[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, #10, March 7, 1975, pp. 5-10. Although this famous article was soon issued in pamphlet form, the version below is as it appeared in Peking Review (if indeed there were any differences between the two).]
SPEAKING of the necessity for a clear understanding of the question of the proletariat exercising dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, Chairman Mao pointed out explicitly: “It would be quite easy for people like Lin Piao to push the capitalist system if they come to power. Therefore, we should read some more Marxist-Leninist works.” This brings up a most important question: What is the class nature of ”people like Lin Plao”? What is the social basis that engendered the Lin Piao anti-Party clique? Undoubtedly a clear understanding of this question, is fully necessary for consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and preventing capitalist restoration and for firmly implementing the Party’s basic line for the historical period of socialism and creating step by step conditions in which it will be impossible for the bourgeoisie to exist, or for a new bourgeoisie to arise.
As in the case of all other revisionists and revisionist trends of thought, the appearance of Lin Piao and his revisionist line was not accidental. Lin Piao and his sworn followers were extremely isolated in the whole Party, in the whole army and among the people of the whole country; but there is a deep-rooted class basis in society that engendered this bunch of extremely isolated persons who described themselves as ”heavenly horses flying through the skies, solitary and free.”
It is fairly clear that the Lin Piao anti-Party clique represented the interests of the overthrown landlord and capitalist classes and the aspirations of the overthrown reactionaries to topple the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The Lin Piao anti-Party clique opposed the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and had inveterate hatred for the socialist system under the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country, slandering it as ”feudal autocracy” and cursing it as ”Chin Shih Huang of the contemporary era.” They wanted the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and Rightists ”to achieve genuine liberation politically and economically,” i.e., politically and economically they wanted to turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the landlord and comprador-capitalist classes and the socialist system into capitalist system. As an agent in the Party, an agent of the bourgeoisie working hard for a restoration, the Lin Piao anti-Party clique was wild in its attack on the Party and the dictatorship of the proletariat, so much so that it set up an organization of secret agents and plotted a counter-revolutionary armed coup d’etat. Such frenzy is a reflection of the fact that the reactionaries who have lost political power and the means of production inevitably will resort to every means to recapture the lost positions of the exploiting classes. We have seen how Lin Piao, after his political and ideological bankruptcy, tried to ”eat up” the proletariat by staking everything on a single cast as a desperate gambler would do, and how he finally betrayed the country and fled to defect to the enemy; despite the very patient education, waiting and efforts to save him by Chairman Mao and the Party Central Committee, his counter-revolutionary nature did not change in the least. All this reflects the life-and-death struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the two major antagonistic classes, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, a struggle that will go on for a long period. As long as the overthrown reactionary classes still exist, the possibility remains for the emergence within the Party (and in society as well) of representatives of the bourgeoisie who will try to turn their hope for restoration into attempt at restoration. Therefore, we must heighten our vigilance and guard against and smash any plot by the reactionaries at home and abroad, and on no account must we slacken our vigilance. Such an understanding, however, still does not embrace all aspects of the issue. The Lin Piao anti-Party clique represented not only the hope of the overthrown landlord and capitalist classes for a restoration but also the hope of the newly engendered bourgeois elements in socialist society for usurping power. Members of this clique had certain characteristics of newly engendered bourgeois elements, and a number of them were in fact such elements. And some of their slogans met and reflected the needs of the bourgeois elements and those wishing to take the capitalist road in developing capitalism. It is precisely this latter aspect that merits our further analysis.
Chairman Mao has pointed out: “Lenin said, ‘Small production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale.’ This also occurs among a section of the workers and a section of the Party members. Both within the ranks of the proletariat and among the personnel of state organs, there are people who follow the bourgeois style of life.” Some in the Lin Piao anti-Party clique were the very representatives of such newly engendered bourgeoisie and capitalism. Among them, Lin Li-kuo [Lin Piao’s son] and his small ”fleet” [code name for their secret agent organization] were out-and-out anti-socialist bourgeois elements and counter-revolutionaries engendered in socialist sodiety.
The existence of bourgeois influence and the existence of the influence of international imperialism and revisionism are the political and ideological source of new bourgeois elements, while the existence of bourgeois right provides the vital economic basis for their emergence.
