First Published: Revolution, Vol. 3, No. 1, February 1978
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
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It is altogether necessary for communists in Britain to defend China’s veteran communist leaders, including Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping. Part of the counter-revolutionary rightist nature of the ’gang of four’ was expressed in their standpoint: “Veteran cadres are democrats and democrats are capitalist roaders”. Therefore to reach the truth and achieve clarity on the question of the ’gang of four’ we must certainly expose this line and defend veteran cadres of the CPC.
Comrade Teng made outstanding contributions to the workers’ struggle and the Chinese revolution. Revisionists in the Marxist-Leninist movement in Britain and throughout the West are slandering the Communist Party of China and are distorting the truth about the ’gang of four’. There are new revisionists who dress up their treachery in ’left’ words. This is the way they hide their true intentions. Their cheap invective very often is directed against Comrade Teng but it is Comrade Hua Kuo-feng and the Communist Party of China who they are really attacking. So it is timely for us to deepen the struggle against revisionism, especially this new form which places an ideological barrier in the way of building the revolutionary party of the working class in Britain. The truth about Comrade Teng should be placed before British Communists.
We have to admit that the influence of the ’gang of four’ has caused confusion throughout the movement in Britain. The RCLB naturally has not been immune from this. More precisely it is true to say that the founding organisations of the RCLB shared the movement’s confusion on this question during 1976 and the years before. It is wrong however for us to make a self-criticism for any incorrect statement made by the RCLB’s founding organisations on the question of Comrade Teng. These mistakes could not be avoided without committing a more fundamental error of confusing the working class by raising uninformed doubts about the Communist Party of China. Comrade Teng’s dismissal from office in April 1976 was supported by us as a matter of proletarian internationalist duty. It is the duty of all communists in Britain to support the socialist People’s Republic of China, publicise its achievements in class struggle, the struggle for production and scientific experiment in order to demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism, and strengthen revolutionary awareness and unity in Britain. Because class struggle is complex and arduous (not a matter of merely repeating slogans and formulas) mistakes are inevitable. Although it is wrong for us to make a specific self-criticism in this case, for the reason given, we do however have a self-critical attitude. We are determined not to persist with incorrect views.
Mistakes should be corrected, not defended. A self-critical attitude is necessary if mistakes are to be overcome. Self-criticism is the materialist method of discarding the baggage that mistakes and incorrect ideas lumber us with. All communists in Britain must make a determined effort to discard the baggage left by the influence of the ’gang of four’. For most comrades this is possible. For the majority it is not a difficult task. For a few it will be hard. Such comrades should persist. Study hard the facts presented in the Chinese publications. Seek truth from facts. Most necessary – take the stand of the working class. Our attitude to the question of the ’gang of four’ is a class one. Proletarian class struggle demands the overall view and persistent all-sided struggle. No class enemy can be finished off at a single blow.
The ’gang of four’ preached metaphysics and idealism. Their view was that history is determined by the actions of a few heroes. They presented themselves as heroes with a self-proclaimed historic role. Lin P1ao, who they collaborated with, emphasised heroes and the validity of coups d’etat carried out by so-called heroes. The truth is that history is made by the masses and the masses alone. The power of leaders lies with the class they represent. The power of a proletarian leader, can he immeasurable because the strength of the working class and the oppressed classes that the working class rallies, is immeasurable. If so-called proletarian leaders like Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and the ’gang of four’ all of whom served the bourgeoisie within the Party step forward, the working class, with correct leadership, will sweep them away like a handful of dried leaves. This is what happened with these renegades. Those comrades who find it hard to shake off the influence of the ’gang of four’ should have this fact uppermost in their minds.
But there is a tiny handful of revisionists in our movement who may never reform. The revisionist Birch is the prime example. We cannot expect any sense from men like him. For him, ideological confusion serves the purpose of maintaining, for a little while longer, his dwindling prestige. His ”ever so militant words” are a thin cover for his real sabotage of party building in Britain. These same “ever so militant words” are also a cover for outright betrayal of the working class on the economic front. The exposure of revisionism of all kinds will leave the revisionist Birch with no place to hide.
