Persist in Continuing the Revolution Under The Dictatorship of the Proletariat

The founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 marked the basic conclusion of the stage of the new-democratic revolution and the beginning of the stage of the socialist revolution. Back at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Party on the eve of countrywide victory, Chairman Mao explicitly pointed out that the principal internal contradiction after the liberation of our country was "the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie." The focus of the contradiction was on the socialist road versus the capitalist road and on the dictatorship of the proletariat versus the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

Both the title of our Party and our Marxist-Leninist world outlook unequivocally demonstrate that the basic programme of our Party is the complete overthrow of the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in place of the bourgeois dictatorship and the triumph of socialism over capitalism, and that the ultimate aim of the Party is the realization of communism. Our 28 years of heroic struggle represented only the first step in the long march of 10,000 li towards this ultimate goal. The seizure of political power by the proletariat was not the end of the revolution but the beginning of the second step.

The vast territory of our country was liberated gradually. The several million troops of the People's Liberation Army served both as a fighting force and as a working force. Our Party relied on its own army which aroused the masses while fighting battles and, together with the masses, resolutely carried out the Party's line and policies, smashed the state machinery of the dictatorship of the big landlords and big bourgeoisie and established the people's regime, which confiscated all bureaucrat capital comprising 80 per cent of modern industry and transformed it into socialist state enterprises. And boldly arousing the masses, we launched on a large-scale the land reform movement, the movement for the suppression of counter-revolutionaries and the movement to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea. In a space of three years, we rehabilitated the national economy and strengthened the people's democratic dictatorship, namely, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In 1953, after the frantic attacks of the bourgeoisie had been repelled in the movement against the "three evils" (corruption, waste and bureaucracy) and the movement against the "five evils" (bribery of government workers, tax evasion, theft of state property, cheating on government contracts, and stealing economic information from government sources for private speculation), Chairman Mao, in accordance with Lenin's theory on the transition period and our own practice, set forth the Party's general line for the transition period: "Bring about, step by step and over a fairly long period, the socialist industrialization of China and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce by the state."

The essence of the Party's general line for the transition period was to solve the problem of the ownership of the means of production, making socialist ownership, that is, ownership by the state and collective ownership by the working masses, our country's sole economic base. This was an important step in further consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat. We tackled this problem firmly, yet gradually. In agriculture, this was done by proceeding through mutual-aid teams, which contained some embryonic elements of socialism, and the elementary co-operatives of a semisocialist character, to the fully socialist advanced cooperatives. In capitalist industry and commerce, it was done first by the state placing orders with private enterprises to process and manufacture goods, purchasing and marketing all their products and using private enterprises as commission agents to purchase and sell goods for the state, and then by transforming private enterprises into joint state-private enterprises and paying a fixed rate of interest on the basis of an appraisal of the assets in accordance with the policy of redemption. Some people afflicted with impetuosity found this process not to their satisfaction and thought the transition period far too long; they wanted the problem to be solved overnight. This "Left" deviation was overcome relatively quickly through education.

The socialist revolution is a struggle to bury capitalism; it has been acclaimed by the labouring people throughout the country but has met with reckless sabotage by Liu Shao-chi and company. Peng Teh-huai, Kao Kang, Jao Shu-shih and others formed an anti-Party bloc in a vain attempt to split the Central Committee and subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat. Their scheme was smashed by the Central Committee of the Party in good time. Liu Shao-chi all along opposed socialist transformation. As early as 1949, wherever he went he preached the fallacy "exploitation is a merit" behind the Central Committee's back and in violation of the Resolution of the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee. At the beginning of the 50s, he put forward the slogan "consolidate the new-democratic system." This meant "consolidating" and developing the forces of capitalism and taking the capitalist road instead of carrying out the socialist revolution. Chairman Mao promptly criticized this slogan, pointing out that it was an error in the nature of a bourgeois programme. He published On the Question of Agricultural Co-operation and other brilliant works to criticize the Right-deviationist error committed by Liu Shao-chi and his gang of slashing the number of co-operatives and criticize their fallacies of realizing "mechanization before co-operation" and of expanding the rich-peasant economy. This immensely inspired the masses of the poor and lower-middle peasants with socialist enthusiasm for co-operation. In the year or so from the second half of 1955, the 500 million peasants of our country were all jubilantly taking the broad road of socialism. Because the proletariat had captured the positions in the vast rural areas, the bourgeoisie, now under cross-fire from the workers and peasants, was isolated and compelled to accept transformation. By 1956, the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce and of handicrafts had in the main been completed in our country with respect to the system of ownership. Instead of suffering any damage, industrial and agricultural production progressed in the course of this great change and the Party's general line for the transition period was crowned with great victory.

