by the Editorial Department of
Renmin Ribao (People's Daily )
and Hongqi (Red Flag )
July 14, 1964
Foreign Languages Press
Peking 1964
C O N T E N T S
| [A PREFACE [my designation -- DJR]] |
[1] |
|
SOCIALIST SOCIETY AND THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT | |
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ANTAGONISTIC CLASSES AND CLASS STRUGGLE EXIST IN THE SOVIET UNION | |
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THE SOVIET PRIVILEDGED STRATUM AND THE REVISIONIST KHRUSHCHOV CLIQUE | |
|
REEFUTATION OF THE SO-CALLED STATE OF THE WHOLE PEOPLE | |
|
REEFUTATION OF THE SO-CALLED PARTY OF THE ENTIRE PEOPLE | |
|
KHRUSHCHOV'S PHONEY COMMUNISM | |
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HISTORICAL LESSONS OF THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT |
page 1
THE theories of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat are the quintessence of Marxism-Leninism. The questions of whether revolution should be upheld or opposed and whether the dictatorship of the proletariat should be upheld or opposed have always been the focus of struggle between Marxism-Leninism and all brands of revisionism and are now the focus of struggle between Marxist-Leninists the world over and the revisionist Khrushchov clique.
At the 22nd Cgngress of the CPSU, the revisionist Khrushchov clique developed their revisionism into a complete system not only by rounding off their anti-revolutionary theories of "peaceful coexistence", "peaceful competition" and "peaceful transition" but also by declaring that the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary in the Soviet Union and advancing the absurd theories of the "state of the whole people" and the "party of the entire people". The Programme put forward by the revisionist Khrushchov clique at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU is a programme of phoney communism, a revisionist programme against proletarian revolution and for the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletarian party.
The revisionist Khrushchov clique abolish the dictatorship of the proletariat behind the camouflage of the "state of the whole people", change the proletarian character of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union behind the camouflage of the "party of the entire peo-
page 2
ple" and pave the way for the restoration of capitalism behind that of "full-scale communist construction".
In its Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement dated June 14, 1963, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China pointed out that it is most absurd in theory and extremely harmful in practice to substitute the "state of the whole people" for the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the "party of the entire people" for the vanguard party of the proletariat. This substitution is a great historical retrogression which makes any transition to communism impossible and helps only to restore capitalism.
The Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the press of the Soviet Union resort to sophistry in self-justification and charge that our criticisms of the "state of the whole people" and the "party of the entire people" are allegations "far removed from Marxism", betray "isolation from the life of the Soviet people" and are a demand that they "return to the past".
Well, let us ascertain who is actually far removed from Marxism-Leninism, what Soviet life is actually like and who actually wants the Soviet Union to return to the past.
What is the correct conception of socialist society? Do classes and class struggle exist throughout the stage of socialism? Should the dictatorship of the proletariat be maintained and the socialist revolution be carried through
page 3
to the end? Or should the dictatorship of the proletariat be abolished so as to pave the way for capitalist restoration? These questions must be answered correctly according to the basic theory of Marxism-Leninism and the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The replacement of capitalist society by socialist society is a great leap in the historical development of human society. Socialist society covers the important historical period of transition from class to classless society. It is by going through socialist society that mankind will enter communist society.
The socialist system is incomparably superior to the capitalist system. In socialist society, the dictatorship of the proletariat replaces bourgeois dictatorship and the public ownership of the means of production replaces private ownership. The proletariat, from being an oppressed and exploited class, turns into the ruling class and a fundamental change takes place in the social position of the working people. Exercising dictatorship over a few exploiters only, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat practises the broadest democracy among the masses of the working people, a democracy which is impossible in capitalist society. The nationalization of industry and collectivization of agriculture open wide vistas for the vigorous development of the social productive forces, ensuring a rate of growth incomparably greater than that in any older society.
However, one cannot but see that socialist society is a society born out of capitalist society and is only the first phase of communist society. It is not yet a fully mature communist society in the economic and other fields. It
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is inevitably stamped with the birth marks of capitalist society. When defining socialist society Marx said:
What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, eco nomically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.[1]
Lenin also pointed out that in socialist society, which is the first phase of communism, "Communism cannot as yet be fully ripe economically and entirely free from traditions or traces of capitalism".[2]
In socialist society, the differences between workers and peasants, between town and country, and between manual and mental labourers still remain, bourgeois rights are not yet completely abolished, it is not possible "at once to eliminate the other injustice, which consists in the distribution of articles of consumption 'according to the amount of labour performed' (and not according to needs)",[3] and therefore differences in wealth still exist. The disappearance of these differences, phenomena and bourgeois rights can only be gradual and long drawn out. As Marx said, only after these differences have vanished and bourgeois rights have completely disappeared, will it be possible to realize full communism
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with its principle, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Marxism-Leninism and the practice of the Soviet Union, China and other socialist countries all teach us that socialist society covers a very, very long historical stage. Throughout this stage, the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat goes on and the question of "who will win" between the roads of capitalism and socialism remains, as does the danger of the restoration of capitalism.
In its Proposal Concerning the General Line of the International Communist Movement dated June 14, 1963, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party states:
For a very long historical period after the proletariat takes power, class struggle continues as an objective law independent of man's will, differing only in form from what it was before the taking of power.
After the October Revolution, Lenin pointed out a number of times that:
a) The overthrown exploiters always try in a thousand and one ways to recover the "paradise" they have been deprived of.
b) New elements of capitalism are constantly and spontaneously generated in the petty-bourgeois atmosphere.
c) Political degenerates and new bourgeois elements may emerge in the ranks of the working class and among government functionaries as a result of bourgeois influence and the pervasive, corrupting atmosphere of the petty bourgeoisie.
d) The external conditions for the continuance of class struggle within a socialist country are encircle-
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In socialist society, the overthrown bourgeoisie and other reactionary classes remain strong for quite a long time, and indeed in certain respects are quite powerful. They have a thousand and one links with the international bourgeoisie. They are not reconciled to their defeat and stubbornly continue to engage in trials of strength with the proletariat. They conduct open and hidden struggles against the proletariat in every field. Constantly parading such signboards as support for socialism, the Soviet system, the Communist Party and Marxism-Leninism, they work to undermine socialism and restore capitalism. Politically, they persist for a long time as a force antagonistic to the proletariat and constantly attempt to overthrow the dictatorship of the proletariat. They sneak into the government organs, public organizations, economic departments and cultural and educational institutions so as to resist or usurp the leadership of the proletariat. Economically, they employ every means to damage socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership and to develop the forces of capitalism. In the ideological, cultural and educational fields, they counterpose the bourgeois world outlook to the proletarian world outlook and try to corrupt the proletariat and other working people with bourgeois ideology.
The collectivization of agriculture turns individual into collective farmers and provides favourable conditions for the thorough remoulding of the peasants. However, until
page 7
collective ownership advances to ownership by the whole people and until the remnants of private economy disappear completely, the peasants inevitably retain some of the inherent characteristics of small producers. In these circumstances spontaneous capitalist tendencies are inevitable, the soil for the growth of new rich peasants still exists and polarization among the peasants may still occur.
The activities of the bourgeoisie as described above, its corrupting effects in the political, economic, ideological and cultural and educational fields, the existence of spontaneous capitalist tendencies among urban and rural small producers, and the influence of the remaining bourgeois rights and the force of habit of the old society all constantly breed political degenerates in the ranks of the working class and Party and government organizations, new bourgeois elements and embezzlers and grafters in state enterprises owned by the whole people and new bourgeois intellectuals in the cultural and educational institutions and intellectual circles. These new bourgeois elements and these political degenerates attack socialism in collusion with the old bourgeois elements and elements of other exploiting classes which have been overthrown but not eradicated. The political degenerates entrenched in the leading organs are particularly dangerous, for they support and shield the bourgeois elements in organs at lower levels.
As long as imperialism exists, the proletariat in the socialist countries will have to struggle both against the bourgeoisie at home and against international imperialism. Imperialism will seize every opportunity and try to undertake armed intervention against the socialist countries or to bring about their peaceful disintegration.
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It will do its utmost to destroy the socialist countries or to make them degenerate into capitalist countries. The international class struggle will inevitably find its reflec tion within the socialist countries.
Lenin said:
The transition from capitalism to Communism represents an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch has terminated, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope is converted into attempts at restoration.[1]
He also pointed out:
The abolition of classes requires a long, difficult and stubborn class struggle, which after the overthrow of the power of capital, after the destruction of the bourgeois state, after the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, does not disappear (as the vulgar representatives of the old Socialism and the old Social-Democracy imagine), but merely changes its forms and in many respects becomes more fierce.[2]
Throughout the stage of socialism the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in the polit ical, economic, ideological and cultural and educational fields cannot be stopped. It is a protracted, repeated, tor tuous and complex struggle. Like the waves of the sea it sometimes rises high and sometimes subsides, is now fairly calm and now very turbulent. It is a struggle that decides the fate of a socialist society. Whether a socialist
page 9
society will advance to communism or revert to capitalism depends upon the outcome of this protracted struggle.
The class struggle in socialist society is inevitably reflected in the Communist Party. The bourgeoisie and international imperialism both understand that in order to make a socialist country degenerate into a capitalist country, it is first necessary to make the Communist Party degenerate into a revisionist party. The old and new bourgeois elements, the old and new rich peasants and the degenerate elements of all sorts constitute the social basis of revisionism, and they use every possible means to find agents within the Communist Party. The existence of bourgeois influence is the internal source of revisionism and surrender to imperialist pressure the external source. Throughout the stage of socialism, there is inevitable struggle between Marxism-Leninism and various kinds of opportunism -- mainly revisionism -- in the Communist Parties of socialist countries. The characteristic of this revisionism is that, denying the existence of classes and class struggle, it sides with the bourgeoisie in attacking the proletariat and turns the dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
In the light of the experience of the international working-class movement and in accordance with the objective law of class struggle, the founders of Marxism pointed out that the transition from capitalism to communism, from class to classless society, must depend on the dictatorship of the proletariat and that there is no other road.
Marx said that "the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat".[1] He also said:
page 10
Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.[1]
The development of socialist society is a process of uninterrupted revolution. In explaining revolutionary socialism Marx said:
This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.[2]
In his struggle against the opportunism of the Second International, Lenin creatively expounded and developed Marx's theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He pointed out:
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class struggle but its continuation in new forms. The dictatorship of the proletariat is class struggle waged by a proletariat which has been victorious and has taken political power in its hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not destroyed, a bourgeoisie that
page 11
He also said:
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a persistent struggle -- bloody and bloodless, violent and peaceful, military and economic, educational and administrative -- against the forces and traditions of the old society.[2]
In his celebrated work On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People and in other works, Comrade Mao Tse-tung, basing himself on the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism and the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat, gives a comprehensive and systematic analysis of classes and class struggle in socialist society, and creatively develops the Marxist-Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung examines the objective laws of socialist society from the viewpoint of materialist dialectics. He points out that the universal law of the unity and struggle of opposites operating both in the natural world and in human society is applicable to socialist society, too. In socialist society, class contradictions still remain and class struggle does not die out after the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production. The struggle between the two roads of socialism and capitalism runs through the entire stage of socialism. To ensure the success of socialist construction
page 12
and to prevent the restoration of capitalism, it is necessary to carry the socialist revolution through to the end on the political, economic, ideological and cultural fronts. The complete victory of socialism cannot be brought about in one or two generations; to resolve this question thoroughly requires five or ten generations or even longer.