Lenin pointed out: “In the first phase of communist society (usually called Socialism) ‘bourgeois right’ is not abolished in its entirety, but only in part, only in proportion to the economic revolution so far attained, i.e., only in respect of the means of production.” ”However, it continues to exist as far as its other part is concerned; it continues to exist in the capacity of regulator (determining factor) in the distribution of products and the allotment of labour among the members of society. The socialist principle: ‘He who does not work, neither shall he eat,’ is already realized; the other socialist principle: ‘An equal amount of products for an equal amount of labour,’ is also already realized. But this is not yet Communism, and it does not yet abolish ‘bourgeois right,’ which gives to unequal individuals, in return for unequal (really unequal) amounts of labour, equal amounts of products.”
Chairman Mao has pointed out: “China is a socialist country. Before liberation, she was more or less like capitalism. Even now she practises an eight-grade wage system, distribution to each according to his work and exchange by means of money, which are scarcely different from these in the old society. What is different is that the system of ownership has changed.” ”Our country at present practises a commodity system, and the wage system is unequal too, there being the eight-grade wage system, etc. These can only be restricted under the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
In socialist, society, there still exist two kinds of socialist ownership, namely, ownership by the whole social people and collective ownership. This determines that China at present practises a commodity system. The analyses made by Lenin and Chairman Mao tell us that bourgeois right which inevitably exists as regards distribution and exchange under the socialist system should be restricted under the dictatorship of the proletariat, so that in the long course of the socialist revolution the three major differences between workers and peasants, between town and country and between manual and mental labour will gradually be narrowed and the discrepancies between the various grades will be reduced and the material and ideological conditions for closing such gaps will gradually be created. If we do not follow this course, but call instead for the consolidation, extension and strengthening of bourgeois right and that part of inequality it entails, the inevitable result will be polarization, i.e., a small number of people will in the course of distribution acquire increasing amounts of commodities and money through certain legal channels and numerous illegal ones; capitalist ideas of amassing fortunes and craving for personal fame and gain, stimulated by such ”material incentives,” will spread unchecked; such phenomena as turning public property into private property, speculation, graft and corruption, theft and bribery will rise; the capitalist principle of the exchange of commodities will make its way into political life send even into Party life, undermine the socialist planned economy and give rise to such acts of capitalist exploitation as the conversion of commodities and money into capital and labour power into a commodity; and there will be a change in the nature of the system of ownership in certain departments and units which follow the revisionist line; and instances of oppression and exploitation of the labouring people will once again occur. As a result, a small number of new bourgeois elements and upstarts who have totally betrayed the proletariat and the labouring people will emerge from among Party members, workers, well-to-do peasants and personnel in state organs. Our worker-comrades have put it well: ”If bourgeois right is not restricted, it will check the development of socialism and aid the growth of capitalism.” When the economic strength of the bourgeoisie grows to a certain extent, its agents will ask for political rule, try to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system, completely change the socialist ownership, and openly restore and develop the capitalist system. Once in power, the new bourgeoisie will first of all carry out a bloody suppression of the people and restore capitalism in the superstructure, including all spheres of ideology and culture; then they will conduct distribution in proportion to the amount of capital and power each has, and the principle ”to each according to his work” will be nothing but an empty shell, and a handful of new bourgeois elements monopolizing the means of production will at the same time monopolize the power of distributing consumer goods and other products. Such is the process of restoration that has already taken place in the Soviet Union.
As regards the way the Lin Piao anti-Party clique stooped to anything to amass riches, insatiably pursued the bourgeois way of life and used bourgeois right to carry out insidious, unsavoury and vile activities, many instances have been brought to light and subjected to criticism. But even more illustrative is its programme for a counter-revolutionary coup d’etat, Outline of Project ”571,” in which the Lin Piao anti-Party clique used precisely the idea of bourgeois right, and not anything else, to abet or incite certain people of various classes to oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words, the class interests the programme represents, in addition to the interests of the old bourgeoisie, are precisely the interests of a number of new bourgeois elements and a few people who want to use bourgeois right to develop capitalism. This explains why the programme directs its attack on Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line and why it shows particularly bitter hatred for certain restrictions placed on bourgeois right through the socialist revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country.
The Lin Piao anti-Party clique slandered office cadres going to May 7th cadre schools as ”unemployment in a disguised form”; it vilified simplifying administrative set-ups and maintaining close relations with the masses as an attack on cadres. It held that cadres should be overlords sitting on the backs of the people and, therefore, they become ”unemployed” once they take part in collective productive labour. This was designed to incite a section of the office workers—those who wish to extend bourgeois right, seek official posts and become overlords and those who are seriously infected with the bourgeois style of life—to oppose the Party’s line and the socialist system.
