The seizure of the Party and state in China by the revisionists is without a doubt the greatest setback for the proletariat in China and around the world since the revisionist seized power in the Soviet Union after the death of Comrade Joseph Stalin.
The proletariat around the world has lost an important ally and leader in its struggles against imperialism, social-imperialism, and capitalism in general. We have lost an important teacher in how to continue socialist revolution and socialist construction after the seizure of state power by the proletariat. We have lost our principal leader in the struggle against modern revisionism.
Many Marxist-Leninists around the world do not want to accept this. Many would rather close their eyes and have blind faith that the Chinese, no matter what scientific analysis shows, are still headed on the socialist road. This does not change the setback; it only aggravates and supports it. In order to move forward, we must analyse what has happened and why it happened, and resolutely support the Chinese who are engaged in the struggle to rectify the situation.
The seizure of power by the revisionists in the Soviet Union set the worldwide communist movement back decades. But the refusal to recognize this fact by many communist parties around the world, and their consequent consolidation around the revisionist line, set back the communist movement decades more. In the United States as in many other countries, only within the last decade have some of us been able to become clear about the danger of revisionism and begin to build a new communist party.
Now we have more experience behind us and we cannot afford to lose another decade in recognizing the seizure of power by the revisionists in China. We must not continue to support the revisionists in their suppression of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary forces in China!
Many would like to say, “Maybe the revisionists have taken power and maybe they haven’t, we’ll know in a few years.”
Comrades, the facts of the two-line struggle in China are all there in front of you to be studied right now! Laziness or refusal to study and analyse the situation is one symptom of closing your eyes in order not to face the truth!
There are many Marxist-Leninist organizations in the United States that look at the Chinese line before and the Chinese line after the purge as one and the same thing and they have gotten themselves all tied up in supporting two contradictory lines. The October League (M-L), for example, congratulated the CCP for the removal of Teng Hsiao-ping in the spring of 1976 with these words:
The present struggle against the Right deviationist wind, which has targeted the line of Teng Hsiao-ping, is a good example of the character of these two-line struggles. Teng has been targeted throughout this struggle as the representative of the old and newly emerged bourgeoisie in China . . Teng Hsiao ping and all capitalist-roaders oppose the task of continuing the class struggle under the dictatorship of the proletariat. (Class Struggle, Spring, 1976)
Now the OL objectively congratulates the CCP for purging Teng’s critics, for discontinuing the struggle against Teng Hsiao-ping, and backhandedly defending him. What will they say if Teng is brought back into official power? Last year the OL used Yao Wen-yuan’s article “On the Social Basis of the Lin Piao anti-Party Clique” as an item for study among their cadres. Now that article is called “anti-Party” by the new Chinese leaders (PR #50, p. 13 1976). The OL still proudly presents the film “Breaking with Old Ideas”,[1] apparently unaware that it has been denounced by implication as “anti-Party and counter-revolutionary” by the present Chinese government.
As a result of their replacing blind faith for scientific analysis, the October League naively considers that the purge of the “gang of four” was part of the same tradition as the purge of Teng Hsiao-ping and the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist attempt!
The October League is by no means alone. In fact, the majority of Marxist-Leninist organizations in the USA have come out in support of the new leaders and the purge. These organizations now have an unprincipled and inconsistent view of the class struggle in China. They supported the struggle to beat back the Right deviationist wind last year and this year they support the complete reversal of that struggle. Opportunistically, they side with whichever line comes out on top in the two-line struggle.
To come up with Marxist-Leninist analysis is not as easy as echoing whoever is editing the Peking Review at a certain time. If the Peking Review is presenting a correct analysis now, then last year when the “gang of four” and their supporters were editing it, it was incorrect! Either one has to denounce the line presented last year (along with the films and articles representing it), as the new Chinese leaders have done, and then make a thorough self-criticism for having been duped into supporting an erroneous line and the “gang of four’s plot to usurp power” last year . . or they must uphold the line presented last year (along with the films and articles supporting it) and denounce the present CCP line and the current leaders’ usurpation of power. To do anything else is eclectic, unprincipled, and anti-Marxist.