Comrade Mao Tse-tung stresses the fact that two types of social contradictions exist in socialist society, namely, contradictions among the people and contradictions between ourselves and the enemy, and that the former are very numerous. Only by distinguishing between the two types of contradictions, which are different in nature, and by adopting different measures to handle them correctly is it possible to unite the people, who constitute more than 90 per cent of the population, defeat their enemies, who constitute only a few per cent, and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is the basic guarantee for the consolidation and development of socialism, for the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie and of socialism in the struggle between the two roads.
Only by emancipating all mankind can the proletariat ultimately emancipate itself. The historical task of the dictatorship of the proletariat has two aspects, one internal and the other international. The internal task consists mainly of completely abolishing all the exploiting classes, developing socialist economy to the maximum, enhancing the communist consciousness of the masses, abolishing the differences between ownership by the whole people and collective ownership, between workers and peasants, between town and country and between mental and manual labourers, eliminating any possibility
page 13
of the re-emergence of classes and the restoration of capitalism and providing conditions for the realization of a communist society with its principle, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". The international task consists mainly of preventing attacks by international imperialism (including armed intervention and disintegration by peaceful means) and of giving support to the world revolution until the people of all countries finally abolish imperialism, capitalism and the system of exploitation. Before the fulfilment of both tasks and before the advent of a full communist society, the dictatorship of the proletariat is absolutely necessary.
Judging from the actual situation today, the tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat are still far from accomplished in any of the socialist countries. In all socialist countries without exception, there are classes and class struggle, the struggle between the socialist and the capitalist roads, the question of carrying the socialist revolution through to the end and the question of preventing the restoration of capitalism. All the socialist countries still have a very long way to go before the differences between ownership by the whole people and collective ownership, between workers and peasants, between town and country and between mental and manual labourers are eliminated, before all classes and class differences are abolished and a communist society with its principle, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", is realized. Therefore, it is necessary for all the socialist countries to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In these circumstances, the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the revisionist Khrushchov
page 14
clique is nothing but the betrayal of socialism and communism.
In announcing the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, the revisionist Khrushchov clique base themselves mainly on the argument that antagonistic classes have been eliminated and that class struggle no longer exists.
But what is the actual situation in the Soviet Union? Are there really no antagonistic classes and no class struggle there?
Following the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat was established in the Soviet Union, capitalist private ownership was destroyed and socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership were established through the nationalization of industry and the collectivization of agriculture, and great achievements in socialist construction were scored during several decades. All this constituted an indelible victory of tremendous historic significance won by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet people under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin.
However, the old bourgeoisie and other exploiting classes which had been overthrown in the Soviet Union were not eradicated and survived after industry was nationalized and agriculture collectivized. The political and ideological influence of the bourgeoisie remained. Spontaneous capitalist tendencies continued to exist both in the city and in the countryside. New bourgeois
page 15
elements and kulaks were still incessantly generated. Throughout the long intervening period, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the struggle between the socialist and capitalist roads have continued in the political, economic and ideological spheres.
As the Soviet Union was the first, and at the time the only, country to build socialism and had no foreign experience to go by, and as Stalin departed from Marxist-Leninist dialectics in his understanding of the laws of class struggle in socialist society, he prematurely declared after agriculture was basically collectivized that there were "no longer antagonistic classes"[1] in the Soviet Union and that it was "free of class conflicts",[2] one-sidedly stressed the internal homogeneity of socialist society and overlooked its contradictions, failed to rely upon the working class and the masses in the struggle against the forces of capitalism and regarded the possibility of the restoration of capitalism as associated only with armed attack by international imperialism. This was wrong both in theory and in practice. Nevertheless, Stalin remained a great Marxist-Leninist. As long as he led the Soviet Party and state, he held fast to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist course, pursued a Marxist-Leninist line and ensured the Soviet Union's victorious advance along the road of socialism.
Ever since Khrushchov seized the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, he has pushed through a whole
page 16
series of revisionist policies which have greatly hastened the growth of the forces of capitalism and again sharpened the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and the struggle between the roads of socialism and capitalism in the Soviet Union.
Scanning the reports in Soviet newspapers over the last few years, one finds numerous examples demonstrating not only the presence of many elements of the old exploiting classes in Soviet society, but also the generation of new bourgeois elements on a large scale and the acceleration of class polarization.
Let us first look at the activities of the various bourgeois elements in the Soviet enterprises owned by the whole people.
Leading functionaries of some state-owned factories and their gangs abuse their positions and amass large fortunes by using the equipment and materials of the factories to set up "underground workshops" for private production, selling the products illicitly and dividing the spoils. Here are some examples.
In a Leningrad plant producing military items, the leading functionaries placed their own men in "all key posts" and "turned the state enterprise into a private one". They illicitly engaged in the production of non-military goods and from the sale of fountain pens alone embezzled 1,200,000 old roubles in three years. Among these people was a man who "was a Nepman . . . in the 1920's" and had been a "lifelong thief''.[1]
In a silk-weaving mill in Uzbekistan, the manager ganged up with the chief engineer, the chief accountant, the chief of the supply and marketing section, heads of
page 17
workshops and others, and they all became "new-born entrepreneurs". They purchased more than ten tons of artificial and pure silk through various illegal channels in order to manufacture goods which "did not pass through the accounts". They employed workers without going through the proper procedures and enforced "a twelve-hour working day''.[1]
The manager of a furniture factory in Kharkov set up an "illegal knitwear workshop" and carried on secret operations inside the factory. This man "had several wives, several cars, several houses, 176 neck-ties, about a hundred shirts and dozens of suits". He was also a big gambler at the horse-races.[2]
Such people do not operate all by themselves. They invariably work hand in glove with functionaries in the state departments in charge of supplies and in the commercial and other departments. They have their own men in the police and judicial departments who protect them and act as their agents. Even high-ranking officials in the state organs support and shield them. Here are a few examples.
The chief of the workshops affiliated to a Moscow psychoneurological dispensary and his gang set up an "underground enterprise", and by bribery "obtained fifty-eight knitting machines" and a large amount of raw material. They entered into business relations with "fifty-two factories, handicraft co-operatives and collective farms" and made three million roubles in a few years. They bribed functionaries of the Department for Com-
page 18
bating Theft of Socialist Property and Speculation, controllers, inspectors, instructors and others.[1]
The manager of a machinery plant in the Russian Federation, together with the deputy manager of a second machinery plant and other functionaries, or forty-three persons in all, stole more than nine hundred looms and sold them to factories in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus and other places, whose leading functionaries used them for illicit production.[2]
In the Kirghiz SSR, a gang of over forty embezzlers and grafters, having gained control of two factories, organized underground production and plundered more than thirty million roubles' worth of state property. This gang included the Chairman of the Planning Commission of the Republic, a Vice-Minister of Commerce, seven bureau chiefs and division chiefs of the Republic's Council of Ministers, National Economic Council and State Control Commission, as well as "a big kulak who had fled from exile".[3]
These examples show that the factories which have fallen into the clutches of such degenerates are socialist enterprises only in name, that in fact they have become capitalist enterprises by which these persons enrich themselves. The relationship of such persons to the workers has turned into one between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed. Are not such degenerates who possess and make use of means of production to exploit the labour of others out-and-out bourgeois elements? Are not their accomplices in gov-
page 19
ernment organizations, who work hand in glove with them, participate in many types of exploitation, engage in embezzlement, accept bribes, and share the spoils, also out-and-out bourgeois elements?
Obviously all these people belong to a class that is antagonistic to the proletariat -- they belong to the bourgeoisie. Their activities against socialism are definitely class struggle with the bourgeoisie attacking the proletariat.
Now let us look at the activities of various kulak elements on the collective farms.
Some leading collective-farm functionaries and their gangs steal and speculate at will, freely squander public money and fleece the collective farmers. Here are some examples.
The chairman of a collective farm in Uzbekistan "held the whole village in terror". All the important posts on this farm "were occupied by his in-laws and other relatives and friends". He squandered "over 132,000 roubles of the collective farm for his personal 'needs'". He had a car, two motor-cycles and three wives, each with "a house of her own''.[1]
The chairman of a collective farm in the Kursk Region regarded the farm as his "hereditary estate". He conspired with its accountant, cashier, chief warehouse-keeper, agronomist, general-store manager and others. Shielding each other, they "fleeced the collective farmers" and pocketed more than a hundred thousand roubles in a few years.[2]
page 20
The chairman of a collective farm in the Ukraine made over 50,000 roubles at its expense by forging purchase certificates and cash-account orders in collusion with its woman accountant, who had been praised for keeping "model accounts" and whose deeds had been displayed at the Moscow Exhibition of Achievements of the National Economy.[1]
The chairman of a collective farm in the Alma-Ata Region specialized in commercial speculation. He bought "fruit juice in the Ukraine or Uzbekistan, and sugar and alcohol from Djambul", processed them and then sold the wine at very high prices in many localities. In this farm a winery was created with a capacity of over a million litres a year, its speculative commercial network spread throughout the Kazakhstan SSR, and commercial speculation became one of the farm's main sources of income.[2]
The chairman of a collective farm in Byelorussia considered himself "a feudal princeling on the farm" and acted "personally" in all matters. He lived not on the farm but in the city or in his own splendid villa, and was always busy with "various commercial machinations" and "illegal deals". He bought cattle from the outside, represented them as the products of his collective farm and falsified output figures. And yet "not a few commendatory newspaper reports" had been published about him and he had been called a "model leader".[3]
These examples show that collective farms under the control of such functionaries virtually become their
page 21
private property. Such men turn socialist collective economic enterprises into economic enterprises of new kulaks. There are often people in their superior organizations who protect them. Their relationship to the collective farmers has likewise become that of oppressors to oppressed, of exploiters to exploited. Are not such neo-exploiters who ride on the backs of the collective farmers one hundred-per-cent neo-kulaks?
Obviously, they all belong to a class that is antagonistic to the proletariat and the labouring farmers, belong to the kulak or rural bourgeois class. Their anti-socialist activities are precisely class struggle with the bourgeoisie attacking the proletariat and the labouring farmers.
Apart from the bourgeois elements in state enterprises and collective farms, there are many others in both town and country in the Soviet Union.
