[This issue of Peking Review is from massline.org. Massline.org has kindly given us permission to to place these documents on the MIA. We made only some formatting changes to make them congruent with our style sheets. Note from massline.org: This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Volume 9, #27, July 1, 1966, pp. 5-8. Thanks are due to the www.wengewang.org web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
TODAY we commemorate the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China in the midst of the upsurge of China’s great proletarian cultural revolution, in an excellent situation of magnificent revolutionary struggle of the people all over the world.
Our Party is a great, glorious and correct Party.
Our Party, founded and nurtured by Comrade Mao Tse-tung personally, is a Party armed with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, a proletarian revolutionary Party that integrates theory with practice, maintains close ties with the masses of the people and has the spirit of conscientious self-criticism, a proletarian revolutionary Party which has gone through the most acute, the most arduous, the most protracted and the most complex struggles in revolutionary history.
Throughout the 45 years of our Party’s history, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has closely integrated the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution and the world revolution. Our Party’s great victories during those 45 years are the great victories of Mao Tse-tung’s thought.
Mao Tse-tung’s thought has been developed in the course of the practice of our people’s democratic revolution, socialist revolution and socialist construction; it has been developed in the struggle of our Party and the Marxist-Leninists of various countries against imperialism and modern revisionism; it has been developed in the course of summing up the new experiences in the struggle of the oppressed people and oppressed nations against imperialism and the reactionaries of various countries; it has been developed in the course of summing up the new experiences in international proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship since the Great October Socialist Revolution; it has been developed in the course of drawing the grave, painful lesson from the fact that the Soviet Khrushchev clique has usurped Party, army and government leadership and has led the Soviet Union from the socialist system on to the road of restoration of capitalism.
A revolutionary leader like Comrade Mao Tse-tung who has undertaken such protracted, complex, acute and many-sided struggles is rare in history, just as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin were. Precisely because Comrade Mao Tse-tung is on all occasions supremely skilled at applying Marxist-Leninist dialectical and historical materialism in summing up the new experiences in all kinds of revolutionary struggles, Mao Tse-tung’s thought has been and is the sole correct guiding principle in the different stages of the Chinese revolution and a powerful ideological weapon of revolution in the hands of the oppressed people and oppressed nations against imperialism, modern revisionism and all reactionaries.
Mao Tse-tung’s thought is Marxism-Leninism inherited and developed with genius, creatively and in an all-round way in the era in which imperialism is approaching complete collapse and socialism is advancing to victory all over the world; it is the acme of Marxism-Leninism in the present era; it is living Marxism-Leninism at its highest. Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the greatest Marxist-Leninist of the present era.
Lenin once said that Marxism “has had to fight for every step forward in the course of its life.” Mao Tse-tung’s thought has been developed in the struggle against all sorts of powerful enemies, in China and abroad, and it has also been developed in the struggle against various opportunist ideas within the Party.
There has been a red Marxist-Leninist line, with Mao Tse-tung’s thought as its guiding principle, running right through the long history of our Party ever since it was founded. Throughout the period of democratic revolution, the Party’s correct line represented by Comrade Mao Tse-tung engaged in serious struggle with Right opportunist lines on two occasions and with “Left” opportunist lines on three occasions. Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s position of leadership over the whole Party was established at the Tsunyi Meeting in January, 1935. As a result of the rectification campaign which went on throughout the Party from 1942 onwards, the Party’s Seventh National Congress in 1945 established Mao Tse-tung’s thought as the guiding ideology for our whole Party, the guiding principle for all the work of the Party.
At the Party’s Seventh National Congress, Comrade Liu Shao-chi pointed out: Comrade Mao Tse-tung “is a creative Marxist of genius.” The emergence and development of Mao Tse-tung’s thought “is the greatest achievement and glory of our Party and the Chinese people in their long struggles and it will be a boon to our nation for generations and generations.” And “it will make great and useful contributions to the struggle for the emancipation of the people of all countries in general, and of the nations in the East in particular.”