Chairman Mao has said:
Either the East wind prevails over the West wind, or the West wind prevails over the East wind; there is no room for compromise on the question of the two lines. (The Chinese Road to Socialism, Wheelwright & McFarlane, MR Press)
It is not a question of whether China is “taking a more moderate path” or that maybe the present leadership is “a little revisionist but still basically on the socialist path,” as some people in the USA (principally the editors of the Guardian) would have us believe. There are always revisionists and revisionist trends within a party, but the question is: Which is the dominant force in the Party – Marxism-Leninism or revisionism? Who is exercising the leadership – proletariat or the bourgeoisie?
China has long been the vanguard of the proletariat of the world and the importance of the question of China cannot be overestimated. If the Marxist-Leninist organizations in the USA continue to follow the line now put forward by the present Chinese leaders, they will undoubtedly become revisionist themselves, as the CPUSA and many communist parties around the world have done in following the revisionist line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. They will find themselves echoing the “theory of productive forces,” and denouncing the mass line, class struggle, and uninterrupted revolution. The criticisms of the “gang of four” now being put forward by the present Chinese leaders and repeated by many in the USA already closely parallel many of the criticisms the Soviet revisionists have consistently put forward to denounce Mao Tse-tung and the entire Chinese revolution.
The Communist Party of the United States and the capitalist press have the same verdict on the recent events in China. The revisionists and the capitalists join together in one chorus to say: China has finally come to her senses! They say Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought is idealistic and impractical, Mao Tse-tung was a zealot, an unrealistic “ultra-Left” idealist and that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was an irresponsible adventure. They acclaim the new revisionists in China and their moves to change China’s policies in education, culture, industry, agriculture and foreign trade to be more “practical”. In typical capitalist fashion, they claim that education’s purpose is to train “experts”, not workers and peasants, and that industry has to be run by “experts” on a profit motive, material incentive capitalist basis – not based on proletarian politics with the workers in command. In typically imperialist fashion, they clamour that it is only “practical” for a Third World country like China to sell its oil and buy foreign technology – not rely on its own strength.
All these claims, along with those of the Chinese revisionists and revisionists around the world, are based on bourgeois mentality and capitalist interests. To defend communism, as set forth by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse-tung, we must resolutely and thoroughly reject this reasoning of capitalistic “practicality”. We must defend the workers’ and peasants’ right to education and the correctness of putting the proletariat and the peasantry and proletarian politics in command of industry and agriculture. We must defend the correctness of an underdeveloped socialist country relying on its own strength while making foreign technology subsidiary, and thoroughly reject the comprador-bourgeois ideas that the imperialists impose on the Third World nations. We must defend the Chinese proletarian art and thoroughly reject the capitalistic “freedom” in art to create revisionist, feudal, and capitalist propaganda.
It is not counter-revolutionary and anti-China to criticize and attack the revisionists in China – it is counter-revolutionary and anti-China to continue to support the revisionists’ destruction of the gains of the Cultural Revolution, their restoration of capitalism, and their suppression of the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary forces in China!
China, in its 28 years of liberation, has brought socialism to the most advanced stage, ideologically, that the world has ever seen. It created new ways to combat revisionism and put proletarian politics in command. It showed us how to mobilize the masses and conduct socialist revolution against revisionism in the period of socialism. It showed us how to put the workers in command of the factories, peasants in command of the communes and the proletariat in command of the Party and the government. It showed us practical ways to reduce the gap between manual and mental labor, the city and the countryside, and industry and agriculture. These lessons cannot be negated by the fact that revisionism is now dominant in China. All movies and documents of this era, especially the time during and since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, must be preserved and carefully studied.
The lesson of the revisionist takeover in China is that modern revisionism is a far more serious danger than we may have realized and therefore must be fought all the more resolutely tooth and nail wherever it raises its head. In our present struggle, we can look to the socialist countries where the proletariat holds power, and especially Albania, as leaders, and must now, more than ever, join with Marxist-Leninists in nations all over the world to continue developing proletarian revolutionary theory and carrying on Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought!
THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT, THE ROAD IS TORTUROUS
China Study Group
57 South Bannock Denver,
Colorado 80223 USA
written in March, 1977
slightly revised in June, 1977
[1] It is possible that by now the OL, recently declared “Communist Party M-L”, has been informed of the ”new verdict” and has discontinued showing this brilliant film. The film is no longer advertised in The Call as it was until a few months ago.