In contrast to swindlers like the ’gang of four’ and our own Birch we see in the Communist Party of China a great many tempered cadres who for decades have devoted all their efforts and talents to the cause of the working class and the proletarian revolution. Comrade Mao Tsetung was such a veteran. He stands in the ranks of the great Marxist thinkers. To the names of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin can be added that of Mao Tsetung. Like Marx and Lenin themselves he has boldly solved major problems of the revolution. Most particularly he has advanced the theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Is it any wonder that he has achieved such prestige in the eyes of the Chinese people and the world proletariat! Also among the great veteran Chinese leaders were Comrade Chou En-lai and Comrade Chu Teh. Chou was the Premier of the People’s Republic of China and Chu, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. All three leaders passed away in 1976 causing great sadness and mourning throughout China.
Many more veteran Marxist cadres stand in high regard by the Chinese people. Their prestige also depends on their devotion to the revolution. They have been tempered in the democratic revolution and after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, they have been tempered in the socialist revolution and socialist construction. Finally they have been tempered in the Cultural Revolution and the struggles against Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and the ’gang of four’. Always they have practised the mass line and where they have made mistakes they have made self-criticisms and upheld the verdict of the people. So the people have reason to trust them. They are an essential part of the proletarian leadership which guides the masses in exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is common sense that the people cannot do without such wise and tempered leaders.
The sickness and death of Mao Tsetung and Chou En-lai created not only sadness but anxiety in the minds of the Chinese people. Many feared for the safety of the revolution when these wise leaders grew close to the end of their lives. At that time (1974-76) the ’gang of four’ were very influential and seemed poised to take power. By 1974 struggle had emerged between the ’gang of four’s’ counter-revolutionary and essentially rightist line and the correct line of Mao Tsetung and Chou En-lai. Teng Hsiao-ping was firmly in the camp of Mao Tsetung and Chou En-lai.
Teng Hsiao-ping is a veteran cadre who has led a life of plain living and hard struggle. His membership of the Communist Party began in his early twenties when he was on a work-study course in France. He was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of China overseas. He was involved on his return to China in the first civil war period of 1925-27. He was in the Long March in 1934. He became a leading cadre in the people’s army during the war against Japan. He continued as a political leader in the military field until liberation. An important part of his job was to ensure that the party commanded the gun. Important victories were achieved by the armies that he played a part in leading.
After liberation; in 1952 he became Vice-Premier. In 1954 he became Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Later he became General Secretary of the Central Committee and was elected to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau. This is the body where the most authoritative Party members fulfill their leadership role.
With the Cultural Revolution beginning in earnest in 1966, Comrade Teng was criticised for taking the capitalist road. On August 8th 1966 the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was thoroughly underway with the 16 point decision of the Communist Party of China on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Comrade Teng was criticised at the same time as the “Number One Party person in authority taking the capitalist road” Liu Shao-chi. Their names are associated in this way, so our self-styled “super-revolutionaries” will have it that if Liu Shao-chi was a renegade so is Teng Hsiao-ping. Our revisionist friends need no more “proof” than that!
But the fact that Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping were criticised and removed at the same time does not prove that they are guilty of exactly the same errors. Nor does it prove that Comrade Teng is an unrepentant capitalist-roader. Still less does it show that Comrade Teng is not firmly on the socialist road at the present time. We must have recourse to facts. Mao Tsetung often said “Seek truth from facts”. Lenin said, “Facts are stubborn things”. There are some stubborn facts about Comrade Teng that will not lie down despite the formidable verbal artillery of the ’gang of four’ and their ideological brothers in the West.
Not every comrade in the movement is conversant with the early days of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Young comrades are entering the movement and are forming a valuable and indeed indispensible part of the strengthening vanguard of the working class. They are eager to build the leading centre in the struggle to rebuild the revolutionary Communist Party of the working class in Britain. To them maybe the issue of Liu Shao-chi’s revisionist bid for supreme power in the party and state of China is irrelevant history. Perhaps some of the cut and dried slogans of the “super-revolutionaries” who are at present attacking China may confuse some comrades into believing that the downfall of the ’gang of four’ is a repudiation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and an adoption of the line of the renegade Liu Shao-chi.
The restoration to all his posts of Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping at the Third Plenum of the 10th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1977 may be seen as “proof” of such an absurd view. So it is necessary to examine the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and to study what the line of Liu Shao-chi was up to and including the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In the course of this we can compare the line of Comrade Teng.
