and artistic works of the Western bourgeoisie, and persecuted and suppressed the revolutionary literary and artistic workers.
These are, broadly speaking, the main points on which the red line of Chairman Mao and the black, revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi, Teng Siao-ping and Co. fought fiercely during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In this great class struggle, the immense Chinese masses, with the proletariat at the centre, under the leadership of the instrument of the People’s Liberation Army, encircled, exposed and defeated the representatives of the bourgeoisie hidden in the socialist state and in the Communist Party of China itself. Once again the dawn broke for the Chinese people, the international proletariat and all the revolutionary peoples of the world.
II. THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION IS THE CONTINUATION OF THE REVOLUTION UNDER THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
The fundamental and decisive problem, theoretically and practically, for the world revolution is the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx was the first to put forward the historical necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the stage of transition between capitalist society and communism. He said: “Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; 2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”
What does the proletariat aim to achieve through its class dictatorship over the bourgeoisie in the period of socialism? Marx makes it masterfully concrete: “This Socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionising of all the ideas that result from these social relations.“
Now, as the classics of Marxism wisely foresaw, and as the history of the last sixty years has proved conclusively, during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, classes and class struggle continue to exist. The bourgeoisie and all the exploiters overthrown by the working class strive to regain their lost power; while, in the new situation of socialism, the factors of restoring capitalism still remain. Lenin rages: “The dictatorship of the proletariat means a most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against a more powerful enemy, the bourgeoisie, whose resistance is increased tenfold by their overthrow (even if only in a single country), and whose power lies, not only in the strength of international capital, the strength and durability of their international connections, but also in the force of habit, in the strength of small-scale production. Unfortunately, small-scale production is still widespread in the world, and small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale. All these reasons make the dictatorship of the proletariat necessary, and victory over the bourgeoisie is impossible without a long, stubborn and desperate life-and-death struggle which calls for tenacity, discipline, and a single and inflexible will.” “It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralised big bourgeoisie than to “vanquish” the millions upon millions of petty proprietors; however, through their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive and demoralising activities, they produce the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie. Whoever brings about even the slightest weakening of the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its dictatorship), is actually aiding the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.”
Lenin’s above theses are still fully valid today after fifty-odd years. Another important question is the survival of bourgeois law under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marxism teaches us that bourgeois law under capitalism is characterised by the recognition of individual private ownership of the means of production, while socialism converts these means into common property; bourgeois law is thus abolished. But this is only partial, since under socialism the distribution of products is practised “according to labour”, which implies that an equal quantity of products is distributed to physically and intellectually unequal men for an unequal quantity of labour (since the distribution is made according to the duration or intensity of the labour). This situation, which is a natural product of the conditions under which socialist society is made, can only be restricted under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin, deepening his analysis, points out that the existence of this bourgeois right necessarily presupposes the existence of a “bourgeois state” to protect this right and that, consequently, during the first phase of communism there is still a “bourgeois state without a bourgeoisie”. These questions allow us to see that the mission historically assigned to the proletariat to build a classless society, to emancipate humanity and bring it from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom, is very complex, must be accomplished in the midst of great storms, and by no means ends with the seizure of power by the proletariat. As Lenin says: “The bourgeoisie is defeated in our country, but it is not yet extirpated, it is not yet annihilated, not even completely destroyed. That is why a new and higher form of struggle against the bourgeoisie is on the agenda, the transition from the simpler task of the further expropriation of the capitalists to the much more complex and difficult task of creating the conditions which will make the existence and revival of the bourgeoisie impossible. It is clear that this is an incomparably greater task and that without accomplishing it there is still no socialism.”
It is therefore not only a question of exercising dictatorship over the bourgeoisie and the reactionary classes already overthrown; it is fundamentally a question of eliminating the real, objective, material conditions, historically originating in the old society, which constitute the constant danger of engendering the bourgeoisie and restoring capitalism. And this, according to Lenin, will be achieved by passing absolutely all the power which the bourgeoisie holds in society, in all its aspects, into the hands of the working class. Thus, he has told us: “The revolution which we have begun, which we have been carrying out for two years and which we are firmly resolved to carry through to the end (applause), is possible and feasible only on condition that we succeed in transferring to power to the new class, on condition that the bourgeoisie, the capitalist slaveholders, the bourgeois intellectuals, the representatives of all the possessors, of all the owners, are replaced from the bottom up by the new class in all spheres of government, in the whole cause of state building, in the whole direction of the new life.”
When, how, and under what conditions is the classless society to be achieved? Marx himself gives us the answer: “At a higher stage of communist society, when the enslaving subordination of individuals to the division of labour, and with it the opposition between intellectual and manual labour, has disappeared; when labour is not merely a means of livelihood, but the first vital necessity; when, with the multi-faceted development of individuals, the productive forces also grow and the springs of collective wealth flow at full flow, only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois law be completely surpassed, and society can write on its banner: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
Chairman Mao, summing up the practical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China and analysing the positive and negative experience of the theory of Marxism-Leninism on the dictatorship of the proletariat, warned: “Why did Lenin speak of the necessity of exercising dictatorship over the bourgeoisie? This problem must be made clear. Lack of clarity on this will lead to revisionism. It must be made known to the whole nation.”
The Chinese democratic revolution destroyed imperialist property, feudal property and capitalist property, socialist public property became more and more predominant in the whole of society, constituting an unprecedented triumph for the Chinese people. However, the very nature of bourgeois law did not change. Chairman Mao saw this as a way for the bourgeoisie to restore capitalism: “In a word, China is a socialist country. Before the Liberation it did not differ much from capitalism. Now it still practises an eight-tier wage system, distribution to each according to his work and exchange by means of money, all of which is hardly different from the old society. The difference is that the system of ownership has changed.” He pointed out, “Our country now practises a commodity system, a wage system which is also unequal, such as that of eight categories, and the like. This, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, can only be restricted. By virtue of the above, it will be very easy for people like Lin Piao to set up the capitalist system if they rise to power. That is why we must study more Marxist-Leninist works.”
A great thesis of Chairman Mao which developed Marxism-Leninism is the following: “Lenin said: ‘Small production breeds capitalism and bourgeoisie constantly, every day, every hour, spontaneously and en masse. This is also the case with a part of the working class and a part of the Party members. Both among the proletarians and among the officials of official bodies there are those who indulge in the bourgeois way of life.” This thesis must be linked to his profound assertion that “there is a misunderstanding as to where the bourgeoisie is located. It is precisely in the bosom of the Party. The followers of the capitalist road are inside the Party. The followers of the capitalist road are still following their road.” This is how Chairman Mao explained the material-economic basis under bourgeois law for the emergence of bourgeois elements in the working class and in the Communist Party. Moreover, the existence of the influence of the bourgeoisie and the influence of international imperialism and revisionism are the political and ideological source of such an emergence.
These problems concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat led Chairman Mao to raise the question of the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The ingenious means conceived by Chairman Mao to undertake this historically significant task was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The nature of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is that it is the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The tasks it sets out to solve is to mobilise the broad masses, during the period of socialism, to make revolution against the bourgeoisie, particularly against the bourgeoisie within the Party. The significance of the GPCR is to combat and prevent revisionism, to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, to prevent the restoration of capitalism and to build socialism. The theory and practice of the continuation of the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat through the GPCR is a brilliant achievement of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and an invaluable contribution to the advance of the world revolution towards the goal of communism.
Finally, Chairman Mao himself has warned us not to relax our revolutionary vigilance and to continue to strive to carry the revolution to the end: “The present Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is only the first and in the future there will undoubtedly be others. In the revolution the problem of who will win over whom will only be solved in a long historical period. If things are not solved properly, at any moment there will be a possibility for a capitalist restoration. All Communist Party members and the people of the whole country must not think that everything will be solved after one or two big cultural revolutions, or even three or four. We must always be very vigilant and never relax our vigilance.”
III. CONTINUATION OF THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND RIGHT-WING COUP D’ÉTAT IN CHINA
After the destruction of Liu Shao-chi’s bourgeois headquarters, the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in 1969, which made a great assessment of the GPCR and made a brilliant contribution to the historical development of the CPCh, to the consolidation and development of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China and to the development of the international communist movement.
It fell to Lin Piao at that time to pick up the ragged banner of the bourgeoisie and prepare to measure his strength against the proletariat. Representing the old and new bourgeoisie in their attempt to restore capitalism, Lin Piao worshipped bourgeois law and stubbornly opposed its restriction, thus preparing the ground for his mad and ambitious race for power. His counter-revolutionary programme, too, had the same “theoretical underpinning” as that of his revisionist master-predecessors: the “theory of productive forces”. Acting as a devout Confucian parishioner and preacher of that doctrine, Lin Piao disowned the Communist Party and betrayed the Chinese people, reaching the height of his insanity by attempting a counter-revolutionary coup d’état by assassinating Chairman Mao and delivering China helplessly into the jaws of Soviet social-imperialism.
Almost as soon as Lin Piao was overthrown, Teng Siao-ping, Liu Shao-chi’s lieutenant who had been defenestrated along with him during the GPCR, seized the opportunity to expose his nauseating revisionist factions. Having knelt down and sworn a thousand times before the proletariat to repent of his countless crimes, Teng Siao-ping, supported by the bourgeoisie inside and outside the Party, crept sinisterly up to occupy high Party and state positions and accumulate immense power. Placed in this position, he dusted off and brought out his stinking programme for restoring capitalism which he crudely retouched with the call to “take the three instructions as the key”. The real content of his programme is none other than to promote capitalist restoration and subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Chairman Mao was the first to point out: “What is this ‘taking the three instructions as the key’! Stability and unity do not mean giving up the class struggle. The class struggle is like the key rope of a net and all the rest is netting. “This person does not insist on the class struggle; he has never mentioned this key. He still goes on with his ‘white cat or black cat’, making no distinction between imperialism and Marxism.” “He does not understand Marxism-Leninism; he represents the bourgeoisie. He gave his word ‘never to attempt the reversal of the verdict’, but what he said does not deserve credit.” Seeing himself immediately counter-attacked by the masses, Teng desperately provoked a counter-revolutionary incident in Tien An Men Square in early 1976 in order to provide himself with a favourable public opinion, receiving, as a just response, the iron fist blow of the proletariat and his dismissal, on Chairman Mao’s proposal, from all his posts inside and outside the Party.
However, the bourgeoisie had been gaining greater positions in the Party, in the army and in the state. The much lamented death of Chairman Mao on September 9, 1976, was a heavy blow to the international proletariat and all the peoples of the world, particularly to the Chinese people. The bourgeoisie, on the other hand, was overwhelmed with delight and saw the occasion as an opportunity to overthrow the proletariat. The Chinese people had not yet recovered from their first moments of surprise and grief at such a sensitive death when the murderous hands of the bourgeoisie carried out a coup d’état.
As we denounced in our previous issue, the usurpers of power, with Jua Kuo-feng at their head, immediately rushed to carefully cook up the “rehabilitation” of Teng Siao-ping, which, in fact, took place in July 1977. Why this “rehabilitation”? Because Teng Siao-ping is the author of the counter-revolutionary programme which is being implemented in China today. Let us review some aspects of this programme.
The system of “direct and exclusive control of enterprises by the relevant ministry” advocated by Teng is an example of polycentrism in absolute opposition to the unified leadership of the Party which seeks to split the socialist economy from the property of all the people and transform it into the property of the leaders who follow the capitalist path. For the management of the enterprises he devised a set of regulations aimed at implementing his long-standing desire to “control, restrict and repress” the working class. Like the Soviet revisionists, Teng Siao-ping puts material incentives and profit-making at the core, prioritises technology and relies on “experts” to manage the enterprises. Chairman Mao’s revolutionary policy of “struggle-criticism-transformation” was slandered as “anarchist”. What does all this mean if not opening the doors wide to the bourgeoisie?
Externally, too, Teng Siaoping intends to hand China over to the imperialists by trying to turn it into a colony or semi-colony. Thrown face first into the quagmire of capitulationism, Teng Siao-ping applies his policy of “if it’s foreign, it’s good”, bowing down to foreign techniques and equipment and encouraging their widespread importation by promising to hand over China’s wealth, especially its mineral wealth, to the big world imperialist monopolies. This negotiation of China’s independence and autonomy is a disgusting policy of national betrayal which Teng has had the effrontery to call “grand policy”.
Teng Siao-ping likewise uses his old tactic of promoting criminal counter-revolutionary economism to whip up the masses against the Party. This is a perfidious attitude! As a result of the GPCR, China’s economy and the lives of the masses have unquestionably improved. And this has been achieved not because of “material incentives” but because of revolutionary enthusiasm, the product of the fusion of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought with the masses and forged in the midst of the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. Yet Teng dares to utter this venomous statement: “To adopt an attitude of indifference to the difficulties in which the masses find themselves in their daily lives is absolutely intolerable”. Look at you! A bourgeois bourgeois who “cares” about the plight of the masses! Teng Siao-ping’s insistence on promoting this old Sanchopancist policy shows his clear attempt to confuse the people, to divide the masses, to torpedo the Party’s leadership over them and to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to clear the way for the restoration of capitalism. Recently in China a “wage increase” has been decided, but what is the policy guiding them? Let us listen to their own words: “To decide whether a person’s wages should be increased, discussions are held among the masses of their entity to assess their political consciousness, their attitude to work, their comparatively great contributions to socialist revolution and construction, as well as those engaged in scientific research or technical work”. Such a revisionist criterion of “material incentives” is now being used to get the masses to bow their heads and submissively serve Teng’s programme. This is vulgar fascist blackmail in the style of the Soviet Union!