Some of them set up private enterprises for private production and sale; others organize contractor teams and openly undertake construction jobs for state or co-operative enterprises; still others open private hotels. A "Soviet woman capitalist" in Leningrad hired workers to make nylon blouses for sale, and her "daily income amounted to 700 new roubles''.[1] The owner of a workshop in the Kursk Region made felt boots for sale at speculative prices. He had in his possession 540 pairs of felt boots, eight kilogrammes of gold coins, 3,000 ; metres of high-grade textiles, 20 carpets, 1,200 kilogrammes of wool and many other valuables.[2] A private entrepreneur in the Gomel Region "hired workers and artisans" and in the course of two years secured con-
page 22
tracts for the construction and overhauling of furnaces in twelve factories at a high price.[1] In the Orenburg Region there are "hundreds of private hotels and trans-shipment points", and "the money of the collective farms and the state is continuously streaming into the pockets of the hostelry owners".[2]
Some engage in commercial speculation, making tremendous profits through buying cheap and selling dear or bringing goods from far away. In Moscow there are a great many speculators engaged in the re-sale of agricultural produce. They "bring to Moscow tons of citrus fruit, apples and vegetables and re-sell them at speculative prices". "These profit-grabbers are provided with every facility, with market inns, store-rooms and other services at their disposal".[3] In the Krasnodar Territory, a speculator set up her own agency and "employed twelve salesmen and two stevedores". She transported "thousands of hogs, hundreds of quintals of grain and hundreds of tons of fruit" from the rural areas to the Don Basin and moved "great quantities of stolen slag bricks, whole wagons of glass" and other building materials from the city to the villages. She reaped huge profits out of such re-sale.[4]
Others specialize as brokers and middlemen. They have wide contacts and through them one can get any thing in return for a bribe. There was a broker in Leningrad who "though he is not the Minister of Trade, controls all the stocks", and "though he holds no post on
page 23
the railway, disposes of wagons". He could obtain "things the stocks of which are strictly controlled, from outside the stocks". "All the store-houses in Leningrad are at his service." For delivering goods, he received huge "bonuses" -- 700,000 roubles from one timber combine in 1960 alone. In Leningrad, there is "a whole group" of such brokers.[1]
These private entrepreneurs and speculators are engaged in the most naked capitalist exploitation. Isn't it clear that they belong to the bourgeoisie, the class antagonistic to the proletariat?
Actually the Soviet press itself calls these people "Soviet capitalists", "new-born entrepreneurs", "private entrepreneurs", "newly-emerged kulaks", "speculators", "exploiters", etc. Aren't the revisionist Khrushchov clique contradicting themselves when they assert that antagonistic classes do not exist in the Soviet Union?
The facts cited above are only a part of those published in the Soviet press. They are enough to shock people, but there are many more which have not been published, many bigger and more serious cases which are covered up and shielded. We have quoted the above data in order to answer the question whether there are antagonistic classes and class struggle in the Soviet Union. These data are readily available and even the revisionist Khrushchov clique are unable to deny them.
These data suffice to show that the unbridled activities of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat are widespread in the Soviet Union, in the city as well as the countryside, in industry as well as agriculture, in the sphere of production as well as the sphere of circulation, all the way
page 24
from the economic departments to Party and government organizations, and from the grass-roots to the higher leading bodies. These anti-socialist activities are nothing if not the sharp class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.
It is not strange that attacks on socialism should be made in a socialist country by old and new bourgeois elements. There is nothing terrifying about this so long as the leadership of the Party and state remains a Marxist-Leninist one. But in the Soviet Union today, the gravity of the situation lies in the fact that the revisionist Khrushchov clique have usurped the leadership of the Soviet Party and state and that a privilegded bourgeois stratum has emerged in Soviet society.
We shall deal with this problem in the following section.
The privileged stratum in contemporary Soviet society is composed of degenerate elements from among the leading cadres of Party and government organizations, enterprises and farms as well as bourgeois intellectuals; it stands in opposition to the workers, the peasants and the overwhelming majority of the intellectuals and cadres of the Soviet Union.
Lenin pointed out soon after the October Revolution that bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologies and force of habit were encircling and influencing the proletariat from all directions and were corrupting certain of its sections. This circumstance led to the emergence from
page 25
among the Soviet officials and functionaries both of bureaucrats alienated from the masses and of new bourgeois elements. Lenin also pointed out that although the high salaries paid to the bourgeois technical specialists staying on to work for the Soviet regime were necessary, they were having a corrupting influence on it.
Therefore, Lenin laid great stress on waging persistent struggles against the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideologies, on arousing the broad masses to take part in government work, on ceaselessly exposing and purging bureaucrats and new bourgeois elements in the Soviet organs, and on creating conditions that would bar the existence and reproduction of the bourgeoisie. Lenin pointed out sharply that "without a systematic and determined struggle to improve the apparatus, we shall perish before the basis of socialism is created".[1]
At the same time, he laid great stress on adherence to the principle of the Paris Commune in wage policy, that is, all public servants were to be paid wages corresponding to those of the workers and only bourgeois specialists were to be paid high salaries. From the October Revolution to the period of Soviet economic rehabilitation, Lenin's directives were in the main observed; the leading personnel of the Party and government organizations and enterprises and Party members among the specialists received salaries roughly equivalent to the wages of workers.
At that time, the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union adopted a number of measures in the sphere of politics and ideology and in the system
page 26
of distribution to prevent leading cadres in any department from abusing their powers or degenerating morally or politically.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union headed by Stalin adhered to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the road of socialism and waged a staunch struggle against the forces of capitalism. Stalin's struggles against the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites were in essence a reflection within the Party of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and of the struggle between the two roads of socialism and capitalism. Victory in these struggles smashed the vain plot of the bourgeoisie to restore capitalism in the Soviet Union.
It cannot be denied that before Stalin's death high salaries were already being paid to certain groups and that some cadres had already degenerated and become bourgeois elements. The Central Committee of the CPSU pointed out in its report to the 19th Party Congress in October 1952 that degeneration and corruption had appeared in certain Party organizations. The leaders of these organizations had turned them into small communities composed exclusively of their own people, "setting their group interests higher than the interests of the Party and the state". Some executives of industrial enterprises "forget that the enterprises entrusted to their charge are state enterprises, and try to turn them into their own private domain". "Instead of safeguarding the common husbandry of the collective farms", some Party and Soviet functionaries and some cadres in agricultural departments "engage in filching collective-farm property". In the cultural, artistic and scientific fields too, works attacking and smearing the socialist system had
page 27
appeared and a monopolistic "Arakcheyev regime" had emerged among the scientists.
Since Khrushchov usurped the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, there has been a fundamental change in the state of the class struggle in the Soviet Union.
Khrushchov has carried out a series of revisionist policies serving the interests of the bourgeoisie and rapidly swelling the forces of capitalism in the Soviet Union.
On the pretext of "combating the personality cult", Khrushchov has defamed the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system and thus in fact paved the way for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. In completely negating Stalin, he has in fact negated Marxism-Leninism which was upheld by Stalin and opened the floodgates for the revisionist deluge.
Khrushchov has substituted "material incentive" for the socialist principle, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work". He has widened, and not narrowed, the gap between the incomes of a small minority and those of the workers, peasants and ordinary intellectuals. He has supported the degenerates in leading positions, encouraging them to become even more unscrupulous in abusing their powers and to appropriate the fruits of labour of the Soviet people. Thus he has accelerated the polarization of classes in Soviet society.
Khrushchov sabotages the socialist planned economy, applies the capitalist principle of profit, develops capitalist free competition and undermines socialist ownership by the whole people.
Khrushchov attacks the system of socialist agricultural planning, describing it as "bureaucratic" and
page 28
"unnecessary". Eager to learn from the big proprietors of American farms, he is encouraging capitalist management, fostering a kulak economy and undermining the socialist collective economy.
Khrushchov is peddling bourgeois ideology, bourgeois liberty, equality, fraternity and humanity, inculcating bourgeois idealism and metaphysics and the reactionary ideas of bourgeois individualism, humanism and pacifism among the Soviet people, and debasing socialist morality. The rotten bourgeois culture of the West is now fashionable in the Soviet Union, and socialist culture is ostracized and attacked.
Under the signboard of "peaceful coexistence", Khrushchov has been colluding with U.S. imperialism, wrecking the socialist camp and the international communist movement, opposing the revolutionary struggles of the oppressed peoples and nations, practising great-power chauvinism and national egoism and betraying proletarian internationalism. All this is being done for the protection of the vested interests of a handful of people, which he places above the fundamental interests of the peoples of the Soviet Union, the socialist camp and the whole world.
The line Khrushchov pursues is a revisionist line through and through. Guided by this line, not only have the old bourgeois elements run wild but new bourgeois elements have appeared in large numbers among the leading cadres of the Soviet Party and government, the chiefs of state enterprises and collective farms, and the higher intellectuals in the fields of culture, art, science and technology.
In the Soviet Union at present, not only have the new bourgeois elements increased in number as never before, but their social status has fundamentally changed. Before Khrushchov came to power, they did not occupy the ruling position in Soviet society. Their activities were restricted in many ways and they were subject to attack. But since Khrushchov took over, usurping the leadership of the Party and the state step by step, the new bourgeois elements have gradually risen to the ruling position in the Party and government and in the economic, cultural and other departments, and formed a privileged stratum in Soviet society.
This privileged stratum is the principal component of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union today and the main social basis of the revisionist Khrushchov clique. The revisionist Khrushchov clique are the political representatives of the Soviet bourgeoisie, and particularly of its privileged stratum.
The revisionist Khrushchov clique have carried out one purge after another and replaced one group of cadres after another throughout the country, from the central to the local bodies, from leading Party and government organizations to economic and cultural and educational departments, dismissing those they do not trust and planting their proteges in leading posts.
Take the Central Committee of the CPSU as an example. The statistics show that nearly seventy per cent of the members of the Central Committee of the CPSU who were elected at its 19th Congress in 1952 were purged in the course of the 20th and 22nd Congresses held respectively in 1956 and 1961. And nearly fifty per cent of the members of the Central Committee who were elected at the 20th Congress were purged at the time of the 22nd Congress.
page 30
Or take the local organizations. On the eve of the 22nd Congress, on the pretext of "renewing the cadres", the revisionist Khrushchov clique, according to incomplete statistics, removed from office forty-five per cent of the members of the Party Central Committees of the Union Republics and of the Party Committees of the Territories and Regions, and forty per cent of the members of the Municipal and District Party Committees. In 1963, on the pretext of dividing the Party into "industrial" and "agricultural" Party committees, they further replaced more than half the members of the Central Committees of the Union Republics and of the Regional Party Committees.
Through this series of changes the Soviet privileged stratum has gained control of the Party, the government and other important organizations. The members of this privileged stratum have converted the function of serving the masses into the privilege of dominating them. They are abusing their powers over the means of production and of livelihood for the private benefit of their small clique.
The members of this privileged stratum appropriate the fruits of the Soviet people's labour and pocket in comes that are dozens or even a hundred times those of the average Soviet worker and peasant. They not only secure high incomes in the form of high salaries, high awards, high royalties and a great variety of personal subsidies, but also use their privileged position to appropriate public property by graft and bribery. Completely divorced from the working people of the Soviet Union, they live the parasitical and decadent life of the bourgeoisie.
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The members of this privileged stratum have become utterly degenerate ideologically, have completely departed from the revolutionary traditions of the Bolshevik Party and discarded the lofty ideals of the Soviet working class. They are opposed to Marxism-Leninism and socialism. They betray the revolution and forbid others to make revolution. Their sole concern is to consolidate their economic position and political rule. All their activities revolve around the private interests of their own privileged stratum.
Having usurped the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, the Khrushchov clique are turning the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of the Soviet Union with its glorious revolutionary history into a revisionist party; they are turning the Soviet state under the dictatorship of the proletariat into a state under the dictatorship of the revisionist Khrushchov clique; and, step by step, they are turning socialist ownership by the whole people and socialist collective ownership into ownership by the privileged stratum.