The Lin Piao anti-Party clique slandered intellectuals integrating themselves with the workers and peasants and going to the countryside as ”reform through forced labour in a disguised form.” Young people, full of vigour and imbued with communist consciousness, have gone group after group to the countryside. This is a great undertaking of far-reaching significance for narrowing the three major differences and for restricting bourgeois right. All revolutionary people enthusiastically praise it, but those corrupted by bourgeois ideology, and particularly those fettered by the idea of bourgeois right, oppose it. Whether the integration of educated young people with the workers and peasants is upheld or not has a direct bearing on whether the revolution in university education can be carried on by following the road taken by the Shanghai Machine Tool Plant—enrolling students from among the workers and peasants and assigning them to work among workers and peasants upon graduation. The Lin Piao anti-Party clique’s special hatred of this not only showed its opposition to the labouring people but also exposed its scheme to use bourgeois right to attack the Party in an attempt to incite some people deeply influenced by the idea of bourgeois right to oppose the socialist revolution. Its programme was aimed at widening the gap between town and country and between manual and mental labour, and turning educated young people into a new stratum of elite, so as to win the support of those deeply influenced by the idea of bourgeois right for its counter-revolutionary coup d’etat.
The Lin Piao anti-Party clique smeared as ”exploitation in a disguised form” the communist spirit displayed by the working class in criticizing, the revisionist ”material incentives.” Lin Piao was a fanatic advocate of ”material incentives.” He wrote in his sinister notebook such revisionist trash as ”material incentives are still necessary” ”materialism—material incentives,” ”inducements—official post, emolument, favour.” A principal member of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique also wrote that ”the principle of to each according to his work and of material benefit” was the ”decisive motive force” in promoting production. On the face of it, they advocated using money to ”stimulate” the workers, but actually they wanted to widen without any limit the differences in grade among the workers in order to foster and buy over a small section of the working class, turn it into a privileged stratum which betrays the proletarian dictatorship and the interests of the proletariat, and split the unity of the working class. They tried to corrupt the workers with the bourgeois world outlook and use the small number of workers who are deeply influenced by the idea of bourgeois right as a force in support of their opposition to the dictorship of the proletariat. Lin Piao and company attached ”particular importance” to using ”wages” to lure ”young workers,” and their ”inducements—official post, emolument, favour” were a sinister scheme. This shows us by negative example that young, workers, particularly those who have become cadres, must consciously reject the material inducements of the bourgeoisie and the flattery offered them in various forms by the idea of bourgeois, right. They must maintain and bring into play the communist revolutionary spirit of fighting valiantly for the complete emancipation of the proletariat and the whole of mankind and strive to arm themselves with the Marxist-Leninist world outlook; they must never be dazzled and become light-headed by the varicoloured world of commodities, exchange by means of money, vulgar flattery, sycophancy and factionalism, so as not to be taken in by political swindlers like Lin Piao or by the landlord and bourgeois elements in society. Under the cloak of ”showing concern,” all these persons are actually giving the young workers ”incentives” to lure them to take the capitalist road, and they could thus be called political ”abettors.” Inexperienced newly engendered bourgeois elements openly break the law while cunning bourgeois elements of long standing direct them from behind the scenes—this is a common occurrence in class struggle in the society today. We lay special emphasis on hitting the backstage abettors in dealing with corrupted young people who have committed criines. We must continue to adhere to this principle. Quite a number of young workers who take a clear-cut stand in the fight against bourgeois corruption have come to the fore in present-day struggles; we must support them and sum up their experience in struggle.
The Lin Piao anti-Party clique also vilified that the peasants ”lack food and clothing,” that ”the living standards” of cadres in the armed forces ”are deteriorating,” and that the Red Guards who displayed the spirit of daring to think, speak, blaze a trail, act and make revolution in criticizing the bourgeoisie during the Great Cultural Revolution ”are being hoodwinked and used”…. All this was aimed at totally negating the socialist system and the Party’s mass line, negating the dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, extending bourgeois right and restoring capitalism. In spreading, the slander that peasants ”lack food and clothing,” the Lin Piao anti-Party clique aimed at inciting the peasants to ”eat up and divide everything” so as to undermine and liquidate the socialist collective economy. If things were done along this line, a small number of people would become the new bourgeoisie while the overwhelming majority would suffer capitalist exploitation. And this would be a situation the landlords, rich peasants and a part of well-to-do middle peasants taking the capitalist road in the countryside yearned for.