With the basic completion of the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production, China's socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat were confronted with a new problem. What was the principal internal contradiction? Were there still classes, class contradictions and class struggle? What were the future tasks of the Chinese revolution? Liu Shao-chi and his gang replied: "In China, the question of which wins out, socialism or capitalism, is already settled," "the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has been basically resolved," and the principal internal contradiction "is the contradiction between the advanced socialist system and the backward social productive forces." This was a refurbished version in new circumstances of the "theory of productive forces" advocated by Bernstein and Kautsky. And it was a means by which the bourgeoisie waged class struggle against the proletariat. In the period of the democratic revolution they said that the proletariat could not seize political power until capitalism was highly developed; at the approach of socialist transformation, they wanted to "consolidate the new-democratic system"; and after the three great transformations of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce were completed in the main, they again dished up the above-mentioned fallacies, trying to stop the proletariat from continuing the revolution. In their opinion, class struggle died out when the question of ownership was settled, and there was no need to consolidate the socialist system, and all that was necessary was to grasp production; the socialist system was too "advanced" to suit the needs of China today and it was necessary to turn back and develop capitalism. Moreover, behind Chairman Mao's back, Liu Shao-chi and his gang inserted this sinister trash into the Resolution of the Eighth National Congress of the Party in their attempt to impose on the whole Party the line of taking the capitalist road.

Chairman Mao at that time pointed out that the words Liu Shao-chi and his gang had stuffed into the Resolution were wrong and anti-Marxist. Shortly afterwards, Chairman Mao made public his brilliant work On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People and, for the first time in the history of the development of Marxism-Leninism, systematically answered the question of classes, class contradictions and class struggle in socialist society after basic victory in the socialist transformation of the system of ownership. He pointed out: "In China, although in the main socialist transformation has been completed with respect to the system of ownership... there are still remnants of the overthrown landlord and comprador classes, there is still a bourgeoisie, and the remoulding of the petty bourgeoisie has only just started. The class struggle is by no means over. The class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the class struggle between the different political forces, and the class struggle in the ideological field between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will continue to be long and tortuous and at times will even become very acute. ...the question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is still not really settled." He said: "The present social system of our country is far superior to that of the old days. If it were not so, the old system would not have been overthrown and the new system could not have been established." He pointed out: "To sum up, socialist relations of production have been established and are in harmony with the growth of the productive forces, but they are still far from perfect, and this imperfection stands in contradiction to the growth of the productive forces. Apart from harmony as well as contradiction between the relations of production and the developing productive forces, there is harmony as well as contradiction between the superstructure and the economic base." Therefore, "Time is needed for our socialist system to become established and consolidated." "We must continue to resolve all such contradictions in the light of our specific conditions. Of course, new problems will emerge as these contradictions are resolved. And further efforts will be required to resolve the new contradictions." With the invincible theory of dialectical and historical materialism, Chairman Mao thoroughly refuted Liu Shao-chi's revisionist fallacies and armed our Party with the theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The development of class struggle at home and abroad constantly provides fresh facts to prove the correctness of Chairman Mao's theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The wild attacks of the bourgeois Rightists in 1957 and, particularly, the gravity of the capitalist restoration in Lenin's homeland by the Khrushchov-Brezhnev renegade clique which occurred after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union have taught us a very profound lesson - the socialist system will not be consolidated if there is only a socialist revolution in the ownership of the means of production without a thoroughgoing socialist revolution on the political and ideological fronts. Just look at history to see how capitalism rises, grows and heads for its doom, and you will understand that the capitalist system, too, was not established at one stroke. Since the proletarian revolution is a revolution for the complete elimination of all exploiting classes, it necessarily involves more acute and tortuous class struggle than the previous revolutions that replaced one system of exploitation by another. Taking the proletariat of the Soviet Union and the world unawares, the Khrushchov-Brezhnev renegade clique restored the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. This is a bad thing, but a bad thing can be turned into a good thing. It has educated the Soviet people and the proletariat of the world. In the development of history as a whole, the restoration of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union is only a temporary phenomenon. The proletariat and the people of all nationalities of the Soviet Union are sure to vanquish the Khrushchov-Brezhnev clique, re-establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and continue to take the road of the October Revolution charted by Lenin and Stalin. Socialism is sure to triumph throughout the world. This is an objective law independent of man's will.