People have seen how in Yugoslavia, although the Tito clique still displays the banner of "socialism", a bureaucrat bourgeoisie opposed to the Yugoslav people has gradually come into being since the Tito clique took the road of revisionism, transforming the Yugoslav state from a dictatorship of the proletariat into the dictatorship of the bureaucrat bourgeoisie and its socialist public economy into state capitalism. Now people see the Khrushchov clique taking the road al ready travelled by the Tito clique. Khrushchov looks to Belgrade as his Mecca, saying again and again that he will learn from the Tito clique's experience and declaring that he and the Tito clique "belong to one and the same
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idea and are guided by the same theory".[1] This is not at all surprising.
As a result of Khrushchov's revisionism, the first socialist country in the world built by the great Soviet people with their blood and sweat is now facing an unprecedented danger of capitalist restoration.
The Khrushchov clique are spreading the tale that "there are no longer antagonistic classes and class struggle in the Soviet Union" in order to cover up the facts about their own ruthless class struggle against the Soviet people.
The Soviet privileged stratum represented by the revisionist Khrushchov clique constitutes only a few per cent of the Soviet population. Among the Soviet cadres its numbers are also small. It stands diametrically opposed to the Soviet people, who constitute more than 90 per cent of the total population, and to the great majority of the Soviet cadres and Communists. The contradiction between the Soviet people and this privileged stratum is now the principal contradiction inside the Soviet Union, and it is an irreconcilable and antagonistic class contradiction.
The glorious Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which was built by Lenin, and the great Soviet people displayed epoch-making revolutionary initiative in the October Socialist Revolution, they showed their heroism and stamina in defeating the White Guards and the armed intervention by more than a dozen imperialist countries, they scored unprecedentedly brilliant achievements in the struggle for industrialization and agricultural collec-
page 33
tivization, and they won a tremendous victory in the Patriotic War against the German fascists and saved all mankind. Even under the rule of the Khrushchov clique, the mass of the members of the CPSU and the Soviet people are carrying on the glorious revolutionary traditions nurtured by Lenin and Stalin, and they still uphold socialism and aspire to communism.
The broad masses of the Soviet workers, collective farmers and intellectuals are seething with discontent against the oppression and exploitation practised by the privileged stratum. They have come to see ever more clearly the revisionist features of the Khrushchov clique which is betraying socialism and restoring capitalism. Among the ranks of the Soviet cadres, there are many who still persist in the revolutionary stand of the proletariat, adhere to the road of socialism and firmly oppose Khrushchov's revisionism. The broad masses of the Soviet people, of Communists and cadres are using various means to resist and oppose the revisionist line of the Khrushchov clique, so that the revisionist Khrushchov clique cannot so easily bring about the restoration of capitalism. The great Soviet people are fighting to defend the glorious traditions of the Great October Revolution, to preserve the great gains of socialism and to smash the plot for the restoration of capitalism.
At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU Khrushchov openly raised the banner of opposition to the dictatorship of the proletariat, announcing the replacement of the state of
page 34
the dictatorship of the proletariat by the "state of the whole people". It is written in the Programme of the CPSU that the dictatorship of the proletariat "has ceased to be indispensable in the U.S.S.R." and that "the state, which arose as a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, has, in the new, contemporary stage, become a state of the entire people".
Anyone with a little knowledge of Marxism-Leninism knows that the concept of the state is a class concept. Lenin pointed out that "the distinguishing feature of the state is the existence of a separate class of people in whose hands power is concentrated".[1] The state is a weapon of class struggle, a machine by means of which one class represses another. Every state is the dictatorship of a definite class. So long as the state exists, it cannot possibly stand above class or belong to the whole people.
The proletariat and its political party have never concealed their views; they say explicitly that the very aim of the proletarian socialist revolution is to overthrow bourgeois rule and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. After the victory of the socialist revolution, the proletariat and its party must strive unremittingly to fulfil the historical tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat and eliminate classes and class differences, so that the state will wither away. It is only the bourgeoisie and its parties which in their attempt to hoodwink the masses try by every means to cover up the class nature of state power and describe the state machinery under their control as being "of the whole people" and "above class".
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The fact that Khrushchov has announced the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and advanced the thesis of the "state of the whole people" demonstrates that he has replaced the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the state by bourgeois falsehoods.
When Marxist-Leninists criticized their fallacies, the revisionist Khrushchov clique hastily defended themselves and tried hard to invent a so-called theoretical basis for the "state of the whole people". They now assert that the historical period of the dictatorship of the proletariat mentioned by Marx and Lenin refers only to the transition from capitalism to the first stage of communism and not to its higher stage. They further assert that "the dictatorship of the proletariat will cease to be necessary before the state withers away"[1] and that after the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat, there is yet another stage, the "state of the whole people".
These are out-and-out sophistries.
In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx advanced the well-known axiom that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the state of the period of transition from capitalism to communism. Lenin gave a clear explanation of this Marxist axiom.
He said:
In his Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx wrote: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."
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Up to now this axiom has never been disputed by Socialists, and yet it implies the recognition of the existence of the state right up to the time when victorious socialism has grown into complete communism.[1]
Lenin further said:
The essence of Marx's teaching on the state has been mastered only by those who understand that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class society in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from "classless society", from Communism.[2]
It is perfectly clear that according to Marx and Lenin, the historical period throughout which the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat exists, is not merely the period of transition from capitalism to the first stage of communism, as alleged by the revisionist Khrushchov clique, but the entire period of transition from capitalism to "complete communism", to the time when all class differences will have been eliminated and "classless society" realized, that is to say, to the higher stage of communism.
It is equally clear that the state in the transition period referred to by Marx and Lenin is the dictatorship of the proletariat and not anything else. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the form of the state in the entire period of transition from capitalism to the higher stage of com-
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munism, and also the last form of the state in human history. The withering away of the dictatorship of the proletariat will mean the withering away of the state. Lenin said:
Marx deduced from the whole history of Socialism and of the political struggle that the state was bound to disappear, and that the transitional form of its disappearance (the transition from state to nonstate) would be the "proletariat organized as the ruling class''.[1]
Historically the dictatorship of the proletariat may take different forms from one country to another and from one period to another, but in essence it will remain the same. Lenin said:
The transition from capitalism to Communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.[2]
It can thus be seen that it is absolutely not the view of Marx and Lenin but an invention of the revisionist Khrushchov that the end of the dictatorship of the proletariat will precede the withering away of the state and will be followed by yet another stage, "the state of the whole people".
In arguing for their anti-Marxist-Leninist views, the revisionist Khrushchov clique have taken great pains to find a sentence from Marx and distorted it by quoting it out of context. They have arbitrarily described the future nature of the state [Staatswesen in German] of communist society referred to by Marx in his Critique of
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the Gotha Programme as the "'state of communist society' [[. . . -- DJR] in Russian], which is no longer a dictatorship of the proletariat".[1] They gleefully announced that the Chinese would not dare to quote this from Marx. Apparently the revisionist Khrushchov clique think it is very helpful to them.
As it happens, Lenin seems to have foreseen that revisionists would make use of this phrase to distort Marxism. In his Marxism on the State, Lenin gave an excellent explanation of it. He said, ". . . the dictatorship of the proletariat is a 'political transition period'. . . . But Marx goes on to speak of 'the future nature of the state [[. . . -- DJR] in Russian, Staatswesen in German] of communist society'!! Thus, there will be a state even in 'communist society'!! Is there not a contradiction in this?" Lenin answered, "No." He then tabulated the three stages in the process of development from the bourgeois state to the withering away of the state:
The first stage -- in capitalist society, the state is needed by the bourgeoisie -- the bourgeois state.
The second stage -- in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the state is needed by the proletariat -- the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The third stage -- in communist society, the state is not necessary, it withers away.
He concluded: "Complete consistency and clarity!!"
In Lenin's tabulation, only the bourgeois state, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the withering
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away of the state are to be found. By precisely this tabulation Lenin made it clear that when communism is reached the state withers away and becomes non-existent.
Ironically enough, the revisionist Khrushchov clique also quoted this very passage from Lenin's Marxism on the State in the course of defending their error. And then they proceeded to make the following idiotic statement:
In our country the first two periods referred to by Lenin in the opinion quoted already belong to history. In the Soviet Union a state of the whole people -- a communist state system, the state of the first phase of communism, has arisen and is developing.[1]
If the first two periods referred to by Lenin have already become a thing of the past in the Soviet Union, then the state should be withering away, and where could a "state of the whole people" come from? If the state is not yet withering away, then it ought to be the dictatorship of the proletariat and under absolutely no circumstances a "state of the whole people".
In arguing for their "state of the whole people", the revisionist Khrushchov clique exert themselves to vilify the dictatorship of the proletariat as undemocratic. They assert that only by replacing the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat by the "state of the whole people" can democracy be further developed and turned into "genuine democracy for the whole people". Khrushchov has pretentiously said that the abolition of the dictatorship of the proletariat exemplifies "a line of energetically devel-
page 40
oping democracy" and that "proletarian democracy is becoming socialist democracy of the whole people".[1]
These utterances can only show that their authors either are completely ignorant of the Marxist-Leninist teachings on the state or are maliciously distorting them.
Anyone with a little knowledge of Marxism-Leninism knows that the concept of democracy as a form of the state, like that of dictatorship, is a class one. There can only be class democracy, there cannot be "democracy for the whole people".
Lenin said:
Democracy for the vast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i.e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people -- this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to Communism.[2]
Dictatorship over the exploiting classes and democracy among the working people -- these are the two aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is only under the dictatorship of the proletariat that democracy for the masses of the working people can be developed and expanded to an unprecedented extent. Without the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be no genuine democracy for the working people.
Where there is bourgeois democracy there is no proletarian democracy, and where there is proletarian democracy there is no bourgeois democracy. The one excludes the other. This is inevitable and admits of no compro-
page 41
mise. The more thoroughly bourgeois democracy is eliminated, the more will proletarian democracy flourish. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie, any country where this occurs is lacking in democracy. But actually this is the promotion of proletarian democracy and the elimination of bourgeois democracy. As proletarian democracy develops, bourgeois democracy is eliminated.
This fundamental Marxist-Leninist thesis is opposed by the revisionist Khrushchov clique. In fact, they hold that so long as enemies are subjected to dictatorship there is no democracy and that the only way to develop democracy is to abolish the dictatorship over enemies, stop suppressing them and institute "democracy for the whole people".
Their view is cast from the same mould as the renegade Kautsky's concept of "pure democracy".
In criticizing Kautsky Lenin said:
. . . "pure democracy" is not only an ignorant phrase, revealing a lack of understanding both of the class struggle and of the nature of the state, but also a thrice empty phrase, since in communist society democracy will wither away in the process of changing and becoming a habit, but will never be "pure" democracy.
He also pointed out:
The dialectics (course) of the development is as follows: from absolutism to bourgeois democracy; from bourgeois to proletarian democracy; from proletarian democracy to none.[2]
That is to say, in the higher stage of communism proletarian democracy will wither away along with the
page 42
elimination of classes and the withering away of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
To speak plainly, as with the "state of the whole people", the "democracy for the whole people" proclaimed by Khrushchov is a hoax. In thus retrieving the tattered garments of the bourgeoisie and the old-line revisionists, patching them up and adding a label of his own, Khrushchov's sole purpose is to deceive the Soviet people and the revolutionary people of the world and cover up his betrayal of the dictatorship of the proletariat and his opposition to socialism.