By now we can see what Lin Piao meant by ”building genuine socialism.” It meant the extension of bourgeois right under the signboard of socialism so that new bourgeois elements and certain factions and groupings intending to take the capitalist road could, in collusion with the overthrown landlord and capitalist classes, ”have everything under their command and everything at their disposal,” overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore capitalism. Lin Piao and his like were their political representatives. The programme advanced by the Lin Piao anti-Party clique in Outline of Project ”571” neither dropped from the skies nor was it innate in the minds of those who described themselves as ”super-geniuses”; it was a reflection of social being. To be exact, this clique which proceeded from its reactionary bourgeois stand reflected the demands of unreformed landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and Rightists—who account for only a few per cent of the population—and the demands of a small number of new bourgeois elements and those intending to make use of bourgeois right to become new bourgeois elements. On the other hand, it opposed the demands of the revolutionary people, who make up more than 90 per cent of the population, to adhere to the socialist road. Members of this clique used idealist apriorism to oppose the materialist theory of reflection; however, the materialist theory of reflection must be used to explain how their counter-revolutionary ideas came into being.
Why would it be quite easy for people like Lin Piao to push the capitalist system if they should come to power? This is because in our socialist society there are still classes and class struggle, there are still the soil and conditions for engendering capitalism. In order to gradually reduce such soil and conditions and finally eliminate them altogether, we must persevere in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is a task which the vanguard of the proletariat, guided by Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, can accomplish only through the firm and indomitable efforts of a number of generations. So we must adhere to the Party’s basic line, enhance the political consciousness of the working class, consolidate the worker-peasant alliance, unite all forces that can be united with and unite the masses of revolutionary people and lead them in consciously remoulding their world outlook in the fight against class enemies and in the three great revolutionary movements of class stxuggle, the struggle for production and scientific experiment. And so we must consolidate and develop socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership by working people, prevent the restoration of bourgeois right already liquidated with regard to the system of ownership and continue to fulfil, gradually and over a fairly long period of time, that part of the task which is yet to be fulfilled in the transformation of ownership; and with regard to the two other aspects in the relations of production, namely, the mutual relations between men and the relations of distribution, we must restrict bourgeois right, criticize the idea of bourgeois right and continually weaken the basis that engenders capitalism. So we must persevere in the revolution in the realm of the superstructure, deepen our criticism of revisionism and the bourgeoisie and achieve the all-round dictatorship of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie.
In his talks given during an inspection tour of various places in the country in August and September 1971, Chairman Mao said: “We have been singing The Internationale for fifty years, and there have been ten occasions on which someone in our Party worked for a split. As I see it, another ten, twenty or thirty such occasions may arise. Don’t you believe this? Well, if you don’t, I do anyway. There will be no more struggles with the realization of communism? That’s not what I believe. There will be struggles even then, although they will be struggles between the new and the old, between what is correct and what is wrong. Even tens of thousands of years from now, what is wrong won’t pass, it won’t stand up.” Lenin said: “Yes, by overthrowing the landowners and bourgeoisie we cleared the way but we did not build the edifice of socialism. On the ground cleared of one bourgeois generation, new generations continually appear in history, as long as the ground gives rise to them, and it does give rise to any number of bourgeois. As for those who look at the victory over the capitalists in the way that the petty proprietors look at it—‘They grabbed, let me have a go too’—indeed, every one of them is the source of a new generation of bourgeois.” What Lenin dealt with is the protracted nature of class struggle in society; what Chairman Mao deals with is the protracted nature of the two-line struggle which takes shape as a reflection in the Party of class struggle in society. We must carry out such class struggle and two-line struggle and continually defeat the bourgeoisie and its agents working for revisionism, for a split and for intrigues and conspiracy; only thus can we gradually create conditions in which it will be impossible for the bourgeoisie to exist or for a new bourgeoisie to arise, and finally eliminate classes. Such is the great cause to be accomplished during the entire historical period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The new bourgeois elements who arise as a result of erosion by bourgeois ideas and the existence of bourgeois right generally share the political features of double-dealers and upstarts. In order to carry out capitalist activities under the dictatorship of the proletariat, they always put up a certain socialist signboard; since their restorationist activities aim not at seizing back any means of production of which they have been dispossessed but at grabbing the means of production they have never possessed, they are especially greedy, anxious to swallow at one gulp the wealth belonging to the whole people or the collective and place it under their private