Another typical feature of this counter-revolutionary line is the use of eclecticism – which is presented to us under the label of “dialectics” to cover up its intentions – Teng argues, for example, that “it is wrong” not to continue the revolution in the superstructure and the economic base, while “it is also wrong” not to stop ensuring “powerful production capable of working independently”; it is “unjust not to criticise the tendency to ignore politics”, but “it is also not correct not to demand and encourage scientists and technicians to study the profession”; that “it is unfair not to criticise the tendency to disregard the masses in scientific research”, but that “it is also not right not to bring into play the role of specialised institutes of science and specialists”; that “it is unfair not to pay attention to leading scientists and technicians to study and solve the urgent problems in current production”, but that “it is also not right to consider that only already well-transformed intellectuals can be used”; that “it is unfair to consider that philosophy does not play a guiding role in the natural sciences”, but that “it is also wrong to consider that the former can replace the latter and that concrete conclusions on specific scientific problems can be drawn on the basis of the general principles of philosophy”. We ask ourselves: can this kind of statement be made at a time like the one China is going through of fierce struggle between the two lines, the two classes and the two ways? Why is it deliberately avoided to differentiate between the main contradiction and the secondary ones, and between the main and the secondary aspect in each contradiction? What is this if not eclecticism of the worst kind?
Before Teng Siaoping was dismissed at the suggestion of Chairman Mao himself, he said: “Stop criticising the theory of productive forces. If the criticism continues, production will not rise” and maliciously slandered the CPCh as “talking only about politics and not about economics, only about revolution, and not about production”. Today, having usurped power again, Teng speaks through the State Planning Commission of China: “Chairman Mao explicitly pointed out for the first time in the history of the development of Marxism that, even after the socialist transformation of property has been fundamentally completed, there is both consonance and contradiction between the relations of production and the productive forces and between the superstructure and the economic base. This contradiction remains the fundamental contradiction in socialist society, and the class struggle has by no means ended. In such circumstances, the social productive forces must still develop in the course of the constant efforts to resolve the fundamental contradiction and in the course of the class struggle. This is the old revisionist theory of the productive forces whose origins go all the way back to Bernstein! And they have the nerve to impute this theory to Chairman Mao himself! The phrases “the class struggle is by no means over” and “in the momentum of the class struggle” are nothing but a crude and vulgar fig leaf that fails to cover their fervent desire to deny the class struggle and restore capitalism.
One of the fundamental aims of Teng Siao-ping’s programme is to overturn the GPCR which he calls “ultra-left” for fighting the capitalist roaders, which “wounded” “experienced cadres” and which served to “bring down” “good Party cadres”. He said: “Forget everything that happened during the Great Cultural Revolution, don’t think about it at all and don’t mention it. I, who have a bad memory, have forgotten all about it. Then he said that the experiences of the GPCR should be “summed up”, thus erasing with one stroke of the pen the assessment made at the Ninth Congress of the CPCh. It is for this reason that we should not be surprised that the 11th Congress of the CPCh recently considered the GPCR to be “finished”.
In all fields Teng Siaoping’s revisionist line is manifested. The aim is to propagate the theory of the extinction of the class struggle in party building, to train the militancy in the spirit of servility and to transform the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China from a party for revolution into a party for counter-revolution, for the restoration of capitalism. On the military problems, it wants to change Chairman Mao’s line of putting politics in command and relying on the broad masses to the revisionist line of putting military techniques in command and relying only on the might of arms. In education, material incentives are put in command and elitist bourgeois entrance examinations are reinstated. In literature and art, bourgeois liberalisation is promoted, the doors are opened to revisionist works banned in the GPCR, and intellectuals are given “independence”. In the field of science and technology, it puts professional work in command and not politics, divorces the scientists and technicians from the workers and peasants and locks them within four walls, eliminating the Party’s leadership over scientific and technological work.
Such are some of the aspects of Teng Siaoping’s revisionist line.
To conclude, let us reproduce some paragraphs from the Declaration of the 6th and 7th Plenary Sessions of the CC of the CPP, an important document that guides the Peruvian proletariat and people in the revolutionary struggle, in which the right-wing coup perpetrated in China is accurately judged:
“The death of Chairman Mao Tsetung, like the death of all the great leaders of the proletariat, has generated deep commotion and wide repercussions in China and in the world; and, under the conditions in which the struggle was developing in China, it provided the opportunity for the right wing to usurp the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat by a coup d’état, to undermine the gains of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and to open the door to capitalist restoration, capitulation and revisionism. The class struggle in China between revolution and counter-revolution, between Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and revisionism, between the proletarian line of Chairman Mao and the revisionist, counter-revolutionary and capitulationist bourgeois line led by Teng Siao-ping has entered crucial, complex and difficult moments; strange and surprising methods are resorted to in dealing with the problems and the struggle, important and wide-ranging changes are taking place in the leadership and in the organisations, mainly in the Party, while the campaign of criticism against Teng Siao-ping’s revisionist revocatory wind is being suspended, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is being openly questioned, capitulation is being developed, especially national capitulation and Teng’s counter-revolutionary programme is being raised as a banner. All this is nothing but a right-wing blow in the sharp struggle of the two lines in the period of the continuation of the revolution taking advantage of the juncture and repercussions of the death of Chairman Mao Tsetung.
“The situation that has arisen in China is not an unimportant problem. On the contrary, it is a problem of transcendental importance for the revolutionaries and communists of the world and we must all pay special attention to it, because the usurpation of power will lead to a general change of line in the development of socialism as well as in international politics. The key question of Marxism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, this is its essence, and a right-wing coup and its usurpation is a problem of the utmost gravity and importance; and it is not only a question of China, it is a question of all communists since its repercussions have to do with the world revolution. The experience of the restoration and usurpation of power in the USSR are fresh lessons that we cannot forget.
“Mariátegui taught us: ‘It is not possible to be disinterested in the destiny of a nation which occupies such a central place in time and space. China weighs too heavily in human history for us not to be attracted by its deeds and its men’. This great truth remains valid today more than ever for all communists and revolutionaries in the country. But even if the events in China, after the death of Chairman Mao in particular, move us to just concern and the obligation to defend the banners of Marxism, it is precisely in order to defend them that we should be guided by their own forecasts:
‘If the right wing carries out an anti-communist coup d’état in China, I am sure that it will not know peace either, and most probably its domination will be short-lived, for this will not be tolerated by any of the revolutionaries, who represent the interests of the people, consisting of more than 90 per cent of the population.’
Whether in China or in other countries of the world, generally speaking, more than 90 per cent of the population will eventually support Marxism-Leninism. In the world there are still many people who, due to the deception of social democracy, revisionism, imperialism and all reaction, have not yet become politically conscious. But they will gradually awaken and support Marxism-Leninism. The truth of Marxism-Leninism is irresistible. The masses of the people will invariably rise up in revolution. The world revolution will inexorably triumph’.
The international proletariat and all the revolutionary peoples of the world have today the most powerful weapon on earth, “the telescope and the microscope” which enable us to scrutinise every corner of the universe, with the hope of the infinite material and spiritual force which, in short, means the glorious Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought which drives the world revolution. “Today to be a Marxist is to adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought!
The GPCR shines in the firmament its eternal radiance can never be extinguished. The handful of counter-revolutionary revisionists who today pretend to ride over the heroic Chinese people will not prevail; they are a tiny eddy that pretends to oppose the sweeping advance of a raging river.
LET US LAUNCH THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION!
LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM MAO TSE-TUNG THOUGHT!
REPORT TO THE
NINTH NATIONAL CONGRESS
OF
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA
(Delivered on April 1 and adopted on April 14, 1969)
IV. ON THE POLICIES OF THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION
In order to continue the revolution in the realm of the superstructure, it is imperative to carry out conscientiously all Chairman Mao’s proletarian policies.
Policies for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were early stipulated explicitly in the Circular of May 16, 1966 and the 16-Point Decision of August 1966. The series of Chairman Mao’s latest instructions including “Serious attention must be paid to policy in the stage of struggle-criticism-transformation in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” have further specified the various policies.
The main question at present is to carry them out to the letter.
The Party’s policies, including those towards the intellectuals, the cadres, “the sons and daughters that can be educated” [the sons and daughters of those who have committed crimes or mistakes – translator], the mass organizations, the struggle against the enemy and economic policy – all these policies come under the general heading of the correct handling of the two different types of contradictions, those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people.
The majority or the vast majority of the intellectuals trained in the old type of schools and colleges are able or willing to integrate themselves with the workers, peasants and soldiers. They should be “reeducated” by the workers, peasants and soldiers under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s correct line, and encouragement should be given to those who do well in such integration and to the Red Guards and educated young people who are active in going to the countryside or mountainous areas.
Chairman Mao has taught us many times: “Help more people by educating them and narrow the target of attack” and “carry out Marx’s teaching that only by emancipating all mankind can the proletariat achieve its own final emancipation.” With regard to people who have made mistakes, stress must be laid on giving them education and re-education, doing patient and careful ideological and political work and truly acting “on the principle of ‘learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones’ and ‘curing the sickness to save the patient’, in order to achieve the twofold objective of clarity in ideology and unity among comrades”. With regard to good people who committed the errors characteristic of the capitalist-roader in power but have now raised their political consciousness and gained the understanding of the masses, they should be promptly “liberated”, assigned to suitable work and encouraged to go among the masses of the workers and peasants to remould their world outlook. As for those who have made a little progress and become awakened to some extent, we should continue to help them, proceeding from the viewpoint of unity. Chairman Mao has recently pointed out:
The proletariat is the greatest class in the history of mankind. It is the most powerful revolutionary class ideologically, politically and in strength. It can and must unite the overwhelming majority of people around itself so as to isolate the handful of enemies to the maximum and attack them.
In the struggle against the enemy, we must carry out the policy “make use of contradictions, win over the many, oppose the few and crush our enemies one by one” which Chairman Mao has always advocated. “Stress should be laid on the weight of evidence and on investigation and study, and it is strictly forbidden to obtain confessions by compulsion and to give them credence.” We must implement Chairman Mao’s policies of “leniency towards those who confess their crimes and severe punishment of those who refuse to do so” and of “giving a way out”. We rely mainly on the broad masses of the people in exercising dictatorship over the enemy. As for bad people or suspects ferreted out through investigation in the movement for purifying the class ranks, the policy of “killing none and not arresting most” should be applied to all except the active counter-revolutionaries against whom there is conclusive evidence of crimes such as murder, arson or poisoning, and who should be dealt with in accordance with the law.
As for the bourgeois reactionary academic authorities, we should either criticize them and see, or criticize them and give them work to do, or criticize them and provide them with a proper livelihood. In short, we should criticize their ideology and at the same time give them a way out. To handle this part of the contradictions between ourselves and the enemy in the manner of handling contradictions among the people is beneficial to the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and to the disintegration of the enemy ranks.
In carrying out the policies of the Party, all units must study their specific conditions. In places where the revolutionary great alliance has not yet been sufficiently consolidated, it is necessary to help the revolutionary masses bring about the revolutionary great alliance in accordance with revolutionary principles and on the basis of different fields of work, trades and school classes so that they will become united against the enemy. In units where the work of purifying the class ranks has not yet started or has only just started, it is imperative to grasp the work firmly and do it well in accordance with the Party’s policies. In units where the purification of the class ranks is by and large completed, it is necessary to take firm hotd of other tasks in keeping with Chairman Mao’s instructions concerning the various stages of struggle-criticism-transformation. At the same time, it is necessary to pay close attention to new trends in the class strug- gle. What if the bad people get unruly again? Chairman Mao has a well-known saying: “Thoroughgoing materialists are fearless.” If the class enemies stir up trouble again, just arouse the masses and strike them down again.
As the 16-Point Decision indicates,
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is a powerful motive force for the development of the social productive forces in our country.
Our country has seen good harvests in agricultural production for years running and there is also a thriving situation in industrial production and science and technology. The enthusiasm of the broad masses of the working people both in revolution and production has soared to unprecedented heights. Many factories, mines and other enterprises have time and again topped their production records, creating all-time highs in production. The technical revolution is making constant progress. The market is flourishing and prices are stable. By the end of 1968 we had redeemed all the national bonds. Our country is now a socialist country with neither internal nor external debts.
“Grasp revolution, promote production” – this principle is absolutely correct. It correctly explains the relationship between revolution and production, between consciousness and matter, between the superstructure and the economic base and between the relations o,f production and the productive forces. Chairman Mao always teaches us: “Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.” Lenin denounced the opportunists who were opposed to approaching problems politically. “Politics cannot but have precedence over economics. To argue differently means forgetting the A B C of Marxism.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Chinese ed., Vol. 32, p. 72.) Lenin again stated: To put politics on a par with economics also means “forgetting the A B C of Marxism”. (Ibid.) Politics is the concentrated expression of economics. If we fail to make revolution in the superstructure, fail to arouse the broad masses of the workers and peasants, fail to criticize the revisionist line, fail to expose the handful of renegades, enemy agents, capitalist-roaders in power and counter-revolutionaries and fail to consolidate the leadership of the proletariat, how can we further consolidate the socialist economic base and further develop the socialist productive forces? This is not to replace production by revolution but to use revolution to command production, promote it and lead it forward. We must make investigation and study, and actively and properly solve the many problems of policy in strugglecriticism-transformation on the economic front in accordance with Chairman Mao’s general line of “Going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism”, in accordance with his great strategic concept “Be prepared against war, be prepared against natural disasters, and do everything for the people” and with the series of principles such as “take agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor”. We must bring the revolutionary initiative and creativeness of the people of all nationalities into full p1ay, firmly grasp revolution and energetically promote production and fulfil and overfulfil our plans for developing the national economy. It is certain that the great victory in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution will con- tinue to bring about new leaps forward on the economic front and in our cause of socialist construction as a whole.
