In 1919, soon after the birth of proletarian state power in the Soviet Union, Lenin said:
The proletariat does not cease the class struggle after it has captured political power, but continues it until classes are abolished . . of course, under different circumstances, in different form and by different means.
And what does the ’abolition of classes’ mean? . . Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organisation of labour, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it. Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labour of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy.
Clearly, in order to abolish classes completely, it is not enough to overthrow the exploiters, the landowners and capitalists, not enough to abolish their rights of ownership; it is necessary also to abolish all private ownership of the means of production, it is necessary to abolish the distinction between town and country, as well as the distinction between manual workers and brain workers/’ (Lenin, A Great Beginning, Collected Works, pp. 411-434)
Soon after the birth of proletarian state power in China, Chairman Mao said:
The new social system has only just been established and requires time for its consolidation. It must not be assumed that the new system can be completely consolidated the moment it is established, for that is impossible. It has to be consolidated step by step. To achieve its ultimate consolidation, it is necessary not only to bring about the socialist industrialisation of the country and persevere in the socialist revolution on the economic front, but to carry on constant and arduous socialist revolutionary struggles and socialist education on the political and ideological fronts. (Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-tung, p. 481)
The forces of production – people, natural resources and the means of production – are the essential components of any society. The means of production, industry and agriculture, are owned by the state or are owned collectively in socialism, and therefore the economic base is socialist. However, in the transition from capitalism to communism, social classes still exist and therefore within the economic base the relations of production (how different groups relate to the means of production) still have capitalist characteristics. Therefore, there has to be continual revolutionary change in the relations of production, with the working classes being the motive force in these changes.
Chairman Mao said:
The bureaucratic class on the one hand and the working class together with the poor and lower and middle peasants on the other are the two classes sharply antagonistic to each other . . If the managerial staff do not join the workers on the shop floor, eat, live, and work with them, and modestly learn one or more skills from them, then they will find themselves locked in acute class struggle with the working class all their lives and in the end are bound to be overthrown as bourgeoisie by the working class. (PR #27, 1976, p. 7)
The superstructure – the government, the army, education, culture, healthcare, etc. – is determined in the long run by the economic base, but it also can be (and always is during the historic period of socialism) in contradiction with it . . that is, parts of it can be bourgeois in nature and therefore can be used to undermine the economic base and restore capitalism. The working classes must constantly struggle to change the superstructure and the relations of production to be in agreement with the economic base and move forward on the socialist road to communism.
In the socialist period the proletariat wants to constantly transform those parts of the superstructure and the relations of production which are not in harmony with the socialist economic base and the productive forces and carry the socialist revolution to the end. The capitalist-roaders in the Party, however, do everything possible to preserve those parts of the superstructure and the relations of production which hamper the development of the socialist economic base and the productive forces. Their vain attempt is to restore capitalism. . We can see from real life that once the leadership in certain units or departments was controlled by capitalist-roaders like Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping they would use the power in their hands to energetically push the revisionist line and turn the socialist mutual relations among people into capitalist relations between employers and employees. They would use legal and illegal means to expand bourgeois right with respect to distribution and appropriate the fruits of other peoples’ labor without compensation, and they would take advantage of their position and power to dispose of state or collectively owned means of production, with the result that socialist ownership exists only in name but is actually turned into capitalist ownership under the control of the capitalist-roaders. (PR #25, 1976, p. 9)
An article that was the eleventh part of a major study campaign on the dictatorship of the proletariat, launched by Chairman Mao in 1975, explains some of the basic principles around which the two-line struggle develops in the domestic economy:
The abolition of the distinctions between town and country and between manual workers and brain workers as set forth by Lenin plus the abolition of the distinction between industry and agriculture often mentioned by Marx, Engels and Lenin constitute what we usually refer to as the abolition of the three major differences Closely connected with classes, they are a reflection of class differences and class antagonism in class society. In capitalist society, the three major differences have all developed to the extent of sharp confrontation. In socialist society, as a result of the realization of socialist public ownership of the means of production and the abolition of the exploitation system, the antithesis between industry and agriculture, between town and country and between manual and mental labour have disappeared, but great differences still remain between them, and bourgeois right that reflects these differences inevitably exists. These