The founding of the People’s Republic of China marked the entry of our country into a new era, that of socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The socialist revolution is a revolution for the complete abolition of the exploiting classes and private ownership; it is incomparably more profound and incomparably broader than the democratic revolution. After the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production is completed in socialist society, classes and class contradictions still remain. Although the form of class struggle has changed, the class struggle does not end. During the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is extremely complicated and sharp class struggle. The class enemy at home and abroad harbours bitter hatred towards our socialist cause. At home, the exploiting classes which have already been overthrown and are being gradually eliminated put up a desperate fight, desperate resistance. They still exist, and they are not reconciled to their defeat. They work in collusion with the new bourgeois elements that emerge, and constantly try to stage a counter-revolutionary come-back. Imperialism, modern revisionism and the reactionaries of all countries are constantly plotting in all sorts of ways to attack, to undermine, to disintegrate, and to subvert our socialist system. And this acute domestic and international class struggle is inevitably reflected within our Party.
In the 16 years since the founding of our People’s Republic, the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Central Committee of the Party headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung has waged three big struggles against anti-Party revisionist cliques.
The first was against the anti-Party alliance of Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih.
This struggle took place in 1953, at the crucial moment when China’s socialist revolution began to develop on a large scale. The Party at that time put forward the general line for socialist industrialization and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce. In this situation, in which class relations in our country were undergoing violent change and the class struggle was extremely tense, these ambitious careerists and conspirators Kao Kang and Jao Shu-shih, agents of the bourgeoisie who had wormed their way into the Parly, could no longer restrain themselves. Working energetically at their conspiratorial activities, they made a vain attempt to seize the highest Party and state power, in order to bring about a bourgeois counter-revolutionary come-back. The Central Committee of the Party headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung fought these counterrevolutionary elements resolutely. And at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Party in 1954, and at the Party conference in 1955, this anti-Party alliance was thoroughly exposed and smashed.
Thanks to the victory in this struggle, the whole Party rallied still more closely under the banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought and around the Party’s Central Committee headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, thus ensuring the great victory in socialist transformation.
The second big struggle was against another small handful of people of a Right opportunist, or revisionist, anti-Party clique.
In 1958, the Central Committee of the Party headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung put forward the general line of going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism. Inspired by it, the people of the whole country buoyantly went forward in a great new upsurge of socialist revolution and socialist construction. This was a new great leap forward. In the course of this great leap forward the people’s communes emerged throughout the country’s rural areas. Our Party’s general line for building socialism, and our people’s great leap forward and the people’s communes which emerged under the guidance of this general line, threw the imperialists, the modern revisionists and the reactionaries at home and abroad into a great panic and aroused their greatest hatred, so that they launched a concerted and frenzied attack on us. At the Lushan meeting of the Party in 1959, a handful of ambitious bourgeois careerists and schemers who had wormed their way into our Party and who had the support of the Khrushchev revisionist clique launched a ferocious attack on the Party’s Central Committee headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung. They put forward a thoroughly revisionist programme intended to replace the Party’s general line for building socialism, in the vain hope of dragging our country back on to the capitalist road.
Under the leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung and the Party’s Central Committee, our Party rose in unison and dealt this anti-Party clique a resolute rebuff, thoroughly smashing its schemes and safeguarding the correct leadership of the Party’s Central Committee headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, safeguarding the Party’s unity and its general line for building socialism. This was followed by one victory of our people after another on all fronts. The seeds sown in the great leap forward in 1958 and 1959 have been proved to bear abundant fruits.
The victory in the struggle in 1959 against the anti-Party clique of Right opportunists was another great victory for Mao Tse-tung’s thought. It was of great historic significance in our country’s advance along the road of socialism.
The third big struggle is the one against the recently exposed counter-revolutionary clique which opposes the Party, opposes socialism and Mao Tse-tung’s thought.
These anti-Party elements are representatives of the bourgeoisie who sneaked into the Party, government, army and cultural departments and usurped important posts. They are more insidious and cunning in their activities than the two previous anti-Party cliques which had been crushed. For a long period, they waved “red flags” to oppose the red flag and donned the cloak of Marxism-Leninism, of Mao Tse-tung’s thought to oppose Marxism-Leninism, to oppose Mao Tse-tung’s thought. They put up the deceptive signboard of supporting the Party and socialism, while carrying on counter-revolutionary intrigues against the Party and against socialism.