V. ON THE FINAL VICTORY OF THE REVOLUTION IN OUR COUNTRY
The victory in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in our country is indeed a very great one. But we must in no way think that we may sit back and relax. Chairman Mao pointed out in his talk in October 1968:
We have won great victory. But the defeated class will still struggle. These people are still around and this class still exists. Therefore, we cannot speak of final victory. Not even for decades. We must not lose our vigilance, According to the Leninist viewpoint, the final victory of a socialist country not only requires the efforts of the proletariat and the broad masses of the people at home, but also involves the victory of the world revolution and the abolition of the system of exploitation of man by man over the whole globe, upon which all mankind will be emancipated. Therefore, it is wrong to speak lightly of the final victory of the revolution in our country; it runs counter to Leninism and does not conform to facts.
There will still be reversals in the class struggle. We must never forget class struggle and never forget the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the course of carrying out our policies at present, there still exists the struggle between the two lines and there is interference from the “Left” or the Right. Much effort is still requir’ed to accomplish the tasks for all the stages of struggle-criticism-transformation. We must closely follow Chairman Mao and steadfastly rely on the broad revolutionary masses to surmount the difficulties and twists and turns on our way forward and seize still greater victories in the cause of socialism.
VI. ON THE CONSOLIDATION AND BUILDING OF THE PARTY
The victory in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution has provided us with valuable experience on how we should build the Party under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. As Chairman Mao has indicated to the whole Party,
The Party organization should be composed of the advanced elements oI the proletariat; it should be a vigorous vanguard organization capable of leading the proletariat and the revolutionary masses in the fight against the class enemy.
Chairman Mao’s instruction has determined our political orientation for consolidating and building the party.
The Communist Party of China has been nurtured and built up by our great leader Chairman Mao. Since its birth in 1921, our Party has gone through long years of struggle for the seizure of state power and the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat by armed force. Led by Chairman Mao, our Party has always stood in the forefront of revolutionary wars and struggles. Under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s correct line, our Party has, in the face of extremely strong domestic and foreign enemies and in the most complex circumstances, Ied the proletariat and the broad masses of the people of China in adhering to the principle of maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands and relying on our own efforts, in upholding proletarian internationalism and in waging heroic struggles with one stepping into the breach as another fell, and it is only thus that our Party has grown from Communist groups with only a few dozen members at the outset into the great, glorious and correct Party leading the powerful People’s Republic of China today. We deeply understand that without the armed struggle of the people, there would not be the Communist party of China today and there would not be the People’s Republic of China today. We must forever bear in mind Chairman Mao’s teaching: “Comrades throughout the Party must never forget this experience for which we have paid in blood.”
The Communist Party of China owes all its achievements to the wise leadership of Chairman Mao and these achievements constitute victories for Mao Tsetung Thought. For half a century now, in leading the great struggle of the people of all the nationalities of China for accomplishing the new-democratic revolution, in leading China’s great struggle for socialist revolution and socialist construction and in the great struggle of the contemporary international communist movement against imperialism, modern revisionism and the reactionaries of various countries, Chairman Mao has integrated the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of revolution, has inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism in the political, military, economic, cultural, philosophical and other spheres, and has brought Marxism-Leninism to a higher and completely new stage. Mao Tsetung Thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory. The entire history of our Party has borne out this truth: Departing from the leadership of Chairman Mao and Mao Tsetung Thought, our Party will suffer setbacks and defeats; following Chairman Mao closely and acting on Mao Tsetung Thought, our Party will advance and triumph. We must forever remember this lesson. Whoever opposes Chairman Mao, whoever opposes Mao Tsetung Thought, at any time or under any circumstances, will be condemned and punished by the whole Party and the whole country.
Discussing the consolidation and buiiding of the Party, Chairman Mao has said:
A human being has arteries and veins through which the heart makes the blood circulate, and he breathes with his lungs, exhaling carbon dioxide and inhaling fresh oxygen, that is, getting rid of the stale and taking in the fresh. A proletarian party must also get rid of the stale and take in the fresh, for only thus can it be full of vitality. Without eliminating waste matter and absorbing fresh blood the Party has no vigour.
With this vivid analogy, Chairman Mao has expounded the dialectics of innerParty contradiction. “The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.” Opposition and struggle between the two lines within the Party are the reflection inside the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no struggles to resolve them, and if the Party did not get rid of the stale and take in the fresh, the Party’s life would come to an end. Chairman Mao’s theory on inner-Party contradiction is and will be the fundamental guiding thinking for the consolidation and building of the Party.
The history of the Communist Party of China is one in which Chairman Mao’s Marxist-Leninist line combats the Right and “Left” opportunist lines in the Party. Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, our Party defeated Chen Tu-hsiu,s Right opportunist line, defeated the “Left’, opportunist lines of Chu Chiu-pai and Li Li-san, defeated Wang Ming’s first ,’Left’, and then Right opportunist lines, defeated Chang Kuo-tao’s line of splitting the Red Army, defeated the Right opportunist anti Party bloc of Peng Teh-huai, Kao Kang, Jao Shu-shih and others and, after long years of struggle, has shattered Liu Shaochi’s counter-revolutionary revisionist line. Our Party has consolidated itself, developed and grown in strength precisely in the struggle between the two lines, especially in the struggles to defeat the three renegade cliques of Chen Tu-hsiu, Wang Ming and Liu Shao-chi which did the gravest harm to the Party.
In the new historical period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletariat enforces its dictatorship and exercises its leadership in every lield of work through its vanguard the Communist Party. Departing from the dictatorship of the proletariat and from continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is impossible to solve correctly the question of Party building, the question of building what kind of Party and how to build it.
Liu Shao-chi’s revisionist line on Party building betrayed the very essence of the Marxist-Leninist teaching on the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the MarxistLeninist theory on Party building. At the crucial moment when China’s socialist revolution was deepening and the class struggle was extraordinarily acute, Liu Shao-chi had his sinister book Self-Cultiuatton republished and it was precisely his aim to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country and restore the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. When he copied the passage from Lenin on the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which we quoted earlier in this report, Liu Shao-chi once again deliberate1y omitted the most important conclusion that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is essential”, thereby clearly revealing his own counter-revolutionary features as a renegade to the dictatorship, of the proletariat. Moreover, Liu Shao-chi went on spreading such reactionary fallacies as the theory of “the dying out of class struggle”, the theory of “docile tools”, the theory that “the masses are backward”, the theory of “joining the Party in order to climb up”, the theory of “inner-Party peace” and the theor:y of “merging private and public interests” (i.e., “losing a little to gain much”), in a vain attempt to corrupt and disintegrate our Party, so that the more the Party members “cultivated” themselves, the more revisionist they would become and so that the MarxistLeninist Party would “evolve peacefully” into a revisionist party and the dictator– ship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. We should caffy on revolutionary mass criticism and repudiation and thoroughly eliminate the pernicious influence of Liu Shao-chi’s reactionary fallacies.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is the broadest and most deep-going movement for Party consolidation in the history of our Party. The Party organizations at various levels and the broad masses of Communists have experienced the acute struggle between the two lines, gone through the test in tJre large-scale class struggle and undergone exarnination by the revolutionary masses both inside and outside the Party. In this way, the Party members and cadres have faced the world and braved the storm and have raised their class consciousness and their consciousness of the struggle between the two lines. This great revolution teaches us: Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, we must educate the masses of Party members cn classes, on class struggle, on the struggle between the two lines and on continuing the revolution. We must fight revisionism both inside and outside the Party, clear the Party of renegades, enemy agents and other elements representing the interests of the exploiting classes, and admit into the Party the genuine advanced elements of the proletariat who have been tested in the great storm. We must strive to ensure that the leadership of Party organizations at all levels is truly in the hands of Marxists. We must see to it that the Party members really integrate theory r.ith practice, maintain close ties with the masses and are bold in making criticism and self-criticism. We must see to it that the Party members will always keep to the style of being modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness and to the style of arduous struggle and plain Iiving. Only thus wiII the Party be able to lead the proletariat and the revolutionary masses in carrying the socialist revolution through to the end.
Chairman Mao teaches us:
Historical experience merits attention. A line or a viewpoint must be explained constantly and repeatedly, It won’t do to explain them only to a few people; they must be made known to the broad revolutionary masses.
The study and spread of the basic experience of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the study and spread of the history of the struggle between the two lines and the study and spread of Chairman Mao’s theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat must be conducted not just once but should be repeated every year, eveuy month, every day. Only thus will it be possible for the masses of Party members and the people to criticize and resist erroneous Iines and tendencies the moment they emerge, and will it be possible to guarantee that our Party will always forge ahead victoriously along the correct course charted by Chairman Mao.
The revision of the Party Constitution is an important item on the agenda of the Ninth National Congress of the Party. The Central Committee has submitted the draft Party Constitution to the congress for discussion. This draft was worked out jointly by the whol.e Party and the revolutionary masses throughout the country. Since November 1967 rvhen Chairman Mao proposed that primary Party organizations take part in the revision of the Farty Constitution, the Central Committee has received several thousand drafts. On this basis the Enlarged Twelfth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party drew up the draft Party Constitution, upon which the whole Party, the whole army and the revolutionary masses throughout the country once again held enthusiastic and earnest discussions. It may be said that the draft of the new Party Constitution is the product of the integration of the great leader Chairman Mao’s wise leadership with the broad masses; it reflects the will of the whole Party, the whole army and the revolutionary masses throughout the country and gives a vivid demonstration of the democratic centralism and the mass line to which the Parly has always adhered. Especially important is the fact that the draft Party Constitr-rlo tion has clearly reaffirmed that Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is the theoretical basis guiding the Party’s thinking. This is a great victory for the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in smashing Liu Shao-chi’s revisionist line on Party building, a great victory for Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought. The Central Committee is convinced that, after the discussion and adoption of the new Party Constitution by the congress, our Party will, in accordance with its provisions, surely be built into a still greater, still more glorious and still more correct Party.
Two-Line Struggle in the GPCR
1. ON THE TWO ROADS
Along The Socialist Or The Capitalist Road?
(Extracts)
Whither China? Will it take the socialist road or the capitalist road? This is not only a fundamental issue of Chinese politics, it concerns the destiny of the world proletarian revolution.
For some decades now a fierce struggle has gone on within the Chinese Communist Party over this fundamental issue, a struggle between two diametrically opposed lines, at each historical stage of the development of the Chinese revolution and at each crucial moment of revolutionary change.
One line maintains that the Chinese revolution must be led by the proletariat, that it must pass from the stage of the new democratic revolution to the stage of the socialist revolution, that the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat must be carried through to the end and that its ultimate goal is communism. This is the proletarian revolutionary line represented by our great leader Chairman Mao.
The other line liquidates the proletarian leadership of the Chinese revolution, practices bourgeois reformism, and, in the stage of socialism, opposes the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and takes the capitalist road, that is, the dark, old road that would lead China back to semi-colonial, semi-feudal society. This is the reactionary line pursued in succession by Chen Tu-hsiu, Chu Chiu-pai, Li Li-san, Wang Ming and Chang Kuo-tao right down to the top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road. And this person represents this reactionary line in its most concentrated form. (…)
The essence of this struggle has been the question of which road China should take. Its focal point has always been a matter of political power, a question of which class should exercise dictatorship.
Our great leader Chairman Mao teaches us: In the stage of the democratic revolution, the focal point of the programme of the Chinese Communist Party is the joint dictatorship of several revolutionary classes led by the proletariat: in the stage of the socialist revolution, the focal point of the programme of the Chinese Communist Party is the dictatorship of the proletariat in the form of the people’s democratic dictatorship. (…)
He says: ”The first step in our revolution is definitely not, and cannot be, the establishment of a capitalist society, under the dictatorship of the Chinese bourgeoisie, but will result in the establishment if a new-democratic society under the joint dictatorship of all the revolutionary classes of China headed by the Chinese proletariat. The revolution will then be carried forward to the second stage, in which a socialist society will be established in China.