ownership. The Lin Piao anti-Party clique had these political features. ”Like the Chungshan wolf in the ancient fable, you commit treachery once you are in a position to have your own way.” These two lines from The Dream of the Red Chamber, which describe how Sun Shao-tsu, a relentless brute, ”stoops to anything to adapt himself to the circumstances,” can be aptly applied to the Lin Piao anti-Party clique. Before Lin Piao was ”in a position to have his own way,” that is, before he got hold of part of political and economic power, he used counter-revolutionary double-dealing tactics to deceive the Party and the masses, and utilized the might of the mass movement to serve his own ends; in doing this, he did not scruple at putting up a revolutionary sign-board or shouting revolutionary slogans while at the same time distorting them. Analysing the innermost feelings of Lin Piao and his gang in a letter written in the early days of the Great Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao pointed out: “I guess their true intention is to make use of Chung Kuei to fight the ghosts.” [Chung Kuei is a legendary character said to have the power to drive away ghosts.] This put the case well. It was a case of making use of a brick to knock open the door, and once that was done they would no longer need it and would brutally get rid of it. Acting as counter-revolutionary double-dealers, opposing the red flag by waving red flags, ”speaking nice things to your face but stabbing you in the back,” or, as the Lin Piao anti-Party clique itself confessed, ”waving Chairman Mao’s banner to strike at Chairman Mao’s forces”—these are but different ways of expressing things done in one and the same manner. The moment the Lin Piao anti-Party clique thought, as they put it, that ”after several years of preparation, the ideological, organizational and military level has been raised considerably and an ideological and material foundation has been laid to a certain extent,” they decided to have their own way. In units and departments under their domination and control, they turned socialist public ownership into the Lin Piao anti-Party clique’s private ownership. More and more openly they exposed their political ambitions which were sure to grow as they were more and more ”in a position to have their own way,” just as the bourgeoisie’s avarice knows no bounds and grows with the accumulation of capital. In analysing the bourgeoisie, Marx said: “As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital.” The soul of Lin Piao, a bourgeois agent inside the Party, was also nothing but the soul of the old bourgeoisie which has been toppled but dreams of a come-back and the soul of the new bourgeoisie which is coming into being and is vainly attempting to rule. A class analysis makes quite clear the root cause of the perverse, counter-revolutionary political activities of Lin Piao said his gang: Preaching the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius, betraying the Party and the Chinese people and going over to social-imperialism, they were engaged in the same kind of dirty business as the Chinese comprador-bourgeoisie which worshipped Confucius and betrayed the country; as to the counter-revolutionary coup d’etat they so feverishly plotted, it was only a carbon copy of the method the bourgeoisie of many countries in the world has resorted to numerous times and still resorts to even to this day.
Our task is, on the one hand, to gradually dig away the soil breeding the bourgeoisie and capitalism and, on the other, to be able to see through in good time the new bourgeoisie like Lin Piao when it appears or is emerging. This is why the study of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought is important. If we depart from the guidance of Marxism, we cannot accomplish the above-mentioned two tasks; moreover, when a revisionist trend of thought surfaces, one may be taken in and may even blindly board the gangsters’ boat because of the idea of bourgeois right in one’s own mind or because of failure to discern it. If this was not so, why did some people follow a revisionist line when it emerged? Why could Lin Piao and company deceive people at the Second Plenary Session of the Ninth Central Committee of the Party by resorting to idealism plus raising a big hullabaloo? Why could those naked words of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique aimed at splitting the Party and overthrowing the dictatorship of the proletariat find a market among a small number of cadres? Why could the ”fleets,” big and small, openly use such methods as giving feasts and presenting gifts, offering official posts and other favours as a means for luring people over to form a clique, for carrying out factional activities and for conspiring? Why did they write in their sinister notebooks such trash as ”using expertise to cover up politics” and use it as their tactics for carrying out counter-revolutionary activities? There is a profound lesson here. In opposing the Peng Teh-huai anti-Party clique in 1959, Chairman Mao pointed out that “at present, the main danger lies in empiricism.” Therefore we should read and study conscientiously. In the past decade and more, Chairman Mao has reiterated this opinion on many occasions. He stressed that high-ranking and intermediate Party cadres, first of all members of the Party Central Committee, “should all conscientiously read and study according to their different levels and have a good grasp of Marxism.” He also stressed that “in the next few years, special attention should be paid to propagating Marxism-Leninism.” After the collapse of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique, Chairman Mao once again said: “I formally advise comrades to do some reading.” And he again stressed this recently when he spoke of the dictatorship of the proletariat. How heartening these earnest and significant teachings are! All comrades in the Party, especially the high-ranking cadres, must grasp conscientious study and reading as a matter of cardinal importance in consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat. First