Mao Tsetung said:
With the overthrow of the landlord class and the bureaucrat-capitalist class, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie has become the principal contradiction in China; therefore the national bourgeoisie should no longer be defined as an intermediate class. (Selected Works, Vol. V, p 77 June 6th 1952)
This clear analysis of the principal contradiction (that is the main contradiction – the contradiction which plays the leading and decisive role) as that between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was made quite soon after liberation. Liu Shao-chi did not agree with this. Mao’s view firmly held that the period after liberation was not essentially a stage of the democratic revolution requiring among other things a strategic alliance with the national bourgeoisie. The new period was one of socialist revolution and socialist construction. The post-liberation period was one of unfolding the struggle to eliminate capitalism.
Liu Shao-chi’s view was different. He said in 1959:
to use capitalism conditionally to serve socialism, so as to facilitate the progress of socialist construction. (The Victory of Marxism-Leninism in China, FLP, 1959 p 16)
This article by Liu Shao-chi was published in “World Marxist Review” to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It contains other gems such as:
we accomplished in the main the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce, and basically solved the question of ”who will win” in the ownership of the means of production. (page 17)
Apart from the bourgeois complacency of this particular statement, there is the most incorrect use of the phrase ”who will win”. This question was posed by Mao and Chou in relation to the class struggle as a whole and both are on record as saying that the question of “who will win” in a number of fields will be resolved only after a considerable period of time. “Who will win” is a matter of whether the revolution in all fields will be continued under the dictatorship of the proletariat or whether the revolution fill be halted and the bourgeoisie restored to power.
In contrast to Liu Shao-chi’s line a recent edition of Peking Review (published in conditions where the ’gang of four’ have been repudiated and Comrade Hua Kuo-feng is leading the Party in new struggles against the influence of the ’gang of four’ and also in conditions where Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping is restored to all his posts) said about these questions:
just before and after the founding of New China, the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the socialist and the capitalist road was extremely sharp. Some people used to cite China as a case of peaceful transition, and the political economy textbooks published in the Soviet Union in particular held that the transition from capitalism to socialism in China was a peaceful one and that the bourgeoisie willingly and without any struggle complied with the transformation of ownership. This was far from the truth. The struggle between the two classes and the two roads in our country has always been extremely fierce. (’Peking Review’ 49, Dec.2, 1977, p 4-5)
This most recent quote is, among other things, a direct refutation of Liu Shao-chi’s revisionist line. So where is the restoration of capitalism in the line of the Communist Party of China?
There is no reference material to hand to show any differences between Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping on these matters. But before the Cultural Revolution it is well known that Comrade Teng struggled defiantly against the Soviet revisionists whereas Liu Shao-chi was not so distinguished.
Han Suyin in the useful book “Wind in the Tower” published in 1975, says in relation to the struggle against Soviet revisionism,
Yet we find Liu Shao-chi asserting at the First Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee (September 1956) that ’The Twentieth Congress...is a political event of world significance...It has condemned the personality cult’ while Teng Hsiao-ping defended Mao. (“Wind in the Tower”, p. 16).
There is reason to believe that Liu Shao-chi and Teng Hsiao-ping were not as close politically and ideologically as the ’left’ revisionist gossips would suggest.
The most important contrast we can make between these two men in their political and ideological views is regarding the Cultural Revolution itself. Statements by leaders of the Chinese Communist Party on international events seldom leave out a crisp and concentrated stand on matters relating to China itself. If space allows, Chinese leaders will never treat an international subject in isolation from the class struggle in China itself. This is especially true of the question of revisionism. Revisionism is not something that cropped up as a matter of chance in the Soviet Union. It is an international phenomenon. Britain has suffered setbacks as a result of revisionism. China too had its revisionists, and doubtless will in the future.
The Cultural Revolution in China was all about preventing a capitalist restoration by beating back the revisionist bid for supreme power in the Party and the State.
In the struggle against the Soviet revisionists therefore Mao Tsetung and Chou En-lai not only made ready to give tit for tat in the international dialogue between the two parties but were ever mindful of the fact that what happened in the Soviet Union might also happen in China. In their statements against the Soviet revisionists this was always borne in mind. It was Mao Tsetung himself who stressed the need to “integrate the universal truths of Marxism-Leninism with Chinese conditions”. So the struggle against modern revisionism is no academic matter for the Chinese communists. It matters because it determines whether the Chinese revolution will go forward or be reversed as it has been in the Soviet Union.