Chairman Mao sharply refuted the fallacious reactionary theory which calls for a futile attempt to establish the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in China. He explicitly pointed out that, judging by China’s international and internal situation, anyone who dreamed of establishing a capitalist society, as society under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, would eventually find himself in the lap of imperialism, with the result that China would again become a colony or a semi-colony and part of the reactionary world under imperialism. (…)
Back in the early twenties, he [Liu Shao-chi] was already singing the very same tune as the renegade Chen Tu-hsiu. He viciously attacked the proletarian revolutionaries, saying that the seizure of political power “of course cannot be carried out right now by such juvenile proletariat, judging by the present situation in China. Since it is a matter of the distant future, there is no need to waste words discussing it.” (…)
After the publication of Chairman Mao’s On New Democracy, he went out of his way to attack Chairman Mao directly, singing a tune entirely opposed to On New Democracy. He went so far as to praise Chiang Kai-shek as “the banner of the revolution” and declared: “I think that under the banner of the Three People’s Principles of the Kuomingtang the Chinese revolution will move on much more smoothly than under any other banner, at least at the present stage of the revolution. (…)
After the War of Resistance Against Japan was won, (…) Chairman Mao pointed out: “From now on the struggle will be, build what sort of country? To build a new-democratic country of the broad masses of the people under the leadership of the proletariat? Or to build a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country under the dictatorship of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie? This will be a most complicated struggle. At present it takes the form of a struggle between Chiang Kai-shek who is trying to usurp the fruits of the victory of the War of Resistance and ourselves who oppose his usurpation. If there is any opportunism during this period, it will lie in failing to struggle hard and in making a voluntary gift to Chiang Kai-shek of the fruits which should go to the people.” (…)
It was none other than the top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road whom Chairman Mao was criticizing and repudiating here as representing opportunism. Once again this old opportunist had systematically set out his national capitulationist and class capitulationist line of opposing and selling out the revolution, at the historical juncture of the great battle decisive for the choice between two destinities, between two prospects, for China. He asserted that “at present the main form of the struggle of the Chinese revolution has become peaceful and parliamentary, it is a legal mass struggle and a parliamentary struggle. (…)
The founding of the People’s Republic of China pushed history forward to a new stage, that is, from that of the new democratic revolution to that of the socialist revolution. At that moment, the struggle between the two lines was focused on what road New China which was just founded should take – the socialist or the capitalist road? In the final analysis, this struggle was over the question of whether the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie would be exercised in China.
(…) Chairman Mao pointed out (…): “After the country-wide victory in the new democratic revolution and the solution of the land problem, two basic contradictions will exist in China. The first is internal, that is, the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The second is external, that is, the contradiction between China and the imperialist countries. Consequently, after the victory of the people’s democratic revolution, the state power of the people’s republic under the leadership of the working class must not be weakened but must be strengthened.”
Later, (…) Chairman Mao pointed out: The founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1st 1949, marked the conclusion in the main of the stage of the new democratic revolution and the beginning of the stage of the socialist revolution. He said: “The general line and general task of the Party during this transition period is gradually to bring about the socialist industrialization of the country and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce by the stage over a fairly long period. This general line is the beacon of light which illuminates all aspects of our work. If we depart from it in any aspect of our work, we will commit Right or ‘Left’ mistakes.”
At such a time (…) [Liu Shao-chi] went around flagrantly campaigning for the development of capitalism in town and country. He raised the slogan “struggle for the consolidation of the new democratic system”. (…) He stood for the development and long-term protection of the rich peasant economy in the rural areas. (…)
[He said] “When in the future China has industrial over-production that will be the time for her to embark on socialism.” “When in the future China has industrial over-production” – what a remark! Industrial over-production is a characteristic of capitalism. This remark of his right away exposed his ambition to develop capitalism. The sort of the things he peddled were actually not new, but a re-has of the “theory of the productive forces” rubbish put forward by the old-line revisionists including Trotsky, Bukharin and Rykov, ans smashed by Lenin and Stalin at an early stage after the founding of the Soviet Union. (…)
In order to hoodwink others, the top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road also hypocritically talked about the dictatorship of the proletariat, but his dictatorship of the proletariat is fake proletarian and genuine bourgeois dictatorship.
Chairman Mao hit the nail on the head when he said: “What will happen if our country fails to establish a socialist economy? It will turn into a country like Yugoslavia, a bourgeois state in effect, and the dictatorship of the proletariat will turn into a bourgeois dictatorship and, for that matter, into a reactionary, fascist dictatorship. (…)”
When the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production has in the main been completed, do classes and class struggle still exist in socialist society? Should the dictatorship of the proletariat be maintained and the socialist revolution be carried through to the end, or should the dictatorship of the proletariat be abolished and the way be paved for the restoration of capitalism? These important theoretical and practical problems were previously unresolved in the history of the international communist movement. (…)
Chairman Mao clearly pointed out that in socialist society “the class struggle is by no means over. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between different political forces, and the class struggle in the ideological field between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will continue to be long and tortuous and at times will even become really acute.” “There are still a number of people who vainly hope to restore the capitalist system and fight the working class on every front, including the ideological one. “
However, [Liu Shao-chi] did his utmost to spread the idea of “the dying of class struggle”. (…)
With regard to the international struggle, he beat the drum for capitulation to the imperialists, the modern revisionists and the reactionaries of different countries and favoured stamping out thew flames of revolution in the world: he advocated liquidation of the struggle in our relations with imperialism, the reactionaries and modern revisionism, and reduction in assistance to the revolutionary struggle of other peoples.
He said: “Even as regards to the United States, we hope to improve our relationships with it too.” He even aspired to “develop friendly relations” with the U.S. He asserted that Khrushchov was “unable to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union” and that Khrushchov was “truly” opposed to imperialism and that “we should unite with them”, “seek common ground while reserving differences” and “together oppose imperialism”. (…)
The history of the dictatorship of the proletariat tells us that political power remains the most fundamental of all questions in the calls struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat. (…)
In that great historic document, the May 16, 1966 Circular of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Chairman Mao pointed out: “Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army and various cultural circle are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some them we has already seen through, others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as out successors, persons like Khrushchov, for example, who are still nesting beside us. Party committees at all levels must pay attention to this matter.” (…)
“Only socialism can save China!” (…)
The orientation given by Chairman Mao is the orientation for the revolutionary people of the whole world. The road which he has opened up is the road along which the revolutionary people of the whole world will advance.
Whither China? Whither the world? The wheel of history is moving in the direction pointed out by Mao Tse-tung’s thought!
(Issue N° 34 of 1967 of the “Peking Review”)
A Theoretical Weapon for Making Revolution
Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
(Extracts)
The biggest betrayal of Marxism-Leninism by the Khrushchov revisionist clique is that it concocted the “theory of the state of the whole people” and the “Party of the entire people.” According to this “theory” in a socialist society contradictions vanish classes and class struggle disappear and the aim is to build “goulash communism.” (…)
The top person in authority taking the capitalist road in the Chinese Party sings the same tune as the Khrushchov’s of the Soviet Union. After the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production was completed in the main in China, he took a stand diametrically opposed to Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s when he advertised the theory of the dying out of class struggle. He claimed: “The domestic enemy has been eliminated in the main”; “domestically, the major class struggle has basically come to an end, or can be said to have been settled in the main, in other words. The contradictions between the enemy and ourselves by and large have been resolved”; “from now on there will be no more revolutionary struggles and no more socialist transformation”; “the question of which will win, socialism or capitalism, has now been settled” and “the most important task of the state is to organize the life of society.” (…)
[Chairman Mao explicitly pointed out in 1962:] Socialist society is a fairly long historical stage. During this historical stage classes, class contradictions and class struggle continue to exist, the struggle between the road of socialism and the road of capitalism goes on and the danger of a capitalist restoration remains. It is necessary to recognize the protracted and complex nature of this struggle. It is necessary to heighten our vigilance. It is necessary to undertake socialist education. It is necessary to have a correct understanding of the problem of class contradictions and class struggle and to handle them correctly. to distinguish between the contradictions between the enemy and ourselves on the one hand and those around the people on the other and to handle them correctly. Otherwise a socialist country like ours will turn into its opposite, it will degenerate. and there will be a come-back. From now on we must remind ourselves of this every year, every month and every day so that we can have a fairly sober understanding of this question and maintain a Marxist-Leninist line. (…)
Chairman Mao told [in 1963] the whole Party and the entire Chinese people that id the existence of classes and class struggle in socialist society were forgotten, “then it would not take long, perhaps only several years or a decade, or several decades at most, before a counter-revolutionary restoration on a national scale would inevitably occurred, the Marxist-Leninist Party would undoubtedly become a revisionist party or a fascist party, and the whole of China would change its colour. Comrades, just think of it – what a dangerous prospect!”
The brilliant Marxist-Leninist document, “A Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement” or the “Twenty-five-Point Proposal” was published on June 14, 1963. This is a great programme for the international communist movement in our era and it is illuminated throughout by the brilliance of Mao Tse-tung’s thought. This document, which was drawn up under the personal direction of Chairman Mao, pointed out:
“For a very long historical period after the proletariat takes power, class struggle continues as an objective law independent of man’s will, differing only in form from what it was before the taking of power.”
“After the October Revolution, Lenin pointed out a number of times that:
“a) The overthrown exploiters always try in a thousand and one ways to revive the ‘paradise’ they have been deprived of.
b) New elements of capitalism are constantly and spontaneously generated in the petty-bourgeois atmosphere.
c) Political degenerates and new bourgeois elements may emerge in the ranks of the working class and among government functionaries as a result of bourgeois influence and the pervasive, corrupting atmosphere of the petty-bourgeoisie.
d) The external conditions for the continuance of class struggle within a socialist country are encirclement by international capitalism, the imperialists’ threat of armed intervention and their subversive activities to accomplish a peaceful disintegration.”
“Life has confirmed these conclusions of Lenin’s.”
“For decades or even longer periods after socialist industrialization and agricultural collectivization, it will be impossible to say that any socialist country will be free of those elements which Lenin repeatedly denounced, such as bourgeois hangers-on, parasites, speculators, swindlers, idlers, hooligans and embezzlers of state funds: or to say that a socialist country will no longer need to perform or be able to relinquish the task laid down by Lenin of conquering ‘this contagion, this plague, this ulcer that socialism has inherited from capitalism.”
“In a socialist country, it takes a very long historical period gradually to settle the question of who will win – socialism or capitalism. The struggle between the road of socialism and the road of capitalism runs through this whole historical period. This struggle rises and falls in a wave-like manner, at times becoming very fierce, and the forms of the struggle are many and varied.”
“The 1957 Declaration rightly states that ‘the conquest of power by the working class is only the beginning of the revolution, not its conclusion.”
“To deny the existence of class struggle in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the necessity to thoroughly completing the socialist revolution on the economic, political and ideological fronts is wrong, does not correspond to objective reality and violates Marxism-Leninism.
In July 1964, our great leader Chairman Mao again taught us that “in the realm of politics and ideology, a very long period of time is needed to decide ‘who will win’ in the struggle between socialism and capitalism. Several decades won’t do it: success requires anywhere from one to several centuries. On the question of duration, it is better to prepare for a longer rather than a shorter period of time. On the question of effort, it is better to regard the task as difficult rather than easy. It will be more advantageous and less harmful to think and act this way.”
It is precisely under the guidance of the great theory of advanced by Comrade Mao Tse-tung that the socialist education movement was carried out on an extensive scale in China’s vast countryside and in the cities. This movement made splendid achievements and solved a number of problems in practice, providing valuable experience for making revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But the top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road used the bourgeois reactionary line of “‘Left’ in form, Right in essence” to oppose Chairman Mao’s Marxist-Leninist line. He negated the essence of the socialist education movement which was a class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and distorted it by characterizing it as a contradiction between “being ‘clean’ politically, ideologically, organizatiorially and economically, and being ‘unclean’ in these respects. He thus shifted the target og the struggle and hit hard at many in order to protect a handful, to protect the Party people in authority taking the capitalist road, to protect the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and Rightists and to preserve the social basis for the restoration of capitalism. He hawked his revisionist wares everywhere in the country, openly attacked Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line and his Marxist-Leninist mass line and method of investigation and study. (…)
[In 1965] Chairman Mao put forward for the first time this very important theory: “The main target of the present movement is those within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road.” “Of those who are in authority taking the capitalist road, some act on the stage while others operate from behind the scenes.” Supporting these persons in authority “there are certain people at the higher levels – at the commune, district, county, prefecture and even at the provincial level and in the central departments – who are opposed to building socialism.” (…)
In his On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People, Chairman Mao lists six political criteria for judging words and actions in the political life of our country. He says:
“Broadly speaking, the criteria should be as follows:
(1) Words and actions should help to unite, and not divide, the people of our various nationalities.
(2) They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to socialist transformation and socialist construction.
(3) They should help to consolidate, and not undermine or weaken, the people’s democratic dictatorship.
(4) They should help to consolidate, and not undermine or weaken, democratic centralism.
(5) The should help to strengthen, and not discard or weaken, the leadership of the Communist Party.
(6) They should be beneficial, and not harmful, to international socialist unity and the unity of the peace-loving people of the world.” (…)
Chairman Mao teaches us: “Of these six criteria, the most important are the socialist path and the leadership of the Party”. These two criteria are also the most important ones for the great revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
(Issue N° 26 of 1967 of the “Peking Review”)
2. ON THE PARTY
Party Building Must Be Closely Linked With Its Political Line
(Extracts)
(…) The building up of the Party is “closely linked with its political line.” In the period of the new-democratic revolution, the united front and armed struggle were our two basic weapons for defeating the enemy. The question of building up of the Party was always closely linked “with the correct or incorrect handling of the questions of the united front and armed struggle.” When these questions were correctly handled by the Party, it moved forward a step in its development and consolidation; but when it incorrectly handled these two questions because of the interference ans sabotage of the opportunist lines pushed by Chen Tu-hsiu, Wang Ming and others. Building up our Party, therefore, involved a process of struggle between the correct and erroneus lines. (…)
[In the period of socialism,] According to the Party’s basic line, Party building must be linked with the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and between the socialist road and the capitalist road, the strengthening and consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and persistence in continuing the revolution under the proletarian dictatorship. The Party must, in the complex class struggle, be good at correctly distinguishing between and handling the two types of contradictions – those between ourselves and the enemy ans those among the people. Only in this way can it rally the people of all nationalities in the country to defeat the calls enemies at home and abroad who make trouble and carry out disruptive activities and to advance the socialist revolution and construction from victory to victory. (…)
Chairman Mao pointed out with special emphasis that the three great revolutionary movements – class struggle, the struggle for production and scientific experiment – “are a sure guarantee that Communists will be free form bureaucracy and immune against revisionism and dogmatism, and will for ever remain invincible. They are a reliable guarantee that the proletariat will be able to unite with the broad working masses and realize a democratic dictatorship.”
