Socialist society covers a considerably long historical period. In the historical period of socialism, there are still classes, class contradictions and class struggle, there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, and there is the danger of capitalist restoration. We must recognize the protracted and complex nature of this struggle. We must heighten our vigilance. We must conduct socialist education. We must correctly understand and handle class contradictions and class struggle, distinguish the contradictions between ourselves and the enemy from those among the people and handle them correctly. Otherwise a socialist country like ours will turn into its opposite and degenerate, and a capitalist restoration will take place. From now on we must remind ourselves of this every year, every month and every day so that we can retain a relatively sober understanding of this problem and have a Marxist-Leninist line. Chairman Mao Tse-tung (A Basic Understanding of the Communist Party of China, pp. 46-47)
Chairman Mao has repeatedly warned of the possibility of a capitalist restoration in China. He emphasized the need to be constantly vigilant and to not be taken in by the capitalist-roaders in the Party. At the same time, he said:
If our children’s generation go in for revisionism and move towards their opposite, so that although they still nominally have socialism it is in fact capitalism, then our grandsons will certainly rise up in revolt and overthrow their fathers, because the masses will not be satisfied. (quoted in Chairman Mao Talks to the People, p. 190)
After the death of Chairman Mao in September, 1976, the capitalist-roaders in China carried out a counter-revolutionary coup de’etat to seize Party and state power, reverse the correct verdicts of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, negate the revolutionary line of Chairman Mao, and start China headed on the road of capitalist restoration.
We don’t pretend to be able to analyze the situation and the two-line struggle in China better than the Chinese. However, it may be some time before a complete analysis can come from the revolutionary elements now being suppressed in China. This analysis is meant to fill in in the meantime and begin a serious study of the question.
We don’t in any way take lightly the significance of this kind of attack on the present leaders of the Communist Party of China. The Chinese Communist Party has been the vanguard and the guiding light for Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries for many years, especially since the criminal restoration of capitalism in the USSR by Khrushchev and his cronies after Stalin’s death. It has led the Chinese people to win the New Democratic Revolution, to expel the Chiang Kai Shek bandits from mainland China, to construct socialism, build the peoples’ communes and socialist industry, to struggle to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, create socialist new things, and move China forward towards communism through the Cultural Revolution. With the leadership of Mao Tse-tung it has successfully waged ten major two-line struggles against erroneous Right and “Left” lines. The Chinese Communist Party has led the Marxist-Leninists around the world in combatting Soviet social-imperialism and modern revisionism.
It has provided analysis of the world situation and guidance for the Marxist-Leninist parties around the world. It has led many nations to stand up to the two superpowers and has given essential close comradely support to the parties and people of Albania, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
However, the Chinese Party’s glorious history and its many two-line struggles don’t mean that it has been forever vaccinated against revisionism.
The present Great Cultural Revolution is only the first; there will inevitably be many more in the future. The issue of who will win in the revolution can only be settled over a long historical period. If things are not properly handled it is possible for a capitalist restoration to take place at any time. It should not be thought by any Party member or any one of the people in our country that everything will be all right after one or two great cultural revolutions, 01 even three or four. We must be very much on the alert and never lose vigilance. (from “teachings of Chairman Mao”, quoted in The Chinese Road to Socialism, Wheelwright and McFarlane, Monthly Review Press, 1970,p. 233)
To attack a great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China would be an extreme dangerous counter-revolutionary error. However, to continue to support a revisionist, incorrect Communist Party of China and fail to support the Chinese who are struggling continue on the socialist road would be an equally dangerous counter-revolutionary error. As we have seen with the “communist” parties that tail behind Soviet social-imperialist it can also lead to consolidation around revisionist counter-revolutionary lines in many countries.
We must, then, study with great care the objective situation in China and analyze the essence of the recent two-line struggle in China. In doing so, we must not forget that the Chinese Communist Party has relied on the initiative of the masses in waging class struggle, and that this struggle has always been reflected in the Party as well. The seizure of power by the revisionists is a consolidation of revisionist tendencies that have existed throughout the history of the Party. These tendencies were not born yesterday nor is their power absolute today.