On the eve of the full scale launching of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, an Albanian delegation visited China to cement the fraternal link between the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania in their common struggle against modern revisionism with the Soviet revisionist renegade clique at its head. They stayed from April 26th 1966 to May 11th 1966 and were received by three very authoritative leaders of the Communist Party of China. One was Comrade Chou En-lai, the others were Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping and Liu Shao-chi. They all made speeches which were published by the Foreign Languages Press in P966 under the title “Struggle Against Imperialism and Revisionism to the Very End”.
The speeches by the three Chinese leaders are worth quoting from where they deal with the subject of fighting revisionism in China. Most particularly these political speeches need examining from the viewpoint of how they approach the then unfolding Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution – the great movement of the masses – to counter revisionism in China itself.
Firstly, we take the words of Chou En-lai. On the very question of “who will win” in the ownership of the means of production, a subject on which Liu Shao-chi’s views are already exposed, – Chou says this:
In regard to ownership of the means of production, it will take a long historical period, of one hundred or several hundred years, to settle the question of ’who will win’ – socialism or capitalism. (page 46)
On the Cultural Revolution he said:
Taking class struggle as the key link, we have in recent years unfolded the socialist education movement in the villages and cities by stages and by groups and have achieved enormous success.
and,
A socialist cultural revolution of great historic significance is being launched in our country. This is a fierce, and protracted struggle of ”who will win”, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, in the ideological field. (pages 48-49).
Secondly, we take the words of Teng Hsiao-ping at that time. He said:
The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people are vigorously pushing ahead the three great revolutionary movements - class struggle, struggle for production, and scientific experiment. All our cadres and the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers have started an enthusiastic campaign to study Mao Tsetung’s works; they regard Mao Tsetung Thought as the supreme guidance for all work. In order to consolidate and further develop the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system and to prevent the restoration of capitalism, we are carrying on the socialist revolution in depth on the political front, and particularly on the ideological and cultural fronts, while continuing it on the economic front.
Thirdly, we cannot quote anything that Liu Shao-chi said in this regard on that important occasion. There is nothing to quote. There is not one word in his speech which relates to the class struggle in China. Can we be surprised? Not at all! But these quotations help to show a) How Chou En-lai at the earliest time carried out the correct aims of the Cultural Revolution, b) How the bourgeois Liu Shao-chi opposed the Cultural Revolution but how Teng Hsiao-ping grasped some of the Cultural Revolution’s objectives and was ready to propagate them. If this latter difference is not important to the revisionist ’leftists’ in Britain, it 1s important to the people of China and it is clear that it was important to Mao Tsetung.
At the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of China in August 1973, Cowade Teng was elected to the Central Committee. Within two years he was in charge of the day to day work of the Central Committee. His restoration was made on the recommendation and with full support of the great leader and teacher Mao Tsetung. The ’gang of four’ and their ideological colleagues in the West cannot deny that stubborn fact. This did not happen with Liu Shao-chi as we all know. Mao clearly distinguished between the errors of Comrade Teng in the Cultural Revolution and the counterrevolutionary revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi. Repudiation of this line was the entire object of the Cultural Revolution in its earliest phase.
Although the great achievements of the Cultural Revolution at the beginning (1966-69) are well known by communists in Britain and the rest of the West, the shortcomings are not so well known. Much of the bad style of work, the dogmatism, sectarianism and subjectivism we have seen in the Marxist-Leninist movement in Britain have resulted from the same metaphysical (that is one-sided) views that were held by Lin Piao and the ’gang of four’. The ’gang of four’s’ control over the mass media in China had for years suppressed Comrade Mao Tsetung’s dialectical materialist estimate of the Cultural Revolution. Mao said that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had 70% achievements and 30% shortcomings. For the shortcomings we now know that the factionalism, violent struggle and the total negation of veteran cadres can be traced to the sabotage of Lin Piao and the ’gang of four’. It was Lin Piao who said that the Cultural Revolution was a revolution against those who had made revolution. It was Chang Chun Chiao who said that the Cultural Revolution was a change of dynasty. These were outright distortions of the aims of the Cultural Revolution as laid down by Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China. These views were not accidental ones. The ’gang of four’ put forward the counter-revolutionary rightist programme ”veteran cadres are democrats, and democrats are capitalist roaders”. This absurd pseudo-Marxist “analysis” is counterrevolutionary because it is the signboard of revolt against the core of the proletarian leadership. It is rightist because it is deliberately intended by the ’gang of four’ to establish “a new dynasty” in the place of the Bolshevik leadership of the great, correct Communist Party of China.