The question of the great proletarian cultural revolution came to the fore with the gradual deepening of our country’s socialist revolution and the step-by-step development of the socialist education movement. Taking the reactionary stand of the bourgeoisie, this counter-revolutionary clique did their utmost to resist and oppose the line of the great socialist cultural revolution formulated by the Central Committee of the Party and Comrade Mao Tse-tung, to resist and oppose the guiding principle on the question of classes and class struggle in socialist society put forward by Comrade Mao Tse-tung at the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party, and to oppose the carrying through to the end of the socialist revolution. From a number of important positions under their control in the fields of journalism, education, art and literature, in the academic field and in publishing and other branches of culture, they waged an all-out class struggle for the bourgeoisie against the proletariat, spread bourgeois, revisionist poison widely and launched frantic attacks against Mao Tse-tung’s thought, against the Party’s Central Committee headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, and against the socialist system. They tried in a hundred and one ways to shield the bourgeois Right, attack the proletarian revolutionaries, suppress the revolutionary movement of the worker, peasant and soldier masses, and resist and sabotage the great proletarian cultural revolution. They reached out to grab power in the Party, army and government Their aim was to usurp the leadership of the Party, army and government and to restore capitalism. Once conditions ripened, they would have staged a counter-revolutionary coup d’etat like the one staged by Khrushchev.
And their efforts to seize hold of the pen had the sole purpose of preparing public opinion for the restoration of capitalism and a counter-revolutionary coup.
The thorough exposure and smashing of this counter-revolutionary clique in the great proletarian cultural revolution is an immense new victory for Mao Tse-tung’s thought. It is a great event, ensuring the continuous development of China’s socialist revolution, consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, preventing a usurpation of leadership by revisionism and a come-back of capitalism, preventing a counter-revolutionary coup and counter-revolutionary subversion, a great event affecting the destiny of the whole Chinese people and, broadly speaking, also the destiny of the people of the world.
The three big struggles that have occurred inside our Party in the last 16 years have been struggles between Mao Tse-tung’s thought and ideas which are against Mao Tse-tung’s thought, struggles between the Marxist-Leninist line and the revisionist line, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and between the road of socialism and the road of capitalism.
Chairman Mao Tse-tung 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. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life would come to an end.” He has also pointed out: “Class struggle is an objective matter which is independent of men’s will. This means that it is inevitable and that it is impossible to avoid even if men want to. One can only guide it along its course of development and so wrest victory.”
It is perfectly normal and in accord with objective laws that, after each big struggle, our Party has purged itself of the handful of the alien class elements who had wormed their way into it. Our Party has become ever more united and consolidated and its combat strength has increased following each of these struggles. Here there is no straw for imperialism, modern revisionism and the domestic and foreign reactionaries to clutch at, and it is futile for them to dream of it.
The three big struggles that have occurred inside our Party in the last 16 years show that the criminal activities of the anti-Party cliques were all directed towards staging counter-revolutionary coups and transforming the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. If their criminal schemes had not been exposed, they would undoubtedly have struck a vicious blow against the people.
If their schemes had succeeded, the proletarian state power, the state power of the people, gained after the sacrifice of so much blood over scores of years of fighting, would have been ruined overnight, and our people would again have been oppressed and exploited and made to live like beasts of burden. Imperialism would have made a come-back. Khrushchev revisionism would have ridden roughshod over us, and our country would once again have been reduced to a colony or semi-colony.
We Communists, the revolutionary proletariat and all who support the socialist system and the dictatorship of the proletariat, must not take such matters lightly; we must deal with them very seriously.
We are entirely capable of seeing through and exposing these anti-Party cliques and thwarting their schemes, because our Party is one which has conducted revolution under the leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung for decades, because our Party is armed with Marxism-Leninism. Mao Tse-tung’s thought, and is of the same flesh and blood as the masses and rich in revolutionary experience. There is nothing much to these anti-Party elements. Once their schemes are exposed, they are immediately besieged by the broad masses of the people and seen as the paper tigers that they really are.
The great thought of Mao Tse-tung is the biggest barrier to the schemes of all anti-Party cliques trying to stage a counter-revolutionary coup d’etat. Consequently, they always direct their attacks against it. When there is any mention of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, they get upset, start swearing and cursing, fly into a rage and even get quite hysterical, just like the imperialists and the Khrushchev revisionists. Whoever supports Mao Tse-tung’s thought and advocates the study of it, is bound to meet with opposition and attacks from them; they spread rumours and slanders and are capable of anything, however foul. They especially fear the direct grasp of Mao Tse-tung’s thought by the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers. They oppose the creative study and application of Chairman Mao’s works by the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, labelling it as “over-simplification,” “philistinism” and “pragmatism.” They issue prohibitions and bans to make Mao Tse-tung’s thought inaccessible to the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers. However, the more they prohibit, ban and oppose, the more enthusiastically the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers show their love for Chairman Mao’s works and study them with the greatest eagerness.