The struggle against the bourgeois Rightists in 1957 was a great battle between the Chinese proletariat and bourgeoisie on the political and ideological fronts. Throughout the country the masses were aroused to speak up boldly, air their views freely, put up big-character posters and hold great debates. The controversy centred mainly on such major questions as whether our work in revolution and construction was correct, whether we should take the socialist road, whether we should uphold the leadership of the Communist Party, the dictatorship of the proletariat and democratic centralism, and whether our foreign policy was correct. The great debates enabled the broad masses to make a clear distinction between the enemy and ourselves and between right and wrong, isolated the bourgeois Rightists and refuted Liu Shao-chi's revisionist fallacies. This was an immense contribution to deflating the arrogance of the bourgeoisie, boosting the morale of the proletariat, enhancing the enthusiasm of the people of the whole country for socialism and pushing forward China's socialist revolution and construction. In 1958, Chairman Mao laid down the general line of going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism. He formulated this general line on the basis of summing up the experience of our Party in building the revolutionary base areas, the experience in carrying out the First Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy and the lessons of Khrushchov's restoration of capitalism, and of criticizing the revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi and his ilk, and on the basis of repeated investigation and study. This general line stresses putting proletarian politics in command and integrating Party leadership with the masses and is a new development of the Party's mass line. It stipulates that we take agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor, and it lays down a series of principles summed up as "walking on two legs," such as giving play to the initiative of both the central government and the localities, speeding up industrial construction in the interior while making full use of industry in coastal areas, simultaneously developing industry and agriculture, light and heavy industries and modern and indigenous methods, and building small, medium-sized and big enterprises at the same time. Under the guidance of the general line, our people created the people's commune as a form of organization in the rural areas. An invigorating great leap forward occurred in industry and agriculture all over the country. This was a great victory for the Party's general line.

In the excellent situation in which revolution and construction were advancing rapidly, Liu Shao-chi and company changed their tactics. Acting in an extreme "Left" manner at first, they opposed Chairman Mao's correct thesis that the rural people's commune is a system of socialist collective ownership, negated the law of value and commodity production and attempted to sabotage the revolutionary mass movement. Chairman Mao criticized their mistakes in good time, defended the revolutionary enthusiasm of the broad masses and took concrete measures to guide the mass movement on to the correct path. At the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party held in August 1959, Peng Teh-huai came out with vicious attacks from the Right on the Party's general line; he frantically opposed the great leap forward, the people's communes and the revolutionary mass movement. Later, Liu Shao-chi also levelled repeated attacks from the Right on the Party's general line. They and their gang did their utmost to exaggerate the temporary economic difficulties caused by three years of natural calamities and the tearing up of contracts and withdrawal of experts by the Soviet revisionist renegade clique. They denied the fact that, led by Chairman Mao and adhering to the Party's general line, the people of the country could overcome the difficulties and had already won initial successes. They openly put forward and pushed a counter-revolutionary revisionist line in domestic and foreign affairs, namely, san zi yi bao (the extension of free markets and of plots for private use, the promotion of small enterprises with sole responsibility for their own profits or losses, and the fixing of output quotas on a household basis) and san he yi shao (the liquidation of struggle in relations with imperialism, revisionism and reactionaries, and reduction of assistance and support to the world revolution). They were no longer waving "red flags" to oppose the red flag, but were waving white flags to oppose the red flag.