What is the essence of Khrushchov's "state of the whole people"?
Khrushchov has abolished the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union and established a dictatorship of the revisionist clique headed by himself, that is, a dictatorship of a privileged stratum of the Soviet bourgeoisie. Actually his "state of the whole people" is not a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat but a state in which his small revisionist clique wield their dictatorship over the masses of the workers, the peasants and the revolutionary intellectuals. Under the rule of the Khrushchov clique, there is no democracy for the Soviet working people, there is democracy only for the handful of people belonging to the revisionist Khrushchov clique, for the privileged stratum and for the bourgeois elements, old and new. Khrushchov's "democracy for the whole people" is nothing but out-and-out bourgeois democracy, i.e., a despotic dictatorship of the Khrushchov clique over the Soviet people.
In the Soviet Union today, anyone who persists in the proletarian stand, upholds Marxism-Leninism and has the courage to speak out, to resist or to fight is watched,
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followed, summoned, and even arrested, imprisoned or diagnosed as "mentally ill" and sent to "mental hospitals". Recently the Soviet press has declared that it is necessary to "fight" against those who show even the slightest dissatisfaction, and called for "relentless battle" against the "rotten jokers"[1] who are so bold as to make sarcastic remarks about Khrushchov's agricultural policy. It is particularly astonishing that the revisionist Khrushchov clique should have on more than one occasion bloodily suppressed striking workers and the masses who put up resistance.
The formula of abolishing the dictatorship of the proletariat while keeping a state of the whole people reveals the secret of the revisionist Khrushchov clique; that is, they are firmly opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat but will not give up state power till their doom. The revisionist Khrushchov clique know the paramount importance of controlling state power. They need the state machinery for repressing the Soviet working people and the Marxist-Leninists. They need it for clearing the way for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union. These are Khrushchov's real aims in raising the banners of the "state of the whole people" and "democracy for the whole people".
At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU Khrushchov openly raised another banner, the alteration of the proletarian character of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He
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announced the replacement of the party of the proletariat by a "party of the entire people". The programme of the CPSU states, "As a result of the victory of socialism in the U.S.S.R. and the consolidation of the unity of Soviet society, the Communist Party of the working class has become the vanguard of the Soviet people, a party of the entire people." The Open Letter of the Central Committee of the CPSU says that the CPSU "has become a political organization of the entire people".
How absurd!
Elementary knowledge of Marxism-Leninism tells us that, like the state, a political party is an instrument of class struggle. Every political party has a class character. Party spirit is the concentrated expression of class character. There is no such thing as a non-class or supra-class political party and there never has been, nor is there such a thing as a "party of the entire people" that does not represent the interests of a particular class.
The party of the proletariat is built in accordance with the revolutionary theory and revolutionary style of Marxism-Leninism; it is the party formed by the advanced elements who are boundlessly faithful to the historical mission of the proletariat, it is the organized vanguard of the proletariat and the highest form of its organization. The party of the proletariat represents the interests of the proletariat and the concentration of its will.
Moreover, the party of the proletariat is the only party able to represent the interests of the people, who constitute over ninety per cent of the total population. The reason is that the interests of the proletariat are identical with those of the working masses, that the proletarian party can approach problems in the light of the historical role as the proletariat and in terms of the present and
page 45
future interests of the proletariat and the working masses and of the best interests of the overwhelming majority of the people, and that it can give correct leadership in accordance with Marxism-Leninism.
In addition to its members of working-class origin, the party of the proletariat has members of other class origins. But the latter do not join the Party as representatives of other classes. From the very day they join the Party they must abandon their former class stand and take the stand of the proletariat. Marx and Engels said:
If people of this kind from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first condition must be that they should not bring any remnants of bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, etc., prejudices with them but should whole-heartedly adopt the proletarian outlook.[1]
The basic principles concerning the character of the proletarian party were long ago elucidated by Marxism-Leninism. But in the opinion of the revisionist Khrushchov clique these principles are "stereotyped formulas", while their "party of the entire people" conforms to the "actual dialectics of the development of the Communist Party".[2]
The revisionist Khrushchov clique have cudgelled their brains to think up arguments justifying their "party of the entire people". They have argued during the talks between the Chinese and Soviet Parties in July 1963 and in the Soviet press that they have changed the Communist
page 46
Party of the Soviet Union into a "party of the entire people" because:
1. The CPSU expresses the interests of the whole people.
2. The entire people have accepted the Marxist-Leninist world outlook of the working class, and the aim of the working class -- the building of communism -- has become the aim of the entire people.
3. The ranks of the CPSU consist of the best representatives of the workers, collective farmers and intellectuals. The CPSU unites in its own ranks representatives of over a hundred nationalities and peoples.
4. The democratic method used in the Party's activities is also in accord with its character as the Party of the entire people.
It is obvious even at a glance that none of these arguments adduced by the revisionist Khrushchov clique shows a serious approach to a serious problem.
When Lenin was fighting the opportunist muddle-heads, he remarked:
Can people obviously incapable of taking serious problems seriously, themselves be taken seriously? It is difficult to do so, comrades, very difficult! But the question which certain people cannot treat seriously is in itself so serious that it will do no harm to examine even patently frivolous replies to it.[1]
Today, too, it will do no harm to examine the patently frivolous replies given by the revisionist Khrushchov clique to so serious a question as that of the party of the proletariat.
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According to the revisionist Khrushchov clique, the Communist Party should become a "party of the entire people" because it expresses the interests of the entire people. Does it not then follow that from the very beginning it should have been a "party of the entire people" instead of a party of the proletariat?
According to the revisionist Khrushchov clique, the Communist Party should become a "party of the entire people" because "the entire people have accepted the Marxist-Leninist world outlook of the working class". But how can it be said that everyone has accepted the Marxist-Leninist world outlook in Soviet society where sharp class polarization and class struggle are taking place? Can it be said that the tens of thousands of old and new bourgeois elements in your country are all Marxist-Leninists? If Marxism-Leninism has really be come the world outlook of the entire people, as you allege, does it not then follow that there is no difference in your society between Party and non-Party and no need whatsoever for the Party to exist? What difference does it make if there is a "party of the entire people" or not?
According to the revisionist Khrushchov clique, the Communist Party should become a "party of the entire people" because its membership consists of workers, peasants and intellectuals and all nationalities and peoples. Does this mean then that before the idea of the "party of the entire people" was put forward at its 22nd Congress none of the members of the CPSU came from classes other than the working class? Does it mean that formerly the members of the Party all came from just one nationality, to the exclusion of other nationalities and peoples? If the character of a party is determined by
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the social background of its membership, does it not then follow that the numerous political parties in the world whose members also come from various classes, nationalities and peoples are all "parties of the entire people"?
According to the revisionist Khrushchov clique, the Party should be a "party of the entire people" because the methods it uses in its activities are democratic. But from its outset, a Communist Party is built on the basis of the principle of democratic centralism and should always adopt the mass line and the democratic method of persuasion and education in working among the people. Does it not then follow that a Communist Party is a "party of the entire people" from the first day of its founding?
Briefly, none of the arguments listed by the revisionist Khrushchov clique holds water.
Besides making a great fuss about a "party of the entire people", Khrushchov has also divided the Party , into an "industrial Party" and an "agricultural Party" on the pretext of "building the Party organs on the production principle".[1]
The revisionist Khrushchov clique say that they have done so because of "the primacy of economics over politics under socialism"[2] and because they want to place "the economic and production problems, which have been pushed to the forefront by the entire course of the communist construction, at the centre of the activities of the Party organizations" and make them "the cornerstone
page 49
of all their work".[1] Khrushchov said, "We say bluntly that the main thing in the work of the Party organs is production."[2] And what is more, they have foisted these views on Lenin, claiming that they are acting in accordance with his principles.
However, anyone at all acquainted with the history of the CPSU knows that, far from being Lenin's views, they are anti-Leninist views and that they were views held by Trotsky. On this question, too, Khrushchov is a worthy disciple of Trotsky.
In criticizing Trotsky and Bukharin, Lenin said:
Politics are the concentrated expression of economics. . . . Politics cannot but have precedence over economics. To argue differently means forgetting the A B C of Marxism.
He continued:
. . . without a proper political approach to the subject the given class cannot maintain its rule, and consequently cannot solve its own production problems.[3]
The facts are crystal clear: the real purpose of the revisionist Khrushchov clique in proposing a "party of the entire people" was completely to alter the proletarian character of the CPSU and transform the Marxist-Leninist Party into a revisionist party.
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The great Communist Party of the Soviet Union is confronted with the grave danger of degenerating from a party of the proletariat into a party of the bourgeoisie and from a Marxist-Leninist into a revisionist party.
Lenin said:
A party that wants to exist cannot allow the slightest wavering on the question of its existence or any agreement with those who may bury it.[1]
At present, the revisionist Khrushchov clique is again confronting the broad membership of the great Communist Party of the Soviet Union with precisely this serious question.
At the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, Khrushchov announced that the Soviet Union had already entered the period of the extensive building of communist society. He also declared that "we shall, in the main, have built a communist society within twenty years".[2] This is pure fraud.
How can there be talk of building communism when the revisionist Khrushchov clique are leading the Soviet Union onto the path of the restoration of capitalism and when the Soviet people are in grave danger of losing the fruits of socialism?
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In putting up the signboard of "building communism" Khrushchov's real aim is to conceal the true face of his revisionism. But it is not hard to expose this trick. Just as the eyeball of a fish cannot be allowed to pass as a pearl, so revisionism cannot be allowed to pass itself off as communism.
Scientific communism has a precise and definite meaning. According to Marxism-Leninism, communist society is a society in which classes and class differences are completely eliminated, the entire people have a high level of communist consciousness and morality as well as boundless enthusiasm for and initiative in labour, there is a great abundance of social products and the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is applied, and in which the state has withered away.
Marx declared:
In the higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs![1]
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According to Marxist-Leninist theory, the purpose of upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat in the period of socialism is precisely to ensure that society develops in the direction of communism. Lenin said that "forward development, i.e., towards Communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise''.[1] Since the revisionist Khrushchov clique have abandoned the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union, it is going backward and not forward, going backward to capitalism and not forward to communism.
Going forward to communism means moving towards the abolition of all classes and class differences. A communist society which preserves any classes at all, let alone exploiting classes, is inconceivable. Yet Khrushchov is fostering a new bourgeoisie, restoring and extending the system of exploitation and accelerating class polarization in the Soviet Union. A privileged bourgeois stratum opposed to the Soviet people now occupies the ruling position in the Party and government and in the economic, cultural and other departments. Can one find an iota of communism in all this?
Going forward to communism means moving towards a unitary system of the ownership of the means of production by the whole people. A communist society in which several kinds of ownership of the means of production coexist is inconceivable. Yet Khrushchov is creating a situation in which enterprises owned by the whole people are gradually degenerating into capitalist enterprises and farms under the system of collective ownership are gradually degenerating into units of a kulak economy. Again, can one find an iota of communism in all this?