The historical experience of our Party during the past 45 years proves that Mao Tse-tung’s thought is the soul and the source of life of our Party. The ambitious anti-Party careerists who plot to usurp Party, army and government power must debase, distort, attack and oppose Mao Tse-tung’s thought. And to ensure that our Party never degenerates and our country never changes colour, we must always take Mao Tse-tung’s thought as our Party’s guiding ideology, as the common ideological foundation of unity and revolution for the entire Party. This is true today and will remain true a hundred or a thousand years from now, it will remain true for ever. One’s attitude towards Mao Tse-tung’s thought is the yardstick distinguishing the genuine revolutionary from the sham revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary, the Marxist-Leninist from the revisionist. Anyone who opposes Mao Tse-tung’s thought, now or in the future, will be a mortal enemy of the revolution and the people and will be condemned by the whole Party and denounced by the whole nation.
As early as 21 years ago, Comrade Liu Shao-chi pointed out to the whole Party: “The important task now is to mobilize the entire Party to study and disseminate Mao Tse-tung’s thought and to arm our membership and the revolutionary people with it, so that it becomes an irresistible force in practice.”
Comrade Chou En-lai has said: “Arming our cadres and working people with Mao Tse-tung’s thought is a vital prerequisite for carrying our socialist revolution forward to the end and for the smooth progress of our socialist construction. It is also the fundamental way to overcome bourgeois ideology, revisionism and dogmatism and prevent their emergence.”
Comrade Lin Piao has pointed out: “China is a great socialist state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and has a population of 700 million. It needs unified thinking, revolutionary thinking, correct thinking. That is Mao Tse-tung’s thinking.” “It is essential to imbue the workers and peasants with Chairman Mao’s thought through the creative study and application of his works. Only so can the mental outlook of the working people be changed and spiritual forces be transformed into tremendous material strength.”
Comrade Teng Hsiao-ping has pointed out: “Our Party’s greatest merit is that it has the guiding ideology represented by Mao Tse-tung’s thought. Mao Tse-tung’s thought has stood the test of history. The Chinese revolution was led to victory by no other set of ideas than Mao Tse-tung’s thought. And since the victory of the revolution, it is under the guidance of Mao Tse-tung’s thought that our socialist revolution and socialist construction have achieved such great successes and are continuously and triumphantly forging ahead.”
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army, personally founded by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, is an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat, loyal to the Party and loyal to the people. The People’s Liberation Army launched the movement to creatively study and apply Chairman Mao’s works, in response to the call issued by the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Party and Comrade Lin Piao to “study Chairman Mao’s works, follow his teachings, act in accordance with his instructions, and be good soldiers of Chairman Mao.” This is a great initiative and has already had immeasurable effect.
The movement by hundreds of millions of the worker, peasant and soldier masses for the creative study and application of Chairman Mao’s works is gaining momentum. It is a monumental ideological revolutionary movement unprecedented in human history. It is a tremendous popularization of Marxism-Leninism such as has never been known before. A vast country with a quarter of the world’s population is becoming a vast school for the study of Marxism-Leninism. Mao Tse-tung’s thought. When there are several hundred million people armed with Mao Tse-tung’s thought, and millions of successors to the proletarian revolutionary cause armed with Mao Tse-tung’s thought, then we shall be able to carry our socialist revolution through to the end, lead our country step by step through the transition from socialism to communism, and make still greater contributions to the world revolution.
The broad masses of the workers, peasants and soldiers, the revolutionary cadres and the revolutionary intellectuals must unite closely around the Party’s Central Committee and Comrade Mao Tse-tung and resolutely adhere to the instructions of the Party’s Central Committee: Remember, never forget, class struggle; remember, never forget, the dictatorship of the proletariat; remember, never forget, to give prominence to politics; remember, never forget, to hold high the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought.
Long live the great Communist Party of China!
Long live the great leader, Chairman Mao!
Long live the great and invincible Mao Tse-tung’s thought!
(“Renmin Ribao” editorial, July 1.)
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