Both Lin Piao and the ’gang of four’ sought to create chaos and confusion, not in the ranks of the bourgeois class enemy but among the revolutionary people. They were against working class unity and stability. They were against unleashing the Cultural Revolution along correct proletarian lines. For example, the decisions on the Cultural Revolution emphasised struggle through reasoned argument. Also, the slogan “Unite to win still greater victories” was put to the fore.
However, Chiang Ching, one of the prime movers of the ’gang’ urged Red Guard factions to fight each other saying in perversion of the line of Mao and the Party, “Attack by reason, defend by force ”.
So it is Lin Piao and the ’gang of four’ who can be held responsible for the shortcomings in the Cultural Revolution. It is Mao, Chou, the Communist Party of China and the masses of the Chinese people who achieved the great successes. It is Hua Kuo-feng, the Communist Party of China and the Chinese masses who are protecting and consolidating those gains.
The truth is that the restoration of Teng in 1973 was perfectly consistent with the continuation of the Cultural Revolution. His opposition to the ’gang of four’ and his determined efforts to uphold the correct line of the Party and correct the shortcomings of the Cultural Revolution were by no means rightist in class content.
Mao and the Party went a step further however than just restoring him to the Central Committee. At the Second Plenum of the Tenth Central Committee on January 1975, Teng was appointed Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee and Vice-Chairman of the State Council and Vice-Chairman of the Military Commission. In the situation where Chairman Mao was in failing health and Premier Chou was in the final stages of his illness, Mao said that Comrade Teng should take charge of the day to day work of the Central Committee. Thus Teng in 1975 was chosen for posts and given work which the ’gang of four’ coveted. Teng became a barrier to the ambitions of the ’gang of four’.
In 1975 Teng set to work with a will to carry out the decisions of the 10th Central Committee. He boldly tackled long outstanding problems relating to socialist construction and the well-being of the masses. The objective of building socialist China into “a great, powerful and modern socialist country by the end of the century” was tackled resolutely. This objective was not something invented by Comrade Teng. For example Mao said:
You have a big population, such a vast territory and such rich resources, and what is more, you are said to be building socialism, which is supposed to be superior; if after working at it for fifty or sixty years you are still unable to overtake the United States, what a sorry figure you will cut! You should be read off the face of the earth. Therefore, to overtake the United States is not only possible, but absolutely necessary and obligatory. (Strengthen Party Unity and Carry forward Party Traditions, Vol. V. p 315, August 30th 1956).
Teng laid emphasis on implementing Mao’s three directives which are: study the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat, on stability and unity, and on pushing the national economy forward. Mao put these directives forward in 1974. It is clear that implementation of these three directives was entirely necessary to the future of the socialist revolution and socialist construction. It is clear also that the ’gang of four’ opposed these important directives and were ready to distort and slander the work Comrade Teng did in trying to solve the most important problem of correctly relating the three directives to the key link of class struggle.
In the first draft of “On the General Programme for all work of the Party and the country” drawn up in 1975, Teng scientifically and militantly upheld the general line of the Communist Party of China and seriously began the work of relating the problems of economic development with the key link of class struggle. This first draft polemicises firmly with the fallacies of the ’gang of four’. Like all documents of the CPC, it is deeply political. It is a product of sharp class struggle which firmly takes the stand of the working class.
For example Teng says in the document:
The study of the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and thereby combating and preventing revisionism, occupies the foremost position among the three important directives. (taken from a translation in “The Case of the Gang of Four” by Chi Hsin).