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Going forward to communism means moving towards a great abundance of social products and the realization of the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". A communist society built on the enrichment of a handful of persons and the impoverishment of the masses is inconceivable. Under the socialist system the great Soviet people developed the social productive forces at unprecedented speed. But the evils of Khrushchov's revisionism are creating havoc in the Soviet socialist economy. Constantly beset with innumerable contradictions, Khrushchov makes frequent changes in his economic policies and often goes back on his own words, thus throwing the Soviet national economy into a state of chaos. Khrushchov is truly an incorrigible wastrel. He has squandered the grain reserves built up under Stalin and brought great difficulties into the lives of the Soviet people. He has distorted and violated the socialist principle of distribution of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work", and enabled a handful of persons to appropriate the fruits of the labour of the broad masses of the Soviet people. These points alone are sufficient to prove that the road taken by Khrushchov leads away from communism.
Going forward to communism means moving towards enhancing the communist consciousness of the masses. A communist society with bourgeois ideas running rampant is inconceivable. Yet Khrushchov is zealously reviving bourgeois ideology in the Soviet Union and serving as a missionary for the decadent American culture. By propagating material incentive, he is turning all human relations into money relations and encouraging individualism and selfishness. Because of him, manual la-
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bour is again considered sordid and love of pleasure at the expense of other people's labour is again considered honourable. Certainly, the social ethics and atmosphere promoted by Khrushchov are far removed from communism, as far as far can be.
Going forward to communism means moving towards the withering away of the state. A communist society with a state apparatus for oppressing the people is in conceivable. The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat is actually no longer a state in its original sense, because it is no longer a machine used by the exploiting few to oppress the overwhelming majority of the people but a machine for exercising dictatorship over a very small number of exploiters, while democracy is practised among the overwhelming majority of the people. Khrushchov is altering the character of Soviet state power and changing the dictatorship of the proletariat back into an instrument whereby a handful of privileged bourgeois elements exercise dictatorship over the mass of the Soviet workers, peasants and intellectuals. He is continuously strengthening his dictatorial state apparatus and intensifying his repression of the Soviet people. It is indeed a great mockery to talk about communism in these circumstances.
A comparison of all this with the principles of scientific communism readily reveals that in every respect the revisionist Khrushchov clique are leading the Soviet Union away from the path of socialism and onto the path of capitalism and, as a consequence, further and further away from, instead of closer to, the communist goal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
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Khrushchov has ulterior motives when he puts up the signboard of communism. He is using it to fool the Soviet people and cover up his effort to restore capitalism. He is using it to deceive the international proletariat and the revolutionary people the world over and betray proletarian internationalism. Under this signboard, the Khrushchov clique has itself abandoned proletarian internationalism and is seeking a partnership with U.S. imperialism for the partition of the world; moreover, it wants the fraternal socialist countries to serve its own private interests and not to oppose imperialism or to support the revolutions of the oppressed peoples and nations, and it wants them to accept its political, economic and military control and be its virtual dependencies and colonies. Furthermore, the Khrushchov clique wants all the oppressed peoples and nations to serve its private interests and abandon their revolutionary struggles, so as not to disturb its sweet dream of partnership with imperialism for the division of the world, and instead submit to enslavement and oppression by imperialism and its lackeys.
In short, Khrushchov's slogan of basically "building a communist society within twenty years" in the Soviet Union is not only false but also reactionary.
The revisionist Khrushchov clique say that the Chinese "go to the length of questioning the very right of our Party and people to build communism".[1] This is a despicable attempt to fool the Soviet people and poison the friendship of the Chinese and Soviet people. We have never had any doubt that the great Soviet people will eventually enter into communist society. But right now
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the revisionist Khrushchov clique are damaging the socialist fruits of the Soviet people and taking away their right to go forward to communism. In the circumstances, the issue confronting the Soviet people is not how to build communism but rather how to resist and oppose Khrushchov's effort to restore capitalism.
The revisionist Khrushchov clique also say that "the CPC leaders hint that, since our Party has made its aim a better life for the people, Soviet society is being 'bourgeoisified', is 'degenerating'".[1] This trick of deflecting the Soviet people's dissatisfaction with the Khrushchov clique is deplorable as well as stupid. We sincerely wish the Soviet people an increasingly better life. But Khrushchov's boasts of "concern for the well-being of the people" and of "a better life for every man" are utterly false and demagogic. For the masses of the Soviet people life is already bad enough at Khrushchov's hands. The Khrushchov clique seek a "better life" only for the members of the privileged stratum and the bourgeois elements, old and new, in the Soviet Union. These people are appropriating the fruits of the Soviet people's labour and living the life of bourgeois lords. They have indeed become thoroughly bourgeoisified.
Khrushchov's "communism" is in essence a variant of bourgeois socialism. He does not regard communism as complefely abolishing classes and class differences but describes it as "a bowl accessible to all and brimming with the products of physical and mental labour".[2] He
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does not regard the struggle of the working class for communism as a struggle for the thorough emancipation of all mankind as well as itself but describes it as a struggle for "a good dish of goulash". There is not an iota of scientific communism in his head but only the image of a society of bourgeois philistines.
Khrushchov's "communism" takes the United States for its model. Imitation of the methods of management of U.S. capitalism and the bourgeois way of life has been raised by Khrushchov to the level of state policy. He says that he "always thinks highly" of the achievements of the United States. He "rejoices in these achievements, is a little envious at times''.[1] He extols to the sky a letter by Roswell Garst, a big U.S. farmer, which propagates the capitalist system;[2] actually he has taken it as his agricultural programme. He wants to copy the United States in the sphere of industry as well as that of agriculture and, in particular, to imitate the profit motive of U.S. capitalist enterprises. He shows great admiration for the American way of life, asserting that the American people "do not live badly"[3] under the rule and enslave ment of monopoly capital. Going further, Khrushchov is hopeful of building communism with loans from U.S. imperialism. During his visits to the United States and Hungary, he expressed on more than one occasion his readiness "to take credits from the devil himself".
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Thus it can be seen that Khrushchov's "communism" is indeed "goulash communism", the "communism of the American way of life" and "communism seeking credits from the devil". No wonder he often tells representatives of Western monopoly capital that once such "communism" is realized in the Soviet Union, "you will go forward to communism without any call from me".[1]
There is nothing new about such "communism". It is simply another name for capitalism. It is only a bourgeois label, sign or advertisement. In ridiculing the old-line revisionist parties which set up the signboard of Marxism, Lenin said:
Wherever Marxism is popular among the workers, this political tendency, this "bourgeois labour party," will swear by the name of Marx. It cannot be prohibited from doing this, just as a trading firm cannot be prohibited from using any particular label, sign, or advertisement.[2]
It is thus easily understandable why Khrushchov's "communism" is appreciated by imperialism and monopoly capital. The U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk has said:
. . . to the extent that goulash and the second pair of trousers and questions of that sort become more important in the Soviet Union, I think to that extent a moderating influence has come into the present scene.[3]
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And the British Prime Minister Douglas-Home has said:
Mr. Khrushchov said that the Russian brand of communism puts education and goulash first. That is good; goulash-communism is better than war-communism, and I am glad to have this confirmation of our view that fat and comfortable Communists are better than lean and hungry Communists.[1]
Khrushchov's revisionism entirely caters to the policy of "peaceful evolution" which U.S. imperialism is pursuing with regard to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. John Foster Dulles said:
. . . there was evidence within the Soviet Union of forces toward greater liberalism which, if they persisted, could bring about a basic change within the Soviet Union.[2]
The liberal forces Dulles talked about are capitalist forces. The basic change Dulles hoped for is the degeneration of socialism into capitalism. Khrushchov is effecting exactly the "basic change" Dulles dreamed of.
How the imperialists are hoping for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union! How they are rejoicing!
We would advise the imperialist lords not to be happy too soon. Notwithstanding all the services of the revisionist Khrushchov clique, nothing can save imperialism from its doom. The revisionist ruling clique suffer from the same kind of disease as the imperialist ruling clique; they are extremely antagonistic to the masses of the people who comprise over ninety per cent of the world's population, and therefore they, too, are weak
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and powerless and are paper tigers. Like the clay Buddha that tried to wade across the river, the revisionist Khrushchov clique cannot even save themselves, so how can they endow imperialism with long life?
Khrushchov's revisionism has inflicted heavy damage on the international communist movement, but at the same time it has educated the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people throughout the world by negative example.
If it may be said that the Great October Revolution provided Marxist-Leninists in all countries with the most important positive experience and opened up the road for the proletarian seizure of political power, then on its part Khrushchov's revisionism may be said to have provided them with the most important negative experience, enabling Marxist-Leninists in all countries to draw the appropriate lessons for preventing the degeneration of the proletarian party and the socialist state.
Historically all revolutions have had their reverses and their twists and turns. Lenin once asked:
. . . if we take the matter in its essence, has it ever happened in history that a new mode of production took root immediately, without a long succession of setbacks, blunders and relapses?[1]
The international proletarian revolution has a history of less than a century counting from 1871 when the pro-
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letariat of the Paris Commune made the first heroic attempt at the seizure of political power, or barely half a century counting from the October Revolution. The proletarian revolution, the greatest revolution in human history, replaces capitalism by socialism and private ownership by public ownership and uproots all the systems of exploitation and all the exploiting classes. It is all the more natural that so earth-shaking a revolution should have to go through serious and fierce class struggles, inevitably traverse a long and tortuous course beset with reverses.
History furnishes a number of examples in which proletarian rule suffered defeat as a result of armed suppression by the bourgeoisie, for instance, the Paris Commune and the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919. In contemporary times, too, there was the counter-revolutionary rebellion in Hungary in 1956, when the rule of the proletariat was almost overthrown. People can easily perceive this form of capitalist restoration and are more alert and watchful against it.
However, they cannot easily perceive and are often off their guard or not vigilant against another form of capitalist restoration, which therefore presents a greater danger. The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat takes the road of revisionism or the road of "peaceful evolution" as a result of the degeneration of the leadership of the Party and the state. A lesson of this kind was provided some years ago by the revisionist Tito clique who brought about the degeneration of socialist Yugoslavia into a capitalist country. But the Yugoslav lesson alone has not sufficed to arouse people's attention fully. Some may say that perhaps it was an accident.
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But now the revisionist Khrushchov clique have usurped the leadership of the Party and the state, and there is grave danger of a restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union, the land of the Great October Revolution with its history of several decades in building socialism. And this sounds the alarm for all socialist countries, including China, and for all the Communist and Workers' Parties, including the Communist Party of China. Inevitably it arouses very great attention and forces Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people the world over to ponder deeply and sharpen their vigilance.
The emergence of Khrushchov's revisionism is a bad thing, and it is also a good thing. So long as the countries where socialism has been achieved and also those that will later embark on the socialist road seriously study the lessons of the "peaceful evolution" promoted by the revisionist Khrushchov clique and take the appro priate measures, they will be able to prevent this kind of "peaceful evolution" as well as crush the enemy's armed attacks. Thus, the victory of the world proletarian revolution will be more certain.
The Communist Party of China has a history of forty-three years. During its protracted revolutionary struggle, our Party combated both Right and "Left" opportunist errors and the Marxist-Leninist leadership of the Central Committee headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung was established. Closely integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of revolution and construction in China, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has led the Chinese people from victory to victory. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Comrade Mao Tse-tung have taught us to wage unremitting struggle in the theoretical, political and
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organizational fields, as well as in practical work, so as to combat revisionism and prevent a restoration of capitalism. The Chinese people have gone through protracted revolutionary armed struggles and possess a glorious revolutionary tradition. The Chinese People's Liberation Army is armed with Mao Tse-tung's thinking and inseparably linked to the masses. The numerous cadres of the Chinese Communist Party have been educated and tempered in rectification movements and sharp class struggles. All these factors make it very difficult to restore capitalism in our country.