The fact that the Liu Shao-chi renegade clique was running rampant was an indication not of their strength, but of their panic in the face of the deepening proletarian revolution. Historical experience proves that, invariably, the activities of domestic counter-revolutionaries and the opportunists in the Party are not only political struggles in character but are co-ordinated with those of foreign reactionaries. Liu Shao-chi and company regarded the rabid anti-China campaign launched by the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet revisionists and the Indian reactionaries as their golden opportunity to restore capitalism. Facts prove just the opposite. The proletariat and the people of China are never afraid of difficulties. The imperialists, revisionists and reactionaries cannot harm us in the slightest with their blockades, embargoes, armed aggression and subversion from within, which, on the contrary, encourage us all the more to maintain independence and initiative, rely on our own efforts and work hard for the prosperity of the country and transform society with soaring revolutionary drive. It is not the Chinese people who are isolated, but imperialists, revisionists and reactionaries, including their running dogs Liu Shao-chi and his pack.

The Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party in September 1962 was of great historic significance. It marked the start of a new attack against the bourgeoisie by the Chinese proletariat and working people under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. At this session, Chairman Mao issued the great call "Never forget class struggle" to the whole Party, the whole army and the people of all nationalities throughout the country, summed up the experience of China and the international communist movement and more comprehensively put forward the basic line of our Party for the entire historical period of socialism, which has now been written into our Party Constitution. He also pointed out: "To overthrow a political power, it is always necessary first of all to create public opinion, to do work in the ideological sphere. This is true for the revolutionary class as well as for the counter-revolutionary class." After this session, Chairman Mao wrote the celebrated essay Where Do Correct Ideas Come From? in which he criticized the bourgeois idealism and metaphysics of Liu Shao-chi. Under Comrade Lin Piao's guidance, the Quotations From Chairman Mao Tsetung was compiled and published, and this promoted the widespread development of the mass movement for the living study and application of Mao Tsetung Thought. At Chairman Mao's call, our Party launched attacks in such ideological fields as Peking opera, the ballet and symphonic music, that had long been controlled by Liu Shao-chi's bourgeois headquarters; as a result, the heroic figures of workers, peasants and soldiers began to appear on the stage. At the same time, the Party started the socialist education movement throughout the country. In the course of this movement the Liu Shao-chi renegade clique used the power they had usurped to launch a fierce counterattack against the proletariat and opposed the policy clearly set forth by Chairman Mao: "The main target of the present movement is those Party persons in power taking the capitalist road." They hit hard at the masses of cadres and people and protected the handful of capitalist roaders by methods which were "Left" in form but Right in essence; they openly attacked the scientific Marxist method of investigating and studying social conditions advocated by Chairman Mao, branding it as "outdated"; and they opposed the mass movement for the living study and application of Mao Tsetung Thought, opposed the revolution in literature and art and opposed criticism of the bourgeoisie. In November 1965, Chairman Mao initiated the criticism of Hai Jui Dismissed From Office, and in 1966 Liu Shao-chi and company produced the "February Outline" to oppose it. The twists and turns in the struggle further exposed Liu Shao-chi as the arch representative of the capitalist roaders in the country, the Khrushchov of China. The Circular of May 16, 1966 worked out under Chairman Mao's guidance called on the whole Party to guard against "persons like Khrushchov . . . who are still nestling beside us." The Cultural Revolution Group Under the Central Committee of the Party, which was set up in accordance with the Circular, firmly carried out Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. At the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party in August 1966. Chairman Mao presided over the adoption of the Decision Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and put up his big-character poster "Bombard the Headquarters," formally taking the lid off Liu Shao-chi's revisionist line. And so came the high tide of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

