II. The Character and the Guiding Ideology of The Party

Chairman Mao tremendously enriched and developed the Marxist-Leninist theory on Party building. He had a systematic set of teachings on the character, the guiding ideology, the organizational principle and the style of work of the Party. It is because he nurtured our Party with these Marxist-Leninist teachings on Party building that our Party has grown and become a great, glorious and correct Party.

In accordance with Chairman Mao's teachings on Party building, the draft includes a revised and extended version of the paragraph on the character of the Party in the Party Constitution adopted by the Tenth Congress. The General Programme in the draft states in explicit terms, "The Communist Party of China is the political party of the proletariat, the highest form of its class organization. It is a vigorous vanguard organization composed of the advanced elements of the proletariat, which leads the proletariat and the revolutionary masses in their fight against the class enemy."

The "gang of four" did their utmost to alter our Party's character as the vanguard of the proletariat in order to achieve their objective of substituting the gang for the Party through usurpation and restoring capitalism. Everywhere they recruited renegades, enemy agents, alien class elements, degenerates, new bourgeois elements, gangsters and bad elements of all kinds who seriously disrupted public order, gave the appellation of "advanced element" to these reactionaries who were bent on creating trouble for the proletariat, drew them into the Party and sent them forth to usurp leadership far and wide. When the "gang of four" and their cohorts set up a clamour for "replacing the Party with mass organizations" and "kicking aside Party committees to make revolution," their intention was precisely to replace our Party with their gang. Had their scheme wholly succeeded, our Party would have completely changed political colour and become a bourgeois fascist party, and our country would have been thrown into complete disunity and utter chaos and pushed back on to the semi-colonial and semi-feudal road.

Only with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought as its guiding ideology and theoretical basis can our Party maintain its character as the vanguard of the proletariat. The "gang of four" vainly tried to confuse our Party in its basic ideology. Flaunting the flag of Marxism, they went in for revisionism on a big scale, spread idealism far and wide and feverishly pushed metaphysics. In view of this, the following passage is added to the paragraph on the guiding ideology in the General Programme: "The Party persists in combating revisionism, and dogmatism and empiricism. The Party upholds dialectical materialism and historical materialism as its world outlook and opposes the idealist and metaphysical world out-look."

The "gang of four" serve as an excellent teacher by negative example and have given us a very good lesson by creating confusion on the character of the Party and its role of leadership. This negative example has made us keenly aware of the necessity of always bearing in mind Chairman Mao's teaching: "Our Party is the political party of the proletariat, the vanguard force of the proletariat, and the fighting force armed with Marxism-Leninism." We must likewise bear firmly in mind another teaching of his. "Of the seven sectors - industry, agriculture, commerce, culture and education, the army, the government and the Party - it is the Party that exercises overall leadership." We must do a good job of building up the Party ideologically and organizationally, further strengthen the Party's leadership and give play to its role as the vanguard. We must also do a good job of strengthening and building up the revolutionary committees at all levels and revolutionary mass organizations such as trade unions, the Communist Youth League, poor and lower-middle peasant associations and women's federations so as to enable them the better to play their respective roles under the Party's leadership.