The basic programme of the Communist Party of China is the complete overthrow of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in place of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes. (…)
A Party organization cannot possibly play the role of a fighting bastion if the vanguard of the proletariat if it neglects or slackens in grasping class struggle. If a Communist turns a blind eye to the living reality of class struggle, he is hardly worthy of the title of a vanguard fighter of the proletariat. In its true sense, the vanguard of the proletariat must act according to the Communist Party’s philosophy of struggle, carrying out an unremitting battle against the class enemy as well as the ideas of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes. Experience has proved that whenever the Party organization makes constant efforts to take class struggle as the key link in all its work and leads the masses to fight the class enemy, the Party members and the masses are imbued with vitality, the revolution and production thrive from day to day and Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line and policies are implemented to the letter. On the contrary, if the the Party organization does not grasp class struggle, an atmosphere of political apathy is bound to prevail and both revolution and production fail to be satisfactory.
(…) Chairman Mao has taught us: “Practice Marxism, and not revisionism; unite, and don’t split; be open and aboveboard, and don’t intrigue and conspire.” These are three basic principles to be followed in waging inner-Party struggles. All the struggles between the two lines hitherto carried out in the Party involved, in the final analysis, the question of whether to practice Marxism or revisionism. In the socialist period, such struggles have always centered around the question of whether to uphold or change the Party’s basic line. (…)
The principle of “unity, criticism, unity” and “learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones and curing the sickness to save to patient” advanced by Chairman Mao in dealing with comrades who have made mistakes is the criterion for correctly waging struggle in the Party. (…)
To maintain our Party’s nature of being the vanguard of the proletariat, it is essential to give all Party members an education in Marxism-Leninism- Mao Tsetung Thought and to do a good job of remoulding their world outlook. This is an important content in building up the Party ideologically. (…) The key problem in remoulding one’s world outlook lies in using dialectical materialism to oppose idealism and metaphysics and using historical materialism to oppose historical idealism. (…)
The dialectical and historical materialist outlook does not drop from the skies, not it is innate in the mind. It comes from prolonged and bitter tempering in practical struggle under the guidance of Marxist theory. Man’s subjective world is remoulded in the course of transforming the objective world.
(Issue N° 12 of 1973 of the “Peking Review”)
Thoroughly Repudiate Liu Shao-chi’s Counter-Revolutionary Revisionist Line On Party Building
(Extracts)
The Party is a Tool of the Class Struggle
Liu Shao-chi worked to the limit advocating the theory of “dying out of class struggle” and being “being a good party member, and building a good party”. He peddled a great deal of his sinister book on “self-cultivation” under his signboard of a “good men’s party”, and mouthed no words about which class the Party belonged to. He vainly tried to get the proletarian Party to divorce itself form the class struggle, to change its nature and to turn our great Party into a “good men’s party”, that is, a so-called “party of the entire people”, a bourgeois fascist party. (…)
He openly declared: “There is nothing to fear even if there are ten thousand rich-peasant Party members in the Northeast”; “it would be better if capitalists have entered the Party” (…) [He] advocated that “people who has confessed to the enemy an performed acts of capitulation can also be elected Central Committee members”.
Discrediting the Theory of “Docile Tools”
Chairman Mao pointed out recently: “A human being has arteries and veins through which the heart makes blood circulate, and he breathes with his lungs, exhaling carbon dioxide and inhaling fresh oxygen, that is, getting rid of the stale and taking in the fresh. A proletarian party must also get rid of the stale and take in the fresh for only thus can it be full of vitality. Without eliminating waste matter and absorbing fresh blood the Party has no vigour.” (…)
The arch traitor Liu Shao-chi energetically spread the reactionary theory of “docile tools”. He shouted himself coarse crying: “What will you do if you don’t act as a tool? Do you think it’s good to be a tool of the Party? Do you think it’s good to be a docile tool? I think it is very good.”
[The agents of Liu Shao-chi declared] that only those who proved to be “honest and obedient” could enter the Party. Clearly, their “honesty” requires Party members to coexist peacefully with class enemies and turn a blind eye to the criminal activities of the handful of enemy agents, renegades and obdurate capitalist roaders to restore capitalism, while their “obedience” requires Party members and the revolutionary masses to follow the handful of capitalist roaders and become their docile tools for restoring capitalism.
Refuting the Theory That “The Masses Are Backward”
Chairman Mao recently pointed out: “Direct reliance on the revolutionary masses is a basic principle of the Communist Party.”
The arch scab Liu Shao-chi, however, looked on the masses as a “mob” and as “ignorant and incapable”. He wildly clamoured for a “struggle against the backward ideas and backward phenomena among the masses”. Using the theory that “the masses are backward”, he and handful of his agents kept out of the Party large numbers of outstanding workers with proletarian revolutionary spirit, and imposed on them a bourgeois dictatorship. (…)
By loudly advocating the theory that “the masses are backward”, Liu Shao-chi vainly attempted to separate the Party from the masses and thereby undermine their close relations, to prevent the Party from taking in fresh blood and thus cause the Party to lose its revolutionary vitality and step by step degenerate. This was a vain attempt by him to turn the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China into a tool for restoring capitalism. (…)
Thoroughly Repudiating Liu Shao-chi’s Theory of “Entering the Party in Order to Be an Official”
Whether a Communist be an ordinary worker and a servant of the people or become and official and overlook is the watershed between Chairman Mao’s line on Party building and Liu Shao-chi’s revisionist line on Party building.
“We Communists seek not official posts, but revolution. Everyone must be a thoroughgoing revolutionary in spirit and we must never for a moment divorce ourselves from the masses.” (…)
In order to restore capitalism, Liu Shao-chi, however, energetically peddled the theory of “entering the Party in order to be an official”. He shamelessly publicized his nonsense that “in the old days when one passed the imperial examination at the county level, one could become an official; now when one joins the Communist Party, one can also become an official. Such a Party member will be included in the list of prospective cadres.”
The theory of “entering the Party in order to be an official” is a strong corrosive aimed to poison those who are not firm-willed and so lead them on to the revisionist road where they only seek an official post and not want revolution and where they can only be officials and cannot remain one of the common people. (…)
In 1964, Chairman Mao again admonished us: “It is necessary to maintain the system of cadre participation in collective productive labour. The cadres of our Party and state are ordinary workers and not overlords sitting on the backs of the people. By taking part in collective productive labour, the cadres maintain extensive, constant and close ties with the working people. This is a major measure of fundamental importance for a socialist system; it helps to overcome bureaucracy and to prevent revisionism and dogmatism. “ (…)
Completely Discrediting the Theory of “Inner-Party Peace”
(…) The great leader Chairman Mao long ago wisely pointed out: “Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in this society.” Since the first day of its birth, the Communist Party of China, personally founded by Chairman Mao, has grown up and become even stronger in constant struggles against “Left” and Right opportunist lines. Without struggle, it is impossible for our Party to develop and advance.
For decades Liu Shao-chi exerted every effort in advocating the theory of “inner-Party peace”, in a vain attempt to reject active ideological struggle in the Party and bring our Party life to an end. (…)
Chairman Mao teaches us: A Communist “must be full of vigour, he must have a strong revolutionary will”, “always and everywhere he should adhere to principle and wage a tireless struggle against all in-correct ideas and actions.” However, Liu Shao-chi’s theory of “inner-Party peace” publicized unprincipled peace in a vain attempt to let bourgeois ideas spread unchecked, corrupt the Party organizations and disarm Communists ideologically. (…)
The Theory of “Merging Private and Public Interests” Is Poison Corrupting The Souls of Party Members
What kind of world outlook should a Communist have? In one of his talks Liu Shao-chi smugly said: “Under the conditions of socialism, anyone who works solely for his personal interests will not secure them. Serving the people with one mind will satisfy personal interests in return.” “The benefits come later and this is a question of world outlook.” (…)
The core of the proletarian world outlook is “to serve the people wholeheartedly”, “utter devotion to others without any thought of self,” that is, devotion to the public interests. The core of the bourgeois world outlook is to fight for personal fame, gain and power, that is, self-interests. The essence of “benefits come later” is the theory of “merging private and public interests” advocated by Liu Shao-chi, it is the bourgeois world outlook of working entirely for self-interest.
What are “benefits”? Different classes have different views.
Chairman Mao teaches us to “proceed in all cases from the interests of the people” and to become persons “very useful to the people”. Armed with the invincible thought of Mao Tse-tung, proletarian vanguard fighters regard as the greatest benefit the complete liberation of the Chinese people and the people of the world and the realization of the grand ideal of communism. (…)
What are the so-called “benefits” Liu Shao-chi talked about? They are “personal interests”, that is, the enjoyment of “position and fortune throughout one’s life”, “excelling others”, “becoming the No. 1 or No. 2 person” in China, and so on, all of which he has sought after and talked so much about all his life. In short, they are personal fame, gain and power. (…)
(Issue N°51 of 1968 of the “Peking Review”)
Betrayal of Proletarian Dictatorship Is Essential Element in the Book on “Self-Cultivation”
(Extracts)
(…) What is the essential element in this book?
It is the betrayal of Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. And this betrayal of the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat means complete, out-and-out betrayal of Marxism-Leninism itself and of the revolutionary cause of the proletariat. (…)
Lenin again emphatetically pointed out fifty years ago:
“It is often said and written that the main point in Marx’s teachings is the class struggle; but this is not true. And from this untruth very often springs the opportunist distortion of Marxism, its falsification in such a way as to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the doctrine of class struggle was not created not by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and generally speaking it is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Those who recognize only the class struggle are not yet Marxists; they may be found to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.” (…)
During the War of Resistance Against Japan, Chairman Mao pointed out: “The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution” and “the development, consolidation and bolshevization of our Party have proceeded in the midst of revolutionary wars; without armed struggle the Communist Party would assuredly not be what it is today.” Obviously, the development, consolidation and building of the Party and the ideological remoulding of Party members cannot be discussed outside the context of revolutionary wars and the seizure of power by armed force. Yet in the very years of war when guns were roaring and when political power was being seized, the top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road wanted people to indulge in “self-cultivation” oblivious of the fundamental task of seizing political power by armed force. “Self-cultivation” of this kid can only “cultivate” philistines who will not take part in revolutionary war and do not want to seize political power! The philistine products of such “cultivation” are no Communists at all, but Social-Democrats of the Second International.
When a revised edition of the book on “self-cultivation” of Communists was printed in August 1949, and when it was re-published with many additions and deletions in August 1963, it dished up the same old stuff. Though revised and re-published o9n these dates, the book not only said nothing about the socialist revolution or the class struggle in socialist society, but remained completely silent about the dictatorship of the proletariat. The top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road was blatantly setting himself up in opposition to a whole series of great works by Chairman Mao. (…)
Though reprinted and revised many times, the book on “self-cultivation” does not mention the seizure of power by armed force or the dictatorship of the proletariat. Is this an accidental oversight? By no means.
The book discusses the question of the state. A Marxist cannot possibly discuss this question without mentioning the class nature of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yet the book on “self-cultivation” precisely throws out the dictatorship of the proletariat and talks abstractly about the question of the state in the manner of scholars in the pay of the bourgeoisie.
The author of the book on “self-cultivation” says that the proletariat “can build up a party and state apparatus with strict organization and discipline for the purpose of carrying on an irreconcilable struggle against all forms of corruption, bureaucracy and degeneration ans to ceaselessly purge the Party and the state apparatus of those elements who are corrupt, bureaucratic, and degenerate in their work”, so that “the purity of the Party and the state apparatus can be preserved.” We may ask: How can the proletariat build up its own state apparatus? Is it possible without revolution by violence? Is it possible without smashing the old state machine? The book has precisely discarded these fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism. It would seem, according to the author, that so long as Communists apply themselves energetically to “self-cultivation”, a “utopia” will descend from the skies. What he has been dreaming of is nothing but a bourgeois state.
In the 1962 edition of the book, the words “set up a centralized and at the same time democratic state apparatus” are added to the above-quoted passage. This deliberate addition indicates the way the author sees the nature of our state. However, neither here or elsewhere in the book, does he make any mention at all of exercising dictatorship over the class enemy. Chairman Mao says that our proletarian state exercises dictatorship over the class enemy and “what applies among the people is democratic centralism”. By simply describing our state as “centralized and at the same time democratic”, with no dictatorship over the enemy, what is the author of the book on “self-cultivation” doing if not opposing the dictatorship of the proletariat, preaching the Khrushchov theory of “the state of the whole people” and advocating bourgeois dictatorship?
The book describes at length “the cause of communism” as “the greatest and most arduous undertaking in human history.” A Marxist would find it imperative to mention here that communism cannot be realized without going through the dictatorship of the proletariat. But the author does not say a word about the dictatorship of the proletariat.