remain the soil for engendering capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Because of the existence of the three major differences, some people value industry while disdaining agriculture and want to stay in the cities and not in the countryside; others who have acquired some knowledge and skill look down upon manual labour and the labouring people and are even haughty to them. The bourgeoisie and its representatives on their part would use these differences to undermine the worker-peasant alliance, sabotage the socialist cause, develop the urban and rural capitalist factors and foster new bourgeois elements and intellectual aristocrats. One of the tactics employed by the Khurshchev-Brezhnev renegade clique to bring about an all-round capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union is to energetically widen the three major differences. Therefore, in socialist society, to gradually narrow or to widen these differences is an important content of the struggle between the two classes and the two lines. To continuously deepen the socialist revolution, thoroughly defeat the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes and finally abolish classes completely, it is necessary to gradually narrow and finally eliminate the three major differences. (PR #50, 1975, p. 25)
The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in socialist society expresses itself in a concentrated fashion in the form of two-line struggle between the capitalist road and the socialist road in the Party. Chairman Mao has said:
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 society. (“On Contradiction,” Selected Works, Vol. 1, p. 317)
He also said: “Outside any party there are other parties: inside it there are groupings. This has always been so . . a grouping is one wing of a class. ” (PR #25, 1976, p. 10) The Communist Party is the party of the proletariat but the bourgeoisie has its representatives within IT and the two line struggle continues until classes and class struggle are abolished and the Party ceases to exist in its current form. As the following article explains, only the representatives of the bourgeoisie within the Party preach the “dying out of class struggle.”
Some people consider that since the CP is the vanguard of the proletariat there should be no contradictions and struggle within the Party and that the Party should be absolutely pure. This is a naive concept which runs counter to materialist dialectics. . After liberation, with the gradual deepening of the socialist revolution, division among the Party ranks constantly took place. Part of the Party members who clung to the bourgeois stand refused to remould their ideology and, not willing to go forward, opposed the socialist revolution and became capitalist-roaders. . ’The development of the proletariat proceeds everywhere amidst internal struggles’ (F. Engels to A. Bebel). Chairman Mao has said: ’If there were no contradictions within the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life would come to an end’ (On Contradictions) ’Without struggle there is no progress. ’ Only by using the viewpoint of class struggle to observe inner-Party life can we really understand the inevitability of inner-Party struggle and be ideologically prepared for protracted struggles inside the Party. . Since we entered the period of socialism, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has become the principal contradiction in society and the two-line struggle within the Party reflects that contradiction . . If inner-Party struggle were not upheld, if Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line were not used to defeat the revisionist line of the capitalist-readers, then the Party would change its nature. Judging from experience, isn’t it quite clear that persistence in inner-Party struggle is of tremendous significance to combatting and preventing revisionism?. . Out of their counter-revolutionary political needs, chieftans of the revisionist line Liu Shao-chi Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping did their utmost to propagate the theory of the dying out of class struggle in Party building. They either negated the class content of inner-Party struggle by distorting it into a struggle between individuals or attacked inner-Party struggle as ’creating contradictions’, denying the objective reality that struggle exists within the Party. It was a hypocritical double-dealing tactic of the chieftans of the revisionist line to preach the theory of the dying out of class struggle in Party building, a tactic designed to cover up their own frenzied attack on the Party and the proletariat. . . To oppose Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, chieftans of the revisionist line Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao, and Teng Hsiao-ping invariably engaged in counter-revolutionary activities to undermine Party unity organizationally and split the Party Central Committee headed by Chairman Mao. To maintain Party unity we must resolutely fight against the splittist activities of these chieftans of the revisionist line in the Party. At present we must deepen the criticism of Teng Hsiao-ping, eliminate his pernicious influence and achieve further successes in the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist wind so as to strengthen the unity of the whole Party on the basis of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line. (condensation, PR #34. 1976. pp. 11-14)
The preamble of the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party includes this passage, which summarizes clearly the importance of class struggle under socialism:
Socialist society covers a considerably long historical period. Throughout this historical period, there are classes, class contradictions and class struggle; there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, there is the danger of capitalist restoration and there is the threat of subversion and aggression by imperialism and social-imperialism. These contradictions can be resolved only by depending on the theory of continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and on practice under its guidance.