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A Quotation From Chairman Mao Tse-tung
The big-character poster is an extremely useful new type of weapon. It can be used in cities and the countryside, in factories, co-operatives, shops, government and other organizations, schools, army units and streets, in short, wherever the masses are. Now that it has been used widely, people should go on using it constantly.
— “Introducing a Co-operative” (April 15, 1958)
Chairman Mao Reviews Mighty Army of the
Cultural Revolution for the 6th Time
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #46, Nov. 11,
1966, pp. 6-9. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
Comrade Lin Piao points out in his important speech: Under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s correct line, the broad revolutionary masses of our country have created the new experience of developing extensive democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This extensive democracy is a new form of integrating Mao Tse-tung’s thought with the broad masses, a new form of mass self-education, it is a new contribution by Chairman Mao to the Marxist-Leninist theory on proletarian revolution and proletarian dictatorship.
ON November 3, at a time when the proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao has won a great victory, our great teacher, great leader, great supreme commander and great helmsman Chairman Mao received revolutionary students and teachers and Red Guards from all parts of the country in Peking, the capital and the centre of the great proletarian cultural revolution. Including the National Day rally, this was the sixth time within something over two months that Chairman Mao received revolutionary students and teachers from all parts of the country. More than two million people took part in this mammoth rally.
On that day, our great leader Chairman Mao and his close comrade-in-arms Comrade Lin Piao were full of energy and in buoyant spirits. They were with the masses throughout the more than seven hours of the rally. Nine times Chairman Mao walked with firm steps to the east and west sides of the Tien An Men rostrum and warmly waved to and applauded the cheering crowd. When the young revolutionary fighters marched through the square, they leapt for joy and endlessly shouted: “Long live Chairman Mao! Long life, long, long life to him!” In boundless excitement they declared: “Our Chairman Mao and Comrade Lin Piao are in excellent health. This is the greatest happiness for the people of China and throughout the whole world.”
At 10:10 in the morning, as a military band played The East Is Red, Chairman Mao and his close comrade-in-arms Comrade Lin Piao and other leading comrades of the Party centre and Government: Chou En-lai, Tao Chu, Chen Po-ta, Teng Hsiao-ping, Liu Shao-chi, Chu Teh, Li Fu-chun, Chen Yun, Soong Ching Ling, Tung Pi-wu, Chen Yi, Ho Lung, Tan Chen-lin, Hsu Hsiang-chien, Li Hsueh-feng, Hsieh Fu-chih, Liu Ning-I, Hsiao Hua, Yang Cheng-wu, Chiang Ching, Liu Chih-chien, Chang Chun-chiao and Wu Teh mounted the reviewing stand on the Tien An Men gate. At that moment the whole Tien An Men Square became a great sea of roaring red waves. Thousands upon thousands of eyes, filled with the deepest of sentiments, looked up to Chairman Mao, thousands upon thousands of arms wearing red arm bands waved shining red-covered Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and people kept cheering “Long live Chairman Mao!” “Long, long life to Chairman Mao!”
The rally was declared open by Comrade Chen Po-ta, Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and leader of the cultural revolution group under the Central Committee.
Comrade Lin Piao spoke amid enthusiastic applause. (For full text of speech see p. 10.) His speech was punctuated by stormy applause.
The mammoth parade began immediately after. Revolutionary students, teachers and Red Guards from all parts of the country swept past the Tien An Men Square to be reviewed by Chairman Mao, the great supreme commander. Standing imposingly on the Tien An Men rostrum in his olive-green military uniform, Chairman Mao, with a kindly smile, frequently waved his salutations to the young revolutionary fighters below. On seeing him, the elated youngsters declared: “What is the reddest thing in the world? The sun on the Tien An Men gate! Who is the dearest person in the world? The great leader Chairman Mao! What is the greatest happiness in the world? To see the great supreme commander Chairman Mao! What is the most glorious task in the world? To study, implement, propagate and defend Mao Tse-tung’s thought!”
The revolutionary students and teachers who came from the forefronts of the struggle— especially the revolutionary pathbreakers who had suffered repression through the bourgeois reactionary line— felt most deeply the fact that it was Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line that supported them and liberated them. This was the line that linked their hearts with Chairman Mao’s. Today, as they passed through the big square and looked on him, our most, most respected and beloved leader, their eyes filled with tears. They ceaselessly shouted: “Long live the victory of the proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao!” “Long, long life to Chairman Mao!”
These young revolutionary fighters, hailing from all parts of our country, from the southern coast to the Tienshan Mountains in the northwest, from the bank of northeastern Heilungkiang River to the Sikang-Tibet Plateau in the southwest, exclaimed out of the tumult of their hearts: Our great leader Chairman Mao has the utmost faith in and concern for the masses; he rouses the masses with the greatest boldness. In the present great proletarian cultural revolution, he has given the most resolute support to the initiative of the revolutionary masses.
They said: Comrade Lin Piao has today put into words our common feeling which we ourselves could not express, and that is: “Chairman Mao is the greatest proletarian revolutionary; he is always with the masses, has full confidence in them, shares weal and woe with them and wholeheartedly supports the revolutionary mass movement. Chairman Mao has set the most glorious example for all comrades in our Party and for the younger generation.”
