[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.]
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 10, #1, Jan. 1,
1967, pp. 20-21. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
Now, a new upsurge of the great proletarian cultural revolution is taking place in industrial and mining enterprises throughout the country. The Chinese working class is the leading force and the most active factor in this revolution for which it has particularly great responsibility. It is very good that tens of millions of workers rise up to carry out the great cultural revolution. This trend is inevitable. No force whatever can stop this.
Which way should our industrial and mining enterprises go? Are they to advance along the socialist road pointed out by Chairman Mao? Or will they slide down the capitalist, revisionist road? This is an extremely important question which involves the success or failure of China’s socialist revolution and socialist construction.
In the past 17 years, our industrial and mining enterprises have made great achievements under the correct leadership of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party headed by Chairman Mao and through the hard work of the masses of workers. However, it should be noted that many of our industrial and mining enterprises, to various degrees, are seriously influenced by capitalism, revisionism and even feudalism in political ideology, organisational leadership and in production management. Such influences not only shackle the workers’ revolutionary enthusiasm and hinder the development of the productive forces, but also breed the seeds of revisionism and are potential hotbeds of capitalist restoration. In some industrial and mining enterprises a handful of people within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road have doggedly opposed Chairman Mao’s correct line and done their utmost to engage in revisionist practices in collaboration with landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries and bad elements who have sneaked into the ranks of the workers, and with bourgeois elements who have not reformed and degenerate elements. They have been vainly attempting to lead the socialist enterprises on to the capitalist road. If we are not resolute in overthrowing those within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road, if we do not thoroughly wipe out the evil influences of the bourgeois reactionary line and uproot revisionism, our country’s socialist economic base will inevitably be undermined, the consolidation of our socialist system of ownership and proletarian political power will be affected and our country will face the danger of changing colour.
Therefore, the undertaking of the great proletarian cultural revolution in industrial and mining enterprises must not be regarded as a trifle and unimportant. On the contrary, it must be carried out and carried out vigorously.
Chairman Mao has always taught us: “Political work is the life-blood of all economic work.” Chairman Mao’s policy of grasping the revolution and promoting production means to put revolution in the first place and let revolution take command over production and push production forward. Our methods of developing production are entirely different from those of imperialism and modern revisionism. Firstly, we do not rely on coercion and, secondly, we do not rely on material incentives. We rely on placing Mao Tse-tung’s thought in command, on political and ideological work and revolutionising the thinking of the people. Once the people’s political and ideological outlook is changed, spiritual force will turn into a tremendous material force.
Who best understands the significance of grasping the revolution and promoting production? First of all, it is the masses of workers who directly take part in revolution and the actual practice of production. Some worker comrades are most indignant and anxious when they see that the lid on the class struggle in their factories has not yet been lifted and that workers engaging in the cultural revolution are being suppressed. They are also most grieved to see that revolution cannot be made and that production is being affected. They have a high sense of political responsibility towards their great socialist motherland. At present, they are resolutely carrying out the instructions of the Party’s Central Committee and Chairman Mao by taking an active part in the great proletarian cultural revolution, while sticking to their posts in production and construction. They are persisting in the eight-hour workday, working hard to fulfil and overfulfil their production plans and striving for high quality in products. By so doing, they are sure to be victorious both in the cultural revolution and in production.
In order that the great proletarian cultural revolution can be carried out in the industrial and mining enterprises, serious struggles are necessary. The handful of persons within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road and the very few persons who stubbornly persist in the bourgeois reactionary line are also talking a lot about grasping production, but they are really using this as a pretext to suppress the revolution. Their talk about grasping production is a fake. What they actually intend to do is to suppress the revolution. It is not a fall-off in production that worries these people, what they are really afraid of is that the masses will overthrow them in the revolution. Some of the workers have said: “They are afraid of the masses, afraid of revolution, afraid of being dismissed from office—the only thing they are not afraid of is to fail in fulfilling the production plan.” This criticism really hits the nail on the head.