This revolution which Chairman Mao personally initiated and has been leading with the boldness and vision of a great proletarian revolutionary, and in which the revolutionary masses in their hundreds of millions have been taking part is "a great political revolution carried out by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes; it is a continuation of the prolonged struggle waged by the Chinese Communist Party and the masses of revolutionary people under its leadership against the Kuomintang reactionaries, a continuation of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie." It may also be called China's second revolution. At first many of our comrades had a very poor understanding of this revolution. When the masses rose and split into two groupings, and even struggle by force occurred, everything under heaven seemed to be in chaos for a time. Some people ask: Since Liu Shao-chi and his handful usurped part of the power of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it needs only an order from Chairman Mao to dismiss them from office. Why should the present method be adopted? Practice shows that the other method, dismissal from office, could not solve the problem, though it was adopted on many occasions. This revolution is not merely about the dismissal of a few people from office; it is a great revolution in the realm of the superstructure. Liu Shao-chi not only had a revisionist political line but also had an organizational line which served his political line. The leadership in quite a number of our units was not in the hands of Marxists and the worker and peasant masses. Only by arousing the broad masses to expose our dark aspect openly, in an all-round way and from below would it be possible to clean out the Liu Shao-chi renegade clique, temper hundreds of millions of people in class struggle, educate them in the struggle against revisionism and enable them to gain experience in seizing back that portion of power which had been usurped by a handful of capitalist roaders. Speaking of chaos, it occurred because there were firstly counter-revolutionaries and secondly capitalist roaders who engaged in sabotage and created disturbances under flags of all descriptions. But they could only hoodwink some of the people for some of the time. Armed with Quotations From Chairman Mao Tsetung, the masses took part in debates and gradually learnt how to distinguish between good and bad people and between the proletarian revolutionary line and the bourgeois reactionary line, and how to carry out Chairman Mao's proletarian revolutionary line and policies correctly. In this way the whole country became a great school for the living study and application of Mao Tsetung Thought, and the broad masses learnt in the stormy struggle what they could not have learnt in normal times. Therefore, in the final analysis, the chaos threw only the enemy into disorder but tempered the masses. The Chinese People's Liberation Army has made new contributions in the service of the people by taking part in the "three supports and two militaries" (i.e., support the broad masses of the Left, support industry and support agriculture and military control and political and military training). Since the day of its founding, our People's Liberation Army has been a fighting force and at the same time a working force and a production force, and it has more than 40 years' experience in doing mass work. That is why our armymen could easily become one with the masses and help to bring about a speedier development of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in different places, and this has enabled our army to further steel itself. The revolutionary committees at all levels, born in the storm of class struggle, constitute a double three-in-one combination in the sense that they comprise representatives of the army, the cadres and the masses and of old, middle-aged and young people. Members of the Party committees at all levels elected after Party consolidation include not only proletarian revolutionaries of the older generation but also middle-aged and younger ones. All this has created favourable conditions for training millions of successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat, and given our Party and country more vitality than ever. As Chairman Mao said, "The current Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is absolutely necessary and most timely for consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, preventing capitalist restoration and building socialism." Under Chairman Mao's personal guidance, the Ninth National Congress of the Party was convened in April 1969, when the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had won great victories. The Congress adopted Vice-Chairman Lin's political report and the Constitution of the Communist Party of China and elected the new Central Committee with Chairman Mao as its leader and Vice-Chairman Lin as its deputy leader. In his political report, Vice-Chairman Lin systematically expounded Chairman Mao's theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and summed up the basic experience of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Therefore, in this article, we will not go into detail about this revolution.

Since the Ninth National Congress of the Party, the development of class struggle at home and abroad has proved that the line of the Congress is completely correct. The tasks and policies defined at the First and Second Plenary Sessions of the Ninth Central Committee of the Party are also completely correct. Though splendid victories have been won in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the tasks ahead are still arduous in carrying out struggle-criticism-transformation on various fronts and particularly in the superstructure, including all spheres of culture. We still have to wage a protracted struggle to fulfil the task of further consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat politically, ideologically, economically and organizationally. Chairman Mao teaches us that no one must think that everything will be all right after one or two great cultural revolutions, or even three or four. For socialist society covers a considerably long historical period. Throughout this historical period, there are classes. class contradictions and class struggle, there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, there is the danger of capitalist restoration and there is the threat of subversion and aggression by imperialism and social-imperialism. These contradictions can be resolved only by depending on the Marxist theory of continued revolution and on practice under its guidance. Our whole Party must keep Chairman Mao's teachings firmly in mind and recognize that this struggle is protracted and complex. We must resolutely carry out the fighting tasks laid down at the Ninth National Congress of the Party and the First and Second Plenary Sessions of the Ninth Central Committee, persist in continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat and strive to win still greater victories.