But let us look at the facts. Is our society today thoroughly clean? No, it is not. Classes and class struggle still remain, the activities of the overthrown reactionary classes plotting a comeback still continue, and we still have speculative activities by old and new bourgeois elements and desperate forays by embezzlers, grafters and degenerates. There are also cases of degeneration in a few primary organizations; what is more, these degenerates do their utmost to find protectors and agents in the higher leading bodies. We should not in the least slacken our vigilance against such phenomena but must keep fully alert.
The struggle in the socialist countries between the road of socialism and the road of capitalism -- between the forces of capitalism attempting a comeback and the forces opposing it -- is unavoidable. But the restoration of capitalism in the socialist countries and their degeneration into capitalist countries are certainly not unavoidable. We can prevent the restoration of capitalism so long as there is a correct leadership and a correct understanding of the problem, so long as we adhere to the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist line, take the appropriate
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measures and wage a prolonged, unremitting struggle. The struggle between the socialist and capitalist roads can become a driving force for social advance.
How can the restoration of capitalism be prevented? On this question Comrade Mao Tse-tung has formulated a set of theories and policies, after summing up the practical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China and studying the positive and negative experience of other countries, mainly of the Soviet Union, in accordance with the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, and has thus enriched and developed the Marxist Leninist theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The main contents of the theories and policies advanced by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in this connection are as follows:
FIRST, it is necessary to apply the Marxist-Leninist law of the unity of opposites to the study of socialist society. The law of contradiction in all things, i.e., the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of materialist dialectics. It operates everywhere, whether in the natural world, in human society, or in human thought. The opposites in a contradiction both unite and struggle with each other, and it is this that forces things to move and change. Socialist society is no exception. In socialist society there are two kinds of social contradictions, namely, the contradictions among the people and those between ourselves and the enemy. These two kinds of social contradictions are entirely different in their essence, and the methods for handling them should be different, too. Their correct handling will result in the increasing consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the further strengthening and development of socialist society. Many people acknowledge the
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law of the unity of opposites but are unable to apply it in studying and handling questions in socialist society. They refuse to admit that there are contradictions in socialist society -- that there are not only contradictions between ourselves and the enemy but also contradictions among the people -- and they do not know how to distinguish between these two kinds of social contradictions and how to handle them correctly, and are therefore unable to deal correctly with the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
SECOND, socialist society covers a very long historical period. Classes and class struggle continue to exist in this society, and the struggle still goes on between the road of socialism and the road of capitalism. The socialist revolution on the economic front (in the ownership of the means of production) is insufficient by itself and cannot be consolidated. There must also be a thorough socialist revolution on the political and ideological fronts. Here a very long period of time is needed to decide "who will win" in the struggle between socialism and capitalism. Several decades won't do it; success requires anywhere from one to several centuries. On the question of duration, it is better to prepare for a longer rather than a shorter period of time. On the question of effort, it is better to regard the task as difficult rather than easy. It will be more advantageous and less harmful to think and act in this way. Anyone who fails to see this or to appreciate it fully will make tremendous mistakes. During the historical period of socialism it is necessary to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat and carry the socialist revolution through to the end if the restoration of capitalism is to be prevented, socialist
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construction carried forward and the conditions created for the transition to communism.
THIRD, the dictatorship of the proletariat is led by the working class, with the worker-peasant alliance as its basis. This means the exercise of dictatorship by the working class and by the people under its leadership over the reactionary classes and individuals and those elements who oppose socialist transformation and socialist construction. Within the ranks of the people democratic centralism is practised. Ours is the broadest democracy beyond the bounds of possibility for any bourgeois state.
FOURTH, in both socialist revolution and socialist construction it is necessary to adhere to the mass line, boldly to arouse the masses and to unfold mass movements on a large scale. The mass line of "from the masses, to the masses" is the basic line in all the work of our Party. It is necessary to have firm confidence in the majority of the people and, above all, in the majority of the worker-peasant masses. We must be good at consulting the masses in our work and under no circumstances alienate ourselves from them. Both commandism and the attitude of one dispensing favours have to be fought. The full and frank expression of views and great debates are important forms of revolutionary struggle which have been created by the people of our country in the course of their long revolutionary fight, forms of struggle which rely on the masses for resolving contradictions among the people and contradictions between ourselves and the enemy.
FIFTH, whether in socialist revolution or in socialist construction, it is necessary to solve the question of whom to rely on, whom to win over and whom to oppose. The
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proletariat and its vanguard must make a class analysis of socialist society, rely on the truly dependable forces that firmly take the socialist road, win over all allies that can be won over, and unite with the masses of the people, who constitute more than ninety-five per cent of the population, in a common struggle against the enemies of socialism. In the rural areas, after the collectivization of agriculture it is necessary to rely on the poor and lower middle peasants in order to consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat and the worker-peasant alliance, defeat the spontaneous capitalist tendencies and constantly strengthen and extend the positions of socialism.
SIXTH, it is necessary to conduct extensive socialist education movements repeatedly in the cities and the countryside. In these continuous movements for educating the people we must be good at organizing the revolutionary class forces, enhancing their class consciousness, correctly handling contradictions among the people and uniting all those who can be united. In these movements it is necessary to wage a sharp, tit-for-tat struggle against the anti-socialist, capitalist and feudal forces -- the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries and bourgeois rightists, and the embezzlers, grafters and degenerates -- in order to smash the attacks they unleash against socialism and to remould the majority of them into new men.
SEVENTH, one of the basic tasks of the dictatorship of the proletariat is actively to expand the socialist economy. It is necessary to achieve the modernization of industry, agriculture, science and technology, and national defence step by step under the guidance of the general policy of developing the national economy with
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agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor. On the basis of the growth of production, it is necessary to raise the living standards of the people gradually and on a broad scale.
EIGHTH, ownership by the whole people and collective ownership are the two forms of socialist economy. The transition from collective ownership to ownership by the whole people, from two kinds of ownership to a unitary ownership by the whole people, is a rather long process. Collective ownership itself develops from lower to higher levels and from smaller to larger scale. The people's commune which the Chinese people have created is a suitable form of organization for the solution of the question of this transition.
NINTH, "Let a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend" is a policy for stimulating the growth of the arts and the progress of science and for promoting a flourishing socialist culture. Education must serve proletarian politics and must be combined with productive labour. The working people should master knowledge and the intellectuals should be come habituated to manual labour. Among those engaged in science, culture, the arts and education, the struggle to promote proletarian ideology and destroy bourgeois ideology is a protracted and fierce class struggle. It is necessary to build up a large detachment of working-class intellectuals who serve socialism and who are both "red and expert", i.e., who are both politically conscious and professionally competent, by means of the cultural revolution, and revolutionary practice in class struggle, the struggle for production and scientific experiment.
TENTH, it is necessary to maintain the system of cadre participation in collective productive labour. The cadres
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of our Party and state are ordinary workers and not overlords sitting on the backs of the people. By taking part in collective productive labour, the cadres maintain extensive, constant and close ties with the working people. This is a major measure of fundamental importance for a socialist system; it helps to overcome bureaucracy and to prevent revisionism and dogmatism.
ELEVENTH, the system of high salaries for a small number of people should never be applied. The gap between the incomes of the working personnel of the Party, the government, the enterprises and the people's communes, on the one hand, and the incomes of the mass of the people, on the other, should be rationally and gradually narrowed and not widened. All working personnel must be prevented from abusing their power and enjoying special privileges.
TWELFTH, it is always necessary for the people's armed forces of a socialist country to be under the leadership of the Party of the proletariat and under the supervision of the masses, and they must always maintain the glorious tradition of a people's army, with unity between the army and the people and between officers and men. It is necessary to keep the system under which officers serve as common soldiers at regular intervals. It is necessary to practise military democracy, political democracy and economic democracy. Moreover, militia units should be organized and trained all over the country, so as to make everybody a soldier. The guns must forever be in the hands of the Party and the people and must never be allowed to become the instruments of careerists.
THIRTEENTH, the people's public security organs must always be under the leadership of the Party of the
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proletariat and under the supervision of the mass of the people. In the struggle to defend the fruits of socialism and the people's interests, the policy must be applied of relying on the combined efforts of the broad masses and the security organs, so that not a single bad person escapes or a single good person is wronged. Counter-revolutionaries must be suppressed whenever found, and mistakes must be corrected whenever discovered.
FOURTEENTH, in foreign policy, it is necessary to uphold proletarian internationalism and oppose great-power chauvinism and national egoism. The socialist camp is the product of the struggle of the international proletariat and working people. It belongs to the proletariat and working people of the whole world as well as to the people of the socialist countries. We must truly put into effect the fighting slogans, "Workers of all countries, unite!" and "Workers and oppressed nations of the world, unite!", resolutely combat the anti-Communist, anti-popular and counter-revolutionary policies of imperialism and reaction and support the revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed classes and oppressed nations. Relations among socialist countries should be based on the principles of independence, complete equality and the proletarian internationalist principle of mutual support and mutual assistance. Every socialist country should rely mainly on itself for its construction. If any socialist country practises national egoism in its foreign policy, or, worse yet, eagerly works in partnership with imperialism for the partition of the world, such conduct is degenerate and a betrayal of proletarian internationalism.
FIFTEENTH, as the vanguard of the proletariat, the Communist Party must exist as long as the dictatorship
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of the proletariat exists. The Communist Party is the highest form of organization of the proletariat. The leading role of the proletariat is realized through the leadership of the Communist Party. The system of Party committees exercising leadership must be put into effect in all departments. During the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletarian party must maintain and strengthen its close ties with the proletariat and the broad masses of the working people, maintain and develop its vigorous revolutionary style, uphold the principle of integrating the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of its own country, and persist in the struggle against revisionism, dogmatism and opportunism of every kind.
In the light of the historical lessons of the dictatorship of the proletariat Comrade Mao Tse-tung has stated:
Class struggle, the struggle for production and scientific experiment are the three great revolutionary movements for building a mighty socialist country. These movements are a sure guarantee that Communists will be free from bureaucracy and immune against revisionism and dogmatism, and will forever remain invincible. They are a reliable guarantee that the proletariat will be able to unite with the broad working masses and realize a democratic dictatorship. If, in the absence of these movements, the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and ogres of all kinds were allowed to crawl out, while our cadres were to shut their eyes to all this and in many cases fail even to differentiate between the enemy and ourselves but were to collaborate with the enemy and become corrupted and demoralized, if our
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Comrade Mao Tse-tung has pointed out that, in order to guarantee that our Party and country do not change their colour, we must not only have a correct line and correct policies but must train and bring up millions of successors who will carry on the cause of proletarian revolution.
In the final analysis, the question of training successors for the revolutionary cause of the proletariat is one of whether or not there will be people who can carry on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary cause started by the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not the leadership of our Party and state will remain in the hands of proletarian revolutionaries, whether or not our descendants will continue to march along the correct road laid down by Marxism-Leninism, or, in other words, whether or not we can successfully prevent the emergence of Khrushchovite revisionism in China. In short, it is an extremely important question,
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a matter of life and death for our Party and our country. It is a question of fundamental importance to the proletarian revolutionary cause for a hundred, a thousand, nay ten thousand years. Basing themselves on the changes in the Soviet Union, the imperialist prophets are pinning their hopes of "peaceful evolution" on the third or fourth generation of the Chinese Party. We must shatter these imperialist prophecies. From our highest organizations down to the grass-roots, we must everywhere give constant attention to the training and upbringing of successors to the revolutionary cause.