He also refers to the key link of class struggle but he concludes by saying that the three directives should be taken as the key link. That is an error. But two points should be borne in mind here, a) It was a first draft which like all important documents required thorough examination, criticism and adjustment, b) It was an important beginning to correctly solving the problem of relating the three directives to the key link of class struggle. It was not a “poisonous weed” as the ’gang of four’ asserted. It was not a “right deviationist attempt to reverse correct verdicts” or a repudiation of the Cultural Revolution. It was a determined effort to solve the burning problems of the Chinese Revolution. Many of these problems were created by the ’gang of four’ themselves who represented the negative 30% aspect of the Cultural Revolution.
Another document drafted under Comrade Teng’s leadership was “Some Problems in Accelerating Industrial Development” which is more widely known as “The Twenty Points”. Together with the ’General Programme’ and another document on scientific work entitled “Outline Report on the Work of the Academy of Sciences”, these documents showed that the Party was squaring up firmly to burning problems of revolution and production. All these documents are branded by the ’gang of four’ as the “3 Poisonous Weeds”.
An article in ’Peking Review’ recently said the following n defence of the “Twenty Points”:
Class struggle as the key link runs through the contents of the “Twenty Points”. Having assembled numerous facts about the existence of class struggle and analysed the situation in class struggle, it pointed out that ’the struggle on the industrial front between the two classes, the two roads and the two lines is extremely fierce’ adding that it was necessary to grasp ’this principal contradiction... to uphold the Party’s basic line, criticise the revisionist line, capitalist tendencies and bourgeois factionalism and resolutely deal blows at the class enemy’s sabotaging activities’. (’Peking Review’ 42, pp 7-8).
This excellent article exposes the ’gang of four’s’ motives in attacking “The Twenty Points”. It states further that:
From the very outset the ’gang of four ’ considered the criticism of the “The Twenty Points” a bombshell in their attack against the comrades in the central authorities. They branded the document “a programme for restoring capitalism,” slanderously called Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping an ’unrepentant capitalist-roader,’ and contrived pretexts for striking down other central leading comrades.
The ’gang of four’ started a “mass campaign” against Teng in late 1975 to early 1976, branding him as “unrepentant capitalist-roader”. The masses, who were fully aware of the problems that Comrade Teng was earnestly tackling, shunned the campaign and would have nothing to do with it. It angered the people that the real object of the campaign was the repudiation of Comrade Chou n-lat and by inference Mao himself.
The anxiety created by that campaign clearly added to the masses justified anger when in early April they demonstrated their militant support for Mao setung and Chou En-lai in Tien An Men Square in Peking. By various devices including the removal of wreaths in honour of Chou En-lai, the ’gang of four’ succeeded in antagonising the masses in Tien An Men Square and branded the whole affair as “a counter-revolutionary incident” created by Teng. Thus Teng was dismissed again but retained his precious party membership.
At the Third Plenum of the 10th Central Committee in 1977, Comrade Teng was again restored to his posts. This was a wise decision made on the recommendation of Comrade Hua Kuo-feng. Hua has distinguished himself by solving the problem of the ’gang of four’ promptly and without a drop of blood being spilt. He has also solved the problem of relating the struggle for socialist construction and other matters of the “three directives” to the key link of class struggle. He has put forward the correct formula “grasp the key link of class struggle and bring about great order across the land”.
The decision to restore Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping to all his posts is a correct decision. It is in 1ine with a dialectical approach to selection of Party cadres at the highest level. It is a decision which sharply contrasts with the bad bourgeois style of the ’gang of four’ who demanded absolutely correct 1eaders. In reality those who talk of absolute correctness are the furthest from the truth. When they promote cadres they do so on the principle of granting favours to those who express total agreement.
The strength of the Communist Party of China is in Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and in the masses of the people. The only true “absolute” is the absolute truth of materialist dialectics. The struggle against the ’gang of four’ in China is a repudiation of one-sidedness and metaphysics. Comrade Teng is a tempered Marxist who would never concede defeat at the hands of the bourgeois ’gang of four’.
The lesson for us is to grasp more firmly dialectical materialism and seek truth from facts.
In finality we quote from the great proletarian leader and teacher Mao Tsetung:
In a word, we must act in accordance with dialectics. So said Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping. In my opinion, the whole Party should study dialectics and advocate acting in accordance with dialectics. (Selected Works, Vol. V, p 382 Jan., 1957).