“What is our communist cause about? How should Party members advance it?” The author replies: “In that world there will be no exploiters and oppressors, no landlords and capitalists, no imperialists or fascists. There will be no oppressed and exploited people, no darkness, ignorance and backwardness, and so on. In such a society all humanity will consist of unselfish, intelligent, highly cultured and skilled Communists, mutual assistance and affection will prevail among men and there will be no such irrationalities as mutual suspicion and deception, mutual injury, mutual slaughter and war. It will of course be the best, the most beautiful and the most advanced society in human history.” (…)
In the opinion of the author, communist society is a bed of roses, without darkness or contradiction; all is well, without the existence of opposites. Society will thereby cease to develop. Not only will society never change qualitatively but it seems it will never change quantitatively either and social development will then come to an end, and society will for ever remain the same. Here the author discards a fundamental Marxist law – that the development of all things, all human society, is set in motion by the struggle of opposites, by contradiction. What the author is doing here is preaching metaphysics and discarding the great theory of dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
(Issue N° 20 of “Peking Review” of 1967)
3. ON MILITARY QUESTIONS
Basic Differences Between the Proletarian And Bourgeois Military Lines
(Extracts)
Whether to Give Prominence to Proletarian Politics or Not Is the Focus of the Struggle Between Chairman Mao’s Military Line And the Bourgeois Military Line in Building Up Our Army
In the last forty years, the struggle between Chairman Mao’s line and the bourgeois line n army building has always focused on the fundamental question whether to put politics or military affairs first, whether to prominence should be given to politics or to military affairs.
The very essence of Chairman Mao’s thinking and line on army building is the putting of proletarian politics to the fore in building a people’s army. It is, first and foremost, to build an army politically.
(…) Chairman Mao pointed out that “military affairs are only one means of accomplishing political tasks” and that “the Chinese Red Army is an armed body for carrying out the political task of the revolution.” (…)
The representatives of the bourgeoisie like Peng Teh-huai and Lo Jui-ching, who wormed their way into the Party, always opposed Chairman Mao’s thinking and line on army building. They always opposed giving prominence to proletarian politics and, instead, advocated giving first place to military affairs, to technique. (…)
To put politics to the fore is to put Mao Tse-tung’s thought to the fore, to arm commanders and fighters with Mao Tse-tung’s thought. The great thought of Mao Tse-tung is the soul of our army, the corner-stone in building our army and the basic guarantee that our army will never change colour.
Dominated by personal ambition and his reactionary class instinct, Lo Jui-Ching mortally feared and hated Mao Tse-tung’s thought. (…)
At the same time, he reverenced and respected the book on “self-cultivation” written by China’s Khrushchov, and personally issued the order making this book compulsory reading for the whole army. (…)
Lo Jui-ching used contests in military skill to obstruct politics and disrupt the study of Chairman Mao’s works.
(…) [W]hether to put proletarian politics to the fore or not, whether to work for the revolutionarization of people’s minds or not has a vital bearing on whether the proletarian army will degenerate or not, on whether the gun is in the hands of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie. In the final analysis, it has vital bearing on whether or not the proletariat can consolidate its political power after seizing it.
Whether to Fight a People’s War or Not Is the Dividing Line Between Chairman Mao’s Military Thinking and Bourgeois Military Thinking
Chairman Mao’s great theory on people’s war has developed Marxism-Leninism creatively and with genius. It not only points out the correct way for the Chinese people to win country-wide victory but also indicates the road to thorough emancipation for the oppressed nations and oppressed classes throughout the world. (…)
Whether one intends to fight a people’s war or not, whether one dares to fight a people’s war or not is the dividing line between Chairman Mao’s military thinking and bourgeois military thinking, between Marxism-Leninism and revisionism, between genuine and sham revolution.
Chairman Mao teaches us: “The revolutionary war is the war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them.” “Rallying millions upon millions of people round the revolutionary government and expanding our revolutionary war, we shall wipe out all counter-revolution.” (…)
As with all opportunists, the military thinking of Lo Jui-ching is founded on the theory that weapons decide everything. He does not trust the masses at all and does not rely on them. He opposes arming the masses, opposes the people’s militia system and opposes Chairman Mao’s great strategic idea of a people’s war.
China’s Khrushchov maintains that technique has pride of place, and technique decides everything. Lo Jui-ching maintains that with new technical equipment, “any invading enemy can be annihilated on the sea, in the air or at the base from which it launches its attack.” They use the theory of winning victory by superior weapons to oppose arming of the masses and dealing with imperialist aggression by people’s war. They vainly hope that the enemy can be defeated relying purely on technical equipment. This is typical bourgeois military thinking. (…)
Our great leader Chairman Mao has fully and most profoundly explained the importance of arming the masses. After country-wide victory, Chairman Mao told us time and time again: “The imperialists are bullying us in such a way that we will have to deal with them seriously. Not only must we have a powerful regular army, we must also organize contingents of the people’s militia on a big scale. This will make it difficult for the imperialists to move a single inch in our country in the event of invasion.” “Should the imperialists dare to unleash an aggressive war against our country, then we will turn the whole nation into soldiers; the militia will co-operate with the People’s Liberation Army and at any time replenish it to crush the aggressors utterly.” (…)
China’s Khrushchov and his agent Lo Jui-ching consider that the militia organized in accordance with Mao Tse-tung’s thought is a main obstacle to their usurpation of Party and army leadership and to their realization of a capitalist restoration. They used a hundred and one ways to undermine the building of the militia and to oppose arming of the masses. In building the militia, they also tried to spread purely military viewpoints and opposed putting proletarian politics to the fore. They vainly attempted to remould our militia with a bourgeois world outlook and so turn it into a tool for realizing their personal ambitions. (…)
In accordance to his master’s intentions, Lo Jui-ching for five years tried to keep secret Chairman Mao’s instructions on strenghtening the building up of the regional forces and refused to carry them out. Later on, although outwardly compliant he did not actually give in and repeatedly discounted them. In a hundred and one ways he attempted to undermine the building of the regional forces. (…)
If imperialism invades us, the militia are not only an inexhaustible reservoir for our army but can also lead the broad masses in waging wide-spread guerrilla warfare. The regional forces are the backbone in regional struggle against the enemy. They lead the vast militia in co-operating energetically with the main forces and continuously expand and are themselves transformed into main forces. (…)
Active Defence and Passive Defence Are Two Diametrically Opposed Principles of Strategic Guidance Between Chairman Mao’s Military Line and the Bourgeois Military Line
Chairman Mao teaches us: “Active defence is also known as offensive defence, or defence through decisive engagements. Passive defence is also known as purely defensive defence or pure defence. Passive defence is actually a spurious kind of defence, and the only real defence is active defence, defence for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive.” (…)
In fact, these people [Lo Jui-ching and Peng Teh-huai] supported and helped the Kuomingtang. After usurping an important position in our army, Lo Jui-ching did his utmost in advocating the wrong policy of passive defence to meet the needs of the class capitulationist and national capitulationist line of China’s Khrushchov. (…)
On the eve of the great proletarian cultural revolution initiated and led by Chairman Mao himself, the counter-revolutionary revisionist Lo Jui-ching’s plot to oppose Chairman Mao, Mao Tse-tung’s thought and Chairman Mao’s military line and to usurp the army leadership and oppose the Party, went completely bankrupt. The reactionary bourgeois military line pursued by him, and he also, were cast off by the commanders and fighters of the whole army. (…)
We must vigorously destroy the bourgeois military line and thoroughly wipe out their poisonous influence. We must establish the absolute authority of Mao Tse-tung’s thought and of his military line in a big way, keep proletarian politics always to the fore, take further steps to promote the revolutionarization of the ideology and organization of the whole army, ensure that the guns are held firmly in the hands of the proletariat at all times and defend the dictatorship of the proletariat so that our impregnable state of the proletariat will never change its political colour!
(Issue N° 48 of 1967 of the “Peking Review”)
The Proletariat Must Take a Firm Hold Of the Gun
(Extracts)
China’s top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road, like all counter-revolutionary revisionists, has all along opposed armed struggle, called for the parliamentary road and carried out capitulationism with all his might. (…)
Chairman Mao says: “Only with guns can the whole world be transformed.” This is the summing up of the experience gained by the proletariat of China and of the whole world at the cost of their blood. This is a universal truth of Marxism-Leninism. This truth is being daily grasped by the proletariat, the oppressed people and nations throughout the world. The revolutionary people in many areas of Asia, Africa and Latina America are rising and driving out their opportunist leaders. They are courageously taking up guns, establishing people’s armies, waging armed struggles, rebelling in a big way against U.S.-led imperialism and all reactionaries and against modern revisionism with the leading clique of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at its centre, and carrying on a great heroic and stubborn battle against the old world.
During the whole period of socialism, class struggle finds concentrated expression in the struggle between the bourgeoisie for restoration and the proletariat against restoration. In striving for restoration the bourgeoisie certainly seeks to control the army and grasp the gun. In order to consolidate their proletarian dictatorship and smash the bourgeoisie’s conspiracy for a come-back, it is imperative for the proletariat too to take a firm hold of the gun and keep firm hold of the army. For a fairly long historical period after seizing state power, the proletariat is faced with the danger of losing state power; similarly, after establishing the army it still faces the danger of losing it. Should the army be lost and its power usurped by bad elements, then everything achieved by the proletariat and the working people will come to nought. The usurping of power in the army and the counter-revolutionary coup d’etat by the Khrushchov revisionist clique in the Soviet Union has provided a serious lesson. (…)
In order to change the proletarian nature of our army and to usurp military power, Peng Teh-huai, Lo Jui-ching and other counter-revolutionary revisionists made desperate efforts to oppose giving prominence to proletarian politics and to peddle revisionist trash imported from abroad; they worked solely to put the army on a regular basis along bourgeois lines and opposed proletarian revolutionarization. They gave pride of place to military technique and denied that political and ideological work was the factor of first importance in determining fighting capability.
The idea that military technique is the basic criterion determining the fighting capability of an army is an out-and-out bourgeois military concept. What gives our army its greatest fighting capability? Is it aircraft, artillery, or atomic bombs? No, absolutely not. What gives our army its greatest fighting capability is the invincible thought of Mao Tse-tung; it is our revolutionary fighters armed with Mao Tse-tung’s thought and having a high level of political consciousness. To oppose giving prominence to proletarian politics while giving pride of place to military technique means giving prominence to bourgeois politics. (…)
In his book Political Work in the Anti-Japanese Armies, Lo Jui-ching made no mention of class struggle or the seizure of political power by the proletariat, and taking a filial attitude towards that enemy of the people, he even used “the greatness of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his life” and the “wisdom, love, bravery” and “loyalty and benevolence” proclaimed by Chiang Kai-shek as the basic content for political work in the army. What they were publicizing was nothing but the reactionary politics of the Kuomingtang. (…)
In a word, using counter-revolutionary, revisionist, bourgeois junk, Peng Teh-huai, Lo Jui-ching and their like, agents of China’s Khrushchov within the army, tried their utmost to subvert our army and usurp its leadership. Had they achieved the aim of their intrigues and got the guns in their hands, our state would have changed its colour, our Party and state would have been destroyed and we all would have been slaughtered.
(Issue N° 32 of 1967 of “Peking Review”)
Hold High the Great Red Banner of Mao Tse-tung’s Thought, Thoroughly Criticize And Repudiate the Bourgeois Military Line
(Extracts)
Chairman Mao pointed out in the resolution for the Kutien Congress: “Military affairs are only one means of accomplishing political tasks.” “The Chinese Red Army is an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of the revolution.” “The Red Army should certainly not confine itself to fighting: besides fighting to destroy enemy’s military strength, it should shoulder such important tasks as doing propaganda among the masses, organizing the masses, arming them, helping them to establish revolutionary political power and setting up Party organizations. The Red Army fights not merely for the sake of fighting but in order to conduct propaganda among the masses, organize them, arm them and help them to establish revolutionary political power. Without these objectives, fighting loses its meaning and the Red Army loses the reason for its existence. “
This series of scientific theses by Chairman Mao solved the relations between military affairs and politics with genius and in a creative way, developed the theories of Marxism-Leninism tremendously and laid the foundation of the military theory of Mao Tse-tung. The core of Chairman Mao’s military theory is to give prominence to proletarian politics and lay stress on building the army politically, to attach full importance to the decisive role of man and the political-ideological factor, and to display to the full initiative of the masses of soldiers and people in war. In accordance with Chairman Mao’s teachings, our army is an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of the revolution and military affairs must be subordinate to politics. Our army is not only a fighting force. It is at the same time a working force and a production force. Our army must be placed under the absolute leadership of the Chinese Communist Party which is guided by Mao Tse-tung’s thought, and implement the principle of the Party commanding the gun, and of never allowing the gun to command the Party. In fighting our army must not solely rely on weapons and technique but must rely mainly on politics, on the consciousness and revolutionary spirit of man and the unity between officers and men, between the higher and lower ranks, between the army and the government, and between the army and the people. Political-ideological work is the lifeblood of our army. This is the diametric opposite to the bourgeois military line, to the bourgeoisie’s purely military viewpoint and theory that weapons decide everything and to the bourgeois military theory and system of management.
(Issue N° 32 of 1967 of the “Peking Review”)
4. ON THE MASSES
“Leader of the Workers’ Movement” Or No. 1 Scab?