of all, they must themselves study well and thoroughly understand the expositions by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and by Chairman Mao and their main works on the dictatorship of the proletariat, strive to explain the question by integrating theory with practice and rid themselves, both ideologically and in action, of the bourgeois ideas and styles of work which are divorced from the masses, so as to identify themselves with the masses, really become promoters of the new emerging socialist things and be good at discerning and daring to resist corrosion by capitalism. We must inherit and carry forward our Party’s glorious tradition of plain living and arduous struggle which has been developed over the past decades. We must have a clear understanding of the situation and study policies, including economic policies. It is imperative to adhere to the principle of grasping revolution and promoting production and other work and preparedness against war, a principle which has proved effective in practice. Attention should be paid to distinguishing between the two different types of contradictions and dealing accurate and powerful blows at the very small number of bad elements; as regards the bourgeois influence among the masses, it should be eliminated by applying the formula “unity, criticism, unity”—mainly by such methods as studying and raising consciousness, supporting advanced things which are firmly opposed to capitalism, recalling past suffering and contrasting it with today’s happiness as well as persuading and educating people and making criticism and self-criticism, all for the purpose of uniting 95 per cent of the cadres and of the masses. In criticizing capitalist tendencies, it is necessary to create public opinion, win aver the majority, awaken consciousness and give active guidance. As for the few who have sunk deep into the quagmire of capitalism, they must be told sharply: ”Comrades, mend your ways right now!”
As was pointed out at the beginning of this article, the Lin Plao anti-Party clique was extremely isolated from the people of the whole country. In tracing its emergence to the class roots, we pointed to the soil and conditions which produced the Lin Piao anti-Party clique. After stating this aspect of the matter, we must also point out that the Lin Piao anti-Party clique was in essence very feeble; like all reactionaries, it was only a paper tiger. All the counter-revolutionary activities of this clique constituted only a record of defeat and impasse, not of victory. The socialist system is bound to replace the capitalist system and communism is bound to triumph throughout the world; this is an objective law independent of man’s will. Since socialist society is born out of the old society, it “is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectuality, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” This is not strange. The history of the past 25 years tells us that so long as we uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, adhere to Chairman Mao’s theory of continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and keep to the line, principles and policies for the socialist revolution which Chairman Mao has laid down for us, we are able to smash the resistance put up by the class enemies, erase these birth marks step by step and continually win fresh victories. The present excellent situation marked by ever greater prosperity of our socialist cause is in sharp contrast to the situation of imperialism and social-imperialism which are disintegrating internally and beset with difficulties at home and abroad. Chairman Mao’s latest instruction on the question of theory will certainly enable us, both in theory and in practice, to understand more fully the historical tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the ways to accomplish them; it will greatly help consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, deepen the socialist revolution, spur the development of socialist construction and promote nationwide stability and unity. The Communists of China are full of confidence, so are the proletariat and the revolutionary people of the country. United as one and in high spirits, they are waging a struggle under the leadership of the Party to combat and prevent revisionism. The history of the Chinese revolution is a history of the revolutionary people advancing to victory through tortuous struggles and the reactionaries heading for destruction after repeated trials of strength. As Chairman Mao has summed it up: “In China, after the emperor was overthrown in 1911, no reactionary was able to stay long in power. The longest was only twenty years (Chiang Kai-shek), but he was also toppled once the people rose in revolt. Chiang Kai-shek climbed to power by taking advantage of Sun Yat-sen’s trust in him and by running the Whampoa Academy and gathering around him a big bunch of reactionaries. Practically the whole landlord class and bourgeoisie supported him when he turned against the Communist Party. Moreover, the Communist Party was inexperienced at the time. So, he gleefully gained temporary ascendancy. In those twenty years, however, he never achieved unification. There occurred the war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, the wars between the Kuomintang and the various warlord cliques, the Sino-Japanese war and, finally, the four-year large-scale civil war, which sent him scampering to a cluster of islands. If the Rightists were to stage an anti-Communist coup d’etat in China, I am sure they would have no peace either and their rule would most probably be short-lived, because it would never be tolerated by the revolutionaries who represent the interests of the people constituting move than 90 per cent of the population.” ”The conclusion is still the two oft-repeated sentences: The future is bright; the road is tortuous.” Let us advance courageously in the direction and along the road pointed out by Chairman Mao!
(A translation of an article in ”Hongqi,” No. 3, 1975)
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