What are the requirements for worthy successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat?
They must be genuine Marxist-Leninists and not revisionists like Khrushchov wearing the cloak of Marxism-Leninism.
They must be revolutionaries who whole-heartedly serve the majority of the people of China and the whole world, and must not be like Khrushchov who serves both the interests of the handful of members of the privileged bourgeois stratum in his own country and those of foreign imperialism and reaction.
They must be proletarian statesmen capable of uniting and working together with the overwhelming majority. Not only must they unite with those who agree with them, they must also be good at uniting with those who disagree and even with those who formerly opposed them and have since been proved wrong. But they must especially watch out for careerists and conspirators like Khrushchov and prevent such bad elements from usurping the leadership of the Party and government at any level.
They must be models in applying the Party's democratic centralism, must master the method of leader
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ship based on the principle of "from the masses, to the masses", and must cultivate a democratic style and be good at listening to the masses. They must not be despotic like Khrushchov and violate the Party's democratic centralism, make surprise attacks on comrades or act arbitrarily and dictatorially.
They must be modest and prudent and guard against arrogance and impetuosity; they must be imbued with the spirit of self-criticism and have the courage to correct mistakes and shortcomings in their work. They must not cover up their errors like Khrushchov, and claim all the credit for themselves and shift all the blame on others.
Successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat come forward in mass struggles and are tempered in the great storms of revolution. It is essential to test and know cadres and choose and train successors in the long course of mass struggle.
The above series of principles advanced by Comrade Mao Tse-tung are creative developments of Marxism-Leninism, to the theoretical arsenal of which they add new weapons of decisive importance for us in preventing the restoration of capitalism. So long as we follow these principles, we can consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, ensure that our Party and state will never change colour, successfully conduct the socialist revolution and socialist construction, help all peoples' revolutionary movernents for the overthrow of imperialism and its lackeys, and guarantee the future transition from socialism to communism.
Regarding the emergence of the revisionist Khrushchov clique in the Soviet Union, our attitude as Marxist-
page 75
Leninists is the same as our attitude towards any "disturbance" -- first, we are against it; second, we are not afraid of it.
We did not wish it and are opposed to it, but since the revisionist Khrushchov clique have already emerged, there is nothing terrifying about them, and there is no need for alarm. The earth will continue to revolve, history will continue to move forward, the people of the world will, as always, make revolutions, and the imperialists and their lackeys will inevitably meet their doom.
The historic contributions of the great Soviet people will remain forever glorious; they can never be tarnished by the revisionist Khrushchov clique's betrayal. The broad masses of the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals and Communists of the Soviet Union will eventually surmount all the obstacles in their path and march towards communism.
The Soviet people, the people of all the socialist countries and the revolutionary people the world over will certainly learn lessons from the revisionist Khrushchov clique's betrayal. In the struggle against Khrushchov's revisionism, the international communist movement has grown and will continue to grow mightier than ever before.
Marxist-Leninists have always had an attitude of revolutionary optimism towards the future of the cause of the proletarian revolution. We are profoundly convinced that the brilliant light of the dictatorship of the proletariat, of socialism and of Marxism-Leninism will shine forth over the Soviet land. The proletariat is sure to win the whole world and communism is sure to achieve complete and final victory on earth.
OF THE PROLETARIAT
[1]
Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Programme", Selected Works of Marx and Engels, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1958, Vol. 2, p. 23.
[2]
Lenin, "The State and Revolution", Selected Works, FLPH Moscow, 1952, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 302.
[3]
Ibid., p. 296.
ment by international capitalism, the imperialists' threat of armed intervention and their subversive activities to accomplish peaceful disintegration. Life has confirmed these conclusions of Lenin's.
[1]
Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 61.
[2]
Lenin, "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers", Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, pp. 210-11.
[1]
"Marx to J. Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852", Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, p. 452.
[1]
Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Programme", Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, pp. 32-33.
[2]
Marx, "The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850", Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 1, p. 223.
has not vanished, not ceased to offer resistance, but that has intensified its resistance.[1]
[1]
Lenin, "Foreword to the Speech 'On Deception of the People with Slogans of Freedom and Equality'", Alliance of the Working Class and the Peasantry, FLPH, Moscow, 1959, p. 302.
[2]
Lenin, "'Left-Wing' Communism, an Infantile Disorder", Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 367.
EXIST IN THE SOVIET UNION
[1]
Stalin, "On the Draft Constitution of the U.S.S.R.", Problems of Leninism, FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p. 690.
[2]
Stalin, "Report to the Eighteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) on the Work of the Central Committee", Problems of Leninism, FLPH, Moscow, p. 777.
[1]
Krasnava Zvezda, May 19, 1962.
[1]
Pravda Vostoka, Oct. 8, 1963.
[2]
Pravda Ukrainv, May 18, 1962.
[1]
Izvestia, Oct. 20, 1963, and Izvestia Sunday Supplement, No. 12, 1964.
[2]
Komsomolskaya Pravda, Aug. 9, 1963.
[3]
Sovietskaya Kirghizia, Jan. 9, 1962.
[1]
Selskaya Zhizn, June 26, 1962.
[2]
Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta, No. 35, 1963.
[1]
Selskaya Zhizn, Aug, 14, 1963.
[2]
Pravda, Jan. 14, 1962.
[3]
Pravda, Feb. 6, 1961.
[1]
Izvestia, April 9, 1963.
[2]
Sovietskaya Rossiya, Oct. 9, 1960.
[1]
Izvestia, Oct. 18, 1960.
[2]
Selskaya Zhizn, July 17, 1963.
[3]
Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta, No. 27, 1963.
[4]
Literaturnaya Gazeta, July 27 and Aug. 17, 1963.
[1]
Sovietskaya Rossiya, Jan. 27, 1961.
THE REVISIONIST KHRUSHCHOV CLIQUE
[1]
Lenin, "Plan of the Pamphlet 'On the Food Tax'", Collected Works, 4th Russian ed., Moscow, Vol. 32, p. 301. [Transcriber's Note: In the 4th English edition of Lenin's Collected Works the title is given as "Plan of the Pamphlet The Tax in Kind", Vol 32, pp. 320-28. The relevant passage therein is as follows: "The appropriation system and the 'apparatus'. We should have perished long ago but for the 'apparatus'. Unless we wage a systematic and persevering struggle to improve it we shall perish before we manage to lay the foundation of socialism" (pp. 321-22). -- DJR]
[1]
N. S. Khrushchov, Interview with Foreign Correspondents at Brioni in Yugosavia, Aug. 28, 1963.
THE WHOLE PEOPLE
[1]
Lenin, "The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve's Book", Collected Works, FLPH, Moscow, 1960, Vol. 1, p. 419.
[1]
Pravda editorial board's article, "Programme for the Building of Communism", Aug. 18, 1961.
[1]
Lenin, "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up", Collected Works, International Publishers, New York, 1942, Vol. 19, pp. 269-70.
[2]
Lenin, "The State and Revolution", Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 234.
[1]
Ibid., pp. 256-57.
[2]
Ibid., p. 234.
[1]
M. A. Suslov, Report at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, February 1964. (New Times, English ed., No. 15, 1964, p. 62.)
[1]
"From the Party of the Working Class to the Party of the Whole Soviet People", editorial board's article of Partyinaya Zhizn, Moscow, No. 8, 1964.
[1]
N. S. Khrushchov, "Report of the Central Committee of the CPSU", and "On the Programme of the CPSU", delivered at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, October 1961.
[2]
Lenin, "The State and Revolution", Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 291.
[1]
Lenin, "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky", Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 48.
[2]
Lenin, Marxism on the State, Russian ed., Moscow, 1958, p. 42.
OF THE ENTIRE PEOPLE
[1]
Izvestia, Mar. 10, 1964.
[1]
"Marx and Engels to A. Bebel, W. Liebknecht, W. Bracke and Others ("Circular Letter"), Sept. 17-18, 1879", Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, pp. 484-85.
[2]
"From the Party of the Working Class to the Party of the Whole Soviet People", editorial board's article of Partyinaya Zhizn, Moscow, No. 8, 1964.
[1]
Lenin, "Clarity First and Foremost!", Collected Works, FLPH, Moscow, 1964, Vol. 20, p. 544.
[1]
N. S. Khrushchov, Report at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, November 1962.
[2]
"Study, Know, Act", editorial of Economicheskaya Gazeta, No. 50, 1962.
[1]
"The Communist and Production", editorial of Kommunist, No. 2, 1963.
[2]
N. S. Khrushchov, Speech at the Election Meeting of the Kalinin Constituency of Moscow, Feb. 27, 1963.
[3]
Lenin, "Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Present Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin", Selected Works, International Publishers, New York, 1943, Vol. 9, pp. 54 and 55.
[1]
Lenin, "How Vera Zasulich Demolishes Liquidationism", Collected Works, FLPH, Moscow, 1963, Vol. 19, p. 414.
[2]
N. S. Khrushchov, "On the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", at the 22nd Congress of the CPSU in October 1961.
[1]
Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Programme", Selected Works of Marx and Engels, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, p. 24.
[1]
Lenin, "The State and Revolution", Selected Works, FLPH Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 1, p. 291.
[1]
M. A. Suslov, Report at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, February 1964.
[1]
"Open Letter of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to Party Organizations and All Communists in the Soviet Union", July 14, 1963.
[2]
N. S. Khrushchov, Speech for the Austrian Radio and Television, July 7, 1960.
[1]
N. S. Khrushchov, Interview with Leaders of U.S. Congress and Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sept. 16, 1959.
[2]
N. S. Khrushchov, Speech at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSU, February 1964.
[3]
N. S. Khrushchov, Talk at a Meeting with Businessman and Public Leaders in Pittsburgh, U.S.A., Sept. 24, 1959.
[1]
N. S. Khrushchov, Talk at a Meeting with French Parliamentarians, Mar. 25, 1960.
[2]
Lenin, "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism", Selected Works, International Publishers, New York, Vol. 11, p. 761.
[3]
Dean Rusk, Interview on British Broadcasting Corporation Television, May 10, 1964.
[1]
A. Douglas-Home, Speech at Norwich, England, Apr. 6, 1964.
[2]
J. F. Dulles, press conference, May 15, 1956.
OF THE PROLETARIAT
[1]
Lenin, "A Great Beginning", Selected Works, FLPH, Moscow, Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 229.
cadres were thus dragged into the enemy camp or the enemy were able to sneak into our ranks, and if many of our workers, peasants, and intellectuals were left defenceless against both the soft and the hard tactics of the enemy, then it would not take long, perhaps only several years or a decade, or several decades at most, before a counter-revolutionary restoration on a national scale inevitably occurred, the Marxist-Leninist party would undoubtedly become a revisionist party or a fascist party, and the whole of China would change its colour.[1]
[1]
Mao Tse-tung, Note on "The Seven Well-Written Documents of the Chekiang Province Concerning Cadres' Participation in Physical Labour", May 9, 1963.