(Extracts)
Before the working class takes political power, should it engage only in legal economic struggles begging for small immediate “benefits” from the ruling class, or should it completely overthrow the reactionary rule and take political power into its own hands? This is a focal point in the struggle between Marxists on the one side and revisionists and reformists on the other. (…)
Chairman Mao teaches us: “The aim of every revolutionary struggle in the world is the seizure and consolidation of political power.” “The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution.” “Armed struggle by the Chinese Communist Party takes the form of peasant war under proletarian leadership.” “Other forms such as mass organization and mass struggle are also extremely important and indeed indispensable and in no circumstances to be overlooked, but their purpose is to serve the war … [they] are directly or indirectly co-ordinated with the war.”
In these great teachings Chairman Mao points out that the general orientation and general task of the workers’ movement are to organize and arouse the working class, directly or indirectly work in co-ordination with the peasants’ revolutionary war led by the Party and struggle to encircle the cities from the countryside and finally seize political power by armed struggle.
China’s Khrushchov (…) opposed political struggle; he opposed co-ordination of the workers’ movement with armed struggle and the seizure of political power by encircling the cities from the countryside. (…)
In a nutshell, his whole line was “economic struggle is everything and everything for economic struggle.” By advocating “economic struggle”, he actually meant to confine the struggle solely to fighting for “legislation”, giving the workers better conditions to sell their labour power, thus restricting the struggle to the scope permitted by the Kuomingtang reactionaries without touching the Chiang Kai-shek regime one jot.
Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, never denies the necessity of economic struggle, but maintains that economic struggle must be integrated with political struggle, (…) If the workers’ movement is divorced from political struggle and the armed seizure of power and limited to economic struggle, it becomes impossible to overthrow the rule of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism (…) and it becomes absolutely impossible to solve “economic demands”.
[In the stage of socialism] should we persist in the dictatorship of the proletariat, carry the socialist revolution through to the end, develop the socialist economy and strive to bring about communism or should we give up socialist revolution, concern ourselves solely with material production, give up the fundamental interests of consolidating the proletarian state power and lead the workers in seeking immediate economic advantages and thus open the way for restoration of capitalism. This is one of the focal point of the struggle between Marxism Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, and revisionism in the workers’ movement after the seizure of political power by the working class. (…)
[T]o prevent trade union workers from engaging in revolutionary and political work, he [Liu Shao-chi] polished it up by putting forward such slogans as “the drive for production is precisely the workers’ movement” and “strive for the livelihood of the workers”; in an attempt to to lead the workers’ movement astray, he advocated that the trade unions concern themselves solely with production and welfare. (…)
Marxists do not oppose the development of production but stand for the active development of production. They always hold that development of the socialist economy is one of the basic tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, development of socialist production demands that proletarian politics be put in command and that the socialist revolution be taken as the motive force. In other words: “take firm hold of the revolution and promote production.” (…)
The trade unions are a product of class struggle and an instrument for class struggle. So long as classes and class struggle exist it is impossible doe the trade unions to be “of the entire people.”
China’s Khrushchov tried in a hundred and one ways to turn the trade unions into “trade unions of the entire people.” (…)
A fundamental difference between Marxism and revisionism in the workers’ movement lies in the answer to the question of whether or not the trade unions should accept the leadership of the political party of the working class. An advocate of economism is in invariably a syndicalist, and denies that the Party is the highest organizational form of the working class and opposes Party leadership over the trade unions. This also describes China’s Khrushchov. (…)
In the past 17 years, China’s Khrushchov has looked on the invincible thought of Chairman Mao Tse-tung as his greatest obstacle in trying to usurp leadership of the Party and the state and restore capitalism in China.
Mao Tse-tung’s thought is the universal truth for the making of revolution by all the oppressed peoples and the fundamental guarantee for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the working class which has already seized political power. The fundamental task of the workers’ movement is to imbue the workers with the Mao Tse-tung’s thought, arm the masses of the workers with the invincible thought of Mao Tse-tung (…)
(Issue N° 50 of 1967 of the “Peking Review”)
Struggle Between the Two Roads In China’s Countryside
(Extracts)
Before the socialist transformation of agriculture was in the main completed, he [Liu Shao-chi] did his utmost to protect and develop the rich peasant economy and oppose the socialist collectivization of agriculture. And after the basic completion of that transformation, he made big efforts to restore capitalism and disintegrate the socialist collective economy. (…)
China’s Khrushchov summed up his whole anti-socialist theory in a programme negating the socialist revolution, namely: “At the present time, we must strive for the consolidation of the system of new democracy.” (…)
[Liu Shao-chi] had the audacity to slander the socialist line of agricultural co-operation as “illusion” (…)
[In 1955] he and another top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road concocted the reactionary plan of “holding up” “contraction” and “checking up”, and he personally ratified a plan for drastically slashing the number of co-operatives. In a little over two months, 200,000 co-operatives were dissolved in the country.
China’s Khrushchov had recourse to the out-worn weapon of “the theory of productive forces” taken from the revisionist rubbish heap of his forerunners, Bernstein, Kautsky, Bukharin and their like. (…)
According to his “theory”, in countries where productive forces are not yet well developed, the proletariat and the poor and lower-middle peasants, after winning victory in the democratic revolution, are not entitled to and should not turn the democratic revolution into the socialist revolution without delay; instead they must let capitalism develop first. Without machinery, they deserve to be exploited by the capitalists and rich peasants. (…)
[In 1958 Liu Shao-chi] vilified the people’s communes, saying, “the peasants have gained nothing form the collective economy in the last few years.” As a result of his incitement, a gust of sinister wind blew up in the rural areas – the San Zi Yi Bao (the extension of plots fro private use, the extension of free markets, the increase in the number of small enterprises with sole responsibility for their own profits or losses, and the fixing of output quotas on the basis of individual households). (…)
Another top capitalist roader in the Party elaborated this in a more figurative way. He said: “So long as it raises output, ‘going it alone’ is permissible. Whether cats are white or black, so long as they can catch mice, they are good cats.”
According to Chairman Mao’s line [of socialist education movement in the rural areas] it is imperative to “grasp the class struggle as the key, grasp the struggle between the road of socialism and the road of capitalism as the key” to resolve “the contradiction between socialism and capitalism.”
(…) “rely on the working class, the poor and lower-middle peasants, the revolutionary cadres, the revolutionary intellectuals and other revolutionaries, and pay attention to uniting more that 95 per cent of the masses and more than 95 per cent of the cadres” in order to “wage a sharp, tit-for-tat struggle against the capitalist and feudal forces which are wildly attacking us.”
(…) “the main target of the present movement is those within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road.”
[Teng Siao-ping] hurriedly concocted a “second ten-point decision (draft)” in direct opposition to the “ten-point decision”. (…) the “second ten-point decision” negated the essential content of the struggle between the two classes and between the two roads and completely discarded the line, principles and policies concerning the socialist education movement which Chairman Mao had explicitly formulated in the “ten-point decision”. (…) it used a hundred and one devices to absolve the capitalist forces in the rural areas, tie the masses hand and foot, and in every way protect the agents of the bourgeoisie within the Party. In the pretext of conducting “socialist education” it directed the spearhead of the struggle against the poor and lower-middle peasants. (…) tried in vain carry out the bourgeois reactionary line to stamp out the revolutionary flames of the socialist education movement which Chairman Mao himself had lit. This is just one of the many towering crimes committed by that other top capitalist roader in the Party in opposing socialism and trying to restore capitalism. (…)
The history of the struggle between the two roads and the two lines in the rural areas during these 18 years has provided us with extremely rich experience. The following are among the most important points:
First, “socialist society covers a fairly long historical stage. In this stage, classes, class contradictions and class struggle continue, the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road continues and the danger of capitalist restoration remains.” (…)
Second: The fundamental question in all revolutions is the question of political power. In the final analysis, the struggle between the two roads and between the two lines is the struggle between the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its subversion. (…)
Third, after the realization of agricultural co-operation, the socialist revolution is not yet completed on the economic front. (…)
Fourth, the broad masses of poor and lower-middle peasants are our social basis in the rural areas for the building of socialism. (…)
Fifth, “the serious problem is the education of the peasantry.” “The basic task of political work” of the Party in the countryside “is constantly to imbue the peasant masses with a socialist ideology and to criticize the tendency towards capitalism.” (…)
The struggle between the two roads and the two lines in the countrysides must be carried through to the end. The great proletarian revolution in the vast countryside must be carried through to the end in the direction pointed out by Chairman Mao.
Let the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought fly high for ever over China’s countryside!
(Issue N° 49 of 1967 of the “Peking Review)
5. ON THEORY
The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution
(Extracts)
(…) Liu Shao-chi advocated the reactionary “theory of productive forces.” According to this fallacy, socialist revolution is impossible and the socialist road cannot be taken in any country where capitalism is not highly developed and the productive forces have not reached a high level. (…)
As far back as the early years of China’s new democratic revolution, however, Liu Shao-chi, following in Chen Tu-hsiu’s footsteps, vigorously preached the “theory of productive forces” to oppose the proletariat making revolution and seizing political power. Using the pretext that China was industrially backward and the level of its productive forces was very low, he slanderously described the Chinese proletariat as “infantile” and “seriously lumpen”, alleging that the seizure of the power by the proletariat was “a thing of the distant future” and that it was utterly “unnecessary to waste much breath discussing it.” (…)
The question whether the proletariat is able to seize political power is absolutely not determined by the level of the productive forces, but objectively by whether there is a revolutionary situation, and subjectively if there is a Communist Party armed with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, which correctly leads the broad revolutionary masses in a courageous struggle to seize political power. (…)
[After the founding of the People’s Republic of China] Liu Shao-chi repeatedly clamoured: “The question of socialism is a matter for the future. It is too early to raise it now.” (…) “capitalism in China today is still in its youth and it is high time to give full play to its historical and positive role and let it make its contribution.” (…)
The great Lenin pointed out long ago that whether the bourgeois democratic revolution, following its victory, would change into the socialist revolution without let-up depended on “the degree of preparedness of the proletariat and the degree of its unity with the poor peasants.” The seizure of political power by the working class following the founding of the People’s Republic of China was the most important political preparedness; the confiscation of bureaucrat-capital, which “will enable the people’s republic to control the economic lifelines of the country and will enable the state-owned economy to become the leading sector of the entire national economy”, was the most important economic preparedness. (…)
[On the moment of completing the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production Liu Shao-chi] clamoured everywhere: “In our country, the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, has now been settled”, “class struggle is over” and “now, the main task of the Chinese people and our Party is to develop the productive forces as rapidly as possible.” (…)
The counter-revolutionary view that “production is everything” that he brought into being was a smokescreen. He wanted to use it to dull our revolutionary vigilance so that he could recruit turncoats, take in renegades and set up cliques for selfish interests, and push ahead wildly with his counter-revolutionary revisionist line on all fronts, make the dictatorship of the proletariat degenerate into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and transform the socialist economy into a capitalist economy. (…)
Lenin pointed out: “Politics cannot but have predecence over economics,” “Without a correct political approach to the matter the given class will be unable to stay on top, and, consequently, will be incapable of solving its production problem either.” (…) Chairman Mao teaches over and over again: “Politics is the commander, the soul in everything”, “political work is the life-blood of all economic work.” “Grasp revolution, promote production”. (…)
Liu Shao-chi is now a political corpse, but the pernicious influence of the “theory of the productive forces” he spread has not yet been eliminated. (…)
(Issue N° 38 of 1969 of the “Peking Review)
From Bernstein to Liu Shao-chi
(Extracts)
The “theory of productive forces” is an international revisionist trend of thought. (…)
Bernstein (…) in 1899 (…) maintained that with the highly developed social productive forces, capitalism would grow into socialism peacefully. Therefore, he said, revolution by armed force would become a meaningless phrase. (…)
The renegade Kautsky (…) in 1909, asserted that only where the capitalist mode of production was highly developed could there be the possibility of turning capitalist ownership of the means of production into public ownership by virtue of state power. (…)
Shutting his eyes to reality, Kautsky even clamoured in 1930 that the revolution that had taken place in Russia could only serve the way for the full development of capitalism and that only when capitalism was fully developed was it possible to establish a socialist society. (…)
In 1922, (…) Trotsky drivelled that Russia had not reached or even approached the stage of establishing a socialist society … and that socialism was possible only when there was the basis of developed and thriving productive forces. He further asserted that a real upsurge in the Russian socialist economy was possible only after the proletariat had triumpfed in several of the most important European countries. (…)
[The contemporary Soviet revisionists] prattle that, under socialist conditions, economics is more important than politics, that the problem of production should be given first place and should be placed at the heart of all Party organization activities and come before all work of the Party organizations. (…)
Chen Tu-hsiu, in 1923, one-sidedly stressed that China’s “industry is in its infancy and its culture backward”, that “even the bourgeoisie is very infantile and, objectively, the working class is even more infantile.” He frantically opposed the proletariat leading the revolution and seizing political power. He ranted: “Under normal circumstances, political power will naturally be in the hands of the bourgeoisie following success in the national revolution.” Even in 1938, he still jabbered that “there is still much room form the development of capitalism in China.” (…)
Stepping into the shoes of the renegades Bernstein, Kautsky, Trotsky and Chen Tu-hsiu, the renegade, hidden traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi consistently advocated the reactionary “theory of productive forces.” He opposed the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat and thus committed towering crimes.