On the Tien An Men Square, a mighty proletarian cultural revolutionary army of revolutionary students and teachers and Red Guards marched with vigour, pouring forward like a torrential red river. A generation of people new in our history, people who place “daring” in the first place, who have Chairman Mao as their supreme commander and the People’s Liberation Army as their brilliant example, and who are fearless of heaven and earth, daring to scale a mountain of swords and brave sea of flames, is filling the world with youth and vitality.
Taking all under heaven as their own responsibility, our young revolutionary fighters and the broad revolutionary masses, guided by Chairman Mao’s correct line, are creating the new experience of developing extensive democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Extensive democracy means that the Party is unafraid to subject leading organizations and leaders of the Party and state at all levels to criticism and supervision by the broad masses in the form of the full and frank expression of views and opinions, of putting up posters written in big characters, of carrying on great debates and extensive exchanges of revolutionary experience.
The great proletarian cultural revolutionary movement in the past several months has fully proved that with extensive democracy it is possible to truly arouse the masses, to touch people to their very souls, and to weed out the poisonous revisionist sprouts as soon as they push their heads out of the ground. A Red Guard from Honan Province has very well said: “As for the enemies, extensive democracy is a people’s war without the use of guns. Not a single one of the ghosts and monsters will be missed and none of them can run away from it. As for the masses, extensive democracy is a revolutionary school without the formal holding of classes. Everyone can get an education and be tempered.”
Among the young revolutionary fighters received by Chairman Mao, there were many who, like the revolutionary youth of the Long March Red Guard Detachment of the Talien Mercantile Marine Institute, had walked the entire distance from their home-towns to the capital to be reviewed by Chairman Mao so as to temper themselves into the kind of successors to the proletarian revolutionary cause as Chairman Mao has expected them to be.
Also present on the occasion were leaders in all fields of work.
Foreign friends present at the Tien An Men rostrum were Anna Louise Strong, the noted American writer; R.D. Senanayake, Secretary-General of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau, and his wife; Djawoto, Secretary-General of the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association; Nguyen Minh Phuong, Acting Head of the Permanent Mission in China of the South Vietnam National Front for Liberation; Robert Williams, noted leader of Afro-Americans, and his wife; Koussakana Prosper, Head of the visiting Congolese (B) Friendship Delegation; da Cruz, Angolan writer and fighter against imperialism; Rewi Alley of New Zealand; Yukio Kanazawa of Japan; Joshua Horn of England; Gotfred Appel of Denmark and V. Garvin of the United Slates.
Acclaimed by the Nation’s People and Army
Our most, most respected and beloved great leader Chairman Mao’s sixth reception in the capital of revolutionary students and teachers and Red Guards from various parts of the country has given the nation’s people and army tremendous new encouragement and fighting strength. Hailing the victory of the proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao, the broad revolutionary masses excitedly cheered “Long live Chairman Mao!”
The workers of the Peking No. 1 General Machinery Works declared that under Chairman Mao’s personal leadership China has put into effect an extensive democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a new form of integrating Mao Tse-tung’s thought with the broad masses, a new form of mass self-education. From the great cultural revolution conducted in our own works we have come to understand that this kind of extensive democracy is very fine. It can mobilize to the fullest extent the enthusiasm and initiative of the revolutionary masses; it can not only most effectively expose all ghosts and monsters but also promote the revolutionization of our ideology.
Chen Fu, a five-good worker in the Shanghai No. 3 Iron and Steel Works, said: “The proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao is one of letting the masses educate themselves and liberate themselves. It is the line of putting ‘daring’ above everything else and of daring to trust the masses, daring to rely on them and daring to boldly mobilize them. Only by thoroughly carrying out this line can we strike down the handful of persons inside the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road, strike down all the ghosts and monsters, win complete victory for the great cultural revolution and enable the masses to temper themselves.”
The beating of drums and gongs resounded throughout the city of Sian and the revolutionary songs The East Is Red and Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman could be heard everywhere. The broad masses of Red Guards and revolutionary students and teachers expressed their determination to go on applying the forms of airing one’s views, putting up big character posters, conducting great debates and carrying cut extensive exchanges of revolutionary experience; and to continue to use the new experience of developing extensive democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat. They pledged themselves to topple all obstacles, thoroughly criticize and repudiate the bourgeois reactionary line, do a better job in creatively studying and applying Chairman Mao’s writings in the course of the struggle and win a still greater victory for the great proletarian cultural revolution.
The whole army was astir when the happy news of Chairman Mao’s sixth reception of revolutionary students and teachers and the Red Guards from various parts of the country reached the many units of the ground, naval and air forces of the People’s Liberation Army. Commanders and fighters enthusiastically hailed the fact that under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s correct line, the broad revolutionary masses of our country have created a new experience in developing extensive democracy under the dictatorship of the proletariat. They unanimously declared that Chairman Mao’s line is the most correct line, the victorious line, the revolutionary line which is peerless in power and is invincible. They must unswervingly follow Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line and persist in that line through all the generations to come. They also unanimously expressed their resolve to emulate the most brilliant example of our great leader Chairman Mao; and, in response to the call of Comrade Lin Piao, resolutely carry the mass movement for the creative study and application of Chairman Mao’s writings to a new stage and truly grasp the thought of Mao Tse-tung.
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