The most important principle that makes Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought different from revisionism is the principle of continuing class struggle and the permanence of revolution during the entire period of socialism under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Chairman Mao said:
Will there still be need for revolution a hundred years from now? Will there still be need for revolution a thousand years from now? There is always need for revolution. There are always sections of the people who feel themselves oppressed; junior officials, students, workers, peasants and soldiers don’t like bigshots oppressing them. That’s why they want revolution. (PR #21, 1976, p. 9)
These words portray the positive proletarian approach to revolutionary struggle. The proletariat’s main weapon is class struggle and every communist must be a firm advocate of uninterrupted revolution. The capitalist-roaders in China, like the capitalists here in the United States, will not disappear on their own but must be attacked and dragged out.
All genuine Marxists are always full of confidence and plunge into the fiery revolutionary struggles to create a bright future through fighting. Evading contradictions and wearying of struggle are not part of the mental outlook of Marxists. (PR #34, 1976, p. 14)
Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all boil down to one sentence, ’It is right to rebel’. . And from this truth there follows resistance, struggle, the fight for socialism. (Chairman Mao as quoted in The Chinese Road to Socialism, Wheelwright and McFarlane, MR Press, 1970)
In 1963, Chairman Mao warned that if class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat were forgotten,
. . then it would not be long, perhaps only several years, or a decade, or several decades at most before a counter-revolutionary restoration on a national scale would inevitably occur, the Marxist-Leninist Party would undoubtedly become a revisionist party, a fascist party, and the whole of China would change its color.
Therefore, the key link of the CCP line has been class struggle, the chief task being fighting revisionism and consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat through continual revolution.
The question of class struggle was central in last year’s struggle to beat back the Right deviationist trend:
The programme of ’taking the three directives as the key link’ was dished up last summer with ulterior motives by that unrepentant capitalist-roader [Teng Hsiao-ping]. It is a distortion of Chairman Mao’s instructions by putting his directives on promoting stability and unity and on pushing the national economy forward on par with the directive on studying the dictatorship of the proletariat and combatting and preventing revisionism, describing all three as ’the key link for all work”. Chairman Mao recently pointed out, ’What ’taking the three directives as the key link’! Stability and unity do not mean writing off class struggle; class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it’. . ’This person [Teng] does not grasp class struggle . . has never referred to this as the key link. His theme of ’white cat, black cat,’ makes no distinctions between imperialism and Marxism.’ (PR #14, 1976, pp. 3-5)
Comrade Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Party of Labor of Albania, has also said:
The modern revisionists with the Soviet revisionists in the lead claim that class struggle dies out with the liquidation of the exploiting classes. This is a fraud designed to disarm the working class and lull it to sleep, to open the way to the restoration of capitalism. This has been most clearly proved in the Soviet Union and the other former socialist countries, where the new capitalist bourgeoisie has come to power. (from Comrade Hoxha’s report to the 7th Party Congress, November, 1976, Section 1)
All revisionists from Brezhnev to Teng Hsiao-ping see revolutionary struggle by the proletariat as ultra-“Leftist”, and talk about the dying out of class struggle and advocate a ’peaceful transition to communism’!, What they really want is peaceful restoration of capitalism. The proletariat seeks order and unity under socialism. They unite the many to carry out uninterrupted revolution and mass movements for socialist construction. Revisionists clamour that class struggle divides and creates contradictions; communists see it as a force that unites and resolves contradictions. Revisionists say that struggle is destructive to production; communists see it as the motive force in socialist production. Of course, revisionists’ view of class struggle by the proletariat is determined by the fact that they basically fear it, because class struggle by the proletariat is aimed at their destruction and the destruction of their ideas. The proletariat has nothing to fear from class struggle . . it has a world to gain.
Revisionists deny that there are contradictions in the Party, contradictions produced by the classes in the Party. They attack the two-line struggle in the Party (that aims to weed them out) saying that it “creates contradictions,” as if those contradictions didn’t already exist. Typical of all these revisionist attacks on the proletariat’s class struggle are the attacks made against the “gang of four”: They attack them repeatedly for causing the country to be “intranquil”!
An article in Peking Review #6, 1977, called ”Exposing Wang Hung-wen’s scheme to Throw China into Disorder”, exposes the revisionists’ uneasiness in the face of class struggle:
In a word, he was bent on stirring up trouble in the whole country. Wherever his sinister hand reached there was disorder. Wang Hung-wen not only made a mess of things in various localities but also created disorder in various leading organs under central authorities and tried to split the Party Central Committee.
At a meeting on planning work convened by the State Council, he personally came out to stir up trouble and secretly instigated his henchmen to open up a surprise attack, clamouring that ’there are quite many capitalist-readers’ in the central department in charge of the economy.
An article in Peking Review #8 (p. 9) gave another example:
. . In 1976, the ’gang of four’ called its own tune in criticizing Teng Hsiao-ping, poked their noses into Chekiang [province] again and made trouble. At a meeting convened by the Party Central Committee last February, Wang Hung-wen and Chang Chun-chiao went to the Chekiang group many times to stir up trouble and attack several leading comrades of the provincial Party committee by name . . Through its secret liaison centre in Peking, the ’gang of four’ ordered followers in Chekiang to instigate the masses to dig out ’capitalist-roaders’ at various levels. Thus, the province was once again thrown into chaos.
Another article compared the ”gang of four” to a proverbial prince who caused trouble for the rulers of an ancient dynasty and said: “Unless the four pests are done away with the country will have no peace.”
“Peace” is not a Marxist answer . . it is a revisionist lie. It is a lie to negate class struggle, attack communist revolutionaries and pave the way for a “peaceful” restoration of capitalism.
When the Chinese press before the October purge talked of class struggle, they advocated it in very real terms, to deal with real problems and contradictions in every factory, commune and school. They talked about it in a revolutionary vigorous way that affected everyones’ lives directly.
When the new leaders call on the people of China to struggle against the “gang of four,” they do not mean fighting capitalist-roader managers in one’s factory, fighting material incentives or bureaucracy. They do not mean fighting the bourgeois anti-worker, anti-peasant ideas in education or fighting servility to foreign things. Struggle against the “capitalist-roader” “gang of four” is in no way connected to the struggle against the capitalist road in every factory, commune, and school. Struggle against the “gang of four” is basically struggle against “disorder” and for “peace” (and is presented in that way to the Chinese people). Struggle against the “gang of four” is basically struggle against the class struggle of the proletariat.
The current main theme, or key link, is to make a thorough exposure and criticism of the ’gang of four’. When this key link is grasped firmly, we can keep to the general orientation of the struggle and get all work done in proper order. ’Once the principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved.’ Party committees at various levels must have a very clear understanding of this ideology. (PR #8, 1977, pp. 6-7)
Emphasizing the top-down nature of this particular “class struggle”, the article said that the Party members and the people must be educated in the Tree Main Rules of Discipline of the People’s Liberation Army, and went on to call on the Chinese people to. .
... rally most closely round the Party Central Committee headed by Chairman Hua, closely follow its strategic plans, obey its orders in all our actions, work with one heart and one mind, march in step, firmly grasp the key link of thoroughly exposing and criticizing the ’gang of four,’ and strive for new victories in bringing about great order across the land.
Check it out for yourselves, comrades. The PR, China Reconstructs, and China Pictorial before the purge were brimming with the class struggle and proletarian revolution. These same magazines since the purge limit “class struggle” to the struggle against the “gang of four” and the spearhead of the attack is against revolution itself.