(Issue N° 38 of 1969 of the “Peking Review”)
Grasp the Principal Contradiction, Hold To the General Orientation of Struggle
(Extracts)
(…) the principal contradiction we must resolve in the great proletarian cultural revolution is the contradiction between the proletariat and the handful of Party people in authority taking the capitalist road. This contradiction is an antagonistic one, a contradiction between the enemy and ourselves. (…)
[This contradiction] is a concentrated manifestation of the struggle between the proletariat an the bourgeoisie in China and of the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road. This is the most outstanding characteristic of the class struggle under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat, particurally after the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production is in the main completed. This is an objective law. (…)
In 1957, (…) Chairman Mao pointed out that revisionism was even more dangerous than dogmatism. As regards to the domestic scene, the revisionism referred to is mainly the agents of the bourgeoisie within the Party.
Chairman Mao pointed out in May 1963 that in the ranks of our cadres, a number of people failed even to differentiate between the enemy and ourselves but collaborated with the enemy and were corrupted, divided and demoralized by him, and the enemy was pulling out cadres to his side or sneaking into out ranks. Chairman Mao added that if things were to continue like this, “it would not take long, perhaps only several years or a decade, or several decades at most, before a counter-revolutionary restoration on a national scale inevitably occurred, the Marxist-Leninist party would undoubtedly become a revisionist party or a fascist party, and the whole of China would change its colour.” It is those elements within the Party pulled out by the bourgeoisie an those elements of the bourgeoisie who sneaked in who are referred to with emphasis as being the most dangerous.
In July 1964, (…) Chairman Mao put forward the question of preventing “the emergence of Khrushchov’s revisionism in China.” And he said that the first requirement for worthy successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat was that “they must be genuine Marxist-Leninist and not revisionists like Khrushchov wearing the cloak of Marxism-Leninism.”
In January 1965 Chairman Mao pointed out (…) that “the main target of the present movement is those within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road.”
In the past few years, Chairman Mao has pointed out on many occasions: Be on guard against the emergence of revisionism, especially against the emergence of revisionism in the Central Committee of our Party. (…)
We must not divert our sight to all sorts of secondary contradictions, and thus shift the general orientation of the struggle. (…)
Only by taking hold of the principal contradiction can we expand and strengthen the ranks of the Left, unite with the masses of the people and cadres, form revolutionary great alliances and isolate to the maximum the handful of Party people in authority taking the capitalist road. (…)
Contradictions also exist among different mass organizations of the Left. These are contradictions between right and wrong within the forces of the Left. In some cases, on a given question one side is right and the other side wrong. In other cases, on a given questions one side has more errors than the other side. In still other cases one side is right on one question and wrong on another, while it is just the opposite with the other side. In all above cases, there are differences in principle. However, these contradictions between them are secondary they have the same general orientation since the Party people in authority taking the capitalist road are their common opponents. (…) Differences between mass organizations of the Left should be resolved by the method of criticism and self-criticism. Controversies between the two sides can be settled by consultation. On secondary issues that cannot be solved for the time being, both sides should seek common ground while reserving their differences and join in fighting the enemy. This cannot be called lack of principle, nor blurring the line between right and wrong, or eclectism or conciliation, but is a correct practice aimed at forging the revolutionary great alliance and a manifestation of the principled attitude of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought. On the contrary, if organizations of the Left hold fast to the controversial points, regard minor issues as more important than anything else and zestfully engage in internal feuds, thereby relaxing the struggle against those Party people in authority taking the capitalist road, this is precisely a lack of principle, a noxious manifestation of the small group mentality, the mountain-stronghold mentality and anarchism.
The relations between mass organizations of the Left and those of the masses who, due to lack of a correct understanding, joined conservative organizations, represent contradictions among the people, not contradictions between the enemy and ourselves. As long as we grasp the principal contradiction and recognize who our chief enemy is, we will understand that the misled masses in the conservative organizations are also victims of the bourgeois reactionary line. They are our class brothers. (…)
(Issue N° 22 of 1967 of the “Peking Review”)
6. ON EDUCATION, PROPAGANDA, ART AND LITERATURE
Who Transforms Whom?
(Extracts)
(…) the first chapter of Kairov’s Pedagogy says: “Education is purely a human phenomenon.” This definition completely denies a most fundamental fact: In class society, education is a phenomenon of class struggle. It is by no means true that “a man should receive a proper education in order to be a man.” Every class wants education to ne given because it wants to maintain its rule. Education develops out of the need of class struggle, not of an abstract “human” need. Every class educates and transforms the younger generation in accordance its own world outlook and political line, training its own successors and thereby achieving the purpose of consolidation of its own rule. After seizing political power, the proletariat must turn education, which is an instrument for bourgeois rule, into an instrument for demolishing this rule and for completely eliminating the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes. The proletariat must make education an important position where “the proletariat must exercise all-round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie in the realm of the superstructure, including the various spheres of culture.” (…)
But Kairov, lauded to the skies by Lu Ting-yi as a “socialist” educator, gave this definition when he spoke of the essence of education. Education, he said, is the “passing on of experience and knowledge to a new generation” by the “older generation” (…)
[Chairman Mao has taught:] “Education must serve proletarian politics and be combined with productive labour.” “Our educational policy must enable everyone who receives an education to develop morally, intellectually and physically and become a worker with both socialist consciousness and culture.” (…)
Let us look at the process of formation he [Kairov] designed, the so-called “straight line” system of education: As soon as a student has entered school, his aim is to make his way up. By finishing primary school he looks forward to be admitted to middle school, by finishing middle school to be admitted to college, and by finishing college to get an associate doctorate or doctorate degree by studying in a research institute. While a few people gain the laurels of an associate doctor or doctor and are thus qualified to enter the “paradise” of the bourgeois privileged stratum, most people finish their primary of middle school education and become workers or peasants only to be exploited and oppressed by the bourgeoisie.
(Issue N° 10 of 1970 of the “Peking Review”)
Strive to Build a Socialist University of Science and Engineering
(Extracts)
Chairman Mao teaches us: “To accomplish the proletarian revolution in education, it is essential to have working class leadership; the masses of workers must take part in this revolution and, in co-operation with Liberation Army fighters, form a revolutionary three-in-one combination with the activists among the students, teachers and workers in schools and colleges, who are determined to carry the proletarian revolution in education through to the end, The workers’ propaganda teams should stay permanently in the school and colleges, take part in all the tasks of struggle-criticism-transformation there and will always lead these institutions.” (…)
“In the problem of transforming education it is the teachers who are the main problem.” (…)
The worker, peasant ans soldier teachers constitute the most vigorous revolutionary force in the contingent of teachers. (…)
The counter-revolutionary revisionist Chiang Nan-hsiang openly opposed the students’ taking part in the class struggle and struggle for production in society, clamouring that “Tsinghua University is a cradle for engineers” and “fighters in the three great revolutionary movements can be trained in laboratories.” (…)
“Schools and colleges should run factories.” This is a great and wise policy if Chairman Mao’s. (…) “Besides meeting the needs of teaching and scientific research, all laboratories and affiliated workshops of engineering colleges which can undertake production tasks should do so to the best of their capability.” (…)
Whether or not we persist in taking political education as the key link in the whole education for worker, peasant and soldier students id a question of whether or not we implement the proletarian educational line. (…)
The slavish comprador philosophy and the doctrine of trailing behind at a snail’s pace constitute the very core of the old system of the teaching material for colleges of science and engineering. (…)
“The teaching material should be thoroughly transformed, in some cases beginning with simplifying complicated material.”
(Issue N° 31 of 1970 of the “Peking Review”)
Carry the Great Revolution on the Journalistic Front Through to the End
(Extracts)
Chairman Mao pointed out [in 1948]: You comrades are newspapermen. Your job is to educate the masses, to enable the masses to know their own interests, their own tasks and the Party’s general and specific policies. “Teach the people to know the truth and arouse them to fight for their own emancipation.” (…)
China’s Khrushchov (…) demanded that the press beat the drum and clear the way for capitalism in China.
(…) the counter-revolutionary revisionist Lu Ting-yi and his like, went so far as to assert that “our Party papers and journals should adapt themselves to the needs of all classes, including the bourgeoisie.”
They all [talks of Liu Shao-chi] boiled down to one thing: opposing Chairman Mao’s proletarian line on journalism, flagrantly advocating bourgeois liberalization ans clearing the way for frenzied attacks by the Rightists all over the country. (…)
Chairman Mao time and time again dealt this evil tendency of bourgeois liberalization head-on blows. (…) He pointed out: “They deny the Party spirit and class nature of the press, then they try to obliterate the differences of principle between proletarian and bourgeois journalism, and they confuse journalism reflecting the collective economy of the socialist countries with journalism reflecting the anarchic economy of the capitalist countries with its inter-group competition. They admire bourgeois liberalism and oppose the leadership of the Party. They favour democracy and oppose centralism. They oppose the necessary, but not over-centralized, leadership, planning and control of culture and education (including journalism), which are indispensable to a planned economy. Close as brothers, they and the Right-wing intellectuals in society support each other and work in unison.”
Teng To, an agent of China’s Khrushchov, had the audacity to withhold Chairman Mao’s words from the Party paper, refusing o publicize Chairman Mao’s great strategic plan and keeping the Party’s policy a secret. (…) Chairman Mao issued an extremely sharp criticism, saying: The Party press should promptly give publicity to the Party’s policies. It was a mistake not to report the conference on propaganda work. The conference was attended by both Party and non-Party people, why then has it not been reported in the press? Why is there no editorial on the Supreme State Conference? Why are the Party’s policies kept a secret? There is a ghost here; where is this ghost? We used to say it was the pedants who ran the papers, now we should say it is the dead. More often than not you sings against the Central Committee’s policies. You dislike, you oppose, you disapprove of those policies.” (…)
The sharp and bitter class struggle on the front of journalism over the past 18 years has provided us with extremely rich and valuable experience and lessons.
First, the unswerving and consistent propagation of Mao Tse-tung’s thought s the fundamental task of the proletarian press, radio and news agencies. (…)
Second, so long as the world is divided into classes, the press will remain an instrument of class struggle. (…)
Third, criticism and repudiation of the reactionary bourgeois line on journalism must be conducted in a deep-going and sustained way, so that its poisonous influence will be completely eliminated and the struggle between the two lines ins journalistic circles carried through to the end.
Fourth, journalistic organizations must take the road of “better troops and simpler administration”, firmly adhere to the mass line and maintain close ties with the working class and the working masses.
Chairman Mao has taught us: “To run a newspaper well the fundamental issue is to revolutionize the ideology of its staff.” (…)
“With our newspapers, too, we must rely on everybody, on the masses of the people, on the whole Party to run them, not merely on a few persons working behind closed doors.”
(Issue N° 37 of 1968 of the “Peking Review”)
Fight to Safeguard the Dictatorship Of The Proletariat
(Extracts)
To serve the millions upon millions of workers, peasants and soldiers, or to serve the handful of exploiting classes? To serve the proletariat, or to serve the bourgeoisie? (…)
(…) literature and art must serve the needs of their struggle, serve their fundamental interests. (…)
(…) revolutionary literary and art workers must maintain a firm proletarian stand and enthusiastically sing the praises of the people, the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat, revolutionary struggles and the heroes of these struggles. They must relentlessly expose the monstrous features and ugly soul of the enemy, expose the bourgeoisie’s schemes for a counter-revolutionary restoration. (…)
(…) it is necessary to engage in struggle and to carry out resolute and deep-going criticism and repudiation of all trends of thought and works of literature and art which run counter to the concept of literature and art serving the workers, peasants and soldiers and proletarian politics. (…)
(…) literary and art workers must take the road of revolutionarization, go into very midst of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, study Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, and society in the heat of the mass struggle in order to radically remould themselves (…)
The top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road and the handful of counter-revolutionary revisionists in literary and art circles including Chou Yang, Lin Mo-han, Chi Yen-ming, Hsia Yen, Tien Han and Shao Chuan-lin have viciously attacked the Talks. (…)
The main slogan of this counter-revolutionary revisionist line on literature and art is “a literature and art of the whole people.” (…)
This theory (…) has been concocted on the basis of the theory of “the dying out of class struggle” advanced by the top Party person in authority taking the capitalist road. It serves the counter-revolutionary revisionist political line of the “Party of the entire people” and the “state of the whole people”.
Using as his pretext the argument that “excellent technique” can “delight people”, the Khrushchov of China openly advocated the staging of such obscene operas as the The Emperor Flirts With the Waitress, which glorify the decadent and licentiuous life of the feudal monarchs, and Yang Yen-hui Visits His Mother which honours a traitor. (…)
[Liu Shao-chi lauded] the “Westernized writers” who “understand” Swan Lake, Notre Dame de Paris and Maid of the Sea.
[Lu Ting-yi, Chou Yang and company] attacked and attempted to force out Comrade Chiang Ching, who had been steadfastly carrying out Chairman Mao’s proletarian line on literature and art and waging a resolute struggle against them, and they suppressed and persecuted revolutionary literary and art workers. (…)
Comrade Chiang Ching and the revolutionary literary and art workers put up a strenuous struggle to overcome many obstacles, and have already produced a number of revolutionary Peking operas and ballets and a revolutionary symphony, all reflecting the brilliance of Mao Tse-tung’s thought. These works are full of militancy and proletarian revolutionary heroism. They are models in serving the workers, peasants and soldiers and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They are gems in the treasury of proletarian literature and art, precious works in the art history of mankind. They have put to rights the turning of history upside down over thousands of years during which the stage was dominated by emperors, kings, generals, ministers, scholars and beauties.
(Issue N° 22 of 1967 of the “Peking Review”)