When the revolutionary masses struggle resolutely against them, this handful of persons within the Party who are in authority and are taking the capitalist road and those very few persons who stubbornly persist in the bourgeois reactionary line try in every way to put up a frantic resistance. They even regard themselves as the “incarnation of the Party” and brand those who oppose them as being “anti-Party”, and threaten them with a settling of accounts later on. They even use “Party or Youth League membership” and material incentives as a bait to deceive and hoodwink some people to act as their protectors. They even manipulate things from behind the scenes, incite workers to struggle against each other, to struggle against students, to create incidents, to agitate for the use of force in struggle, to disrupt production and to undermine the cultural revolution. We, the working class, must maintain a high level of vigilance and smash their intrigues and schemes.
The Party’s Central Committee has laid it down that in the great proletarian cultural revolution, no leading personnel in industrial and mining enterprises can take revenge because of the masses’ criticisms and exposure of facts. Nor, because of such criticisms or exposure, are they allowed to withhold or cut workers’ pay, sack workers, or discharge contract and casual workers. The verdicts on those of the revolutionary masses who have been branded as “counter-revolutionaries” during the great cultural revolution must be reversed without exception. They must not be transferred from their original posts and no threat to or persecution of their families is permitted. The revolutionary workers who have been victimised and were forced to leave their factories must be allowed to return and take part in production and the cultural revolution. They should be paid as usual for the time they were forced to leave their factories. We must firmly carry out the Party Central Committee’s stipulations and guarantee that the great cultural revolution in industrial and mining enterprises proceeds normally and healthily.
The working class should firmly observe the decision of the Party’s Central Committee concerning the great proletarian cultural revolution, and let the masses elect cultural revolutionary groups, committees or congresses that can represent them. Members to these organisations must not be appointed from above nor is behind-the-scenes manipulation allowed. A system of general elections must be instituted in accordance with the principles of the Paris Commune. Full deliberations and repeated discussions must be carried out by the masses and the election conducted in a serious way. The members can be replaced through election or recalled by the masses at any time.
In the great proletarian cultural revolution, the masses of workers have the right to set up every kind of revolutionary organisation. All workers’ organisations should maintain the working-class characteristics of industriousness and thrift and should not set up bureaucratic apparatus or acquire a mass of equipment which divorce them from the masses. In general, the working staff of these workers’ organisations should not leave production.
The masses of workers and their organisations, on the basis of the great thought of Mao Tse-tung and with agreement on the main revolutionary orientation as a prerequisite, must strengthen unity and they must not allow evil people to use them or to create a situation of confrontation. They must adhere to carrying out the struggle by reasoning and not by force or coercion, and they must not hit people. As to those questions on which there are different views and opinions, consideration should first be given to the interests of the revolution and the overall situation and they should be solved through consultation by the method of setting out facts and reasoning and democratic discussion. On questions of principle a common stand must be achieved but on minor questions differences may be reserved.
We must be staunch proletarian revolutionaries, firmly carry out the Party’s class line and policies, consistently consolidate and broaden the ranks of the revolutionary Left. We must unite the great majority and organise a mighty army of the proletarian cultural revolution so as to isolate the enemy to the greatest possible extent.
The integration of revolutionary intellectuals with the masses of workers and peasants is an important guarantee that the great proletarian cultural revolution will be victorious. We of the working class should welcome revolutionary students to the factories to exchange revolutionary experience, while the revolutionary students should also welcome local workers to come to their schools to establish contact, so that they can learn from each other, help and support each other for mutual advancement.
Worker comrades throughout the country, so long as we are good at creatively studying and applying Chairman Mao’s works in struggle and mastering the invincible ideological weapon of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, though there might be difficulties and twists and turns on our way of advance, we can certainly brave the winds and storms, march from victory to victory and carry the great proletarian cultural revolution through to the end.
(“Renmin Ribao” editorial, December 26, 1966.)
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